Dovetail, headquartered in Sydney, aims to enable the world to create better products and services through deep customer understanding. Dovetail states they empower 45,000+ people, from agencies to universities to Fortune 100 companies, to make sense of their customer research in one collaborative research platform.
$0
per month
Optimal
Score 9.1 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.
$2,388
per year
Pricing
Dovetail
Optimal
Editions & Modules
Free
$0
Professional
$15
per month
Enterprise
Contact Sales
per year
Starter
$2388
per year
Enterprise
Custom
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Dovetail
Optimal
Free Trial
Yes
No
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
Optional
No setup fee
Additional Details
Discount available for annual billing on the Professional plan.
As a qualitative researcher who conducts client interviews, I find that Dovetail's ability to accurately transcribe the conversations (which, many times, include technical jargon that Dovetail is able to pick up on), synthesize the relevant information, pull highlights and insights, and create shareable reports is much better than other programs I've used in the past.
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.
I really like the User Interface, how easy it is to have all your research data in one project and how visual it is to understand where are things. It does have a good User Experience.
I like how nice and easy it is to create categories or use the ones auto generated as a starting point. It is very easy to create a color coded set of categories that help make sense of the data.
I like how easy it is to see the video snippet of a specific highlight.
Tree Testing - it is a very simple and easy to use system, that provides the data needed from a tree test
Card sorting - provides a system for users to participate in navigation menu layouts. We looked into several options, but this seemed very intuitive for users.
I think one of Dovetail's biggest challenges is discoverability. They are constantly shipping new features and adding more functionality, but I find the help articles and videos do not go deep enough or even provide enough help to get started. I'm sure I'm not utilizing the platform to its full potential, and I think better training or onboarding across all tiers would help us get more out of Dovetail. Its hard to even know what you're not using or what you don't know.
On the Enterprise plan, you get a dedicated account manager who can handle your onboarding. That's the only plan with an account manager. And it's a little unfortunate. When you write into the help center, they direct you to a help article, which again does not go deep enough. I wish there were more opportunities for training and enablement for lower tiers.
I think Dovetail is amazing for qualitative research, but I find it very frustrating and lacking for quantitative research. I don't think it makes survey analysis very easy. I would be looking for something closer to a Sheets or Excel for quant analysis, but Dovetail is pretty crude in what it allows you to do with survey results.
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.
Because we are really happy with the tool and it’s capabilities at the moment. The price increase is the main issue we can have but the features are getting better and better. It really saves a lot of time for our team and allow us to collaborate more efficiently with certain stakeholders that often did not réalise how much research we conduct. Now they can just have a look to it by themself!
As I said, since the navigation changed, I’m a bit lost. The previous structure felt more intuitive, and I could quickly access the sections I needed. Now, some areas seem reorganized in a way that’s less predictable, which slows me down. I sometimes have to click through multiple menus to find specific features or content
I would rate Optimal Workshop's overall usability 9 out of 10 due to several key factors. Firstly, the platform has a user-friendly interface makes navigation straightforward, even for first-time users. The tools and features are well-organized, ensuring users can quickly find what they need without unnecessary complexity. Secondly, the platform is highly intuitive, meaning users can easily understand how to perform tasks without extensive guidance. This is supported by clear and concise instructions throughout the application, reducing the learning curve significantly.
Additionally, the learnability of Optimal Workshop is exceptional. New users can become proficient in a short amount of time, thanks to its well-thought-out design and helpful onboarding materials. Even more advanced features are presented in a way that feels approachable and manageable. Finally, the platform supports a seamless workflow, allowing users to focus on their research or tasks rather than struggling with the software. These qualities collectively make Optimal Workshop a reliable and efficient tool for many projects, justifying its high usability rating.
Regarding performance, I would say it’s satisfactory. Adding data and transcriptions is really fast and efficient, and can be done in the background, so I’m never hindered by these aspects. However, all the new AI-generated features are still somewhat slow to run. It’s nothing major, but it should improve in the future.
Support was good, especially when it comes to the capability of your support agents and engineers. But as i am located in Europe, the difference in the time zone made it hard to communicate with your offices and kept my work way back
We’ve never had to use much of their support services since the platform is very easy to use, we have however needed to transfer ownership between team members due to people leaving or other circumstances. Under those situations, the support offered to us has been been very quick and efficient and we never had to nudge them much to get the job done.
The training went very well, and we co-built it to really address our needs. I also think it was beneficial to have feedback coming from someone other than myself (since I manage the tool), as it helped reinforce the points I wanted to highlight. The team’s feedback on the training was very positive.
I have used Condens for qualitative analysis in the past, and I really like that product. I think that Dovetail is more powerful in its ability to analyze with AI and organization. One feature I really liked about Condens was the ability to clip and tag quotes directly from the video, as if it were a movie-editing tool.
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.
Management is quite straightforward; it’s easy to change access if certain stakeholders need to use it. The repository features are accessible to all teams, making it a good entry point into the tool. The more people use it, the more powerful the tool becomes, so it seems truly scalable to me. The limits are more financial, in terms of accessing additional features.
Having a centralized research space is a game changer. Makes it so much easier to hand over research if working with new people and have system in place (using the templates). Saves so much time. We don't have hard numbers on the hours saved but we are much more efficient using Dovetail than without.
The tagging system in general is amazing and allows for consistency in topic marking. This was non-existent for our team before Dovetail and now we can do much more granule reports with exact # of times something was said with accuracy.
