Usability test, or a user test, is a screen and audio recording of a participant using a specific website or app to determine its ease of use, its design aesthetics, its claimed functionality and overall usability.
You’ll need about 5 to 10 participants to conduct a single rewarding usability test, and you’ll need to repeat your user tests around every two weeks as you improve your application, so pay attention to various pricing models described here, as some might be way more beneficial to your particular case than the others.
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Userlytics
Trial: No trial, offers a demo
Price: Plans starting from $49/participant, offers a free plan (1 free participant)
Features: Multi-channel Testing, System Usability Scale, Video Features, Participant Recruitment, Branching Logic, Card Sorting, Prototype Testing, Live Conversations
Analytics tells you what, Userlytics tells you why, — says the new slogan for our first usability testing platform called “Userlytics”. Userlytics is your typical user testing platform that charges participant-based, with each viewer costing you $49. After you’ve defined your test goals, target personas, and device types you launch the test and boom, — you receive quantitative and qualitative data (here’s an article on what’s the difference) in a single place.
You can also utilize usability testing tools like card sorting, tree testing, user research, success/failure, Net Promoter Score, Single Ease Question and System Usability Scale. Your final price plan will differ depending on wherever participants will be supplied by you or by Userlytics, but you can also start with a free plan and a single free participant.
UserTesting
Trial: Ability to request a trial, offers a demo
Price: Contact sales for prices
Features: Insight Core, Product Insight, Marketing Insight, Mobile testing
If you’re looking for a perfect user testing solution that simplifies all aspects of the said process, take a look at the eponymous Human Insight Platform called “UserTesting”. UserTesting makes the main emphasis on being customer-centric, helping you close the empathy gap and getting real, diverse and comprehensive high-quality feedback in a matter of hours.
UserTesting has been on the market for over 10 years and all-in-all already helped grew more than 35,000 companies, which says a lot about its expertise when it comes to perfecting and managing user experience. Their pricing plans are divided into individual and enterprise solutions, with the first option allowing you up to 15 video sessions a year, each costing you around $50 per video, while the terms of the enterprise plan are fully individual.
TryMyUI
Trial: Free 14-day trial, offers a demo
Price: Plans starting from $99/month
Features: Written survey, Demographic curation, Screener questions, Impression testing, Testing with your own users
TryMyUI possesses quite outdated design aesthetics, so if the outlook of your tools and dashboards does really matter to you, we advise you to go ahead with another option. Despite having a typical-wordpress-blog-kind-of interface, this user testing tool has quite some functionality to offer, especially to those who can overlook its design imperfections.
On top of offering your everyday remote usability testing, TryMyUI also presents a collaborative analysis suite, which turns user data into actionable insights, and research crowdsourcing, which highlights the hottest ranked issues your users are currently having.
UsabilityHub
Trial: No trial, no demo
Price: Plans starting from $79/month, free plan (tests up to 2 minutes long)
Features: Multi-device support, Quality assurance, Audience split testing, Custom variables, Open text analysis
The pop-star of all usability tests has just entered this list and is an end-to-end remote user testing platform a lot of us know as UsabilityHub. UsabilityHub is an all-in-one user experience solution for large marketing teams, independent design professionals, and multitasking product managers who enjoy a comprehensive approach, sleek design, and fruitful analysis.
UsabilityHub platform offers a long list of features along with a real-time notification system, which makes sure you start receiving customer feedback in minutes. Here you only pay $1 per participant, as opposed to $50 charged within other demanded user testing platforms.
Lookback
Trial: Free 14-day trial, offers video demos
Price: Plans starting from $99/month
Features: LiveShare, SelfTest, Timestamped notes, Prototype testing, Highlights creation
Lookback is one of the priciest user testing tools we have on this list and works perfectly only for teams who take their user experience quite seriously. But don’t worry, as you won’t have to commit before you watch any of their demos or try out their free no-credit-card-required 14-day trial.
Lookback simplifies a large chunk of managing your teamwork by offering collaborative dashboards, time tags, stakeholder mentions, research broadcast, participant catalogues, user touches and so on. It has a nicely optimized interface and a structured workflow which enables you to conduct all the necessary user testing (especially in large quantities) without much worry.
Watchsend
Trial: No trial, no demo
Price: Contact team for prices
Features: Representative data, Actionable recommendations, User dropoff, 1-on-1 help
Watchsend is a simple, concise, only a few landing pages long website, which was built by a team of data engineers in sunny San Francisco, California. What they do is analyze your actual customers’ behavioural representative data within the context and use it as evidence for their usability observations.
This user experience technique allows Watchsend to recognize key customer drop-off patterns, frequent inefficient workarounds, and inactive screens or buttons, and notify you about them. Instead of using typical dashboards with graphs and numbers, Watchsend provides insights in the form of specific recommendations and observations and employs machine learning and custom data analysis to develop them.
Userbrain
Trial: No trial, no demo
Price: Plans starting from $19/month, free account
Features: Multiple devices, Natural environments, Video annotations, Tags, Audio recordings, Automated testing schedule
Test anything from a live desktop mode to a mobile prototype to a competitor’s website, Userbrain allows you to user test literally anything you can imagine if you can get a link to it. You don’t need to download any apps, install codes or perform guided setup to launch your first Userbrain test in just 24 hours and run subsequent immediate or scheduled usability tests afterwards.
Here you already have a pool of vetted, qualified, English-speaking participants at your disposal, which drastically saves you time on finding and managing those user testers yourself. You can choose to pay as you go without having to commit anything for just $29 per user test, or you can choose to subscribe annually and pay only $19 for the same single user test throughout the year.
Conclusion
Since you do love our tool comparison articles (you can’t deny it now, can you? ;)) here is a shortlist of other good reads you might be really interested in:
