Optimizely Web Experimentation is a website optimization platform, providing A/B and multivariate testing. It enables users with and without technical expertise to make dynamic changes to their websites, test the variations to live traffic and gather immediate results.
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VWO
Score 8.5 out of 10
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VWO is an A/B testing and conversion optimization platform that enables growing businesses to conduct qualitative and quantitative visitor research, build an experimentation roadmap and run continuous experiments on their digital properties. With its 5 capabilities Plan, Track, Test, Analyze, and Target, it brings the entire CRO (conversion rate optimization) process at one place. VWO helps online businesses follow the process- and data-driven conversion…
$49
per month
Pricing
Optimizely Web Experimentation
VWO
Editions & Modules
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Subscription
$99.00
per month
TESTING
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The classic VWO A/B testing solution
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The all-in-one platform for all your optimization needs
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Customized solution with advanced AB testing and conversion optimization capabilities
Adobe Target, VWO and Google Optimize are often the three that come up against Optimizely from an agency recommendation perspective. The first, because Adobe Target is a comparable enterprise optimization platform; the second, because it's a paid but has a much more achievable …
Verified User
Director
Chose Optimizely Web Experimentation
Optimizely is ok and cost effective compared to other tools. In general the industry keeps lowering the value of tools as they broaden the audience.
We decided on Optimizely as a recommendation from a friend in the industry. We are happy with the choice.
Verified User
Engineer
Chose Optimizely Web Experimentation
In some ways, when we did a demo with other products, some things were built in like scroll tracking. But in many ways, Optimizely just was easier to use.
Optimizely is more advanced in terms of UI, activation.
Verified User
General Manager
Chose Optimizely Web Experimentation
Whilst Optimizely is more expensive (for us at least) we found it was far technically superior and easier to use. We have not run into the technical constraints that we have with other tools.
In addition when we went to market to evaluate different suppliers optimizely won out …
Out of all of the split testing tools I have used, Optimizely has displayed the best performance and engineering surperiority. While it is expensive, for sites that get lots of traffic & have critical performance requirements, Optimizely is honestly the only split testing …
Verified User
Manager
Chose Optimizely Web Experimentation
While they all do the same thing, I felt, and still feel, that Optimizely does it better. I felt like the other tool were too simple in format and analytics for the prices being charged and they also lacked reliable word-of-mouth. When talking to other professionals, Optimizely …
Verified User
Executive
Chose Optimizely Web Experimentation
Optimizely is an all-in once service compared to the others I tested. Visual Website Optimizer (VWO) is very solid and probably a close second as far as I'm concerned. Their servicing was a little lacking which made it hard to ramp up the testing. Unbounce is very user-friendly …
Verified User
Employee
Chose Optimizely Web Experimentation
I feel like Optimizely has more functionality in the editor, but for the price, Visual Website Optimizer (VWO) can't be beat. I haven't had as much experience with VWO but from what I've seen, I can get many of the same benefits with that software as well. The VWO onboarding is …
Optimizely feels as though it is a level above what is currently offered by Visual Website Optimizer. The interface for Optimizely is a lot easier to use and the dashboard that allows you to quickly pause and start your experiments as well as duplicate them across your projects …
Verified User
Analyst
Chose Optimizely Web Experimentation
We evaluated Google, as well as Visual Website Optimizer but Optimizely ranked better in terms of support, scalability and ease. We are really happy with the decision.
With GA Content Experiments you should create a new page for your variation, it doesn't really offer WYSIWYG interface where you can just make your changes. It also requires a new code to be added for each experiment. The multi-armed banded approach didn't work for us and back …
Verified User
Director
Chose Optimizely Web Experimentation
We like the UI of optimizely more and it doesn't hurt that it was founded by ex-Googlers :)
We determined that Optimizely had the range of features that we were interested in for our optimization goals. Through searching for different services, we came to understand Optimizely is the leader in the industry and has the support staff and knowledge-base to back up their …
While there are many free or cheap options for A/B and multivariate testing out there (and we have tried several), VWO provides the right balance between cost and capability for our agency. That, and the level of customer service provided when we need it makes VWO our choice …
Verified User
Employee
Chose VWO
We evaluated Optimizely, but for our specific needs VWO fared better, so we chose that.
There are significant differences in each platform when it comes to Optimizely and vwo. From a functionality and performance perspective they each have their pros and cons. It is important to go through the feature sets of each and ensure the solution you select will work …
Verified User
Manager
Chose VWO
VWO has worse usability and isn't as flexible as the other platforms. Also, the insight that Qubit and Optimizely generates is actually accurate and can be used compared to the reports that VWO provide.
I was not involved in Optimizely, nor did we implement it outside a free trial I believe, but VWO seemed to do generally the same things with a lower cost, though I could be mistaken.
I have used Qualtrics in the past. It is very good for survey creation and logic. I know some …
We enquired and looked into using Optimizely and Qubit before deciding on VWO. All appear to be great tools that would have done the job required, however, when compared, we didn't hit the level of traffic for Qubit to consider a partnership, and Optimizely was a lot more …
VWO is better in price for sure, and I would say it has much better functionality than Crazy Egg. Optimizely is more expensive than the two and I think its UI is much better than VWO. However, I think you get the same with VWO that you do with Optimizely. Once VWO catches up in …
VWO does seem to be as good as, or better, than Optimizely. And VWO is certainly not as expensive. But I must say that we have not really used Optimizely - we have only compared it with VWO when doing research before choosing for VWO as our tool of choice.
VWO is much cheaper than Optimizely, while most of the features offered are similar.
Verified User
Engineer
Chose VWO
The user experience was quite similar at least on that level we were and are using these kind of products. We decided to stick with VWO because of a more attractive pricing, the ease of use of the WYSIWYG editor and the user segmentation.
We chose VWO because it combines all the features that we need in one. All of the other products we have looked at have been missing something.
Verified User
Manager
Chose VWO
The way VWO is priced makes more sense for mid market users (don't have to pay by impression). I had used Optimizely, but when my company had some content go viral we used up all our impressions on a test with data that was irrelevant (viral visitors aren't target audience).
VWO…
Verified User
C-Level Executive
Chose VWO
I think VWO is the best in the business, they have been very reliable for many years.
Verified User
Employee
Chose VWO
I don't remember exactly why we ended up with VWO instead of Optimizely, both had quite similar feature list.
VWO was our ultimate choice because we of the affordability. It also fell more in line with our use case of testing and not necessary for full personalization.
Verified User
Team Lead
Chose VWO
We've used Optimizely for a year then switched to VWO (using it for 2 years now). Optimizely is too expensive for what it provides. The cost is double the VWO cost and it has less features and lower visitor quota.
We chose VWO after deciding that Optimizely is absurdly expensive. We stopped using VWO months ago due to a number of problems and switched to Convert, which has been fantastic. We highly recommend Convert to other companies now and wished we had found it prior to going with VWO.
Senior UX, UI Designer & Front End Developer - Associate
Chose VWO
The key aspect in the decision to switch to VWO was the integration of all the features as a single unified resource and platform.
The competitors are very good at what they do (did back then) but required moving insight and understanding from one platform to the other.
Verified User
Manager
Chose VWO
At the time of decision the main criterias were "install on premise" and "asynchron integration".
Verified User
Strategist
Chose VWO
VWO is more of an entry level tool, unless you purchase the enterprise solution, which includes a lot of additional features including IP targeting, custom attributes and segmentation (which allows you to filter results by a referrer URL, if a visitor clicked on a specific …
VWO has greatly improved its product to compete in the marketplace. In cases where Optimizely was the enterprise solution on the market, VWO was 2nd due to functionality. However, VWO overtime has improved its product, so that it can easily be a better product for companies …
Optimizely is a great A/B testing tool for any size business. The Optimizely platform democratizes A/B testing through a simple interface, excellent training tools, easy implementation and low dependence on IT resources. Utilizing Optimizely I've been able to run robust experimentation programs with a variety of resources (acting as a 1-person team with limited access to IT resources as well as managing a team with high access to resources). Additionally, Optimizely is well-priced and positioned to be affordable for a variety of business sizes.
Our marketing team does a lot of creative testing around messaging and imagery. VWO is well suited for this type of testing and can yield great results if you define your conversion goals correctly. However, when we have tried to do more substantial/advanced changes through VWO (such as re-positioning content or modifying elements in a form), we have had some challenges and not been able to get the desired tests working correctly.
Optimizely makes it extremely easy to setup almost any type of split or multi-variate testing experiment. It has a variety of test triggers types & many ways to segment incoming visitors.
I believe Optimizely's results dashboard is one of the best among split testing software. It allowed my team to get insights into the running of tests, like time to significance and a view of metric changes over time.
Optimizely is very easy to use for non-engineers. It has a powerful visual interface that allows marketers and advertisers to setup complex variations without 1 line of code.
In terms of documentation and implementation, I believe Optimizely is ahead of its competitors in terms of its focus on reliability and speed.
VWO has a strong support team willing to help provide answers to questions during the setup process. During setup, we had some questions regarding implementation across a significant number of sites and they were able to ease dev team concerns and provide detailed best practices to streamline integration.
Some of the initial results of a few of the initial tests raised some questions internally. We setup a call and were able to quickly address the questions and find some opportunities to leverage moving forward.
I discovered a bug within the UI that lead to some questions internally. I was able to report it and the problem was fixed rather quickly and their team followed up with a thank you for reporting it and to report the issue was now resolved.
Actual creation of an A/B test is confusing and difficult (like the differences between Pages vs URLs etc.).
Setting up a URL Redirect Experiment is so convoluted it seems like it's not even a feature Optimizely wants you to use. Instead, it's like I'm tricking Optimizely into alternating between 2 URLs. That really needs to be cleaned up as it would be very helpful.
The user interface within VWO does take a bit of time to get used to, especially as it pertains to switching back and forth between tests. When running multiple experiments on a site at a time, a clear and succinct dashboard for everything in one place would be helpful (as opposed to needing to switch between A/B, multivariate, etc).
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.
It's great value and we think we've ironed out all the major teething troubles. However, if we experience any more bugs or problems that significantly slow us down then we're seriously considering switching to Optimizely, which I haven't personally tested but have heard great things about from my CRO peers
Without a doubt, after 8 years using various different testing tools, Optimizely is by far the easiest to use. Feedback from developers and more technical teams has always been positive, mostly due to the code editor allowing for easy implementation along with the creation of advanced audience segments using advanced javascript. For business users and non-technical people, the wysiwig editor allows for smaller changes to be made quickly whilst somewhat educating the user on the types of code changes that are being made.
I gave Visual Website Optimizer a rating of 8 because it is overall a great product to use. Setting up and keeping track of various tests is easy and straight forward. The only reason why this product is not rated higher is because the support documents online leave a lot of room for improvement.
VWO doesn't appear to slow down our website at all, though some customers with adblockers like UBlock Origin have been known to not see entire pages if VWO is making changes to the page at a macro level (background, font, etc). This is rare though.
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.
While their online document support is lacking a simple email to their support team will almost always get responded to the next day. It has however taken more than one email to explain the problem to the support team till they understood the problem. The solution I was given also only half fixed the problem the rest I figured out on my own.
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).
Training was good, just limited to the onboarding process. They walked through all of the steps it takes to get started in VWO and each of the modules, along with giving us ideas for starting our first test. I feel like it could be better if there was a guided process within the VWO program to continue to educate you along the way, and a way to turn that off for experienced users.
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.
Overall, the implementation of VWO is straightforward. If you've got a straightforward way of deploying code to all of your test pages, either a good CMS or a TMS, then implementation should be a breeze. There is no tweaking to be done to the code itself, and once deployed it has the flexibility to cope with different VWO modules (tracking, conversion analysis, session analysis) without modification.
I think that Optimizely is more user-friendly than Adobe and Monetate, for example - Adobe is really suited for people with deep pockets and a distinct technical acumen that may not be suitable for a small business. Montetate is not user-friendly - even for seasoned marketers. Apptemize is a pretty great product but they killed their free product. Like Optimzely, they seem to be shooting for enterprise-level clients.
I used Google Optimize when it had just launched. It was therefore not yet a competitor to VWO. I haven't used it in roughly half a year time, so a lot has probably changed. I still use Hotjar for certain features that VWO offers, but which I think function better in Hotjar. I for instance prefer the Hotjar heatmaps, because I can elect to ignore certain elements on the webpage, such as a cookie consent pop up. A simple difference which makes me like Hotjar recordings more is that I can view a recording and click next, rather than going back to the overview and selecting the next recording.
It's all you need to design, install, analyze and measure simple tests with Optimizely. When test complexity increases, it becomes necessary to integrate third party analytics tools to perform more detailed analysis such as additional details like page views, average time spent on each page, and bounce rates by variation. Optimizely has very straightforward integrations, so integration with analytics is straightforward.
The product seems infinitely scalable for our needs (small business) and we've never had any issue with loading VWO-edited elements. I will say, though, that online customers with ad blockers have been known to not see certain VWO elements as their third-party scripts are disabled.
Optimizely has had a tremendous positive impact on the ROI of our clients. Whether you're just starting your testing program and just want to get your feet wet with a few simple WYSIWYG tests, or you're ready to dive in to complex MVT test designs and Personalization Campaigns, Optimizely has everything you need to create, and maintain, a highly successful testing center.