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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Ion Interactive

    Score8 out of 10
    Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
    Ion is an enterprise-grade content experience platform that empowers modern marketers and designers to create no-code interactive content experiences integrated with their CRM or marketing automation tools.N/A

    Optimizely Web Experimentation

    Score8.7 out of 10
    N/AWhether launching a first test or scaling a sophisticated experimentation program, Optimizely Web Experimentation aims to deliver the insights needed to craft high-performing digital experiences that drive engagement, increase conversions, and accelerate growth.N/A
    Pricing
    Ion InteractiveOptimizely Web Experimentation
    Editions & Modules
    Managed Services + SaaS
    Custom
    per year
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Ion InteractiveOptimizely Web Experimentation
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesYes
    Entry-level Setup Fee$5,500 per customerOptional
    Additional Detailsion’s Build Anything SaaS platform provides organizations with an entirely new and agile interactive content marketing capability. It enables non-technical marketers and designers to create, test and measure an unlimited number of all types of interactive content marketing experiences. It includes unlimited seats, experiences, tests, customization, phone and email support, analytics and more.—
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Ion InteractiveOptimizely Web Experimentation
    Considered Both Products
    Ion Interactive LLC
    Chose Ion Interactive
    Compared to Adobe's products, I prefer ion. However, Optimizely is slightly more intuitive to use than ion, but the value comes in big savings over Optimizely's prices.
    Incentivized
    Chose Ion Interactive
    We decided to stick with ion interactive because of legacy data saved in ion in addition to key features not found in competitors.
    Incentivized
    Chose Ion Interactive
    It works well for A/B testing and data collection. Additionally, our Salesforce integration is critical for our team. With Ion Interactive, we are able to reliably retain all lead information, and pass it into Salesforce. This includes UTM information as well as proprietary ID …
    Incentivized
    Chose Ion Interactive
    I was not involved in the decision to adopt ion at my current agency. However, clients occasionally use other landing page tools and we have overall found ion to be the best choice in its class: its reporting, design capabilities, ease of deployment, and integration suite makes …
    Incentivized
    Chose Ion Interactive
    It depends on wha the individual is looking for and what their skill level and experience is. Ion is unique in that it is a comprehensive package. It offers CAD, analytics and web design and optimization. In order to achieve this without Ion, you would need Adobe, Google …
    Incentivized
    Chose Ion Interactive
    I have not used other landing page creation tool, but have compared ION to Optimizely and Adobe Test and Target.
    ION is a much more flexible solution than Adobe Test and Target, and is more affordable and comes with free customer support.
    Incentivized
    Chose Ion Interactive
    We actually like and still use Optimizely, but ION is much more robust.. again with its pros and cons. We even use this on our ION pages for testing at times. I think we could get rid of it if we had a better grasp on how to A/B on ION (which I believe it does offer).
    Incentivized
    Chose Ion Interactive
    There are definitely other content management systems that are more user-friendly. ion interactive was selected by the head of my department.
    Incentivized
    Chose Ion Interactive
    We found ION to be much better at being able to quickly and effectively launch, measure and change tests. The only downside is that ION needs to be on its owner server (at least with our setup) so it's not as easy to use it to test core site content.
    Incentivized
    Chose Ion Interactive
    The ability to edit the original creative and create many variations of those gives this a much higher capability than other sites and programs.
    Incentivized
    Chose Ion Interactive
    Unbounce is the super light, beginners version of ion interactive. We've only used Unbounce if a client already has them on record. Optimizely and Visual Website Optimizer are sort of separate beasts that let us do separate things. We've almost split them into a church/state …
    Incentivized
    Chose Ion Interactive
    Honestly these are different products. Other web platforms, are built to create a website. However this is meant for rapid content creation of landing pages. A user lands on the page, does a desired action (fills out a form, clicks a button, etc) and then they are done. Also …
    Incentivized
    Optimizely
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    95%
    Would buy again
    89 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    96%
    Delivers good value for the price
    69 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    95%
    Happy with the feature set
    89 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    91%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    52 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    87%
    Implementation went as expected
    58 Answers
    Features
    Ion InteractiveOptimizely Web Experimentation
    Content Creation
    Comparison of Content Creation features of Ion Interactive and Optimizely Web Experimentation
    Feature
    Ion Interactive
    7.5
    105 Ratings
    4% below category average
    Optimizely Web Experimentation
    -
    Ratings
    Ideation10.099 Ratings00 Ratings
    Content collaboration5.094 Ratings00 Ratings
    Content Publishing
    Comparison of Content Publishing features of Ion Interactive and Optimizely Web Experimentation
    Feature
    Ion Interactive
    8.7
    120 Ratings
    11% above category average
    Optimizely Web Experimentation
    -
    Ratings
    Content hub10.0104 Ratings00 Ratings
    Forms / Gated content10.0107 Ratings00 Ratings
    Embedded CTAs10.0108 Ratings00 Ratings
    Content distribution8.093 Ratings00 Ratings
    Content promotion8.086 Ratings00 Ratings
    Content automation6.090 Ratings00 Ratings
    Content Reporting & Analytics
    Comparison of Content Reporting & Analytics features of Ion Interactive and Optimizely Web Experimentation
    Feature
    Ion Interactive
    8.5
    118 Ratings
    14% above category average
    Optimizely Web Experimentation
    -
    Ratings
    Audience profiling and targeting6.091 Ratings00 Ratings
    Closed-loop tracking and reporting8.095 Ratings00 Ratings
    Content performance analytics10.0116 Ratings00 Ratings
    Campaign optimization dashboard10.0107 Ratings00 Ratings
    Testing and Experimentation
    Comparison of Testing and Experimentation features of Ion Interactive and Optimizely Web Experimentation
    Feature
    Ion Interactive
    -
    Ratings
    Optimizely Web Experimentation
    8.0
    163 Ratings
    5% below category average
    a/b experiment testing00 Ratings9.0163 Ratings
    Split URL testing00 Ratings8.5135 Ratings
    Multivariate testing00 Ratings8.4139 Ratings
    Multi-page/funnel testing00 Ratings7.9126 Ratings
    Cross-browser testing00 Ratings8.197 Ratings
    Mobile app testing00 Ratings8.075 Ratings
    Test significance00 Ratings8.4147 Ratings
    Visual / WYSIWYG editor00 Ratings8.1133 Ratings
    Advanced code editor00 Ratings7.9125 Ratings
    Page surveys00 Ratings6.217 Ratings
    Visitor recordings00 Ratings8.418 Ratings
    Preview mode00 Ratings7.6145 Ratings
    Test duration calculator00 Ratings7.9112 Ratings
    Experiment scheduler00 Ratings8.2112 Ratings
    Experiment workflow and approval00 Ratings7.890 Ratings
    Dynamic experiment activation00 Ratings7.574 Ratings
    Client-side tests00 Ratings7.896 Ratings
    Server-side tests00 Ratings7.250 Ratings
    Mutually exclusive tests00 Ratings8.280 Ratings
    Audience Segmentation & Targeting
    Comparison of Audience Segmentation & Targeting features of Ion Interactive and Optimizely Web Experimentation
    Feature
    Ion Interactive
    -
    Ratings
    Optimizely Web Experimentation
    8.2
    152 Ratings
    7% below category average
    Standard visitor segmentation00 Ratings8.4147 Ratings
    Behavioral visitor segmentation00 Ratings7.6122 Ratings
    Traffic allocation control00 Ratings9.1144 Ratings
    Website personalization00 Ratings7.8111 Ratings
    Results and Analysis
    Comparison of Results and Analysis features of Ion Interactive and Optimizely Web Experimentation
    Feature
    Ion Interactive
    -
    Ratings
    Optimizely Web Experimentation
    8.3
    149 Ratings
    4% below category average
    Heatmap tool00 Ratings9.313 Ratings
    Click analytics00 Ratings8.833 Ratings
    Scroll maps00 Ratings8.517 Ratings
    Form fill analysis00 Ratings8.072 Ratings
    Conversion tracking00 Ratings8.744 Ratings
    Goal tracking00 Ratings8.2127 Ratings
    Test reporting00 Ratings7.9137 Ratings
    Results segmentation00 Ratings7.7103 Ratings
    CSV export00 Ratings7.9102 Ratings
    Experiments results dashboard00 Ratings8.049 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Ion InteractiveOptimizely Web Experimentation
    Small Businesses
    Contently
    Score9.9 out of 10
    Google Optimize
    Score6.7 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    CoSchedule Marketing Suite
    Score10 out of 10
    AB Tasty
    Score8.6 out of 10
    Enterprises
    PathFactory
    Score8.3 out of 10
    Google Content Experiments (discontinued)
    Score7.3 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Ion InteractiveOptimizely Web Experimentation
    Likelihood to Recommend
    10.0
    (135 ratings)
    8.7
    (254 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    7.0
    (22 ratings)
    9.5
    (51 ratings)
    Usability
    7.4
    (17 ratings)
    10.0
    (58 ratings)
    Availability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (7 ratings)
    Performance
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    7.3
    (6 ratings)
    Support Rating
    10.0
    (18 ratings)
    10.0
    (16 ratings)
    Online Training
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    3.0
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    10.0
    (6 ratings)
    8.0
    (11 ratings)
    Configurability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    6.0
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    8.0
    (163 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Ion InteractiveOptimizely Web Experimentation
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Ion Interactive LLC
    If you want to choose a quick start template and fill in the fields with your content, Ion will be fantastic for you. We've done this with whitepapers and quizzes and it's been great and extremely easy to use. If you have an exact idea of what you want, and a background in web development, you may get frustrated. Ion has some quirks that make it tricky to fully customize - everyone once in a while I really just want to go into the HTML and make some changes, but can't. If you are looking to reuse a piece of content for specific targeting (industry or account-specific), Ion is great. The dynamic substitutions are great and very helpful.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Optimizely
    I think it can serve the whole spectrum of experiences from people who are just getting used to web experimentation. It's really easy to pick up and use. If you're more experienced then it works well because it just gets out of the way and lets you really focus on the experimentation side of things. So yeah, strongly recommend. I think it is well suited both to small businesses and large enterprises as well. I think it's got a really low barrier to entry. It's very easy to integrate on your website and get results quickly. Likewise, if you are a big business, it's incrementally adoptable, so you can start out with one component of optimizing and you can build there and start to build in things like data CMS to augment experimentation as well. So it's got a really strong a pathway to grow your MarTech platform if you're a small company or a big company.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Ion Interactive LLC
    • Quick Starts make it so easy to get started.
    • Real-time updates are awesome and save a ton of wasteful process.
    • The combination of user friendliness for simple things and the flexibility to do more complex things is great.
    • Chat support is excellent and deeper-dive support has been super helpful.
    • The ability to use these tools in the cloud or embedded has given us tactic flexibility.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Optimizely
    • The Platform contains drag-and-drop editor options for creating variations, which ease the A/B tests process, as it does not require any coding or development resources.
    • Establishing it is so simple that even a non-technical person can do it perfectly.
    • It provides real-time results and analytics with robust dashboard access through which you can quickly analyze how different variations perform. With this, your team can easily make data-driven decisions Fastly.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Ion Interactive LLC
    • Ion University, while stacked with a wealth of information, is difficult to navigate from a troubleshooting perspective. The tutorial videos are all very helpful, but they are also very long. Sometimes I would want to search for how to address a particular issue I was struggling with and it would be a two-minute segment buried in a 45-minute video.
    • Again, getting back the self-guidance side of things. I think a lot of the tutorials are set up in a way that makes sense to Ion, but not as much to the end user.
    • I think the controls admins use when creating new users could be a bit more straightforward.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Optimizely
    • JavaScript is hard to implement sometimes especially for JQuery elements
    • ROI reporting should be part of the overall experimentation reporting
    • CMP integration: where we can easily show status of test on the HPT request
    • CMS integration
    • More widgets like social proof banners, etc.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Ion Interactive LLC
    We use it for every landing page and we plan on only doing more dynamic content creation. We dont see that option coming in-house any time ever in the future. ION has a very robust platform for us to work with that really allows us to do more for our customers in regards to having the one-to-one conversation.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Optimizely
    I rated this question because at this stage, Optimizely does most everything we need so I don't foresee a need to migrate to a new tool. We have the infrastructure already in place and it is a sizeable lift to pivot to another tool with no guarantee that it will work as good or even better than Optimizely
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Ion Interactive LLC
    Usability is straightforward, with extensive documentation and tutorials provided to ensure landing pages are built to specifications and can be optimized for performance. Built-in platform funnels give insight into customer dropoff, success/failures, and conversions (at a glance). Setting up a landing page can be done quickly and easily, with numerous integrations (CRMs like SalesForce, for instance) supported
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Optimizely
    Optimizely Web Experimentation's visual editor is handy for non-technical or quick iterative testing. When it comes to content changes it's as easy as going into wordpress, clicking around, and then seeing your changes live--what you see is what you get. The preview and approval process for sharing built experiments is also handy for sharing experiments across teams for QA purposes or otherwise.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Ion Interactive LLC
    No answers on this topic
    Optimizely
    I would rate Optimizely Web Experimentation's availability as a 10 out of 10. The software is reliable and does not experience any application errors or unplanned outages. Additionally, the customer service and technical support teams are always available to help with any issues or questions.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Performance
    Ion Interactive LLC
    Sometimes the editor can be a little slow.
    Read full review
    Optimizely
    I would rate Optimizely Web Experimentation's performance as a 9 out of 10. Pages load quickly, reports are complete in a reasonable time frame, and the software does not slow down any other software or systems that it integrates with. Additionally, the customer service and technical support teams are always available to help with any issues or questions.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Ion Interactive LLC
    The ION support team is amazing. There has not been a single issue they they could not solve for me. If there is a feature or request that they do not have, they have even, on occasion, created custom scripts for our team. *Update 6/5/17 - ION has continued to delight on multiple occasions. I appreciate their attention to detail and ability to solve whatever issue I have. After 3+ years of use and support, ION still has my full endorsement.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Optimizely
    They always are quick to respond, and are so friendly and helpful. They always answer the phone right away. And [they are] always willing to not only help you with your problem, but if you need ideas they have suggestions as well.
    Read full review
    Online Training
    Ion Interactive LLC
    They offer a great amount of online training, videos, articles, etc. There is usually an answer available if you run into an issue. I would recommend taking advantage of the online training they offer. I wish I would have done it sooner.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Optimizely
    The tool itself is not very difficult to use so training was not very useful in my opinion. It did not also account for success events more complex than a click (which my company being ecommerce is looking to examine more than a mere click).
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Ion Interactive LLC
    There were a lot of things we learned about the tool once we really got in and got our hands dirty. Being hands-on was essential for our team to be able to utilize ION in the most effective manner.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Optimizely
    In retrospect: - I think I should have stressed more demo's / workshopping with the Optimizely team at the start. I felt too confident during demo stages, and when came time to actually start, I was a bit lost. (The answer is likely I should have had them on-hand for our first install.. they offered but I thought I was OK.) - Really getting an understanding / asking them prior to install of how to make it really work for checkout pages / one that uses dynamic content or user interaction to determine what the UI does. Could have saved some time by addressing this at the beginning, as some things we needed to create on our site for Optimizely to "use" as a trigger for the variation test. - Having a number of planned/hoped-for tests already in-hand before working with Optimizely team. Sharing those thoughts with them would likely have started conversations on additional things we needed to do to make them work (rather than figuring that out during the actual builds). Since I had development time available, I could have added more things to the baseline installation since my developers were already "looking under the hood" of the site.
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Ion Interactive LLC
    I was not the decision maker to choose this over Uberflip, but the UI is much more appealing to me. It's incredibly easy to use, clean, and from a backend standpoint, it requires little to no tech savvy'ness. Our team has really enjoyed using it and has required no training what-so-ever.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Optimizely
    The ability to do A/B testing in Optimizely along with the associated statistical modelling and audience segmentation means it is a much better solution than using something like Google Analytics were a lot more effort is required to identify and isolate the specific data you need to confidently make changes
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Ion Interactive LLC
    Separate client portfolios enable scalability, however, some elements are still grouped for all accounts so it's difficult to scale for an ad agency with multiple clients. Would prefer totally separate sections of the platform for all clients with each element housed separately.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Optimizely
    We can use it flexibly across lines of business and have it in use across two departments. We have different use cases and slightly different outcomes, but can unify our results based on impact to the bottom line. Finally, we can generate value from anywhere in the org for any stakeholders as needed.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Ion Interactive LLC
    • Though we have not had the service long enough to see any measurable outcomes, we've been able to create interactive web content faster than ever before
    • The speed with which we can build interactive pages and re-use assets has been critical as projects we've done with Ion have made their way around and more and more internal clients have said "me too" for their own projects
    • It is very pricey at $28K for the base annual subscription (dropping to $24k after the first year), so depending on your budgetary situation, that may make no sense for your team--but we had contract money set aside for a company to build us a microsite for around the amount, so we just used it for Ion instead and will now be building the microsite ourselves using it
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Optimizely
    • We're able to share definitive annualized revenue projections with our team, showing what would happen if we put a test into Production
    • Showing the results of a test on a new page or feature prior to full implementation on a site saves developer time (if a test proves the new element doesn't deliver a significant improvement.
    • Making a change via the WYSIWYG interface allows us to see multiple changes without developer intervention.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Ion Interactive Screenshots

    Screenshot of ion empowers your other marketing technologies to deliver higher fidelity, data-driven scoring, targeting, segmentation and personalization.Screenshot of The types of interactive experiences the ion platform can create is near-endless. These are the most common types used by our customers: Assessments, Calculators, eBooks, Interactive Infographics, Interactive White Papers, Landing Pages, Lookbooks, Quizzes, Resource Library, Solution Finder.Screenshot of See what our customers are saying about our platform and services!Screenshot of Starting at $2,000 per month, you get an unlimited, scalable interactive content platform with our full feature set. Including: Unlimited experiences, unlimited use of Quick Starts, Unlimited Seats/Users, Unlimited A/B/n Testing, Unlimited Sell-Side Experiences, Unlimited Phone, email & chat support, unlimited analytics... PLUS a FREE custom-branded theme that can be applied to all of your experiences.Screenshot of You have the option to start from a template or entirely from scratch. Our Quick Start template library includes more than 100 fully tested, responsive and flexible interactive experiences you can brand, customize and launch.Screenshot of ion is the only interactive content platform that provides the scalable foundation to grow from one interactive experience to one thousand interactive experiences. With ion, interactive content development complexity, long timelines, high costs and maintenance problems are replaced with freedom and agility.

    Optimizely Web Experimentation Screenshots

    Screenshot of AI-Powered Experimentation with Opal:

- Instant Test Ideas: Generates high-quality A/B test ideas based on any goals and audience insights.
- Smarter Experimentation: The AI can suggest impactful variations, reducing guesswork and increasing test velocity.
- More Than Just Ideas: From hypothesis generation to analyzing results, Opal helps optimize every stage of the experimentation process.Screenshot of the new Visual Editor with an AI Variation Development Agent

Create simple or advanced website changes fast without writing a line of code with our AI Development Agent.

Use natural language to build out your ideas and apply brand styles to your experiments instantly.Screenshot of Advanced Audience Targeting:

- Delivers personalized experiences by targeting users based on behaviors, attributes, and real-time conditions.
- Defines precise audience segments using first-party data, geolocation, and device type.
- Can test and optimize for different audience groups to maximize impact and engagement.Screenshot of Variation Template

Library of experience templates that you can access right within the Visual Editor. Customize these templates or create your own to easily reuse throughout your experimentation program.

- Offers pre-built templates for common test setups.
- Standardized variations and maintains brand integrity with reusable templates.
- Templates can be customized visually or tweak them with code for full flexibility.Screenshot of Web Experimentation Results Page:

- Data visualizations help interpret experiment performance.
- Displays which variations are winning with built-in statistical significance calculations.
- Results can be filtered by audience segments, events, and conversions to uncover key trends.Screenshot of the custom code editor for JavaScript & CSS changes, used to build complex tests.