Overview
Google Optimize used to be our go-to tool for A/B testing. If you are not familiar with that term, A/B testing, as it applies to websites, usually means randomly displaying two different alternatives to visitors to determine which performs best. Usually this means different placement or designs for CTAs, forms, etc. to see which gets the most responses. Optimize was an excellent, free tool that was easy to use and had all of the features most of our clients needed. Unfortunately, Google decided to discontinue it at the end of September, 2023.
One of our clients asked us to do some research and recommend an alternative. While this research and the resulting conclusions were specific to the needs of this client and will not apply to every website, we thought the they still might be helpful to others small and medium businesses, so we are presenting them here.
I focused on the tools that seemed most suitable for this client. They wanted something that was easy to use and not too expensive, although no specific price ceiling was given. My conclusion was that the two I would focus on are VWO and Convert. VWO is probably the single most recommended A/B testing tool, but Convert gets very good feedback from customers and emphasizes the right things on their website—but I have no personal experience to verify that they follow through. Once I narrowed the list to two, I stopped researching the others as deeply due to time constraints, so the fact that the also-rans do not have a particular attribute mentioned does not mean they lack them. The points listed below for each app are based on pricing data from their websites and comments from customers and reviewers.
My Recommendation
Check out VWO’s free Starter plan—especially its limitations. If you feel as if it is insufficient, then download Convert and set up a project using the 15 day free trial of the Community Full plan.
The Finalists
VWO
- Only for A/B testing—does not integrate other marketing tools.
- Shows up as recommended on literally every A/B testing review and comparison I was able to find
- Free version has limited features-especially targeting options–but is good for for up to 50,000 visitors per month
- Next level up is $286/mo
- Has low impact on site and app loading speed
- Excellent test creation process
- Excellent security and privacy
- Setup is not the easiest
- Excellent success metrics
- Excellent reporting
- Excellent support even on the free plan
- Uses a probability-based UI to prevent users from reaching conclusions too early
Convert (sometimes called Convert Experiences)
- Price: Community Full plan at $199/mo includes 100K tested users/month
- 15 day free trial
- Consistently gets the best reviews from customers on various review sites
- Claims to be flicker free
- Excellent success metrics
- Excellent reporting
- Test creation process is a bit basic
- Very good support on Community Full plan and higher
- Excellent targeting options and test types even in the cheapest plan
Also Worth Consideration
AB Tasty
- Pricing is by quote only
- Enterprise focused so possibly too expensive
- Excellent support
- Excellent security and privacy
- Easy to implement
- Can cause noticeably slowdowns in page-loading speed
- Very full featured
- May require a developer
Optimizely
- Pricing is by quote only
- Enterprise-focused so possibly too expensive
- Only forum-based support with the cheaper plans
- Good documentation
- States it has good integrations with existing workflows
- Powerful audience targeting
- Data privacy may be a concern based on some reports I read
Kameleoon
- Pricing is by quote only
- Advertises that it utilizes predictive AI
- A/B testing, personalization, and feature management
Yieldify
- Pricing is by quote only
- Bills itself as an “onsite personalization platform” which includes A/B comparison tools, so it might be worth looking into IF you will utilize all the features
- Primarily of interest because it Integrates with WebFlow