Optimizely Web Experimentation vs. VWO

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
VWO
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
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 ExperimentationVWO
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Subscription
$99.00
per month
TESTING
Get a Demo
The classic VWO A/B testing solution
CONVERSION OPTIMIZATION
Get a Demo
The all-in-one platform for all your optimization needs
ENTERPRISE
Get a Demo
Customized solution with advanced AB testing and conversion optimization capabilities
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Optimizely Web ExperimentationVWO
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Optimizely Web ExperimentationVWO
Considered Both Products
Optimizely Web Experimentation
Chose Optimizely Web Experimentation
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 …
Chose Optimizely Web Experimentation
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.
Chose Optimizely Web Experimentation
Analytics are vastly superior, platform UI is by far the easiest to use, and capabilities are best in class. If your organization has any budget for a web experimentation tool, it should be using Optimizely Web Experimentation.
Chose Optimizely Web Experimentation
We wanted one tool, that was easy for marketers and developers to use and would allow us to remain organized. Neither Of the other products allowed for this as seamlessly as Optimizely.
Chose Optimizely Web Experimentation
Ultimately, we are able to build faster, have a better site experience for end users, and have cleaner results reporting on Optimizely.
Chose Optimizely Web Experimentation
Significantly easier user-inferface, and ability for folks throughout an organization to use and report on.
Chose Optimizely Web Experimentation
Optimizely is the leader - best editor UI, results
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 …
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.
Chose Optimizely Web Experimentation
We decided on Optimizely as a recommendation from a friend in the industry. We are happy with the choice.
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.
Chose Optimizely Web Experimentation
Optimizely is easily a top 3 platform, depending on your other MarTech will determine if its the best tool for you.
Chose Optimizely Web Experimentation
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Chose Optimizely Web Experimentation
Optimizely is lacking a lot of the tools that VWO offers. My favorite being user recordings because of the valuable insight you get on the UX.
Chose Optimizely Web Experimentation
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 …
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.
Chose Optimizely Web Experimentation
Google Website Optimizer (now Content Experiments)
Visual Website Optimizer
Chose Optimizely Web Experimentation
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 …
Chose Optimizely Web Experimentation
We like the UI of optimizely more and it doesn't hurt that it was founded by ex-Googlers :)
VWO
Chose VWO
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 …
Chose VWO
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 …
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.
Chose VWO
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 …
Chose VWO
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 …
Chose VWO
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 …
Chose VWO
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.
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.
Chose VWO
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.
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…
Chose VWO
I think VWO is the best in the business, they have been very reliable for many years.
Chose VWO
I don't remember exactly why we ended up with VWO instead of Optimizely, both had quite similar feature list.
Chose VWO
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.
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.
Chose VWO
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.
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.
Chose VWO
At the time of decision the main criterias were "install on premise" and "asynchron integration".
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 …
Chose VWO
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 …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Optimizely Web ExperimentationVWO
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
VWO
7.6
8 Ratings
12% below category average
a/b experiment testing9.392 Ratings8.21 Ratings
Split URL testing8.574 Ratings9.11 Ratings
Multivariate testing8.877 Ratings8.88 Ratings
Multi-page/funnel testing8.272 Ratings6.41 Ratings
Cross-browser testing7.450 Ratings8.21 Ratings
Mobile app testing7.638 Ratings00 Ratings
Test significance8.584 Ratings7.31 Ratings
Visual / WYSIWYG editor8.076 Ratings7.31 Ratings
Advanced code editor7.568 Ratings9.11 Ratings
Page surveys7.017 Ratings00 Ratings
Visitor recordings8.418 Ratings6.41 Ratings
Preview mode8.082 Ratings6.41 Ratings
Test duration calculator6.956 Ratings6.41 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
VWO
8.2
1 Ratings
7% below category average
Standard visitor segmentation8.985 Ratings9.11 Ratings
Behavioral visitor segmentation8.365 Ratings7.31 Ratings
Traffic allocation control9.481 Ratings9.11 Ratings
Website personalization7.957 Ratings7.31 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
VWO
7.0
1 Ratings
20% below category average
Heatmap tool9.113 Ratings6.41 Ratings
Click analytics8.733 Ratings6.41 Ratings
Scroll maps8.017 Ratings6.41 Ratings
Form fill analysis8.326 Ratings00 Ratings
Conversion tracking8.744 Ratings8.21 Ratings
Goal tracking8.473 Ratings8.21 Ratings
Test reporting8.176 Ratings7.31 Ratings
Results segmentation8.048 Ratings5.51 Ratings
CSV export7.648 Ratings00 Ratings
Experiments results dashboard8.049 Ratings8.21 Ratings
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Optimizely Web ExperimentationVWO
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Convert Experiences
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Score 9.5 out of 10
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Score 9.5 out of 10
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Kameleoon
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Score 9.5 out of 10
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Score 9.2 out of 10
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Score 9.2 out of 10
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Score 9.2 out of 10
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User Ratings
Optimizely Web ExperimentationVWO
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(177 ratings)
8.5
(105 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.5
(45 ratings)
8.7
(20 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(57 ratings)
8.2
(2 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(7 ratings)
9.1
(3 ratings)
Performance
7.3
(6 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(16 ratings)
9.1
(4 ratings)
Online Training
3.0
(1 ratings)
6.4
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.0
(11 ratings)
9.1
(3 ratings)
Configurability
6.0
(1 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
3.6
(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)
8.2
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Optimizely Web ExperimentationVWO
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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Wingify Pvt Ltd
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.
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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
Wingify Pvt Ltd
  • 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.
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
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Wingify Pvt Ltd
  • 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).
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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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Wingify Pvt Ltd
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
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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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Wingify Pvt Ltd
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.
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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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Wingify Pvt Ltd
I have not experienced an application error or unplanned outage with VWO.
Read full review
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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Wingify Pvt Ltd
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.
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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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Wingify Pvt Ltd
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.
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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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Wingify Pvt Ltd
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.
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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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Wingify Pvt Ltd
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.
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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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Wingify Pvt Ltd
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.
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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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Wingify Pvt Ltd
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.
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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.
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Wingify Pvt Ltd
  • The ability to offer a CRO service is greatly enhanced by VWO, as it allows us to run tests for clients
  • The editor means to some extent we don't need much developer resource to run the tests, lowering costs of doing so
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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.

VWO Screenshots

Screenshot of Screenshot of