Key takeaways
📉 Optimal Workshop’s appeal has decreased over time, due to the increase in pricing, while removing or restricting some features.
🔎 UserZoom enables quick, insightful surveys, although it comes with a higher price tag and some reliability concerns. Still, its broader capabilities often justify the cost for teams needing deeper insights.
💡 Optimal Workshop’s strength lies in card sorting and tree testing, but these limited features make it more suitable for niche use cases rather than comprehensive UX research needs.
🐝 UXtweak prioritizes affordability, thorough and high-quality analysis, a wide range of different features and access to reliable respondents for user research.
⚖️ In the comparison between UXtweak, UserZoom, and Optimal Workshop, UXtweak consistently earns the highest customer ratings.
🍯 Interested in boosting your conversion rates with valuable insights? Try UXtweak for free today!
In this article, we will examine the unique features of each platform, explore their pricing options, and consider customer feedback for a comprehensive evaluation.
Let’s jump in!
UserZoom and Optimal Workshop alternative – UXtweak
UXtweak stands out as an alternative to UserZoom and Optimal Workshop, particularly as an all-in-one user research platform. It comes equipped with a wide range of tools designed to improve the usability of websites and apps throughout their entire development process, starting from prototypes and extending to fully developed products.
UXtweak’s features include tree testing, first-click testing, five-second test, remote usability testing and mobile app testing – a combination rarely offered by a single platform.
Alongside these specialized tools, UXtweak offers a comprehensive suite of research and recruiting instruments, coupled with a participant management solution.
These unique aspects, paired with flexible and cost-effective pricing options, make UXtweak a comprehensive and user-friendly option for user experience professionals.
Explore UXtweak’s demos for a direct view of user interactions and analytics! 🔽
UserZoom vs Optimal Workshop: Features and Capabilities
This table offers a comparison of three research platforms: UserZoom, Optimal Workshop, and UXtweak, with a focus on their distinct features.
Note: A feature marked with an orange check in the table signifies its availability on certain testing tools, though it might come with an extra fee or be exclusive to a more advanced subscription plan.
Features | UserZoom | Optimal Workshop | UXtweak |
Website Usability Testing | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ |
Mobile Apps Testing | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ |
Prototype Testing | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ (Compatible with Figma, InVision, Axure) |
Card Sorting | ✓ (not avaliable in UserZoom GO) | ✓ (Open, Closed, Hybrid) | ✓ (available on all plans) |
Tree Testing | ✓ (not avaliable in UserZoom GO) | ✓ | ✓ |
Preference Testing | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
First Click Testing | ✓ (not avaliable in UserZoom GO) | ✓ (With click heatmaps) | ✓ |
5 Second Testing | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
A/B Testing | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ |
Moderated/User Interviews | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ (on Enterprise plans) conduct directly in one platform* |
Session recording | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ |
Survey | ✓ | ✓ (With skip logic) | ✓ |
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 demonstrates that all three platforms provide a diverse set of capabilities. Notably, UXtweak incorporates every feature listed, often with advanced functionality and cost-effectiveness compared to the other two platforms.
Need to conduct moderated research?
With UXtweak, you can recruit, schedule, conduct, and analyze user interviews or any other moderated studies directly in one platform.
Try our Freefrom Interview tool for user interviews or use Study Interviews to run any UXtweak studies moderated (eg. moderated card sorting, moderated website testing…).
Moderated testing supports multiple recruitment methods:
👉 Bring your own participants
👉 Access qualified participants from a global User Panel in 130+ countries
👉 Turn site visitors into participants with Onsite Recruiting
👉 Use your custom panel with Own Database
Try UXtweak for free today! 🐝
UserZoom vs Optimal Workshop: Participant Recruitment and Management Capabilities
The table shows how UserZoom, Optimal Workshop, and UXtweak find and manage people for usability studies.
Capabilities | UserZoom | Optimal Workshop | UXtweak |
User Panel | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Panel size | 100+ countries | 50+ million participants | 130+ countries |
Advanced Targeting criteria | ✓ (200 demographic filters) | ✓ (use of custom recruitment) | ✓ (2000+ attributes) |
Price per participant | non-public information | Starts at $10 | Starts at $10 |
Expert audit | ✓ (available on request) | ✓ | ✓ (included with each order from User Panel) |
Ability to bring your own users | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ (for free) |
Participant management solution | ✓ (on select plans) | ✗ | ✓ (available on all plans) |
Automatic QA of responses | ✓ (for professional, international, and premium plans) | ✗ | ✓ |
UserZoom vs Optimal Workshop: Pricing and Plans Comparison
When choosing a user testing tool, it’s important to think about the cost. Find a tool that suits your research needs and fits your budget. Now, let’s see how affordable the research platforms are.
UserZoom | Optimal Workshop | UXtweak | |
Features | Features depend on the plan | Only selected features for the starter plan | All features are available on all plans |
Monthly subscription | ✗ Annual only | ✗ Annual only | ✓ Available – cancel anytime |
Free plan | ✗ Not avaliable | ✗ Not avaliable | ✓ Available – free forever plan, no credit card needed |
Cost of annual subscription | Upon request – starting at around $70,000/year | Starter plan costs $2,388 a year | Business plan starts at $1,104 a year, Enterprise plans start at $5k/year |
Cost of monthly subscription | N/A | N/A | Free forever plan, Business plan starting at $92 per month |
Optimal Workshop pricing plans
Optimal Workshop offers two plans – Starter and Enterprise.
- Starter Plan: Priced at $199 per month (billed only annually), it offers 5 live studies and participant responses per study.
- Enterprise Plan: Customized pricing solutions available upon request.
💡 Pro Tip
Wondering if Optimal Workshop is worth the cost? In the Optimal Workshop pricing article, we break down its pricing plans, features, and limitations to help you decide if it’s the right tool for you.
UserZoom pricing plans (as part of UserTesting)
UserZoom, which is now part of UserTesting, offers two separate platforms:
- UserZoom GO – Designed for individual researchers or small teams, this platform provides tools for usability testing of websites and mobile apps, both moderated and unmoderated. It also offers pre-study recruitment options.
- UserZoom – Geared towards enterprise teams, this platform offers more advanced capabilities, including card sorting, tree testing, surveys, and click tests.
While some details about these plans are provided, it’s still necessary to schedule a meeting with UserTesting’s representatives for further clarification. The pricing, starting at $70,000 annually, will be determined based on the agreed terms.
💡 Pro Tip
For additional information on the merger of UserZoom with UserTesting and its impact on customers, see our next article UserTesting vs UserZoom.
UXtweak pricing plans
UXtweak has designed a variety of pricing plans to suit different user testing requirements:
- Free Plan (€0/month) – Forever free, 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.
For more information on the features of each plan, visit the UXtweak pricing page. 🐝
UserZoom vs Optimal Workshop: Customer Reviews
To ensure an unbiased assessment of the three platforms discussed, we’ve incorporated a table compiled using data from capterra.com. Similar to G2, this website aggregates user reviews of various platforms.
UserZoom | Optimal Workshop | UXtweak | |
Overall Score | 4.4/5 | 4.1/5 | 4.8/5 |
Ease of Use | 4.5/5 | 4.0/5 | 4.7/5 |
Customer Service | 4.7/5 | 5.0/5 | 5.0/5 |
Value for money | 4.6/5 | 4.3/5 | 4.8/5 |
Source: capterra.com
UserZoom
Pros:
- Offers quick and informative surveys: A/B testing, unmoderated usability testing, and click surveys.
- Intuitive Platform: The platform’s user-friendly design makes starting usability tests straightforward.
- Responsive Customer Support: Provides a highly accommodating customer support team that responds swiftly when needed.
- Participant Recruitment: Facilitates fast acquisition of enough participants for quantitative benchmarking usability studies.
Cons:
- Pricing Model: Considered prohibitive, limiting the ability to widely distribute ‘specialist’ seats within a company for test creation.
- High cost: UserZoom is perceived as expensive, posing a challenge for users with budget constraints.
- Inflexible Research Sessions: Limitations in combining devices into a single study, resulting in the need for more studies than necessary.
- Limited Features in UserZoom Go: Lacks advanced options such as transcription in the base cost.
- Adding Users to Studies: It’s challenging to add extra users to an ongoing study, as it necessitates direct communication with support.
- Automated System Inconsistencies: Occasional failures in the automated system, affecting test success approximately 1 in 10 times.
Source: G2.com
Optimal Workshop
Pros:
- User-Friendly Setup: The tool is straightforward to set up and initiate, although it may be slightly less intuitive during actual activities.
- Concept Association Exploration: OptimalSort is effective for exploring how individuals associate concepts.
- Effective for Card Sorting and Tree Testing: Optimal Workshop is effective for card sorting and tree structure testing, making it a valuable tool for optimizing website navigation.
- Helpful Results Analysis: The tool provides valuable results analysis to enhance usability.
Cons:
- No free plan
- Expensive plans for what it is (199/month)
- No flexibility (no monthly plan option)
- Limited research methods (mostly focused on IA tools)
- Performance issues, when working with bigger studies
- Lacking advanced survey features
- Low-quality responses from participants
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.
Source: Trustpilot
UXtweak
Pros:
- Extensive Tester Pool: Participants across 130 countries and over 2,000 selectable tester attributes ensure diverse and comprehensive feedback.
- Wide Range of Tools: Offers a comprehensive set of top-tier features, reducing the need for multiple separate tools.
- Advanced Features: Includes tools like heatmap analysis and video recordings of user sessions, providing in-depth user interaction data.
- Affordable Pricing
- Quality of Respondents: Provides access to high-quality respondents, ensuring valuable and reliable feedback.
Cons:
- Learning Curve: Becoming comfortable with the dashboard can take some time, indicating a potentially complex user interface.
- Complex Feature Additions: The platform’s frequent addition of complex features may pose a challenge for some users.
- UXtweak note: To address this, new tutorial videos are being produced.
Source: G2.com
UserZoom vs Optimal Workshop: Support options
UserZoom (now part of UserTesting)
UserZoom offers customer support for its Ordered Software Services during regular business hours, with varying support hours for escalated issues, ensuring that customers receive assistance when needed.
- Technical support is available from 12 a.m. to 5 p.m. Pacific Time, Monday through Friday, excluding U.S. holidays.
- UserZoom tracks and logs all support requests, allowing customers to inquire about their request status at any time.
- Incident priority and response times are determined based on severity, with UserZoom providing timely acknowledgment, resolution efforts, time estimates, and ongoing updates for significant errors.
Optimal Workshop
Optimal Workshop provides customer support through its help center, offering articles to address common issues, and encourages users to email support@optimalworkshop.com for assistance if needed.
UXtweak
At UXtweak, we extend beyond traditional support options by providing consulting services and audits conducted by our in-house team of expert UX researchers. Our commitment to excellence is highlighted by our perfect 5/5 rating on Capterra. For more information, feel free to explore our UX research consulting services.
UserZoom vs Optimal Workshop: Conclusion
UserZoom is a usability testing platform offering A/B testing, unmoderated usability studies, and click surveys with a user-friendly interface and responsive support. However, it’s seen as costly, with limited flexibility in mixed-device testing, basic base plans, and occasional technical issues impacting test reliability.
Optimal Workshop provides card sorting and tree testing tools but has struggled to keep pace with modern UX needs. Users report high costs, limited feature updates, poor participant screening, and inefficient data aggregation, making it feel outdated and overpriced.
UXtweak outshines Optimal Workshop with its broader range of features and a more diverse tester pool across various countries. While Optimal Workshop is sufficient in exploring concept associations, UXtweak offers advanced capabilities like heatmap analysis and video session recordings, providing deeper insights into user interactions.
Additionally, UXtweak is praised for its affordability and access to high-quality respondents, making it a more cost-effective choice compared to UserZoom, which can be perceived as expensive.
Stop settling for less. Switch to UXtweak.
❌ If you’re frustrated with expensive pricing, limited research methods and flexibility, there’s a better way.
Why UXtweak is the better choice:
✅ All-in-one platform – 15+ research methods in one tool
✅ More value at a better price – our upgradable Business plans starts at $92 per month
✅ Top-rated customer support
✅ High quality recruiting – Study audits and recruiting are handled by an expert
✅ Better performance – Handles large studies without issues
See Why Teams Are Switching To UXtweak – Try It For Free Today!
