Kissmetrics vs. Optimizely Feature Experimentation

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Kissmetrics
Score 9.6 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
Kissmetrics is a customer engagement automation platform. This solution includes behavioral analytics, segmentation, and email campaign automation.
$150
per month
Optimizely Feature Experimentation
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Optimizely Feature Experimentation unites feature flagging, A/B testing, and built-in collaboration—so marketers can release, experiment, and optimize with confidence in one platform.N/A
Pricing
KissmetricsOptimizely Feature Experimentation
Editions & Modules
Growth
$500
Monthly Tracked People
Power
$850
Monthly Tracked People
Enterprise
Custom
Monthly Tracked People
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
KissmetricsOptimizely Feature Experimentation
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup Fee$1,500 per installationRequired
Additional DetailsWhat are Monthly Tracked People? Monthly Tracked People are unique visitors that engage in an Event on your website or with your product, that gets tracked by you in Kissmetrics. Monthly Tracked People can be anonymous or identified.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
KissmetricsOptimizely Feature Experimentation
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User Ratings
KissmetricsOptimizely Feature Experimentation
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(48 ratings)
8.2
(47 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.4
(27 ratings)
4.5
(2 ratings)
Usability
7.1
(6 ratings)
7.6
(26 ratings)
Availability
8.3
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.5
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(9 ratings)
3.6
(1 ratings)
In-Person Training
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
8.6
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
7.3
(7 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
5.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
KissmetricsOptimizely Feature Experimentation
Likelihood to Recommend
Kissmetrics
[Kissmetrics is well suited for the] abandon cart scenario to re-engage users on the purchase journey. Engaging users to personalized content using the visit metrics derived from the data captured at each digital touch points. [Implementing] website campaign and journey orchestration is easy. You get visitor profile to segment upon using different visit metrics and action.
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Optimizely
Based on my experience with Optimizely Feature Experimentation, I can highlight several scenarios where it excels and a few where it may be less suitable. Well-suited scenarios: - Multi-Channel product launches - Complex A/B testing and feature flag management - Gradual rollout and risk mitigation Less suited scenarios: - Simple A/B tests (their Web Experimentation product is probably better for that) - Non-technical team usage -
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Pros
Kissmetrics
  • The more events you track and properties you send along, the more you can see how specific users use your product/service. The user based timeline gives you a perfect start point to get in touch with users, because you can see where they get stuck.
  • Tracking your traffic sources and how they influence conversions is awesome. You can get a perfect view of how much a traffic source contributes to revenue.
  • Funnel reports give you more insights into micro and macro conversion steps and give you actionable data to work with.
  • Customer support!
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Optimizely
  • It is easy to use any of our product owners, marketers, developers can set up experiments and roll them out with some developer support. So the key thing there is this front end UI easy to use and maybe this will come later, but the new features such as Opal and the analytics or database centric engine is something we're interested in as well.
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Cons
Kissmetrics
  • Installing.... yes this is also a negative. While you can install and have the program running in minutes, if you use Unbounce, the form tracking process is quite complicated!
  • Updates... I feel like the product updates have slowed a lot lately. Thankfully, the product functionality is so amazing that it hasn't impeded the use of it. However, it is still disappointing to see less frequent software updates.
  • Occasionally clunky UI... there are a few reports that are really easy to mess up and leave you scratching your head on why it isn't showing you any data.
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Optimizely
  • Would be nice to able to switch variants between say an MVT to a 50:50 if one of the variants is not performing very well quickly and effectively so can still use the standardised report
  • Interface can feel very bare bones/not very many graphs or visuals, which other providers have to make it a bit more engaging
  • Doesn't show easily what each variant that is live looks like, so can be hard to remember what is actually being shown in each test
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Likelihood to Renew
Kissmetrics
Price sensitivity and the different choices that now exist in the Analytics industry. I think it makes sense for us sometime this year to rethink our analytics strategy to see how we may leverage the best of GA (which has included lots of new features and updates the past years_, Kiss and other tools as need be
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Optimizely
Competitive landscape
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Usability
Kissmetrics
Right after login, you'll get to a dashboard which shows you a quick view on how your business is doing across the events you are tracking. There is no need to dig deeper than that unless you want to, in which case it's very easy to do so just by clicking on the metric on which you want more information. The interface is very intuitive.
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Optimizely
Easy to navigate the UI. Once you know how to use it, it is very easy to run experiments. And when the experiment is setup, the SDK code variables are generated and available for developers to use immediately so they can quickly build the experiment code
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Reliability and Availability
Kissmetrics
The application was very rarely down; during the period we used the application, I can think of only two or three occasions in which the site was down. Notably, at no time was the the performance of our own site compromised as a result.
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Optimizely
No answers on this topic
Performance
Kissmetrics
Speed improved dramatically as the service matured. Early iterations of the publicly-released application would occasionally provide slow processing of results, but those delays became much rarer occurrences during the last year that we used KISSmetrics. One of the more impressive views (which started out feeling more like a toy) is the live view of visits. Knowing that you could see, in real time, what events a user triggered, was gratifying and instructive.
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Optimizely
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Kissmetrics
Our front-line product support person (Mika) is great. She is responsive and great to work with.

However, the data accuracy issue described earlier is the reason for the low score here. This issue was escalated from front-line to support to level 2 technical support and then it disappeared into a black hole. Escalations, in general, do not go well. We get no response for days, or I have to chase things down. This is not acceptable. Marketing metrics are critically important to me and I need answers quickly. I cannot afford to wait around for days / weeks for a response.

Just to be clear, these comments only apply to escalated support issues.
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Optimizely
Support was there but it was pretty slow at most times. Only after escalation was support really given to our teams
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In-Person Training
Kissmetrics
Again, we were fortunate to work with KISSmetrics as they built their application, but Hiten, their CEO and founder, was incredibly helpful to me personally, and to our metrics-driven business as a whole, as we adopted their tool.
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Optimizely
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Kissmetrics
I loved this aspect of the product. It wasn't just that the documentation and online tutorials are great - which they are - the on-boarding process though was really stellar. Once you have set everything up, you get a welcome message followed by a step-by-step guide to get you started that is built right into the product interface. For example, the UI asks you to first do X, and then copy this code snippet and send it to your developer who will know what to do with it. When you come back after the first interaction with the product, it continues the process by explaining right in the UI how to track events etc. This kind of step-by-step approach is incredibly efficient. Although there are various forms of supporting documentation (PDFs videos etc) to support every step, you don't really need them. This approach means that you are up and running very quickly with virtually no training time or documentation consultation. Highly efficient process.
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Optimizely
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Kissmetrics
In order to build trackability down to revenue, there was quite a lot of work to integrate Kissmetrics with our software and internal process. We had to build the hooks so that Kissmetrics could call back into our software and billing system, etc.. However, we didn't need additional expertise to do this. Once you understand the API, and you own systems, making it work is not too difficult. We did not require an outside consultant or anything like that
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Optimizely
It’s straightforward. Docs are well written and I believe there must be a support. But we haven’t used it
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Alternatives Considered
Kissmetrics
Kissmetrics is a next-level step up for people who are used to getting their tracking and reporting from Google Analytics or Shopify's CMS. While HubSpot arguably has a better user interface, Kissmetrics certainly has the power and usability necessary to track important conversion data and help you make better marketing decisions.
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Optimizely
When Google Optimize goes off we searched for a tool where you can be sure to get a good GA4 implementation and easy to use for IT team and product team. Optimizely Feature Experimentation seems to have a good balance between pricing and capabilities. If you are searching for an experimentation tool and personalization all in one... then maybe these comparison change and Optimizely turns to expensive. In the same way... if you want a server side solution. For us, it will be a challenge in the following years
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Scalability
Kissmetrics
No answers on this topic
Optimizely
had troubles with performance for SSR and the React SDK
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Return on Investment
Kissmetrics
  • Unfortunately for this client (small business) the cost of Kissmetrics was just too prohibitive. But it's obvious that for a larger company that can afford it, the data would be invaluable to gain more insight in how to gain more active users and orders for a funnel.
  • The data provided really increases an understanding of how best to provide the right experience for the users...happy users equals increase in ROI.
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Optimizely
  • We have improved various metrics throughout the course of our experimentation program with Optimizely and therefore sharing numbers is tricky. Essentially we only implement versions of the product that perform the best in terms of CVR, revenue/visitor, ATV, average order value, average basket size and so forth dependent on the north star we are trying to move with each release.
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ScreenShots

Kissmetrics Screenshots

Screenshot of Kissmetrics Activity Report is a part of our report suite called AnalyzeScreenshot of Kissmetrics Populations allow your to track your most important segment over timeScreenshot of Kissmetrics Campaigns allow you to engage your user with automated behavior-based emails when it is most effective

Optimizely Feature Experimentation Screenshots

Screenshot of Feature Flag Setup. Here users can run A/B and multi-armed bandit tests, as well as:

- Set up a single feature flag to test multiple variations and experiment types
- Enable targeted deliveries and rollouts for more precise experimentation
- Roll back changes quickly when needed to ensure experiment accuracy and reduce risks
- Increase testing flexibility with control over experiment types and delivery methodsScreenshot of Audience Setup. This is used to target specific user segments for personalized experiments, and:

- Create and customize audiences based on user attributes
- Refine audience segments to ensure the right users are included in tests
- Enhance experiment relevance by setting specific conditions for user groupsScreenshot of Experiment Results, supporting the analysis and optimization of experimentation outcomes. Viewers can also:

- examine detailed experiment results, including key metrics like conversion rates and statistical significance
- Compare variations side-by-side to identify winning treatments
- Use advanced filters to segment and drill down into specific audience or test dataScreenshot of A Program Overview. These offer insights into any experimentation program’s performance. It also offers:

- A comprehensive view of the entire experimentation program’s status and progress
- Monitoring for key performance metrics like test velocity, success rates, and overall impact
- Evaluation of the impact of experiments with easy-to-read visualizations and reporting tools
- Performance tracking of experiments over time to guide decision-making and optimize strategiesScreenshot of AI Variable Suggestions. These enhance experimentation with AI-driven insights, and can also help with:

- Generating multiple content variations with AI to speed up experiment design
- Improving test quality with content suggestions
- Increasing experimentation velocity and achieving better outcomes with AI-powered optimizationScreenshot of Schedule Changes, to streamline experimentation. Users can also:

- Set specific times to toggle flags or rules on/off, ensuring precise control
- Schedule traffic allocation percentages for smooth experiment rollouts
- Increase test velocity and confidence by automating progressive changes