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User testing tools can vary in terms of their use-case, functionality, and affordability. Here, we help you narrow down your search.
Peter Foy
If you’ve looked at user testing tools before, you know they vary in terms of their use cases, functionality, and affordability. User testing tools can be broadly divided into three main use cases:
User testing tools can also be further broken down based on features and functionality. These are some of the capabilities you might find in user testing tools (but exactly what’s offered will vary by tool):
As you’ll see in this article, there are many different user testing tools on the market which meet a variety of use cases and price points. Just like there is no one-size-fits-all user test, there are no tools that work 100% perfectly for every company.
We compiled this list to help you narrow down which ones are a good fit for your specific needs. To get a more detailed look at the UX research software landscape, discover new tools, and identify gaps in your own user research toolkit with the 2021 UX Research Tools Map. 🗺
One thing to note before we get to the tools: Some folks maintain that there’s a difference between the terms user testing and usability testing, but for the sake of evaluating tools, we’re going to stick with the common practice of using them interchangeably.
Before we get to the user testing tools, let’s discuss a few questions you can ask yourself to narrow down your choices.
Note: Looking for a specific audience to participate in your UX research? User Interviews offers a complete platform for finding and managing participants.Tell us who you want, and we’ll get them on your calendar. Get your first three participants for free.
As you probably know, user tests need to be planned carefully to ensure you can both trust and gain insight from the data. Now that we’ve discussed the high-level categories of user testing tools, here are a few questions you can ask yourself to help choose the right tool for you.
These questions will likely need to be adapted to your particular needs, but they can serve as a base to start thinking about your user testing strategy.
(1) How much control do you want over the testing process?
This question can really be broken down into two parts:
Some platforms will source participants and run everything based on the option you select. Others are completely self serve.
If you want real users of your product or people from a specific target audience, then platforms with a built-in pool of participants may not be the best option. But if you want expert test-takers to poke holes in your site, they’re a lot more attractive.
Look for tools that fit your modus operandi — and keep in mind that, generally speaking, the more the tool does for you, the more it will cost.
(2) Which specific actions do you want users to take during testing?
Defining the specific actions you want users to take during the testing is an important step in choosing the features you’ll need in a user testing tool. For example, if you want to know where users look for help documentation, then having a heatmap and/or eye tracking tool might be at the top of your list.
(3) How much room do you have in your budget for another tool?
This is an obvious question, but it’s a big one. The tools in this list range from completely free and open source to costly, enterprise-level solutions.
(4) What device will users primarily be on during user testing?
If your product is primarily used on mobile, you’ll want a tool with mobile testing capabilities. Otherwise, most tools work for desktop.
(5) How do I want the user tests to be conducted?
Do you have a preference for how the test itself will be conducted? As you probably know, tests can be:
In moderated tests, the interviewer asks questions and interacts with the participant, whether face-to-face or remote. You can ask follow-up questions, tweak your process on the fly, and observe physical and emotional cues.
In unmoderated tests, participants are given pre-established tests or tasks to complete. The script or testing process is identical every time.
If you have a preference, choose a tool that enables you to proceed accordingly.
Price: Plans start at $150/month, with pay-as-you-go available options starting at $30 per recruited participant. View full pricing details here.
We aren’t a user testing tool, but we are a user research recruiting platform. Since we wrote the list, we thought we’d introduce ourselves first.
The User Interviews platform matches participants for you based on the criteria and screener questions you provide. You can review profiles then accept or reject participants who initially qualify. We also handle scheduling and incentive payments to give you more time back in your day. Our customers report speed, ease of use, and high participant quality as the best things about our platform. We also play nice with others — you can use User Interviews with any testing platform you like.
If you’re ready to start a new study, get your first three participants for free on User Interviews. After that, we only collect payment on completed sessions with participants.
Price: Available upon request
UserTesting is one of the biggest players in the user testing market and is rated the #1 software in the User Research and Software Testing categories on the review site G2. They have solutions for all the use cases mentioned — product, design & UX, and marketing. The platform has two main products:
The price of UserTesting is available upon request, so it’s not the most affordable option on this list. That said, it is a solid choice if you have the budget and want to have all your research on one platform.
Price: Starts at €10,000 per year
Usabilla is a comprehensive usability testing platform with several features like heatmaps (these analyze a user’s mouse movements), exit surveys, and feedback forms. They have four core products:
The price of Usabilla starts at €10,000 per year, and they calculate a personalized quote based on the products and monthly usage you need.
Price: Starts at $199/month
Optimal Workshop is a user research platform with a suite of tools to optimize user experience and UX design. This platform has five core features, including:
Pricing for Optimal Workshop starts at $199/month for individuals and discounts are available for teams of 3+ users.
Price: Pay-as-you-go at $29 per user test or monthly subscriptions starting at $19
Userbrain is a user testing tool that lets you lets you capture video recordings of people interacting with your website. The user tests are 5-15 minute screen recordings and include audio commentary from one of their testers using your site. Userbrain also handles all of the recruiting and managing to test participants, which can be good or bad, depending on your needs.
One of the highlights mentioned on the review site Capterra is UserBrain’s ease of use — there’s no code installation needed. All you need to do is enter the URL you want to test, and you get access to their worldwide pool of testers.
Price: Starts at $49/month
Userlytics is a remote user testing tool that lets you define your target demographic and your test goals, tasks, and questions. Then you get user feedback from their panel of testers within a few minutes. The platform provides both qualitative data and quantitative data from testing sessions, with tools to observe things such as facial expression tracking, Time on Task, and System Usability Scale (SUS), a “quick and dirty” usability scale to evaluate practically any kind of system.
Pricing for Userlytics starts at $49 per participant for their DIY plan, $69 per participant for their Enterprise plan, and they have a full platform SaaS subscription plan with pricing available upon request.
Price: Starts at $24/month
Crazy Egg is a user experience tool that specializes in heatmaps, scrollmaps, and other visual reports to help you understand how customers respond to elements on your site. They also have a no-code-required A/B testing tool for fast split testing.
Pricing for CrazyEgg starts at $24/month and is based on the number of tracked pageviews and recordings you want each month.
Price: Starts at $29/month with a free plan available
Built for marketers, product managers, and UX designers, Hotjar is a behavior analytics platform that includes heatmaps, visitor recordings, conversion funnels, form analysis, feedback polls, visual feedback, and surveys.
Pricing for Hotjar is based on the number of pageviews per day that you want to collect data from. They offer a free plan for websites with up to 2,000 pageviews per day, and their paid plans start at $29/month for up to 10,000 pageviews per day.
Price: Free of charge
ClickHeat is a visual heatmap tool that shows you the hot and cold click zones of any HTML page. Unlike the other options in this list, ClickHeat is an open-source software released under a GPL license.
Since it is open-source, you’ll need to have a developer implement the software, and you won’t be able to get any premium support other than using the Github issue tracker, but if you’re looking for a basic heatmap free of charge, this may be the tool for you.
Price: Available upon request
Clicktale is a user experience analytics platform that specializes in data visualizations and analytical algorithms for behavior data. The platform integrates with over 50 martech and experience vendors such as Optimizely and Adobe Experience Manager.
Pricing for ClickTale is available upon request, and a few of their clients include T-Mobile, Office Depot, and Dell.
Price: Starts at $79/month
Now part of the UsabilityHub platform, Five Second Test does exactly what the name suggests — it is a usability testing tool where each test runs for 5 seconds. The tool helps you optimize the clarity of your designs and improve conversion rates by measuring a visitor’s very first impression.
Pricing starts at $79/month for up to 5 minutes of testing time, although there is a free option for up to 2 minutes of testing time with UsabilityHub branding.
Price: Starts at $79/month
UsabilityHub is a user testing and usability research platform designed to help you improve the user experience of your apps and websites. The features of their platform include first click tests, design surveys, preference tests, and the five second tests mentioned above.
Pricing for UsabilityHub is based on the length of tests you want to run each month with a free option for tests up to 2 minutes, and their paid plans start at $79/month for tests up to 5 minutes in length.
Price: Available upon request.
Optimizely is one of the world’s leading experimentation platforms, with an impressive client list including IBM, American Express, and eBay. The platform has two core products:
You can also use the Optimizely platform to run experiments on any channel, including websites, mobile apps, TV apps, and even IoT/conversational apps.
Price: Starts at $199/month
Qualaroo is a user research and feedback platform that is focused on SaaS products and built specifically for UX designers. One of the main differentiators of Qualaroo is that it’s one of the only feedback tools that offers sentiment analysis powered by IBM Watson, which lets you to do the following types of research:
Pricing for Qualaroo is based on the number of views and starts at $199/month for 500,000 views per month.
Price: Based on credits; 1 credit costs $59
Designed by UX researchers, Userfeel is a remote usability testing tool that gives you videos of users speaking their thoughts as they use your website or app. This user testing tool can also be used by multilingual sites as their panel of users consists of 70,000 testers that speak 40+ languages.
Pricing for Userfeel is based on credits per user session, with 1 credit costing $59 and discounts available if you prepay for 50+ credits.
Price: $35 for 1 test credit or $299/month for 10 credits
TryMyUI is a remote usability testing tool that specializes in video screen captures of users on websites, mobile devices, and apps, as well as wireframe and prototype testing. The features of this platform include…
Pricing for TryMyUI is offered in either a pay-per-result model, with each test credit costing $35, or a monthly subscription, starting at $299/month for 10 credits.
Price: Available upon request
UserReport is a user engagement tool that helps you tell who your users are and what they want to achieve. Features of the platform include surveys and feedback forums, and their Premium platform is built to help publishers show advertisers which media and website sections are relevant to them with audience insights.
Price: Starts at $39/month
Usersnap is a user testing tool that is best known for its customer feedback and visual bug tracking tools. The tool is primarily used by web developers for quality assurance (QA) and user acceptance testing (UAT).
Pricing for Usersnap starts at $39/month and is based on the number of team members using the tool as well as the number of pageviews you get each month.
Price: Available upon request
UserVoice is a user feedback software that is primarily focused on product development and management for software companies. Their customer feedback platform streamlines the feedback collection process with auto-suggestions as users type based on existing data. This feature allows for a high coverage rate (% of customers with tracked feedback) compared to other programs, and it’s not it’s not uncommon to see coverage rates of 30-70%.
Price: Starts at $39/month
UseResponse is a customer service software that helps you optimize the customer experience with various tools such as feedback software (the main one you’d use for customer learnings), help desk software, knowledge base software, and live chat messaging software. It’s designed to make all-things-customer-support more user friendly; if you’re not focusing on customer support, then this isn’t the tool for you.
Pricing for UseResponse is based on the number of solutions you want to use. It starts at $39/month for their self-serve platform and $4800/year for their enterprise on-premise solution.
Price: Available upon request
Focused on software development, Applause is a crowdtesting platform that assembles curated teams of vetted software professionals to test any device/OS combination. The main differentiator of Applause is that the testers have technical expertise in areas such as security, accessibility, usability, user feedback, and payments. In addition to being able to test websites and apps, Applause is well suited for more advanced technology companies such as voice & AI, IoT testing, and AR & VR testing.
Price: Starts at $39
UsersThink is an on-demand user testing platform that is focused on optimizing the UI and UX of landing pages. Participants of the tests are US-based and provide detailed responses to questions about your landing page.
Pricing is based on the number of users you’d like to get feedback from and starts at $39 for 6 users.
Price: Starts at $99/month
Feng-GUI is an AI-powered design audit tool built for digital marketers to get feedback on visuals, landing pages, and ad creative. This user testing tool simulates human vision and creates reports that predict what a real person would be most likely to engage with.
Pricing for Feng-GUI starts at $99/month for a single user and discounts are available for 3+ users.
Price: Starts at $69/month
Loop11 is a user testing tool that helps you identify navigational and usability issues on a website. The platform provides a suite of tools for webpage testing, wireframes and prototypes, and accessibility including 5-second and first-click tests, heatmaps, and more.
Pricing for Loop11 starts at $69/month for 3 user tests per month and goes up from there based on the number of tests per month.
Price: Starts at $59/month
Lookback is a user experience recording tool used by some of the world’s leading companies, such as Nike, Netflix, and Facebook. The three main features of this platform include:
Pricing for Lookback starts at $59/month per collaborator and goes up from there.
Price: Starts at $499/month
Recently acquired by UserZoom, Validately is a user testing tool that includes screen sharing, note taking, clip creation, video sharing, and more. All of their paid plans include a dedicated testing platform, recruiting services, and automated reporting. In terms of their recruiting services, you can choose from moderated recruiting, recruiting from your customer list, or unmoderated recruiting.
Validately also boasts an impressive client list, including Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. Pricing for Validately starts at $499/month and is based on the number of researcher and collaborator seats you want.
Price: Available upon request
SessionCam offers a suite of user testing tools for CRO and UX, including:
SessionCam offers a free trial of their platform, and pricing is available upon request.
Price: Starts at $39/month
Inspectlet’s tagline is: “Google Analytics tells you what, Inspectlet tells you why.” This user testing tool includes the following features:
Inspectlet offers a free tier for up to 1,000 recorded sessions per month, paid plans starting at $39/month, and enterprise solutions are available upon request.
Price: Starts at $530 for a single license
Recollective offers a suite of research software tools. The features of this user testing tool include qualitative and quantitative data gathering, moderation, and analysis.
Pricing for Recollective starts at $530, and there are multiple pricing models available, including project pricing, annual licenses, multi-client agency license, and special licences.
Price: Available upon request
SiteSpect is a user testing tool that specializes in A/B testing, personalization, and a full suite of optimization techniques, including:
Pricing for SiteSpect is based on which optimization techniques you want to include, and pricing is available upon request. SiteSpect also offers additional service and security packages with pricing available upon request.
Price: Starts at $15/month
Koncept is a prototyping and usability testing tool that helps you to make data-backed UX design decisions. One of the unique features of this platform offers a drag-and-drop editor for quickly building prototypes for Web, iOS, and Android.
Pricing for Koncept starts at $15/month for individual users.
Price: Starts at $39/month
Mopinion is a feedback analytics tools for websites and mobile apps. Feedback can be collected in a number of ways including slide-in forms, embedded forms, and in-app forms.
Mopinion offers a free plan for web-only feedback, paid plans that start at $39/month for individuals, and $289/month plans for businesses.
Note: Looking for a specific audience to participate in your UX research? User Interviews offers a complete platform for finding and managing participants.Tell us who you want, and we’ll get them on your calendar. Get your first three participants for free.
Peter is a content marketer with a focus on eCommerce & SaaS companies. Based in Montreal, Quebec, when he’s not writing he’s usually studying data science and machine learning, you can find more about him at mlq.ai.
