Key Takeaways
💰 Optimal Workshop pricing starts at $199/month for small teams, only annual billing is allowed.
🚨 User feedback isn’t great when it comes to the built-in participant pool – over 90% of responses are low-quality, forcing researchers to find participants elsewhere and adding extra costs.
⚠️ Expect some bugs – users have reported issues with Figma prototype tracking and recruitment popups not working properly, making research more frustrating.
🐝 Alternatives like UXtweak will get you twice as far with stronger analytics, reliable participant recruitment, and more features, all at a better price.
How much does Optimal Workshop cost?
Wondering how much Optimal Workshop (OW) costs? Here’s a quick breakdown of its pricing plans:
- Starter Plan: $199/month (billed annually)
- Enterprise Plan: Custom pricing (contact sales)
Optimal Workshop also provides a 7-day free trial with full access to all features. However, studies in the free trial only have a 2-participant limit, making it difficult to test the features.
Did you know that…?
Some Optimal Workshop users have reported serious issues with the platform’s participant recruitment pool, leading to unreliable research data.
Users have experienced:
⚠️ Over 90% of participants submitted junk answers, with gibberish responses for category names.
⚠️ Frustration with the reliability of the built-in recruitment pool, as it fails to provide meaningful data.
⚠️ Wasted time, as researchers have to filter out poor-quality responses and find alternative participant sources.
Given these issues, it is disadvantageous to pay for a participant pool within OW that researchers ultimately do not use.
Instead, they turn to other platforms to find reliable respondents, which increases overall research costs and wastes valuable time.
Optimal Workshop pricing plans
Optimal Workshop offers two pricing plans:
Starter plan ($199/month)
Includes:
- Supports 1 seat
- Unlimited studies
- Tree testing
- Card sorting
- Prototype testing
- First-click testing
- Access to Optimal Academy
- Provides basic GDPR compliance but lacks Single Sign-On (SSO), security assessments, and legal review.
Enterprise (Custom Pricing)
Includes:
- Unlimited seats
- Unlimited participant responses per study
- All tools and study types
- Administrator controls
- Multiple workspaces
- Optimal Academy access
- Usage reports
- Tailored onboarding
- Adds advanced security options, including Single Sign-On (SSO), security assessments, and legal review.
Discounts for the Optical Workshop pricing plans
Optimal Workshop offers a 7-day free trial with access to all features.
A more in-depth look into the Starter plan
The Optimal Workshop Starter plan is quite limited. Still, it includes basic prototype tests, surveys, card sorts, tree tests and first-click tests. However, there is no monthly payment option available. This brings the cost to $2388.
On the other hand, UXtweak includes all these features and more in its Business plan for a better price – just $1,104 per year. 🍯
Feature | UXtweak (Business plan) | Optimal Workshop (Starter plan) |
Price | €92/month (annual billing) | €199/month (annual billing) |
Number of studies | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Tree Testing | ✓ | ✓ |
Moderated User Testing | ✓ | ✗ |
First-click testing | ✓ | ✓ |
Figma integration | ✓ | ✓ |
Custom Branding | Included | ✗ |
Surveys | ✓ | ✓ |
In-app video conferencing | ✓ | ✗ |
Mobile app testing | ✓ | ✗ |
Card Sorting | ✓ | ✓ |
Prototype testing | ✓ | ✓ |
Who is Optimal Workshop best for?
Optimal Workshop is a solid choice for teams that primarily need tree testing and card sorting, as these are its strongest features.
Some researchers rely on it for organizing information architecture structures and testing navigation flows, making it a useful tool for UX designers and product teams working on website or app architecture.
What do users say about Optimal Workshop?
Users appreciate Optimal Workshop for its user-friendly tree testing and card sorting tools, as well as the helpful learning resources. The Figma prototype integration is a nice addition, although some users find it challenging to get it working seamlessly in practice.
The biggest complaint is the poor quality of participants, with many users reporting unreliable and unprofessional panelists, which leads to unreliable data.
Other concerns include poor customer support, limited integrations, basic survey options, and a lack of transparency in the costs for their services.
💡 Pro Tip
Want to know more what users think about Optimal Workshop? Check out our Optimal Workshop reviews article!
Most common complaints about Optimal Workshop
Complaint 1 – Expensive plans for what it is
The features and customer support have been stripped down, while the price for the Starter plan has significantly increased.
👍 What do you like best about Optimal Workshop?
The tool is pretty straight-forward. It’s okay for completing simple tasks and for people who specifically require just one feature, like card sorting.
👎 What do you dislike about Optimal Workshop?
It used to be brilliant… but then they changed their pricing strategy, to fund other products. Once the subscription has expired there’s no access to your studies for analysis, despite having paid for the study. With that, I wouldn’t recommend, nor will be using again going forward.
Complaint 2 – Unreliable panelists
The recruitment panelists are unreliable and do not take the tasks seriously, resulting in bad data.
Additionally, customer service is extremely poor, and there are too many limitations with the tool after launch, including limited integrations, poor survey options, and the tool being too basic for most sites, especially B2B.
👍 What do you like best about Optimal Workshop?
Usually, data collection is quick. It’s quite easy to use, although the quality of participants is questionable.
👎 What do you dislike about 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.
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.
Complaint 3 – Performance issues
Some features in Optimal Workshop, like the Figma integration and popups for collecting users, have recurring bugs and don’t work as expected, requiring workarounds.
👍 What do you like best about Optimal Workshop?
I like the exercises Optimal Workshop has to offer, easy to analyse results and get recruitment quickly.
👎 What do you dislike about Optimal Workshop?
Some features don’t quite work as well as I’d like. The popups for collecting users did not work for us so we had to create our own in tag manager.
Figma integration has a few bugs as animations can cause issues with the behaviour of prototype tracking.
Additionally, users point out that the platform:
- Lacks advanced survey features
- Has limited research methods
- Only allows annual payments.
The best Optimal Workshop alternative – UXtweak
UXtweak is a complete user research solution that supports organizations throughout the entire product development cycle – from initial concepts to final implementation.
It offers a wide range of usability testing features, including prototype testing, five-second tests, screen recordings, live interviews, remote usability studies, and first-click testing.
Key features
- Website testing – reveals how users interact with your site, helping you identify pain points, broken flows, or confusing layouts.
- Survey tool – lets you gather targeted, direct feedback from different customer segments, with flexibility to match your brand and goals.
- Session recording – capture real user behavior on your site or app, so you can spot drop-offs, rage clicks, and usability issues in context.
- Prototype testing – allows you to test early versions of a product before launch, helping you validate assumptions and adjust based on real user reactions.
- Mobile testing – ensures your mobile experience works across devices and OS versions, which is key as more traffic shifts to mobile.
- Moderated testing – involves real-time observation and follow-up questions, giving you deeper understanding of customer motivations and thought processes.
Try UXtweak’s session recording and usability testing tools in these demos! 🔽
Pricing & Plans
- Free Plan (€0/month) – A great way to experiment with UX research tools at no cost. Includes access to all tools, 15 responses/month, 1 active study, and 14-day access to results.
- Business Plan (€92/month, billed annually) – Ideal for teams that require essential UX research tools and features for their projects. Includes 50 responses/month (upgradable), 1 active study (upgradable), unlimited tasks per study, 12-month data retention, reports and video exports.
- Custom Plan (Pricing upon request) – Tailored for organizations with advanced research needs, providing unlimited active studies, customizable responses, live interviews, access to a global user panel and much more.
What do users say about UXtweak?
Users of UXtweak appreciate its comprehensive analytical outputs, including detailed reports, heatmaps, session replays, and in-depth study audits. Here’s what was said about us:
👍 What do you like best about UXtweak?
I liked the analytics and all the different data you can get from them. It’s not just the recordings of sessions. There are profiles for each participants, task completion rates, lostness metric and overal usability score.
You can see exactly where visitors click the wrong thing, the time it takes them to complete your tasks, and can understand how and why they got confused if so.
👎 What do you dislike about UXtweak?
Didn’t have any big problems with it, the setup process definitely got a learning curve but they provide tips that guide you through it, so it’s no big deal.
UXtweak also helps users save time through smart integrations, making the research process more efficient:
👍 What do you like best about UXtweak?
I love how easy and quick it is to set up the tests. To import the prototype from Figma you just need a link. It imports all your transitions directly from Figma or you can choose to connect the screens manually during setup.
The analytics are great, you can easily filter out specific respondent groups, based on different criteria, and analyze results for each of them. I like that you can get a great amount of qual and quant insights without having to spend hours on the manual analysis.
👎 What do you dislike about UXtweak?
I guess the biggest drawback for some teams could be that they only support Figma and Invision testing.
Another thing our users value is the seamless combination of powerful analytics, reliable participant recruitment, and a great set of tools, making it a truly all-in-one research platform:
👌 What do you like best about UXtweak?
I like how you have all the user research tools in one place. It was a big benefit for us, as the team was not ready to invest in a bunch of different tools every time we introduce a new research method.
Another big plus is the quality of support. Big thanks to UXtweak support team for being so responsive and helping us solve minor setup complications in no time!
👎 What do you dislike about UXtweak?
I really missed branding customization options, it is not available in the Business plan.
Discounts
🎓UXtweak offers exclusive discounts for universities and NGOs to support research and education. Contact the sales team for more details!
Want to further compare UXtweak and Optimal Workshop?
Our article comparing UXtweak and Optimal Workshop will help you decide which one suits your needs best!
Dive into the full comparison and make the right choice today. 🐝
Final Decision: Is Optimal Workshop the right tool for you?
If you need a tool for simple tree testing and card sorting, Optimal Workshop can be a good fit. It helps with structuring information architecture and testing navigation flows efficiently.
However, if you’re looking for a more advanced and reliable research tool, there are drawbacks to consider.
Users have reported junk responses from the built-in participant pool, buggy Figma integration affecting prototype tracking, limited survey functionality, and a poor price-to-quality ratio, as many end up paying extra for reliable respondents elsewhere.
For teams interested in deeper insights, better analytics, and high-quality participants, you’ll get twice as far with UXtweak – all for a better price. 🍯
