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
Smartlook
Score 8.5 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
Smartlook is an analytics solution tool for websites, iOS/Android apps, and various app frameworks, that answers the "whys" behind users' actions. It helps users understand precisely how customers interact with website and app — watch recordings, create heatmaps, use automatic tracked events, and build conversion funnels. Data is seen on one central dashboard, which enables sharing and collaborating with colleagues. This is to support clear, data-driven decision-making for product managers,…
$55
per month 5000 sessions
Pricing
Dovetail
Smartlook
Editions & Modules
Free
$0
Professional
$15
per month
Enterprise
Contact Sales
per year
Pro
$55
per month 5000 sessions
Free
Free forever
per month 3000 sessions
Enterprise
Custom pricing
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Dovetail
Smartlook
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
Optional
Optional
Additional Details
Discount available for annual billing on the Professional plan.
All Smartlook packages support both web and mobile app platforms.
See 1st question answer for my use case, I went into depth there for the specific use cases we have. For less appropriate (touched on this earlier) the final report is not great in dovetail. The formatting options are not great and does not look professional because of the lack of customization and layouts. For my customer we wouldn't be able to present that data as it's constructed. So we have to copy and paste all the quotes and insights to a word doc. That's ok but then it means if we want to use Dovetail as a repository of data we have to then re-import a pdf of the report into the project page.
Smartlook is best for screen recordings. Especially when you are running MVPs. However, its pricing is very high. If your daily visitors are too much then either you will have to lose many of your recordings or you will have to pay too much money.
The tagging, linking, and repository features make it simple to maintain a living library of knowledge, ensuring past work is never lost.
Dovetail enables our researchers and non-research partners to engage more directly with findings, fostering a stronger culture of evidence-based decision-making.
Dovetail makes it simple to track engagement metrics with research insights proving overall ROI.
We should have a trust indicator for our insights, as it is difficult to quickly determine when they are trustworthy or not.
Chatbot analysis within different data, I mostly use it with a small sample and replicate the process instead of using the chatbot for more global analysis.
Insight creation, the format is not always really engaging, and you can't really create a presentation from it. It does not align with some stakeholder expectations and requires us to redo the work.
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 my ratings show, I have been absolutely delighted with Smartlook in terms of usability, cost, support, and its benefit to our organization. I have given it such high ratings because I think it has really benefitted our organization and I think it could do the same for other companies too.
Very organized and user-friendly; however, the editing capabilities for the analysis report/insight doc could use some work. There was a recent update also causing it to be harder to find the in-project search bar and where to switch from the highlight list and highlight board view, which made the experience more challenging, especially since I was sharing my screen. Not only did it catch me off guard that it changed, but stakeholders and I were trying (on-call) to figure out how to access it and couldn't. After the call, I did more digging and finally found it, but that was after a bit of time. Outside of this and the editing for insight reports, I feel like the usability is actually very well thought out and effective.
Every page, the tool setup pages and dashboards are built very well, the site structure is perfectly designed and intuitive to use. All functions are well documented and the help sections are really everywhere, you don't have to search for answers, as they are just popped up or max. a click away for your service.
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.
My customer success manager is very responsive and has always been able to answer my questions and resolve issues quickly. The collaboration is smooth, so I have no complaints in that regard.
Sofia P. is being our point of contact with the issues we faced. I was unsure about how to explain to her what was going on with the recording numbers (the recording has stopped before we were expecting to), but she readily understood and came with a solution for us in the same day. The problem was blocking our developer to test the integration, so it was great to have support so fast that he could continue his work.
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.
Dovetail is the most stakeholder-friendly research tool we've used. Its visual insights, highlight reels, and intuitive interface make it easy for non-researchers to understand and act on customer feedback. Stakeholders can engage directly without needing deep training, making it ideal for cross-functional teams. Compared to other tools, Dovetail offers the best balance of depth for researchers and clarity for decision-makers.
It has been a year between the time when I last used Hotjar and first started using Smartlook. I would say both tools are more or less equal when it comes to features, the only 2 differences I can think of are - price and customer support. Smartlook is cheaper and has superior customer services. You have the feeling when interacting with them that they genuinely care.
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.
Researchers and designers now spend less time digging through scattered notes or redoing similar studies. Centralizing everything in Dovetail has significantly reduced the time needed to prepare synthesis reports, align stakeholders, or onboard new teammates into past research.
With Dovetail, user insights are no longer abstract or anecdotal—they're traceable, searchable, and backed by real quotes. Product teams feel more confident making roadmap decisions based on what users actually need, not assumptions.
Dovetail has encouraged more non-designers to engage with user feedback directly. This democratization of insights helps align everyone around real user problems, which ultimately leads to better product-market fit and faster iteration loops.
Smartlook is used by different individuals from different organizations to have insights into different parts of products. It is used as the sole developer of our website as well as marketing campaigns.
Smartlook has an amazing feature which is tracking the activities of return users.
