Usability testing can help you to understand the problems and desires of your users. With this knowledge, you can continuously improve your product. The goal is to offer a great user experience that automatically will lead to happy customers.
Due to the importance of usability testing, there are many tools on the market that are offering free services for conducting user tests. In this blog post, we’ll present them to you, and speak about the pros and cons to help you make your decision.
1 Userbrain | userbrain.com
Userbrain is a remote user testing tool with a focus on continuous testing. You can order and watch videos of real people interacting with your website. You will hear what users think and see what they do to build better products for happier customers.
You can test an array of live websites, those under development, prototypes, or even competitor’s sites on smartphones, desktops, or tablets.
What Userbrain offers for free:
- The first two participants are free (👉 use free trial)
- 5 sessions with your users are included for free
Pros:
- No long-term contracts (and even a Pay-as-you-go plan)
- Fast results (only a few hours)
- Unlimited testing with own participants
Cons:
- No native app testing
- No phone support
Pricing: Pay-as-you-go $39 per tester. Subscription starts at $99/mo
2 Lookback | lookback.io
Lookback offers a rich set of features that offers everything you need for running user tests with your own participants in one place. Lookback allows you to directly talk with participants – live and face-to-face in moderated user tests. You can use the “Live” feature to broadcast your research to your team and invite them to watch and gain insights.
What Lookback offers for free:
- 60-day free trial
Pros:
- Remote moderated testing
- Broadcast your research using the “Live” feature
Cons:
- No account sharing
- No tester pool, you’ll have to recruit testers on your own
Pricing: Freelance Plan: $25/mo and 10 sessions, Insights Hub Plan: $344/mo and 300 sessions, For enterprise contact support
3 Usability Hub | usabilityhub.com
UsabilityHub allows you to run summative studies like first-click and five-second tests, design surveys or preference tests of multiple design solutions. You will receive written answers and can either recruit your own participants or use UsabilityHub’s integrated participant panel.
What Usabilityhub offers for free:
- All Tests under 2 minutes are for free
Pros:
- Starting at $1 per answer when running summative studies
- Full CSV export
Cons:
- No screen and audio recording
- No prototype testing
Pricing: Longer tests than 2 minutes and advanced features require a test upgrade. Flexible upgrade $50, Annual $100, Enterprise contact, Paying per response starts at $2
4 Userlytics
What Userlytics offers for free:
- Free Trial
- First participant test session at quick & easy plan
- At annual enterprise plan one free session with your participant for each purchased session with a Userlytics participant and bring your own participants for free
Userlytics is the first UX research service to offer picture-in-picture (webcam view + screen and audio recording), skipping logic for qualitative unmoderated usability testing. Additionally, Userlytics offers advanced quantitative tools such as card sorting & tree testing fully integrated with your qualitative usability tests.
Pros:
- Automated and multilingual transcriptions
- Quantitative metrics like time on task, SUS, NPS or SUPR-Q.
Cons:
- Outdated user interface
- Complex pricing plans, offering 5 different pricing tiers with different options
Pricing: quick & easy $49 per participant (limited feature set), annual enterprise $69, custom project $99 per participant, annual subscription (special recruitment services)
5 TryMyUI
TryMyUI is noted by Forrester Research as an affordable, effective SAAS usability testing tool for user research and design insights. TryMyUI delivers videos of real users navigating any website.
What TryMyUI offers for free:
- Free Trial
- Unlimited testing with own participants with Enterprise and Unlimited plan
Pros:
- Audience targeting
- Conducting surveys
Cons:
- Setting up a test a bit complex
- No option to save your test scenario as a draft
- No option for automated user testing
Pricing: Personal $99/mo, Team $399/mo, Enterprise $2.000/mo, Unlimited $8.000/mo
6 Crazy Egg | crazyegg.com
Crazy Egg offers Heatmaps, User Recordings & A/B Testing. 300,000 Customers. Heatmaps show you how customers scroll, click, engage and experience your website or application. Filters help you understand specific customer segments &use cases. User Recordings help you follow individual user journeys through your website or application. You can organize Recordings into playlists to quickly identify patterns. A/B Testing and Editing helps you translate what you’ve learned into experiments to improve UX.
What Crazy Egg offers for free:
- All plans free for 30 days
Pros:
- Easy and fast set up
- Great UX and UI within the tool
- Easy to understand visual reporting
Cons:
- Heat mapping with limited visualizations
- Pricey for users who have a lot of page views
- Annual billing
Pricing: Basic $24/mo, Standart $49/mo, Plus $99/mo, PRO $249/mo, Custom plan
7 Usabilla | usabilla.com
Usabilla empowers brands like KLM, Tommy Hilfiger, and Toyota to become truly customer-centric by improving digital experiences on websites, apps and emails. Through targeted surveys and embedded feedback options, enterprises acquire the ultimate solution to capture the voice of their customers, collect quantitative along with qualitative data, and turn insights into actions that drive success.
What Usabilla offers for free:
- free, personalized demo
Pros:
- Well designed and clear reporting
- Clean UI, easy to use
- short and intuitive feedback collection button and supporting questions
Cons:
- No heat mapping
- A bit pricey
Pricing: Contact Customization
8 Validately | validately.com
Validately is a comprehensive solution for user research that includes a dedicated testing platform, recruiting services, and automated reporting. Validately makes it easy to talk to users – helping user researchers, UX designers, and product managers build products that customers love.
What Validately offers for free:
- Free trial at every plan
- Bring your own testers for free at every plan
Pros:
- Recruiting services offered
- Run Moderated and unmoderated tests
Cons:
- All plans are billed yearly
- Limited researcher seats at plans
Pricing: Basic $299/mo, Experience $499/mo, Collaborate $999/mo, Enterprise Contact Support
9 Loop11 | loop11.com
Loop11 is a useful UX tool for benchmarking a site’s KPIs, finding out where exactly users are running into an issue and gathering quantitative data on UX improvements.
What Loop11 offers for free:
- 14-day Free trial at every plan
Pros:
- Unlimited number of users
- Quick report generation
Cons:
- No participant pool, recruiting tester on your own
- Tests can’t be edited after publishing
Pricing: Rapid insights $69/mo, Pro $249/mo, Contact for Teams plan
10 Optimizely | optimizely.com
Optimizely is the world’s leading experience optimization platform. The Optimizely platform technology provides A/B testing and multivariate testing tools, website personalization, and feature toggle capabilities.
What Optimizely offers for free:
- Free Rollouts plan
Pros:
- API output
- Quickly adjust test volumes or turn tests on/off
Cons:
- Poor user interface
- Sometimes long load times in the app
Pricing: Rollouts plan for free, Price for essentials, business and enterprise plan offered when contacting the sales team