12 Best Usability Testing Tools for an Effective UX Strategy

Usability testing encompasses a range of tools tailored to various testing methods. I understand the challenge, particularly for new entrepreneurs, in finding the right usability testing tool that fits your needs seamlessly.

That’s why I curated a comprehensive list of top-notch usability testing tools to simplify this process. 

We’ll delve into several tools that will help you achieve usability testing goals using different methods like the ones focusing on customer feedback, user experience monitoring, analytics, A/B testing, and more.

Notably, I will be sharing my experience with all the tools (some I’ve tried in the past and some I tested recently) to examine its salient features, advantages, drawbacks, and pricing to help you make well-informed choices.

Here’s a quick glance table for the best usability tools:

12 Best Usability Testing Tools to Try in 2024

The usability testing software I added in the list are shortlisted based on multiple criteria like ease of use, UI interface, types of data analysis methods, and pricing. I am sure you would find the perfect tool for your needs in the mix.

Qualaroo

Best Usability Tool for in-Context User Feedback and Prototype Testing

Qualaroo lets you design targeted, in-context survey nudges to gather product feedback before, during, and after deployment. The survey editor is really easy to use. It practically guided me through each step of the survey creation process – From adding the questions to theme customization and deployment.

The biggest advantage of using Qualaroo as a usability tool is the ability to target the right people for the responses. The tool has advanced survey trigger options that let you target niche user actions and behavior on your website, app, or product.

What’s more, the platform provides a prototype testing feature, where you can embed the usability testing questions using surveys into your design mockups to collect feedback from teams, customers, and shareholders. For example, I added the survey Nudge™ to Figma and sent it to my team members.

I got the responses to my survey questions, and the tool’s AI-based sentiment engine automatically categorized it into positive and negative feedback, making the analysis process faster.

What you’ll like:

• Test your product prototype and design templates to collect user experience feedback.
• Add surveys to your design templates like AdobeXD, Figma, and others to ask targeted questions from the testers and users.
• Powerful insights than simple comments on your templates.
• Ask the right questions directly in the template from stakeholders, team members, and users.
• Deploy surveys on your live SaaS product, website, and mobile app to collect feedback on design, navigation, and other features.
• Advanced targeting options to show the survey to the right people.
• AI-based data analysis engine and sentiment analysis to mine through the feedback in real-time.
• Integrate with other workspace tools like Salesforce, Hootsuite, and Slack to manage dataflows.

What you won’t like:

• It would be great if the NPS score integrated with the KPIs to show real-time impact.
• No option for respondents to add media to the survey.

Pricing:

Starts at $69/month

UXtweak

Best usability tool for UX research and participant recruitment

Source: UXtweak_usability_testing_tool.png

UXtweak offers a wide range of usability testing and UX research methods. It will allow you to test anything from screens and audio to prototypes, websites, or even published mobile apps on the App or Play Store. 

It is the only usability testing tool that comes with session recording, website heatmaps, and usability testing tools in one package, allowing you to improve your website or web applications continuously. 

The tool also comes with a built-in User Panel to recruit participants for usability testing hassle-free. You can also leverage its participant management solution called Own Database to build and manage your own panel of participants or upload a list of customers you want to recruit for your studies.

What you’ll like:

• Lots of tests and research tools like first click testing, mobile app testing, tree testing, website testing, and more.
• One-of-a-kind mobile app usability testing capable of testing mobile prototypes, TestFlight, APK, and published apps on App stores.
• Session recording with Click, Scroll, Move, and Tap Heatmaps. 
• Built-in reward function to send gift coupons to participants after their participation. 
• Video, audio recordings as well as screen capture.
• Browser extension allows you to do user testing of competition or any website you want.
• Advanced statistics and results data with a lot of different visualizations. 

What you won’t like:

• A somewhat restricted number of integrations with prototyping tools (offers Figma and inVision only).
• Localized only in 14 languages.
• The app has a learning curve.

Pricing: Starts at $59 per month

Maze

Best Usability Testing Tool for Live Website Testing

Though Maze provides many suitable usability testing methods, I loved its live website testing feature. 

It’s probably one of the best tools for post-deployment (live) testing and optimization on your site. You can define the success tasks and paths to validate the website design and user experience. 

The tool also comes with built-in comparison reports to visualize the projected and actual user behavior. In this way, you can make changes to optimize the workflows and conversions on your live website.

What you’ll like:

• Different usability tests like 5-second and card sorting.
• Continuous optimization by testing the product concept, prototype, and live website.
• Share the survey and usability test via link to your participants and maximize reach.
• Video recording and screen capture.
• Build and manage your testers’ panel.
• Built-in reporting dashboard for quantitative and qualitative data analysis.
• Data visualization using automatically created charts to create dynamic reports.
• Invite stakeholders, assign user roles, add comments, and build team spaces for collaboration.

What you won’t like:

• Increased test load times for some users due to task complexity.
• Lacks a dedicated panel to recruit participants.

Pricing:

Starts at $75 per month

Lookback

Best Usability Testing Tool for Moderated Testing and User Interviews

Lookback provides the ability to overview how testers use your product, app, or website with the video conferencing feature. The stakeholders can also join in to observe the users, and you can record the video simultaneously for analysis later. 

You can then schedule live interviews with the testers to ask follow-up questions and collect more in-depth information about their experience.

I also tested Lookback’s AI assistant, Eureka, to automatically transcribe and summarize testers’ sessions into scannable headlines. It can significantly reduce the analysis time and help extract relevant insights from the usability testing.

What you’ll like:

• A test “Live” broadcasting where people from different locations can watch the live test.
• Remote moderated testing and allows you to timestamp test recordings for in-depth analysis. 
• All the recordings are saved on the Cloud automatically.
• Creation of ‘Secret’ projects and control user permissions.
• Unmoderated testing where users click on a link to participate, and the tool guides them throughout the process. 

What you won’t like:

• It is difficult to troubleshoot.
• Absence of good categorization for highlighting data.

Price:

Starts at $25 per month

ContentSquare

Best Usability Testing Tool for User Journey Analysis

ContentSquare can help you observe and analyze the real-time user behavior on our digital platforms. The platform provides insightful heatmaps, session recordings, and conversions to help you visualize how the audience engages with our content. 

What caught my attention was ContentSquare’s journey analysis feature. I was able to dissect the user journey on our product website to identify visitors’ pain points, drop-offs, and areas of improvement. 

It also offers a built-in funnel analysis report, making ContentSquare a standout among usability testing online tools in the market.

What you’ll like:

• The Crash Trends report allows you to see what causes the crashes. 
• Record sessions of each crash and analyze the leading actions of users cousin the crash.
• Easy to detect friction in user journey by using Clicktale’s visual analysis and reports feature.
• Automated tagging for different zones on the website using features like heatmaps, scroll-depth engagement, session recording, and more.
• Seamless integration with 50 analytics tools 
• Session recordings for tracking individual users’ actions on the website/app.

What you won’t like:

• The tool glitches sometimes.
• There’s a learning curve for new users.

Pricing:

Custom pricing

Optimal Workshop

Best Usability Tool for Qualitative Analysis of Your Feedback and Test Results

Out of multiple qualitative research tools I’ve tried in the past, Optimal Workshop made the list due to its Reframer feature. The analysis tool integrates into different usability testing methods offered by Optimal Workshop, like tree testing, card sorting, etc. 

It provides in-depth user insights during testing sessions and lets you capture users’ thoughts and emotions in real time. The icing on the cake is affinity maps, which effortlessly transform the scattered data into clear patterns, aiding the decision-making process.

What you’ll like:

• Treejack feature that tests the data architecture of a product/project.
• Chalkmark feature allows users to test anything from wireframes, prototypes to websites and mobile apps, which makes it easier to identify issues and fix them.
• Includes are surveys, card sorting tests, and more.

What you won’t like:

• Limitations on screening questions.
• Cannot create subgroup hierarchies.

Pricing:

Starts at $208 per month

UsabilityHub

Best Usability Tool for Remote Prototype Testing

If you are looking to run user testing on your design prototype, UsabilityHub is a top-tier tool. It provides ready-to-use usability templates for prototypes. Just pick the template, design tasks for your testers in minutes, customize it to your needs, and deploy the test. 

The reporting section generates heat maps, click maps, and path analysis reports to guide you through evaluating interactive designs. 

What’s more, it provides a built-in research panel to recruit relevant testers. I found qualified participants within 24 hours of designing the test. It saved a lot of time and effort to find the right people manually.

What you’ll like:

• Design online surveys to gather in-context (on images, videos, and other content) and real-time feedback.
• Free tests which are under 2 minutes, a very useful feature for start-ups and small businesses. 
• Intuitive experiences for users with test interfaces, iconography, interaction flows, to name a few.
• CSV exports allow companies to run the data in any analysis tool of choice.
• Conduct user testing in 30 languages.
• Integrates with G Suite, GoDaddy, Airtable, Asana, and more.

What you won’t like:

• The research panel does not allow to save the participant list for future use.
• No option to add branching logic to the questions.

Pricing:

Starts at $75/month

Loop11

Best Usability Tool for Information Architecture Testing

Loop11 is another excellent user experience research tool for refining product UI. I tested out various features and usability testing methods for this blog. I really liked the informational architecture testing interface. 

This feature allows me to validate user journeys, refine navigation, and optimize content findability on our product app. 

It provides tree testing and clicks tests to evaluate user flows and find missing and redundant steps in the user journey from landing on the app to completing the desired action.

What you’ll like:

• Unmoderated remote tests that you can perform for any device.
• Features like A/B testing, live websites or prototypes testing, heat maps, and clickstream analysis.
• You can test an unlimited number of users.
• The tool generates quick reports for better analysis.
• Test in 40 languages to create custom tests.
• An extensive library to help businesses get the best out of the platform.
• Watch session videos of user tests.
• Optional JavaScript solutions for developers are available.
• Integration with tools like JustInMind, Axure, InVision, and more. 

What you won’t like:

• Difficult to learn for the new users
• Does not scale according to the regions

Pricing:

Starts at $179 per month

Crazy Egg

Best Usability Tool for A/B Testing

Crazy Egg offers a plethora of tools to run user testing, implement the changes and test them in one place. The heat maps and session recordings provide in-depth insights into actual user actions on your website. 

I also tried the A/B testing feature to evaluate the website’s usability, which helped me identify key optimization opportunities. Overall, Crazy Egg is one of the best usability testing tools for running full-scale website optimization campaigns for UX design and conversions.

What you’ll like:

• Discover the most attractive areas on a webpage for users and which components grab their attention the most.
• Filters in heatmaps help segregate customer segments.
• Straightforward visual reporting for easy analysis.
• See the number of clicks on specific sections of a webpage.
• A/B Testing and User Recordings to see what elements on your website and mobile app are useful to users. 
• Automatically directs the traffic towards the most effective option for more conversions.
• Confetti feature shows in-depth details about search terms used by users, visitor sources, etc.

What you won’t like:

• The pricing structure only includes yearly billed plans.
• It lacks funnel and form analysis to link with the recordings and heatmaps.

Pricing:

Starts at $25 per month

Hotjar

Best Usability Tool for User Behavior Visualization

Hotjar is another behavioral analysis platform that lets you gauge product usability using heatmaps, session recordings, surveys, and more. Once you have the insights, you can schedule live interviews with the testers to gather more qualitative data. 

Like Crazy Egg, Hotjar also offers A/B testing capabilities to help you test the optimization changes before deploying them. The seamless integration between the tools helped me get from observation to deployment without switching to other tools.

What you’ll like:

• Interactive surveys and feedback polls to collect direct feedback from website/mobile app visitors.
• User-friendly setup using Hotjar ID in the Google Tag Manager.
• Data visualization to analyze the recorded data and feedback.
• Integrations with all the major CRM and marketing tools like Slack, Google Analytics, Segment, Hubspot, Google Optimize, Omniconvert, Optimizely, and Zapier.
• Track the conversion funnel and discover at what stages users churn the most (i.e., which website sections need work in terms of user experience and the user interface).

What you won’t like:

• Survey themes need more flexibility for customization. 
• Heatmaps for mega menus can be a little confusing.

Pricing:

Starts at $32 per month

UserTesting

Best Usability Testing Tool for Empathy Gap Analysis

User Testing is another usability testing tool I tried a few months back. My team used it for conversion rate optimization, UI/UX experience, product optimization, and more.

It is a good tool to close the “empathy gap.” It refers to the gap between how much companies think they are customer-centric (75%) and how much customers think they are (30%). 

Another feature that makes it one of the top usability tools is that it allows you to test websites using user demographics that resemble their target audience.

What you’ll like:

• Ready-to-use test templates or customize your own.
• Screen and audio recording to collect users’ feedback during the test.
• Screener questions to disqualify irrelevant participants.
• Edit, cut, or combine the video clips to analyze feedback from different users.
• Download, export, and share videos with other team members.
• Schedule remote interviews and live conversations with your participants to ask follow-up questions.
• Integrate with other tools like Jira and Trello.

What you won’t like:

• Requires extensive planning and setup time.
• Lack of other means to collect feedback, like surveys

Pricing:

Custom pricing

Userfeel

Best Usability Tool for Efficient Data Analysis

What I liked most about Userfeel was how easy it was to work on the feedback from the usability test. You can run moderated and unmoderated tests on your website, app, and product. 

Once it’s complete, the platform provides you with data analysis and collaboration features to make sense of the feedback. For example, I could add comments directly to the test session videos, create highlights videos, and bring in other team members to collaborate.

Plus, the tool offers a research panel of 850k quality testers to help you find the right participants, making it one of the most accessible usability tools in the industry.

What you’ll like:

• Diverse and extensive global network of testers for your usability tests.
• Multilingual testing to conduct tests in multiple languages.
• Video recordings of testers’ interactions with your product to provide real-time insights.
• Design specific scenarios and tasks for testers to complete during their sessions, mimicking real-world user interactions.
• Click heatmaps that visually represent where testers clicked or interacted the most.
• Testers can provide feedback not only through written responses for more nuanced insights.

What you won’t like:

• Lacks option for moderated testing.
• Needs more testing methods.

Pricing:

Starts at $30 for 60 minutes of unmoderated testing

Trymata (Formerly TryMyUI)

Best Usability Testing Tool for First Impressions Tests

I like Trymata’s intuitive UI that makes designing and conducting usability testing easy. I set up the first impression test in minutes with custom tasks and questions for the testers. The tool also provides a pool of testers, eliminating the need to recruit people manually. 

Another great feature of TryMyUI is collaborative video annotation, where multiple team members can analyze the video sessions simultaneously to create custom reports and video highlights.

What you’ll like:

• Record and see videos of users interacting with the website and apps tests you designed.
• Surveys to gather user feedback while they navigate the website/mobile app.
• The TryMyUI database offers segmentation screening, user diagnostics, and advanced targeting features.
• UX Sprint that helps manage several workflows and even compares live test results with old ones, video screencaps, voiceover commentary, etc.

What you won’t like:

• Limited test availability.
• A limited number of participants allowed.

Pricing:

Starts at $333 per month

Usability Testing Tools: Which One Is the Best for You?

Neglecting usability testing is a swift route to misinterpreting your users’ true desires. A dependable and adaptable usability testing tool is essential to streamline your testing procedure and ensure your product revolves around users.

I am sure you would have found your perfect tool by now. But if you are still in dilemma, here are my top final three choices for different purposes:

Option A: Qualaroo

Qualaroo offers targeted in-context survey nudges for comprehensive product feedback throughout deployment stages.

The tool’s key strength lies in precise respondent targeting, facilitated by advanced survey trigger options. Additionally, Qualaroo’s prototype testing feature enables embedding usability questions in design mockups for feedback collection.

Option B: Loop11

Loop11 is a top-notch user experience research tool offering multiple usability testing methods to enhance product UI. 

The informational architecture testing interface facilitates validating user journeys, navigation enhancement, and content discoverability optimization within the product app. 

And with tree testing and click tests, you can evaluate user flows and identify redundant steps to streamline the journey from the first click to desired action completion.

Option C: Hotjar

Hotjar assesses product usability via heatmaps, recordings, surveys, and interviews. To make the most out of the data, you can schedule live interviews with testers to gather qualitative data. 

Then, design A/B tests to gauge the impact of the changes on the conversions and customer engagement.

Now, go find the right tool and run successful usability testing on your product.

Learn More About Usability Testing Tools

Which tools are used for usability testing?

Usability testing tools include Qualaroo, UserTesting, PlaybookUX, Loop11, and Userfeel.

What kind of testing is best for usability?

Some of the best usability testing methods include remote moderated test, in-person test, five-second test, and session recordings.

How do you test usability?

You can test the usability of your website, app, or product through tasks, scenarios, and user interactions, gathering insights from real users.

Frequently Asked Questions