Sabine Harnau has spent years helping brands find the right words. As co-founder and managing director of From Scratch, an Amsterdam-based communications consultancy, she works with organisations that want their messaging to be as inclusive and clear as it is persuasive. But clarity doesn't come from instinct alone. It comes from evidence. And getting that evidence used to mean expensive contracts, clunky tools, and enterprise pricing designed for agencies ten times her size.

When the Tools That Should Help Get in the Way

Before Userbrain, From Scratch relied on a well-known competitor. The quality wasn't the problem. The pricing model was. Agency accounts required a minimum commitment of $100k per year, a number that made no sense for a boutique consultancy that needed to stay nimble.

The tool itself also sent the wrong signal. For a platform whose entire purpose is good user experience, it felt clunky and outdated. Sabine expected better from a platform in that business.

She started looking for something more flexible, more European, and more honest about what a smaller agency actually needs.

An Austrian Company That Earned Trust

From Scratch found Userbrain in 2020. What made the decision easy wasn't just the pricing. It was the location.

For DACH-market clients who ask hard questions about where their data goes, an Austrian, GDPR-compliant tool removes a friction point that would otherwise slow down adoption. The flexible, on-demand pricing did the rest. Five years later, Sabine has never looked elsewhere.

Testing Messages, Not Just Designs

From Scratch uses Userbrain differently than most UX teams. They're not primarily testing whether buttons work or whether a checkout flow confuses people. They're testing what messages land: what makes someone trust a brand, act on a call to action, or understand what a company actually does.

Their workflow runs in two directions: tests at the start of a project to surface blind spots the internal team can't see, and tests at the end to validate before anything goes live. That second step (validation before launch) has quietly changed how From Scratch clients feel about shipping.

Before this practice, clients would pay for new websites and new messaging, and then hesitate to put them live. The redesign was too bold. The message shift was too big. With a few Userbrain sessions, the evidence is right there on screen: real people, understanding the content, getting it. That confidence closes the gap between "finished" and "live."

Launching German audiences on Userbrain was a further milestone for the team. Many From Scratch clients target DACH markets, and being able to run tests in German (with native-speaking testers) makes the findings more relevant and the internal case for user testing much easier to make.

What Two Tests Revealed That No One Expected

The impact of Userbrain shows up most clearly in two client stories.

For an NGO running a donation campaign, the team tested the full funnel: Facebook ads directed testers straight to the donation page. The results were stark. People weren't engaging. Not because the visuals were weak, but because they didn't recognise the organisation. Brand trust was missing entirely. Once the NGO began answering "who are we and why should you believe us?" in the messaging itself, the campaign had a foundation to build on.

For a client in the scientific field who struggled to turn conference appearances into leads, From Scratch built a dedicated landing page, tested it with Userbrain, and refined the headlines based on what real testers responded to. That page became the client's top lead driver for the summer.

Both wins followed the same pattern: user testing revealed a gap the client couldn't see from the inside, and fixing it made a measurable difference.

"No Excuse to Skip User Testing"

After 5 years, From Scratch has no intention of switching. Userbrain fits the way the consultancy works: fast, affordable, multilingual, and accessible enough that clients can run their own tests once Sabine's team has shown them how.

That's the longer goal: not just delivering insights, but leaving clients with a testing practice they can sustain on their own. When the tool is this straightforward, that handover actually works.