Fantastic Usability Tool - Needs a Better Pricing Model
November 20, 2020

Fantastic Usability Tool - Needs a Better Pricing Model

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with UserTesting

At my company, only the Product Design (UX) team has access to UserTesting. We use it to conduct rapid online usability tests on our UI designs so we can find and correct usability issues before the design is finalized and created in code. As a business, this kind of testing helps us to ensure that our product is highly usable [and] it saves us time vs. creating something in code only to find out that major changes might be needed.

Pros

  • Provides a [huge] panel of usability test participants
  • Allows you to screen participants to only people relevant to your test
  • Manages their panel to ensure participants are articulate in their responses
  • Provides a pretty simple method of creating unmoderated usability tests

Cons

  • Their pricing model stinks. I don't see why I should pay per seat license when that doesn't affect their costs. I should pay per usability test conducted.
  • If you need multiple seat licenses (e.g. multiple users who can create and administer tests) it gets very expensive very quickly.
  • They communicate a LOT at sales time, but I never hear from them any other time of year.
  • Better user experience. We've used UserTesting to iterate through numerous designs before finding a solution that works well for users. This has saved us from countless failed product launches.
  • Faster time to market. We can build lightweight prototypes using Sketch and InVision, and test them without writing any code. That means we can move much faster overall.
In the rare cases where we've had a test participant from UserTesting's panel not complete a test or not follow the instructions, UserTesting is always quick to respond with an apology and a free re-test with a different participant.

My only complaint is with the pricing, which seems unnecessarily high and results in lengthy negotiations every year. They often want to up-sell us with some professional services that we don't need.
As you might expect from a product that facilitates usability tests, they have certainly done usability testing on their own product. Overall, I find it quite easy to use. When they update the product with new features, it can be temporarily hard to use while I learn how the redesign works. But, overall, I think it's excellent.
Our company has benefited because UserTesting makes usability testing [so] fast and easy that there's literally no reason not to do it. With the size and breadth of UserTesting's panel, we can quickly recruit relevant users and get usability feedback on the same day, sometimes within the same hour! So our product designers are able to move quicker, make better decisions, and justify their designs with internal stakeholders.
Userlytics is probably the best alternative to UserTesting. It has a large panel, a similar tool for creating tests, [but] their pricing model is much more favorable for our company. They don't charge per seat license, but only per test that you conduct. That would allow my entire team of designers to conduct tests on their own without going through an admin. (In contrast, UserTesting charges a high fee for each seat license that's able to launch tests. That means we have to funnel all usability tests through a small number of people.)

Userbrain.net and TryMyUI seem similar to Userlytics, but for now less polished.

Loop11 is a similar service with no panel. If you can bring your own test participants, it's probably the cheapest option for online, unmoderated usability tests.

UsabilityHub allows you to test concept mockups, but you can't give users detailed tasks to complete, like you can with UserTesting or Userlytics.

Ethnic lets you intercept real users as they're using your web page. You can recruit users to participate in longer discussions. It's not exactly usability testing, but it lets you do more robust ethnographic research.
UserTesting is a fantastic tool for conducting unmoderated usability tests. It has a huge panel of participants who usually complete any usability test within a matter of minutes or hours. The tools they provide for creating the tests are easy to use and comprehensive. In almost any situation, I think you could get quality usability feedback about your product in a really short timeframe. They have also added the ability to conduct in-person interviews with members of their panel, which is a pretty powerful offering (although it does cost extra).

If you need to conduct testing with a really specialized type of user, and if you can provide that panel of users yourself, then you may not need to pay for UserTesting. The main benefit to UserTesting is the panel of test participants they offer. You can provide UserTesting with your own test participants, but if you plan to do that a lot, then there are cheaper options available (Userlytics, UserBrain.net, TryMyUI, etc.).

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