Optimal Workshop vs. UserTesting

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Optimal Workshop
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Optimal Workshop, a company in New Zealand, offers their suite of user research tools on a subscription basis, including the Treejack information architecture tool, OptimalSort card sorting test, Chalkmark first-click testing, and other tools.
$191
per month per user
UserTesting
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
UserTesting aims to enable every organization to deliver the best customer experience powered by human insight. The vendor states that with UserTesting’s on-demand Human Insight Platform, companies across industries can make accurate customer-first decisions at every level, at the speed business demands.N/A
Pricing
Optimal WorkshopUserTesting
Editions & Modules
Team
$191
per month per user
Individual
$208
per month per user
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Optimal WorkshopUserTesting
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsThese prices are based per user, per month billed annually. For 10 users or more, please contact us directly for a quote.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Optimal WorkshopUserTesting
Considered Both Products
Optimal Workshop
Chose Optimal Workshop
Optimal Workshop is worse than its competitors, and I only tried it because of the price. Huge mistake.
Chose Optimal Workshop
Optimal Workshop was the best tool that provided just what we needed and not anything more. The price point was also perfect for us as it provided room to try it out and then jump into a bigger package.
UserTesting
Chose UserTesting
UserTesting is superior because of their vast panel, speed, and intuitiveness.
Chose UserTesting
User Testing provided me with several research methodologies especially when it comes to qualitative data about users.
It is easy to use and required less learning curve
User Testing offers a high quality panel, it is easy to get the required number of participants for my …
Chose UserTesting
I have no used any other product similar to UserTesting. I am aware of User Interviews but do not think it has the audience/user reach like user testing does. I have used a variety of survey programs like SurveyMonkey and Typeform and have used them in conjunction with …
Chose UserTesting
We have evaluated other tools including Validately, Loop11, LookBack, UserZoom. Some have more features and capabilities, but UserTesting seems to have the best user panel. It is also hard to switch from a tool, as you lose all the data that lives within the tool. For now we …
Chose UserTesting
We also explored UserZoom but our team found it much more difficult to use. It was not intuitive at all and we had to have a lot of help and support from their team. Additionally, UserZoom was about five times more expensive than UserTesting.
Chose UserTesting
All the tools we had evaluated before purchasing had similar features but the one thing that set UserTesting apart from the rest was the size and reach of their user base. We needed to reach global audiences and at the time of our choice, only UserTesting was able to reach a …
Chose UserTesting
The users are much better at UserTesting. They are thoughtful and give good insight.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
Optimal WorkshopUserTesting
Small Businesses
Smartlook
Smartlook
Score 8.3 out of 10
Smartlook
Smartlook
Score 8.3 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Optimizely Web Experimentation
Optimizely Web Experimentation
Score 8.7 out of 10
Optimizely Web Experimentation
Optimizely Web Experimentation
Score 8.7 out of 10
Enterprises
Optimizely Web Experimentation
Optimizely Web Experimentation
Score 8.7 out of 10
Optimizely Web Experimentation
Optimizely Web Experimentation
Score 8.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Optimal WorkshopUserTesting
Likelihood to Recommend
7.7
(10 ratings)
8.1
(129 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
7.5
(5 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(1 ratings)
8.4
(117 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
8.9
(3 ratings)
8.9
(119 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(3 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Optimal WorkshopUserTesting
Likelihood to Recommend
Optimal Workshop
Optimal Workshop is great for UX testing for those with a budget to do so. This may be a little on the expensive side for smaller businesses, but definitely not anything crazy expensive. The insights that you get out of these tests are invaluable and can be the difference between launching a site and succeeding/failing.
Read full review
UserTesting
UserTesting solves the problem of recruitment. Thanks to UserTesting I can recruit participants from different countries around the world with the characteristics I need. Recruitment is a very difficult process for a small research team and I sometimes still struggle with that; for example, when recruiting minors for research. But not having to do the whole recruitment and reward process is a huge benefit.
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Pros
Optimal Workshop
  • The user interface is quite user friendly
  • Variety of tests
  • Access and variety of help on how to run tests, as well as educational information on which tests to run for your use case
Read full review
UserTesting
  • Taking notes with video clips. I can take notes while I am watching a session and I can create clips of UX issues or bugs occurring. This really helps when I share them with other teams.
  • Exporting all your notes. I analyze all usability tests by exporting my notes from UserTesting. I wish I could bulk export multiple tests though.
  • Setting up demographics. This helps me reach out to users who are similar to our audience.
  • Setting up screeners. Some studies require specific audiences (using a specific tool etc.), by setting screeners I can make sure I reached the correct audience.
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Cons
Optimal Workshop
  • The recruitment panelists are not professional, nor do they take the tasks seriously. You are going to get a lot of bad data.
  • They are HQ'd outside the US and must have a small team because the customer service is the absolute WORST I've experienced in their industry.
  • They pride themselves on documentation, but when they fail to document something they blame the customer for the mistake.
  • There are way too many limitations with the tool after you launch, limited integrations, and poor survey questionnaire options. The tool itself is far too basic for most sites, especially B2B.
Read full review
UserTesting
  • The organization of the work spaces/dashboards could use some work.
  • I don't feel as supported as I used to from a customer success perspective. I used to have dedicated, go-to professionals to reach out to about my account who knew my project context, account history, etc. Recently we've been pushed into general support pools, and it doesn't feel like my account gets any personalized attention anymore.
  • I would like to see a more refined experience for collaborators - the test plans I share with them are plain text/hard to read.
  • Would be nice to be able to conduct focus groups using this tool.
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Likelihood to Renew
Optimal Workshop
No answers on this topic
UserTesting
I'm very happy with my experience of the product and the level of service and learning resources they provide. If the service becomes more expensive than it currently is then we might not be able to justify additional cost - but this is theoretical. I would recommend UserTesting and would ideally renew our contract.
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Usability
Optimal Workshop
Excellent and easy platform to use. Easy to onboard new members of the team. Easy to set up tests and follow number of participants performing the test. Easy to plug into other platforms to record participants. Excellent reporting. Easy to share reports with stakeholders. Easy to recruit through platform, however the quality of participants can be better.
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UserTesting
The video review interface is user-friendly and makes it easy to navigate between different test responses. This helps us quickly analyze and understand the feedback we receive from users.
UserTesting's platform is straightforward and intuitive to use when setting up tests. We can easily select the type of test we want to conduct, define our objectives and criteria, and invite participants to take the test.
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Reliability and Availability
Optimal Workshop
No answers on this topic
UserTesting
Never encountered any problems
Read full review
Performance
Optimal Workshop
No answers on this topic
UserTesting
Perfectly fine. Never had any problems.
Read full review
Support Rating
Optimal Workshop
The support has been good. No complaints. I have not needed to contact support more than 1-2 times when I was first getting set up, because the tools work well and are pretty straight forward. They do have good documentation
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UserTesting
The support team at UserTesting is super helpful, responsive, and overall respectful and nice. They respond to your chat requests very quickly if you need immediate support within the tool, where time is of the essence. If you need support via email, they are quick and responsive there too. They are also very nice and helpful
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Implementation Rating
Optimal Workshop
No answers on this topic
UserTesting
From a technical perspective, the implementation was extremely smooth. Most of the change management / implementation hurdles were clearing use of the tool through our various security, legal, and information privacy teams. Once these concerns were addressed (UserTesting.com was very helpful in providing all the needed documentation), the implementation process was very simple and we were able to get going right away.
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Alternatives Considered
Optimal Workshop
For the price as it is very convenient for first-time beginners, its intuitiveness both for the one who is designing the activities and for those who have to interact with them. The fact that it collects and gathers the data into insights of the overall responses collected by all users.
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UserTesting
UserTesting allows for a quicker recruiting process for our studies. Additionally, UserTesting has more unmoderated research features and capabilities. I think that their payment model is also easier than UserInterviews. We typically user UserTesting for reaching our hard to reach segments and recruiting prospective users not already within our product user population.
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Scalability
Optimal Workshop
No answers on this topic
UserTesting
The package we have limits the number of people who can set up tests. This prevents us from scaling the use of the platform.
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Return on Investment
Optimal Workshop
  • Optimal Workshop has had a positive impact on investigating information architecture on several websites.
  • Optimal Workshop has helped investigated the labeling on several websites.
  • Optimal Workshop has also support in the investigation of UX in navigations.
Read full review
UserTesting
  • Cost savings of over $100K as we dont involve our research vendors as much as we used to do in the past
  • Better tested experience get out in the market quickly even when we don't have enough time available with our researchers; our designers who are well-trained on usertesting.com can test out quickly
Read full review
ScreenShots

UserTesting Screenshots

Screenshot of UserTesting's several solutions for gathering rich customer experience narratives.Screenshot of Interactive Path Flows
Built on recent research in data mining, the Interactive Path Flow aggregates interaction data across multiple participant sessions to visualize the customer journey, surface unexpected behaviors, and locate key moments in the customer journey.Screenshot of Keyword Mapping
Similar keywords are automatically grouped based on overall sentiment (positive, negative, or neutral) to identify themes. Highlight reels associated with each keyword are grouped together, to discover the why behind each sentiment.Screenshot of Video capture and live streaming
Digital and real-world customer experiences are recorded on desktop and mobile devices or live streamed for in-platform viewing.Screenshot of Audience targeting
Audiences are specified by screening contributors from UserTesting’s global network of contributors or connecting to any preferred network.