No Code Needed to Run Product Experiments Inside Your App

01 /The Concept

Plotline lets product and marketing managers run user experience experiments inside mobile apps without writing a line of code.

The setup is a one-time integration: engineers connect the app to Plotline via the platform's SDK. After that, product and marketing teams take over.

What they get is a visual editor with a library of UI widgets that can appear at specific moments in the app based on defined conditions. The goal is to reduce friction in the user journey and accelerate the moments where users discover what the app can do for them.

The widget types include: stories, contextual tooltips explaining interface elements, floating overlays, video and animated tutorials, and spotlight overlays that dim the background and draw attention to a specific part of the UI.

The core job of all these mechanics: get new users to their first value moment faster. That's the key activation lever – users who don't understand what to do will leave. And get existing users to notice and adopt new features, deepening their investment in the app.

Plotline also offers engagement mechanics: scratch cards, quizzes, and spin-the-wheel widgets designed to pull users deeper into the app and increase time spent.

With this toolkit, product and marketing teams can run A/B tests, inserting different widget configurations and tracking the impact on their metrics. Everything surfaces in real time on the platform's dashboard.

One client switched to Plotline and is now running at least four new experiments per week, with each one taking under ten minutes to launch.

Another inserted floating overlays and scratch cards into their app and saw a 37% increase in users accepting in-app offers.

A third used Plotline to drive an 80% increase in users trying new features – leading to a 30% increase in subscription renewals.

Pricing runs $499 or $1,299 per month depending on the widget set, features, and user volume.

Plotline shipped its platform in 2022. It now serves around 50 clients whose apps collectively reach roughly 150 million users. The company is targeting $5M in annual revenue this year.

Plotline just raised its first $2.6M round to put behind more aggressive marketing.

02 /Why It Matters

As Plotline's founder put it in a recent interview, no-code platforms for user activation and feature discovery have been available for web apps for some time. The mobile equivalent is far more limited – and mobile apps need these tools just as much.

A [review from 2022](/review/chto-ja-tut-mogu-poleznogo-dlja-sebja-sdelat) covered Appcues, which has since raised $52.8M (with more coming after that review) – one of the established web-app players in this space.

Heyflow, [covered here](/review/starye-posadochnye-stranicy-umerli) in March, applies similar interactive-layer thinking to conversion optimization – replacing static landing pages with sequences of interactive screens designed to draw visitors in. That startup raised $22M.

Even in web apps, the market isn't saturated. Y Combinator's latest batch included Resonance – also covered in March – which helps web developers communicate new features to users more effectively.

The core business problem these platforms address is revenue per user. Churn is a constant: some percentage of subscribers always drifts away – tried it, didn't need it, or thought they needed it and didn't. Developers need to grow revenue from the users who stay, to offset losses from the ones who leave. That means upselling – paid add-ons, expanded tiers, premium feature unlocks.

The relevant metric is Net Revenue Retention (NRR), sometimes called Net Dollar Retention (NDR). It measures retention not in users but in revenue – how much the developer earns today from a cohort acquired at some point in the past. NRR above 100% means that the remaining users are paying enough more to more than compensate for the revenue lost to churn. Top-performing SaaS companies often run NRR of 120–140%.

But mobile app developers have an additional opportunity that's specific to their market: the super-app.

In emerging markets – Southeast Asia, Latin America, parts of Africa – and notably in China, the super-app model has taken hold. A super-app consolidates a wide range of functionality into a single experience: mobile banking, ride-hailing, grocery delivery, movie tickets, all in one place. The rationale is simple: once an app has a user's attention and trust, why not serve more of their needs?

The super-app market was valued at $64.61 billion in 2022 and is expected to grow exponentially – projections put it at $734.67 billion by 2032, over 10x growth in a decade. A significant driver will be existing apps that decide to expand their feature surface in this direction, even if they never framed themselves as super-apps.

For super-apps, in-app feature discovery isn't just important – it's critical. The entire business model depends on users actively adopting new capabilities, many of which may surprise them. Tools like Plotline become infrastructure for that model.

03 /Opportunities

Building a mobile-app equivalent of Plotline is the most direct opportunity here – one the founders and their investors both say is still wide open.

The less obvious angle: whether your own mobile apps should evolve toward super-app territory. Especially if your target markets include or could include emerging economies, where this trend is most pronounced. The mechanics aren't complicated: understand what other apps your users rely on and start absorbing the most popular functions. It's a straightforward expansion path – into a market that may be approaching $1 trillion, which is reason enough to take it seriously.