Last Updated on March 7, 2024 by Alex Birkett
User testing (or usability testing) is an essential part of the product development process.
You can see real people use your product, identify areas for improvement, and make decisions that will ultimately improve the user experience.
It’s also useful for conversion rate optimization, marketing, and any domain where the user experience matters (which is…everywhere).
Whether you’re looking for a tool to help you with usability testing, user research, or something else entirely, you’re sure to find something on this list that will meet your needs.
The 13 Best User Testing Tools in 2024
- UsabilityHub
- UserTesting
- Trymata
- Loop11
- UserZoom
- HotJar
- FullStory
- Lookback
- Wynter
- Ethnio
- Optimal Workshop
- Appcues
- Proto
1. UsabilityHub
UsabilityHub is a great all-around tool for user testing. It offers a variety of different test types, including usability testing, preference testing, first-click testing, and five-second tests. You can use UsabilityHub to test websites, apps, prototypes, and more.
It’s a great tool for getting quick feedback on your product.
Their five-second test tool is a particularly effective usability test for messaging. It allows you to quickly see if your headlines are understood by general audiences or your target audience.
I like UsabilityHub because it has a ton of different usability testing tools to serve many purposes, whether you’re testing messaging on the marketing side, figuring out new experiments to run for conversion rate optimization, or testing out new product features.
Pricing: they have a free plan that gives you tests up to 2 minutes long and allows 3 collaborators. Then the basic plan begins at US $89 per month
G2 Score: 4.3/5
2. UserTesting
UserTesting is one of the most popular user testing tools on the market. It’s one of the biggest names in usability testing, and it was one of the first usability testing tools I ever used.
When it started, it offered just moderated or unmoderated user testing, but now it’s a whole platform of different types of usability testing. It offers video recordings of real people using your product, as well as written feedback and insights from a panel of over 1 million testers. Some other features include:
- Live interviews
- Usability testing
- Brand and messaging testing
- Card sorting
- Tree testing
- Clickstream tracking
It’s probably not a great tool for those just starting out in usability testing, as they really don’t have any beginner plans (the enterprise plan pricing isn’t even available on the website).
But if you’re serious about user-centric design and development, this is the gold standard for all things from basic unmoderated user tests to prototype testing and more. Plus, they’ve baked a lot of machine learning into their products, to speed up time to insights.
UserTesting is great for usability testing and customer insights.
Pricing: request free trial (pricing unavailable on the website)
G2 Score: 4.5/5
3. Trymata (formerly TryMyUI)
Trymata (formerly TryMyUI) offers video recordings of real people using your product or website. It also provides written feedback and task completion rates. Trymata is great for usability testing and identifying areas for improvement in your UX design.
Trymata is one of my personal favorite usability testing tools. I’ve used it a ton over the course of my career, and it’s one of my favorite tools for conversion rate optimization research.
Their big feature is user testing – both moderated and unmoderated testing available.
They’ve also built a product analytics tool that helps you uncover issues by looking at real time data from real users on your website, mobile app, or product. This includes:
- Visitor logs
- Session recordings
- Ability to get real time insights on your websites
Combining the quantitative and qualitative insights is the real way to do effective UX research, and this testing platform includes it all.
Pricing: their user testing and product analytics tools have different pricing models. Usability testing starts at $333/mo. This includes 120 panel credits/yr to recruit test participants as well as 120 invites/yr to test with your own users. Product analytics begins at $300/mo for up to 4,000 sessions.
G2 Score: 4.3/5
4. Loop11
Loop11 is a tool that specializes in remote usability testing.
It offers video recordings of users completing tasks on your website or app. Loop11 is great for companies with global audiences or who want to test their products with users in different locations.
They also include benchmarking so you can see where your product and conversion funnel fall within the sphere of similar companies. This can help establish a baseline from which to improve.
In addition to moderated and unmoderated tests, they have prototype testing, a/b testing capabilities, mobile testing and tablet testing, information architecture testing, true intent testing, and even search engine findability tests (a great addition to the SEO tool stack).
Overall, a great platform for marketers and product managers alike with tons of different user data to gather.
Pricing: free trial (14 days), then beginner plan starts at $199 billed monthly (
G2 Score: 3.5/5
5. UserZoom
UserZoom is a tool that offers both qualitative and quantitative data from user tests.
It provides video recordings of real people using your product, as well as written feedback, surveys and feedback, and task completion rates. UserZoom is great for those who want to get detailed insights into how users interact with their product or service.
Two features I love on this one are the live intercept feature (where you can invite real users currently on your website to test your app or conduct a study), and I also like their QXscore (which is a single score based on several composite test results).
A few years ago, UserZoom acquired one of my other favorite usability testing tools, WhatUsersDo.
WhatUsersDo was one of my favorite tools for mapping out bottlenecks in the conversion funnel, offering video recordings of users completing tasks on your website or app. This is all incorporated into the broader UserZoom platforms, making it one of the most comprehensive and feature rich usability testing tools on the market today.
Pricing: available on the website (need to request demo)
G2 Score: 4.2/5
6. HotJar
HotJar offers a variety of features for user testing, including heatmaps, polls & surveys, session recordings, and forms analysis.
This allows companies to get a comprehensive view of how users interact with their product or website. Additionally, HotJar offers user feedback widgets that can be placed on any page of a website. This provides an easy way for companies to collect user feedback.
This is one of the first usability testing tools I’ve ever used, and it’s still one of my all time favorites. Their pricing has always been inclusive and scalable, and they have so many features that you can get almost all the user insights you need (sans moderated & unmoderated user testing) for conversion rate optimization, marketing, and product development.
Honestly, if I could just take HotJar and Google Analytics (and maybe a website testing tool), I’d be set.
HotJar is great for companies who want to get a comprehensive view of how users interact with their product or website.
Pricing: they have a generous free plan and then the basic plan starts at just $32 / month, making this one of the most affordable tools on the market.
G2 Score: 4.3/5
7. FullStory
FullStory is a comprehensive product analytics and usability tool that allows you to see how users interact with your website or product.
This can help you identify pain points and areas for improvement. In addition to user recordings, FullStory also offers session replay, user analytics, and form analysis. You can also build custom conversion funnels for any touch points across your website, mobile app, or product.
This allows companies to get a comprehensive view of how users interact with their product or website. Additionally, FullStory offers user feedback widgets that can be placed on any page of a website. This provides an easy way for companies to collect user feedback.
This also enables cross-browser testing and cross-device testing. You can implement on your mobile apps as well.
In full transparency (to tell you the *ahem* full story), I used this at a past company and found it to be a little bit cumbersome and difficult to use compared to more affordable solutions like HotJar.
The ability to build custom funnels on the fly was amazing, but their heat maps and session replays were honestly a little bit difficult to use.
Pricing: available on the website (need to request demo)
G2 Score: 4.5/5
8. Lookback
Lookback is a tool that specializes in remote usability testing.
Not only do they have your classic moderated or unmoderated testing setup (all remote), but they have a ton of tools to archive, share, and actually use your insights. These include Virtual Observation Rooms, team chat, timestamped notes, and shared insights.
Personally, I’ve found this to be one of the most challenging aspects of data-driven projects, and it’s where data-driven companies truly succeed: archiving and sharing of knowledge.
I’ve had many experiences where I’ve done a ton of great user research, only for it to be used for a few experiments or a single redesign. Realistically, this stuff could be used for so much more: informing personas, building hypotheses for experiments across departments, and just generally building on the corpus of user knowledge.
Lookback does this well.
Pricing: starts at just $25 per month (and they have a 60 day free trial)
G2 Score: 4.4/5
9. Wynter
Wynter is a message testing platform that allows you to test your marketing content with your target audience. It’s a great tool for figuring out if your positioning and copy resonates with your target audience.
You take a page or set of pages (or even cold emails), and you pick a target panel (which Wynter gathers for you, or you can use your own users). They specialize in B2B, so this audience could be CIOs at companies with 1000+ employees, freelance writers, or anyone in-between.
Now, the methodology is simple – basically a remote user test. Wynter puts the screen / page you choose in front of your target audience and asks a series of questions to gauge the clarity, resonance, motivation, and persuasiveness of website sections and copywriting.
We’ve used this for my content agency’s website.
Pricing: pay as you go model (starts at $899/test, which includes panel selection)
G2 Score: 4.8/5
10. Ethnio
Ethnio helps you recruit participants for user tests. They’re primarily a participant management platform for UX and usability research.
Whether you want to recruit panelists from your target audience, or you want to use your own users as participants, the platform has tools to help you manage this.
Features include:
- Pool – central participant database and management
- Incentives – managing incentives for participation
- Screeners – links you can send out via email or social media
- Intercepts – recruit visitors or customers from your website, mobile app, or product
- Scheduling – no need for explanation. A planning tool to help organize customer interviews and research sessions.
Ethnio is a great complement to any other tool or methodology you’re using to conduct user research, whether that is customer interviews, feedback sessions, focus groups, in-person or remote user testing sessions, etc.
Pricing: starts at $79 per month
G2 Score: 4.2/5
11. Optimal Workshop
Optimal Workshop is a usability testing platform with a ton of features for product managers, UX professionals and marketers.
One of my favorite features is their archiving system for storing and sharing research notes from user interviews and usability tests. This gives you easy access to all the work you’ve conducted.
They also have tree testing and card sorting to conceptualize and test your website architecture and product experience.
Finally, they have user surveys to gather feedback from your audience.
They also allow you to recruit participants within their platform, screening for demographic and firmographic factors. You can recruit from a pool of some 80+ million users speaking 80+ languages worldwide.
Great platform.
Pricing: they offer a free plan limited to one live study and up to 10 participants. Then the starter plan begins at $208/month, billed annually.
G2 Score: 4.5/5
12. Appcues
Appcues helps you create onboarding experiences for new users of your product.
It allows you to create guided tours, tooltips, and other elements that help new users learn about your product or service.
Appcues is great for those who want to improve their product’s onboarding experience.
While it’s not necessarily a usability tool in the same vein as UserTesting, it does include experience testing capabilities like A/B testing, multivariate testing, and personalization (plus a ton of data).
For product led growth companies, this tool is clutch.
Pricing: starts at $299/mo for 3500 monthly active users.
G2 Score: 4.7/5
13. Proto
Proto is a prototyping tool that allows you to create interactive prototypes of websites and apps.
Proto is great for those who want to create prototypes that can be used for user testing. With Proto, you can test how easy it is to use a particular feature or flow without having to build out the entire thing.
This makes it super helpful for getting early feedback on designs.
You could combine Proto with several other tools on this list. I particularly like five second tests (offered by UsabilityHub and others) in conjunction with prototype testing. You could even layer on something like CrazyEgg to get some heatmap data (CrazyEgg also has more functionality now, like A/B and multivariate testing).
Pricing: Starts at $29/mo
G2 Score: 4.1/5
Conclusion
User testing is a critical part of the design process, as it allows you to identify issues and improve the user experience.
There are a variety of user testing tools available, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. The best tool for you will depend on your specific needs. If you’re looking for detailed insights into how users interact with your product or website, FullStory or UserZoom may be a good fit for you.
If you’re interested in recruiting participants for user tests from your own customer base, Ethnio may be a good option. And if you’re looking to improve your product’s onboarding experience, Appcues may be worth checking out.
No matter which user testing tool you choose, the important thing is that you make user testing a part of your design process. By doing so, you can ensure that your product or website is as user-friendly as possible.
Do you have any experience with user testing tools? Let us know in the comments below!