Comparison
ScreenCI and interactive demo tours
Arcade and Storylane build a clickable simulation out of captured screens. ScreenCI records the real product running and returns a narrated video you can embed anywhere. They solve different problems, and the honest answer is that a lot of teams should use both.
When Interactive tours is the better choice
- The demo is a sales asset and you need the prospect to click through it themselves, at their own pace.
- You want to gate it behind a form and capture the lead.
- You need to show a state of the product that does not exist yet, or edit the screen text away from what the product says.
- Branching paths matter more than narration.
Side by side
| Interactive tours | ScreenCI | |
|---|---|---|
| What the viewer gets | A clickable simulation built from captured screens. | A narrated video of the product actually running. |
| Viewer control | They click through at their own pace, and can branch. | They watch. Chapters and a permanent link, but one path. |
| Where it can be published | An embed on pages that can run the tour script. | An MP4 or a CDN embed: docs, help center, README, YouTube, a launch post, a vertical cut for social. |
| Keeping it current | Re-capture the screens when the UI changes. | CI re-records it, and a broken flow fails the build. |
| Narration | Tooltip text on each step. | Spoken narration with subtitles, per-cue speaking styles, and 79 languages. |
| Editing the captured content | Screens can be edited directly, including text that was never in the product. | What is on screen is what the product did. Narration, overlays, and branding are editable. |
| Sensitive data | Edit it out of the captured screen afterwards. | redact() masks before the frame is captured. |
| Lead capture in the demo | Forms and gating built in, which is the point. | Not a goal. Videos are published assets, not a funnel step. |
What separates the two
A video goes where a tour cannot
The same render is an MP4 and a permanent CDN embed, so it works in a README, a docs page, a help-center article, a launch post, a changelog, and a vertical cut for social. A tour lives on pages that can run it.
Captured screens drift silently
A tour is a snapshot of the UI at capture time. When the product moves, the tour keeps working and quietly stops being true. A ScreenCI video is a test: if the flow it walks through no longer exists, the run fails.
They are not exclusive
Plenty of teams run a tour on the pricing page and videos in the docs and help center. If the tour is your sales motion, keep it. This page is about the library of walkthroughs somebody has to maintain.
Judge it on your own product
Three recordings with live previews, no account and no card. Recording and previews stay free on every plan, so iterating on a video costs nothing.