What is a Flow?
A Flow is an interactive guide that helps users learn features, complete tasks, or navigate your application. It's a sequence of steps—like tooltips, speech bubbles, or modals—that appear on specific pages or elements as users progress. You can configure triggers and actions to create personalized, context-aware guidance that responds to how users interact with your app.
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Flow options, such as adding a focus attention, custom positioning, and conditional logic triggered by user actions, help you personalize the user experience. They're perfect for onboarding new users, driving feature adoption, and delivering timely in-app help exactly when it's needed.
Common Flow use cases (manual or AI-generated)
Onboard new users to shorten the time to value.
Demonstrate complex concepts or functions to reduce friction, add clarity, and reduce support tickets.
Pair flows with new feature announcements to drive product adoption.
Drive users to that “Aha!” moment faster by highlighting product value.
Flows vs. Smartflows
A Flow can be built in two ways: manually, using the Flow option to build steps one at a time and configure each step along the way; or using Smartflow, which uses AI to record your steps in your app and build a flow you can refine to meet your exact requirements. Flows and Smartflows produce the same outcome: interactive, guided experiences (Flows) that run within your app to help users learn features, complete onboarding tasks, or navigate processes.
The main difference between a Flow and Smartflow is how steps are added. Once the steps are added (either manually or via AI), you have the same options to enhance them with additional engagement and customizations.
A Flow is created manually, allowing you complete control over what is included and how it is configured at each step.
A Smartflow is an AI-powered method for generating a Flow. You click through your app once, and Userflow’s AI converts that recording into an editable flow of up to 30 steps. Smartflow automatically chooses step types, contextual copy, and rich media based on what the AI observes, drastically reducing the time and expertise needed to create onboarding and feature-adoption Flows. Learn more about using Smartflow in: Creating AI-generated Smartflows.
When to Use Flows vs. Smartflows
Your Environment | Best Choice | Why |
|---|---|---|
Need highly precise, hand-crafted guidance | Flows | Build from scratch for complete control over every detail |
Have complex logic or strict UX requirements | Flows | Customize advanced conditions and branching exactly as needed from the start |
Want to quickly prototype or jump-start a Flow | Smartflows | Generate a complete flow (up to 30 steps) in minutes, then refine |
Have a straightforward UI with simple element selection | Smartflows | Fastest way to build—AI handles element selection automatically |
Team members are new to Userflow or are less technical | Smartflows | Just record your steps, and AI does the heavy lifting |
💡 Pro tip: Most teams use both! Start with Smartflows to quickly create your initial flow, then switch to manual editing for fine-tuning copy, paths, and targeting before going live.
Using step templates for efficiency and consistency
One way to streamline Flow building is to save steps as templates for future use. Step templates eliminate repetitive work and accelerate your content creation process. Learn more about saving a step as a template and reusing it in Flows in the Step templates guide.