Adobe XD vs. Optimal Workshop

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Adobe XD
Score 7.1 out of 10
N/A
Adobe XD is a prototyping and UX/UI option for website and mobile application design, featuring a range of UI tools and and templates, a versatile artboard and contextual layer panels, and deep integration with Adobe's creative suite of products for fast import of objects from these applications.
$33.99
per month per license
Optimal Workshop
Score 9.2 out of 10
N/A
Optimal Workshop, a company in New Zealand, offers their suite of user research tools on a subscription basis, including the Treejack information architecture tool, OptimalSort card sorting test, Chalkmark first-click testing, and other tools.
$191
per month per user
Pricing
Adobe XDOptimal Workshop
Editions & Modules
Individual
$9.99 ($119.88)
per month (annual, prepaid)
Students & Teachers - All Apps
$19.99 ($239.88)
per month, annual plan (for the year)
Business - Single App
$33.99
per month per license
Business - All Apps
$79.99
per month per license
Schools & Universities - Institution Wide
Contact Sales
Team
$191
per month per user
Individual
$208
per month per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Adobe XDOptimal Workshop
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details—These prices are based per user, per month billed annually. For 10 users or more, please contact us directly for a quote.
More Pricing Information
Best Alternatives
Adobe XDOptimal Workshop
Small Businesses
UXPin
UXPin
Score 7.9 out of 10
Smartlook
Smartlook
Score 8.3 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
OmniGraffle
OmniGraffle
Score 9.2 out of 10
Optimizely Web Experimentation
Optimizely Web Experimentation
Score 8.8 out of 10
Enterprises
OmniGraffle
OmniGraffle
Score 9.2 out of 10
Optimizely Web Experimentation
Optimizely Web Experimentation
Score 8.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Adobe XDOptimal Workshop
Likelihood to Recommend
7.5
(32 ratings)
7.8
(10 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.7
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
8.3
(16 ratings)
8.9
(3 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Adobe XDOptimal Workshop
Likelihood to Recommend
Adobe
Adobe XD is particularly useful and extremely easy to learn if you are a designer or a frequent user of the Adobe Creative Suite. Like all Adobe software, the tools, shortcuts, and interface are very similar to each other and allow for easy migration. Now, if you are not a frequent user of Adobe, it will probably cost a bit more to learn how to use the software, plus it is probably not going to be worth the price just for Adobe XD.
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Optimal Workshop
Optimal Workshop is great for UX testing for those with a budget to do so. This may be a little on the expensive side for smaller businesses, but definitely not anything crazy expensive. The insights that you get out of these tests are invaluable and can be the difference between launching a site and succeeding/failing.
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Pros
Adobe
  • Easy and simple animations.
  • Good tool for website mock-ups.
  • Easy user interface and tools that are like most Adobe products.
  • You can share a dev link and it displays all assets for developers to download or user like it's very own style guide.
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Optimal Workshop
  • The user interface is quite user friendly
  • Variety of tests
  • Access and variety of help on how to run tests, as well as educational information on which tests to run for your use case
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Cons
Adobe
  • Doesn’t have image editing tools, so having to go back to Photoshop or Lightroom just to make a sight edit can be a pain.
  • Could add some text editing functionality. It feels silly that I have to draw a line under text when I should just be able to underline.
  • Would be nice to have some real-time collaboration functionality.
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Optimal Workshop
  • The recruitment panelists are not professional, nor do they take the tasks seriously. You are going to get a lot of bad data.
  • They are HQ'd outside the US and must have a small team because the customer service is the absolute WORST I've experienced in their industry.
  • They pride themselves on documentation, but when they fail to document something they blame the customer for the mistake.
  • There are way too many limitations with the tool after you launch, limited integrations, and poor survey questionnaire options. The tool itself is far too basic for most sites, especially B2B.
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Likelihood to Renew
Adobe
We utilize many of the applications in the Adobe CC suite and our usage of this application came about simply because it was the one that was already paid for. Bearing that in mind we will definitely be renewing the software upon the expiration of the licensing. I am not sure if this is the solution we would go with were it not already included, we would have to evaluate all other options
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Optimal Workshop
No answers on this topic
Usability
Adobe
Very easy to use even for novice software users. A lot of the functionality is ubiquitous among the different software applications so the learning curve is relatively small. The biggest limitation may be someone's creativity or lack of it. There are some functional limitations but my understanding is that reviews come out fast and furious
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Optimal Workshop
Excellent and easy platform to use. Easy to onboard new members of the team. Easy to set up tests and follow number of participants performing the test. Easy to plug into other platforms to record participants. Excellent reporting. Easy to share reports with stakeholders. Easy to recruit through platform, however the quality of participants can be better.
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Support Rating
Adobe
I have not had a need to connect with the Adobe XD support team as of yet, but from past experience when dealing with the other products, the support has been very very good, and I would have no reason to think that this product would be any different. There are a good number of training videos on the Adobe site for this product as well as on other social media sites so a quick search should let you find the answers in several different ways.
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Optimal Workshop
The support has been good. No complaints. I have not needed to contact support more than 1-2 times when I was first getting set up, because the tools work well and are pretty straight forward. They do have good documentation
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Implementation Rating
Adobe
Implementation was a snap
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Optimal Workshop
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Adobe
While I have used Zeplin, InVision, and Adobe XD on various projects, partly dependent on in-house client teams preferences, Adobe XD is the most familiar to me based on 20+ years [of] working within Adobe applications. They all can do most of what I am looking to do within their toolset, from what I can tell, but jumping from Photoshop to create raster images and to Illustrator for my vectors, it is very second nature then to bring those right into XD to layout, basically as a digital experience analogy to InDesign. The fact that Adobe XD is already there in Creative Suite makes it very hard to consider any other product since it works well with what I do.
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Optimal Workshop
For the price as it is very convenient for first-time beginners, its intuitiveness both for the one who is designing the activities and for those who have to interact with them. The fact that it collects and gathers the data into insights of the overall responses collected by all users.
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Return on Investment
Adobe
  • Ease of use means we are up and running in no time.
  • Integrates and is a part of the Adobe CC platform (which we already subscribe to) so there was no additional cost.
  • Online proofing and developer handoff links are the icing on the cake. Keeps everything in one place.
  • Handles all our assets (mostly created in Illustrator) like a dream. Even imports native Photoshop docs, too, so that saves us so much time round tripping.
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Optimal Workshop
  • Optimal Workshop has had a positive impact on investigating information architecture on several websites.
  • Optimal Workshop has helped investigated the labeling on several websites.
  • Optimal Workshop has also support in the investigation of UX in navigations.
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