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Marketing Request - Sunsetting Product Tours #18479
Description
summary
product tours have been "deprecated" for some time now. however - the code still exists and users are still using it, which is causing unnecessary complexity & support requests for the team
we need to officially sunset product tours:
- delete product tours docs
- ship product tours skill
- remove product tours from the in-app roadmap
- send comms to users with some timeframe
- officially delete posthog / posthog-js product tours code
details
open to suggestions on any of the below, just jotting down some ideas
- 30-day heads-up
- at the end of 30 days, product tours will stop working entirely (even with older versions of posthog-js, etc)
- maybe we should be a bit "!! action required !!", since this is potentially quite disruptive?
- provide recommendations for alternatives: the product tours skill, and/or i can curate a list of some friendlies that offer product tours as a product
- should email anyone with tour activity (
product tour shownor similar event in their account, or events on our side that show they viewed/edited the tour admin) in the past... 60 days(?) - as we approach the 30-day marker, we should probably do a sweep on still-active tours and send a followup
Activity
joethreepwood commentedon Jul 15, 2026
@adboio Just checking: How should we direct users to use this skill and what does it accomplish compared to tours?
joethreepwood commentedon Jul 15, 2026
Proposal for Email One @adboio
We'd then send a second one 7 days beforehand. Much shorter:
Eyebrow: The time has (almost) come
H1: Product tours is (still) going away
Copy:
Three weeks ago we let you know that product tours was being removed from PostHog, and that we'd be back in touch closer to the deadline. And here we are.
We'll be removing product tours from PostHog on [DATE]. It will no longer work with any existing or future version of PostHog, and we will not offer official support for it.
We strongly recommend finding an alternative solution, which can include this product-tours skill we made for you.
CTA: Use the skill
adboio commentedon Jul 20, 2026
@joethreepwood the skill helps users build product tours one-off in their apps, complete with posthog event triggers / tracking / etc -- the same thing you'd get from our product tours product, just directly in your codebase instead
i actually don't see the skill in posthog code though so lemme double-check where it is / how to give it to customers lol
joethreepwood commentedon Jul 21, 2026
OK, cool. Let me know when you know and I can update the emails to direct to it and use that as the CTA.
Open to any other feedback on copy too, obviously.
adboio commentedon Aug 7, 2026
apologies for the delay!! really appreciate your help on this :)
product tours skill
🚨 pending context-mill#330 🚨
cli
ai plugin
for use with your coding agent, use the ai-plugin
posthog desktop
...actually still not working right now, but it's fine, i'll get it in there soon
adboio commentedon Aug 7, 2026
@joethreepwood do you think we should also put something in-app for customers with active tours (perhaps... using the product tours tool... one last time...)?
i don't think there's a risk we fully break anyone's website, but i just want to be confident everyone who needs to see this will see this & understands that we aren't just dropping support, but it's completely turning off
joethreepwood commentedon Aug 10, 2026
OK, two emails below for you to approve @adboio
We can definitely run an in-app notification with similar language. My suggestion would be that we time it alongside the 7 day email.
The final blocker for Customer.io now would be targeting. Is it enough to just target anyone who has the
product tour shownevent? Initial brief is a little vague here, but I'm basically going to need a static cohort in PostHog that matches the people (individuals, not orgs) that you want to get this message.Then I can update the dates and hit send.
adboio commentedon Aug 12, 2026
thank you @joethreepwood !! these emails look great.
feel free to set this up so replies go my way, or fwd any individual replies to me if you need help addressing questions/comments
i'll get you a static cohort first thing in the morning.
product tour shownis probably enough, but we have a few more events on our side for the product tour builder etc so i will add that in as wellyou da best 🐐
joethreepwood commentedon Aug 18, 2026
Quick poke on the cohort, please @adboio!
No specific rush, we just have a lot of outbound comms at the moment and I want to get this in the calendar so we can plan around it
adboio commentedon Aug 25, 2026
hey @joethreepwood i'm sorry (again) for the delay here - cohort created: https://us.posthog.com/project/2/cohorts/514637
the cohort includes:
product tour created,product tour viewed,^ all within the past 1yr
i think this covers everyone! we don't want to use
shown/dismissed/ etc because those are the events that trigger when customers see our tourshowever it also includes internal users, for some reason i can't get them excluded, the cohort keeps breaking lol. are you able to exclude
@posthog.comon your end?joethreepwood commentedon Aug 25, 2026
Scheduling now, deprecation date set at September 26 (30 days from now).
And the reminder, 7 days before hand
@adboio I'll update teams internally now, and lmk if you need anything else here -- otherwise I'll assume you're good to remove it at the right time.