Optimizely Web Experimentation vs. Smartlook

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Optimizely Web Experimentation
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Optimizely Web Experimentation empowers teams to conduct experiments (without having to rely on developer resources) in order to test various user interactions, make website changes backed by data, and personalize customer experiences.N/A
Smartlook
Score 8.3 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
Optimizely Web ExperimentationSmartlook
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Pro
$55
per month 5000 sessions
Free
Free forever
per month 3000 sessions
Enterprise
Custom pricing
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Optimizely Web ExperimentationSmartlook
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalOptional
Additional DetailsAll Smartlook packages support both web and mobile app platforms.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Optimizely Web ExperimentationSmartlook
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Optimizely Web ExperimentationSmartlook
Testing and Experimentation
Comparison of Testing and Experimentation features of Product A and Product B
Optimizely Web Experimentation
8.0
92 Ratings
7% below category average
Smartlook
-
Ratings
a/b experiment testing9.392 Ratings00 Ratings
Split URL testing8.574 Ratings00 Ratings
Multivariate testing8.877 Ratings00 Ratings
Multi-page/funnel testing8.272 Ratings00 Ratings
Cross-browser testing7.450 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile app testing7.638 Ratings00 Ratings
Test significance8.584 Ratings00 Ratings
Visual / WYSIWYG editor8.076 Ratings00 Ratings
Advanced code editor7.568 Ratings00 Ratings
Page surveys7.017 Ratings00 Ratings
Visitor recordings8.418 Ratings00 Ratings
Preview mode8.082 Ratings00 Ratings
Test duration calculator6.956 Ratings00 Ratings
Experiment scheduler8.154 Ratings00 Ratings
Experiment workflow and approval6.537 Ratings00 Ratings
Dynamic experiment activation7.434 Ratings00 Ratings
Client-side tests9.250 Ratings00 Ratings
Server-side tests9.119 Ratings00 Ratings
Mutually exclusive tests8.437 Ratings00 Ratings
Audience Segmentation & Targeting
Comparison of Audience Segmentation & Targeting features of Product A and Product B
Optimizely Web Experimentation
8.6
86 Ratings
2% below category average
Smartlook
-
Ratings
Standard visitor segmentation8.985 Ratings00 Ratings
Behavioral visitor segmentation8.365 Ratings00 Ratings
Traffic allocation control9.481 Ratings00 Ratings
Website personalization7.957 Ratings00 Ratings
Results and Analysis
Comparison of Results and Analysis features of Product A and Product B
Optimizely Web Experimentation
8.3
84 Ratings
3% below category average
Smartlook
-
Ratings
Heatmap tool9.113 Ratings00 Ratings
Click analytics8.733 Ratings00 Ratings
Scroll maps8.017 Ratings00 Ratings
Form fill analysis8.326 Ratings00 Ratings
Conversion tracking8.744 Ratings00 Ratings
Goal tracking8.473 Ratings00 Ratings
Test reporting8.176 Ratings00 Ratings
Results segmentation8.048 Ratings00 Ratings
CSV export7.648 Ratings00 Ratings
Experiments results dashboard8.049 Ratings00 Ratings
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User Ratings
Optimizely Web ExperimentationSmartlook
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(177 ratings)
9.1
(140 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.5
(45 ratings)
8.9
(4 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(57 ratings)
7.9
(74 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(7 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Performance
7.3
(6 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(16 ratings)
7.7
(106 ratings)
Online Training
3.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.0
(11 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Configurability
6.0
(1 ratings)
8.2
(2 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.0
(89 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Optimizely Web ExperimentationSmartlook
Likelihood to Recommend
Optimizely
This is our second testing platform, and is by far the best we have leveraged. Its intuitive in how you are able to build tests. Tracking is easy to set up within the visual editor or as a capability in URL tracking. The reporting tab does need more filtering capabilities for custom metrics.
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Smartlook
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.
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Pros
Optimizely
  • Considers every kind of experiment from simple code change, code additions, code removal, javascript functions, CSS changes, and split landing redirects.
  • Very friendly UC interface for easy navigation of implementation of pages, click events, experiment set up, and metric set up.
  • The ability to let me know when something has reach stat sig without having to do complicated math on my own
  • ability to carry UTM parameters through landing page redirects with a click of a button.
Read full review
Smartlook
  • Funnels are both easy to configure yet comprehensive enough to detect complicated customer journeys.
  • Real-time recording provides exceptional insights to our design & engineering teams.
  • Session recording is surprisingly lightweight and seems to cause no substantial performance degradation for our customers.
Read full review
Cons
Optimizely
  • Hard to use extensions without some knowledge of HTML/CSS
  • Inconsistent user counts between GA & Optimizely when it comes to calculating MAUs, hard to be able to forecast budget and overages when our source of truth (GA) differs from our testing platform (Optimizely)
  • Impressions model doesn't support scaling personalization experiences - hard to run a serious data driven testing program when you have to cut tests short before 14 days (ideal length to get to any statistical read) in order to save on impressions
Read full review
Smartlook
  • I feel nickel and dimed with the events and funnels.
  • We came from sessions being 30 mins of inactivity and now it's 5-10 mins. Session count has gone up significantly which we weren't prepared for.
  • Recording playback isn't as clean and maneuverable like FullStory.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Optimizely
Because it's an incredible and essential tool for my line of work as a conversion optimization specialist. Really couldn't do my job nearly as effectively without it. It's paid for itself many times over and I feel like I'm only beginning to unlock the tools potential.
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Smartlook
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.
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Usability
Optimizely
Usability is mostly great. I like the WYSIWYG functionality and adding in real code is simple as well. It's easy to target specific pages or audiences. I've knocked a couple of points off because of how difficult it is to set up URL redirect experiments, confusion around creating pages, and lack of data that can be further analyzed.
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Smartlook
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.
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Reliability and Availability
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.
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Smartlook
No answers on this topic
Performance
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.
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Smartlook
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
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.
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Smartlook
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.
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Online Training
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).
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Smartlook
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
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.
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Smartlook
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Optimizely
Overall, the tools we compared against were great, but we went with Optimizely because it has all the features we needed and has the market leadership that gave us trust we would be successful in our experimentation efforts.
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Smartlook
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.
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Scalability
Optimizely
While granted, I am not the one making the changes to deploy the software; it seems basically as simple as placing the optimized snippet on your site. If you place it in the header, it should reach across your entire site easily. I do think the test setup can be a bit temperamental at times, and having too many cooks in the kitchen can lead to errors. So, I would caution how many people have the access needed to make actual changes.
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Smartlook
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Optimizely
  • Customer retention: We've reduced subscription service client churn by 20%+ using optimized unsubscribe flows.
  • Risk mitigation: Testing into full site redesigns has saved clients millions of dollars.
  • Feature prioritization: Identifying what painted door changes add value has allowed developers to focus on changes that add hundreds of thousands or even millions to the bottom line.
Read full review
Smartlook
  • 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.
  • It gives reliable and efficient services.
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ScreenShots

Optimizely Web Experimentation Screenshots

Screenshot of the visual editor, used to make changes to the appearance and layout of a website.Screenshot of the results dashboard that displays experiment results.Screenshot of the integrations page, where integrations can be enabled.

Smartlook Screenshots

Screenshot of HeatmapsScreenshot of RecordingsScreenshot of DashboardsScreenshot of EventsScreenshot of FunnelsScreenshot of Analytics for websites & mobile apps