10 Onboarding Teardowns from top PLG products 🚀

Notion, Linear, Figma, Canva, and more — 400+ screenshots, 200+ comments, and a video deep-dive from me.

🔥 Want to fix your Onboarding and Activation? I’m opening just 3 summer slots for my new Onboarding & Activation Design Sprint — a focused 2-week sprint where I work side-by-side with your team to define unique solutions that reduce drop-off and boost activation. Past solutions have delivered 15% to 2× lifts. See how it works →

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For the last 8+ years, I trained one of the most helpful habits: analysing product flows through the eyes of a user (and business). Whenever I register in a new product, or see something interesting, I try to analyse that and notice new details, patterns, and industry trends. For this latest asset, I analysed the onboarding journeys from activation gaps to UX wins, broke down what’s working — and what’s not.

This was client-only, and last week I made it public in my LinkedIn post. The post went viral 🫣

I was surprised how many people still need this. In a constant rush of product work, I see how difficult it is for teams to find time to ZOOM OUT — look not just at their product flows from a new perspective, but also look around the industry, learn from competitors, and other best players.

If you wanted this board but haven’t received a DM from me, I’m making this available now for everyone here. The habit that I started more than 10 years ago at the beginning of my career is still with me — and it transformed into a mission to educate a broader community. Thanks for giving me huge support and inspiration to keep creating this educational content 🙏

In addition to 400+ screenshots, I added 200+ personal comments in sticky notes with my suggestions and observations. This board is for anyone trying to:

• ✅ Reduce early drop-off

• ✅ Improve time-to-value

• ✅ Build onboarding flows that feel intuitive

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By the way, if you're working on something like this, my next User-Centric Growth Course starts June 16 — you can bring your real Onboarding & Activation challenge there. For dear readers, I’m happy to share a promo code “growthmates” for $100 off 🎁 Past students came from Miro, Dropbox, and Appcues — you'd be in good company (and you can leverage L&D budget for that).

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Getting back to the onboarding teardowns — here are 5 activation patterns that kept showing up across the best:

1. Simplicity wins — Clean, focused signup flows with NO distractions or visuals (8/10 products follow this).

2. Visible progress matters— Progress bars or step counters (like Intercom’s profiling flow) help users orient and commit.

3. Tours aren’t enough anymore — 6/10 still rely on them, but users are fatigued. Modern UX needs more than just a tooltip walkthrough.

4. No more dead ends — Only 3/10 products guide users clearly from the dashboard. Figma stands out here with clear next-step nudges.

5. Let the product lead — If your UX is intuitive enough (like Notion or Linear), the product itself becomes the onboarding. No overlays needed.

Let’s dive deeper into each of these patterns with concrete examples and a special video walkthrough from me👇