Walnut vs Reprise: Which Demo Platform Actually Delivers in 2025?

If you’re evaluating Walnut vs Reprise, you’re looking at dropping at least $9,000 on an interactive demo platform this year. Go with Reprise and you’re closer to $30,000 — and that’s before implementation costs. Pick wrong and it’s not just expensive. You’ve lost months of setup time you’ll never get back.

By the end of this guide, you’ll know exactly which of the demo automation platforms fits your use case, timeline, and budget. No vendor speak here, just the real trade-offs that matter when you’re trying to hit your demo goals without blowing up your budget.

Quick heads up: we’re throwing a third demo platform (HowdyGo) into the mix. Same high-quality HTML interactive demos, a fraction of the cost, and it lets you have engaging demos up and running running today instead of waiting weeks.

Quick answer - which interactive demo platform should you choose?

Pricing reality check

You need a very good reason to justify Reprise’s pricing as it sits firmly in enterprise territory. Their very bottom tier starts at $30,000/year and is only available under an annual contract. Realistically, most Reprise deals climb well above that entry point. Add their full demo platform suite (Replay, Replicate, Reveal) plus user scaling, and you’re often looking at $60,000 to $130,000+ annually.

Walnut positions itself as the “accessible enterprise” option. Their starter tier runs about $9,000 per year for up to 3 users. Still annual contracts, but the math feels more reasonable when you compare it to Reprise. Walnut’s pricing tiers are designed to accommodate businesses of different sizes and needs, offering flexibility as organizations grow. That said, if you actually want the features that make Walnut compelling: AI personalization, solid integrations, real support, then you’re bumping up to their professional tier of around $18,600 annually for up to 5 users.

HowdyGo delivers enterprise-quality HTML demos at $159/month with unlimited users. No hidden fees, no seat limits, no annual lock-in. You can actually try it free for 2 weeks instead of sitting through another sales demo. And here’s the kicker - most teams end up with better demo adoption rates on HowdyGo because there’s no per-seat anxiety holding them back from rolling it out company-wide. HowdyGo offers a scalable solution for teams as they grow, making it easy to expand without worrying about pricing complexity.

Hidden cost of unnecessary complexity in the demo creation process

The “nobody got fired for buying IBM” syndrome is alive and well in the demo platform world. Sales teams default to the most expensive option because it feels safer. Enterprise sales reps are really good at making you feel like anything cheaper is somehow… risky.

So most buyers are over-engineering their solution. The reality? Most teams just need to:

• Capture their product in action
• Make it look professional
• Share it with some personalization
• Track impact

What happens with overly complex platforms is your team gets trained, creates a few demos, then… stops using it. The complexity wins. New users often face onboarding challenges, struggling with navigation and a steep learning curve, which makes it difficult for them to get started. When only the sales ops person knows how to use a platform, the reps default back to screen recordings because the “approved” platform is too much work.

Deep Dive: Walnut

Choose Walnut if sending AI-powered personalized demos 1-1 to prospects fits your sales process. Their standout feature is using AI to automatically customize demos based on prospect data, which can be a game-changer for mid-market sales teams running high-volume demos. The $9,000 starting price and 1-2 week setup might make sense when you need that level of intelligent personalization at scale.

What Walnut gets right

AI-assisted creation that genuinely helps. Most “AI-powered” tools are just marketing fluff. Their AI genuinely speeds up demo creation by suggesting relevant screens, auto-generating demo flows, and even writing copy that doesn’t sound like a robot. Walnut's user friendly interface makes it easy to create interactive demos and manage demo templates, so sales teams can quickly build and personalize demos with minimal technical expertise.

243-language support for global teams. If you’re selling globally, this is huge. Walnut doesn’t just translate text - they localize entire demo experiences. Your German prospects get demos that feel native, not like Google Translate had a bad day.

Where Walnut falls short

Per-seat pricing that punishes growth. This is the killer for most growing teams. Start with 5 users at $9,200/year, but add another 5 as you scale? You’re looking at significant cost jumps. Teams outgrow their pricing tier faster than they expect. Additionally, limited support for certain advanced features—such as mobile optimization or complex workflows—can be a drawback for some teams.

Learning curve steeper than advertised. The AI helps, but mastering Walnut’s full feature set takes time. New users may find the onboarding process challenging due to the platform's complexity. Expect your team to spend 1-2 weeks before they’ve got their first demo production ready.

Deep Dive: Reprise

Reprise isn't for everyone. Actually, it's not for most people - which makes it great for a select few. Pick Reprise when live sandbox demos are non-negotiable and you have very specific / custom requirements. If your product requires a stable, managed sandbox for reps to give live demos, Reprise delivers the most sophisticated sandbox environments in the space.

What Reprise gets right

The three-product suite is genuinely comprehensive. Replay handles guided demos, Replicate creates full sandbox environments, and Reveal adds live demo overlays. It's like having three specialized tools that actually work together instead of fighting each other.

Code-level customization means you can build anything. Need to modify JavaScript on the fly? Want to create a completely custom user flow that doesn't exist in your actual product? Reprise lets you get under the hood in ways that make developers happy.

Where Reprise falls short

Implementation takes 4-8 weeks minimum. And that's if everything goes smoothly, which it rarely does with enterprise software. One customer told us they spent three months just getting their first demo environment properly configured.

You'll need dedicated technical resources. This isn't a "set it up over lunch" situation. Plan on having developers involved, probably for longer than you'd like and constantly on SEs maintaining the environments.

Deep Dive: HowdyGo

Go with HowdyGo when you want to move fast without enterprise friction. Same-day setup, unlimited users, and monthly billing let growing teams start creating demos immediately. The sweet spot is when you want interactive demo adoption across multiple GTM teams without per-seat pricing roadblocks.

Live demo sandboxes, 1-1 personalized demos, marketing embeds and onboarding guides are all doable with a very quick learning curve using this interactive demo platform.

Why HowdyGo hits different

Unlimited users. This isn't just nice-to-have pricing. It changes how your team operates. No more rationing demo access or playing politics over who gets a login. Your entire GTM team can create interactive demos.

Same-day deployment that actually works. Customers routinely get their first demo live within hours of signing up - no 4-week implementation sprint.

Founding team support (not a ticket system). When you hit a snag, you're talking to the people who actually built the thing. The founders (us!) are still hands-on with customer success. That means feature requests get heard, problems get solved fast, and we proactively help you get the most out of the platform.

HowdyGo's honest limitations

Newer player (less enterprise street cred). Let's be real: HowdyGo doesn't have the brand recognition of Walnut or Reprise. Some procurement teams want to see 10+ years of enterprise customers and case studies for a demo automation platform. HowdyGo is building that track record but isn't there yet.

Limited advanced enterprise governance features. You won't find the same depth of user permissions, audit trails, or compliance reporting that enterprise platforms offer. For most teams, this doesn't matter. For heavily regulated industries or massive organizations, it might.

You may need to go through support for particularly complex customizations. While HowdyGo handles 99% of demo scenarios out of the box, really complex product flows might need some hand-holding. The platform is built for speed and simplicity first. If you need to recreate every possible user journey in your enterprise software, you might bump up against limitations.

Next steps

If you're spending weeks in vendor calls and comparing 47-point key feature matrices, you're probably solving for problems you don't actually have. The best demo platform is the one your team will actually use consistently - not the one with the most impressive enterprise features gathering dust.

Start with a realistic assessment of your actual needs, factor in the total cost of complexity (training time, ongoing maintenance, user adoption friction), and pick the platform that gets you creating great demos fastest. And hey, if you want to see what same-day demo creation actually looks like, give HowdyGo a try - we think it stacks up pretty well!