Come along as we explore the features, benefits, and possibilities these tools present, helping you make the ideal choice for your design requirements.
Key insights
👉 Maze is valued for its straightforward UX research tools, prioritizing easy survey creation and prototype testing. However, it faces challenges with test participant reliability, mobile prototype performance and limited report customization, suggesting areas for improvement.
👉 Dscout, while notable for its high-quality panelists and excellent support for research studies, lacks many basic testing features, including tree testing and preference testing. Challenges also include a less intuitive analysis tool, limited features for group discussions, difficulties in reaching niche audiences, and restrictive response options.
👉 UXtweak offers a compelling alternative to both Maze and Dscout. It addresses the participant reliability concerns sometimes found in Maze and brings more features to the table than Dscout, all while maintaining lower prices.
🐝 Start with UXtweak – create your free account now!
Maze and Dscout alternative – UXtweak
UXtweak stands out by offering a wide range of features, including tree testing, first-click testing, five-second tests, and mobile app testing, all in one platform. It also provides a full suite of research, recruitment, and participant management tools. With its flexible and affordable pricing, UXtweak is an all-encompassing solution for UX professionals.
🐝 Check out UXtweak’s demos to watch user interactions and real-time analytics⬇
Features and Capabilities
The table presents a feature comparison among three research platforms: Maze, Dscout, and UXtweak.
Features | Maze | Dscout | UXtweak |
Website Usability Testing | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Mobile Apps Testing | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
Prototype Testing | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ (Compatible with Figma, InVision, Axure) |
Card Sorting | ✓ (avaliable in Team and Organization plan) | ✗ | ✓ (available on all plans) |
Tree Testing | ✓ (avaliable in Team and Organization plan) | ✗ | ✓ |
Preference Testing | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
First Click Testing | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
5 Second Testing | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
A/B Testing | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Moderated/User Interviews | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ (on Enterprise plans) conduct directly in one platform* |
Session recording | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Survey | ✓ (only in the Starter plan and higher) | ✓ | ✓ |
Onsite Recruiting/ Website recruiting widget | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
Branching logic (conditional logic) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
*UXtweak offers built in features to recruit, schedule, conduct, and analyze user interviews or any other moderated studies.
The table indicates that each of the three platforms, Maze, Dscout, and UXtweak, provides a broad selection of features. Notably, UXtweak encompasses every feature listed, consistently introducing enhancements or providing them more cost-effectively than its counterparts.
Participant Recruitment and Management capabilities
The table outlines the approaches of Maze, Dscout, and UXtweak to recruiting and managing participants for usability studies.
Capabilities | Maze | Dscout | UXtweak |
User Panel | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Panel size | 130+ countries | Participants are mostly from US | 130+ countries |
Advanced Targeting criteria | ✓ Only in Organization plan Targeting on other plans only by basic demographics (Country, Age, Sex) | ✓ | ✓ (2000+ attributes) |
Expert audit | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ (included with each order from User Panel) |
Ability to bring your own users | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ (for free) |
Participant management solution | ✓ (Reach Database) | ✓ | ✓ (available on all plans) |
Automatic QA of responses | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
🐝 Need to enhance conversion rates with insights but missing real user access? Take a look at UXtweak today!
Pricing and Plans Comparison
When choosing a user testing platform, it’s essential to consider pricing. Select a platform that aligns with your research needs while staying within your budgetary constraints. Next, we’ll examine the affordability of these research tools.
Maze’s Pricing
- Free Plan: An excellent choice for those new to usability testing, this plan is free and includes 1 study per month, 5 seats, and basic features.
- Starter Plan: For $99 a month or $1,188 a year, this plan is great for small teams starting with product research. It offers unlimited blocks, advanced features, and 5 seats.
- Team Plan: At $1,250 monthly or $15,000 yearly, this plan is designed for larger teams looking to boost their research, offering more than 20 studies per year, advanced features, and additional seats.
- Organization Plan: Tailored for large organizations with extensive research needs, this plan includes custom pricing, customizable studies and seats, a full range of features, and strong security measures.
Dscout’s Pricing
Dscout does not publicly share its pricing. To inquire about costs, you’ll need to contact Dscout directly.
UXtweak’s Pricing
- Starter Plan: Free and designed for simple testing tasks, offering access to all features, one active study, and up to 30 responses monthly.
- Plus Plan: Costs $708 annually ($59 monthly), tailored for solo researchers, including 200 monthly responses, unlimited studies, and data storage for a year.
- Business Plan: Priced at $1,812 annually ($151 monthly), ideal for small to mid-sized companies, with unlimited studies, 1,000 responses per month, and premium support.
- Enterprise Plan: Begins at $5,000 annually, for large-scale project needs, providing unlimited responses and custom support, with variable pricing based on requirements. Subscription options are generally yearly, with monthly payment options for added flexibility. Modifying or terminating plans is straightforward. Visit the UXtweak pricing page for more information on plan specifics.
Customer Reviews
For a fair comparison of the three platforms, we’ve looked at information from G2, a top site for B2B SaaS reviews. G2.com serves as a place where buyers can check reviews, compare ratings, and assess software options.
Maze | Dscout | UXtweak | |
Overall Score | 4.5/5 | 4.6/5 | 4.7/5 |
Ease of Use | 9.0/10 | 8.7/10 | 8.9/10 |
Quality of Support | 8.6/10 | 9.5/10 | 9.8/10 |
Ease of Setup | 9.6/10 | 8.7/10 | N/A |
🐝 Note from the author: Pros and cons on this page were formulated by aggregating user feedback from platforms like Capterra.com and G2.com.
Maze
- Pros
- Easy Survey Creation: Maze offers a user-friendly platform for building surveys, combining ease of use with flexibility.
- Straightforward Prototype Testing: Quick and simple process to set up prototype tests, including integration with Figma.
- Diverse Question Formats: Provides a broad selection of question types to accommodate complex inquiries.
- Cons
- Prototype Stability Issues: Users experience frequent prototype crashes, particularly on mobile devices, which can disrupt the testing process.
- Limited Report Customization: Customizing reports presents challenges, such as modifying content or adjusting the order of slides, and combining results from different tests.
- Unclear Heat Maps: The heat map functionality often falls short in offering useful, actionable insights.
- Test Participant Reliability: Some test participants may not fully engage with the test, leading to early dropouts or incomplete sessions, even despite compensation.
Source: G2.com
Dscout
- Pros
- High-Quality Panelists: dscout distinguishes itself from other remote usability and research tools through the really good quality of its panelists.
- Supports Many Types of Studies: Whether it’s video diaries, in-depth interviews, or quick missions, dscout can handle a variety of research needs.
- Helpful Support: When users can’t do the analysis on their own, dscout offers helpful support to guide them through.
- Cons
- Unintuitive Analysis Tool: The tool for analyzing mission data (outside of express missions) feels awkward and hard to use, especially when trying to analyze data across questions.
- Limited Group Discussion Features: dscout’s tools for group discussions aren’t as good as from other platforms, missing important parts like a separate chat for observers.
- Hard to Find Niche Audiences: It can be tough to find specific groups of people in dscout’s panel for certain studies.
- Restrictive Response Options: The platform limits how participants can respond to questions, forcing a choice between formats like photos, videos, or notes, with further constraints on upload size and number.
- Cost and Commitment: For consultancies, especially smaller ones, the minimum credit purchases and long-term commitments can make dscout difficult to manage, justify, and bill for.
- Time Zone Challenges and Speed: The requirement for manual review by Chicago-based staff can slow down project launches, making dscout less suitable for fast-paced needs, particularly for those operating in non-Central time zones.
Source: G2.com
UXtweak
- Pros
- Diverse Testing Options: Offers a broad selection of testing options at competitive prices, providing great value for user research and advanced analytics.
- Direct Exports: It provides easy export of data, supporting the case for modifications to website architecture.
- Expert Customer Support: The support team consists of experts who quickly resolves user inquiries with practical solutions.
- Effortless Figma Integration: Enables easy and efficient testing with Figma prototypes.
- Convenient Participant Recruitment: Allows for the quick recruitment of study participants directly within the application, eliminating the need for additional tools.
- Hands-on Demos: Offers interactive demos for each tool, giving users a comprehensive understanding of data presentation and tool functionality.
- Cons
- Navigation Challenges: Navigating certain areas, such as the left menu, can be unintuitive.
- Intricate Study Setup: The extensive range of options can make study setup appear daunting.
- Initial Dashboard Familiarity: New users may require time to become comfortable with the dashboard layout, though it becomes more intuitive with use.
- Note from UXtweak: In response to the learning curve, new tutorial videos are being produced.
Source: G2.com
🐝 Tip: When it comes to selecting the right user research platform for your needs, considerations like preference tests, actionable user insights, and advanced security features are crucial. UXtweak stands out for its comprehensive toolset in relation to these. Additionally, its focus on mobile application UX testing ensures that you can optimize your product for various devices.
Support options
Maze
Maze offers a range of informative articles on topics like security, privacy, integrations, and setting up tests. For more personalized assistance, customers can click the ‘Submit a request’ button for support. Furthermore, Maze strives for quick responses to inquiries, although response times may vary with the complexity of the issue.
Dscout
Dscout’s help center has answers to many common questions. You can look for help based on if you’re a researcher, a scout (user/tester), or want to know the latest updates about the platform. If you can’t find what you need, you can reach out to help@dscout.com.
UXtweak
UXtweak goes above and beyond standard support by offering consulting services and audits from our expert in-house UX research team. Our dedication to quality service is reflected in our perfect 5/5 Capterra rating. To discover more, visit our UX research consulting services page.
Maze vs Dscout: Conclusion
Maze offers an easy-to-use option for UX research, focusing on simple survey creation and prototype testing. Its user-friendly layout and fast setup attract researchers who want to work more efficiently. But, problems like how well mobile prototypes work and not being able to customize reports much show where Maze needs to get better. Even with these issues, its basic features and easy interface make it a solid pick for anyone who values straightforwardness and speed in their UX research work.
Dscout stands out for its quality panelists and ability to support a wide range of research studies. However, it has drawbacks like a clunky analysis tool, limited group discussion features, difficulty in targeting niche audiences, and restrictive participant response options. Additionally, the financial and commitment demands can be challenging for smaller consultancies. Despite these challenges, dscout’s strengths in excellent research support and customer care make it a notable choice in the UX research field.
UXtweak offers a compelling alternative to both Maze and dscout. It addresses the participant reliability concerns sometimes found in Maze and brings more features to the table than Dscout, all while maintaining lower prices. With its range of testing options, straightforward integration with tools like Figma, and efficient participant recruitment, UXtweak provides a balanced solution. Although new users may need some time to get used to its navigation and setup, the platform’s value and feature set make it a practical choice for user testing, blending reliability with affordability and functionality.
