20 Best Usability Testing Tools of 2024 for Better UX
10 Best Usability Testing Tools Shortlist
Here's my pick of the 10 best software from the 20 tools reviewed.
With so many different usability testing tools out there, figuring out which is right for your needs is tough. You know you want a tool to help you identify issues within your user experience to create user-friendly services and products, but you need to figure out which tool is best. In this article, I'll help you make your choice easier by sharing my insights on the best usability testing tools to evaluate digital products from your users' perspective to make them more effective.
What are Usability Testing Tools?
Usability testing tools are software applications that assess the usability of digital products, like websites or applications, to improve the user experience of a product. With usability testing tools, you can perform usability tests with real users, collect feedback, and analyze user interactions to find usability flaws. These tools include capabilities such as task-based testing, screen recording, participant feedback gathering, and data analysis.
Usability testing tools can help you improve your user experience (UX), increase your user satisfaction, and make your digital products more effective. Their feedback collection and analysis tools can also help you make data-driven adjustments to improve the overall user experience of your digital products while reducing development costs by identifying key issues earlier on in the development process.
Overviews of the 10 Best Usability Testing Tools
Here’s my evaluation of the best usability testing tools, including a summary of their key features, screenshots, and information on trials and pricing.
testRigor is a generative AI-based intelligent test automation tool that enables you to write and execute test cases using plain English commands without any prior coding knowledge. testRigor’s AI identifies a UI element through the text visible to the end user and the element’s position on the screen.
Why I picked testRigor: This tool allows you to create test cases in plain English by using its recorder, generative AI-based automatic test case creation, or writing out test steps yourself. You can directly import manual test cases from all test management tools and immediately automate them using testRigor’s AI engine.
testRigor’s test cases are ultra-stable since they don't use CSS/XPath locators for element identification. These unique locators and visual testing features make it an efficient solution for usability testing. It captures screenshots, error texts, execution video recordings, logs, and MS Word/PDF test execution files. Furthermore, you can test across different browsers, devices, and operating systems to ensure that all users have a consistent experience.
testRigor Standout Features and Integrations:
Standout features include testRigor’s generative AI-powered capabilities that allow everyone on your team to build, understand, and update tests from an end-user perspective. Additionally, testRigor supports testing for complex scenarios like FA, email, database, file, Captcha, data-driven tests, QR code, geolocation, complex mathematical calculations, exploratory, and accessibility testing across web, mobile (hybrid/native), desktop, and API.
Integrations include Jira, GitLab, Jenkins, Travis, TestRail, Kobiton, MySQL, PagerDuty, Oracle, ReportPortal, and more.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Analytics and reporting
- Test data management features
- No-code test writing
Cons:
- Some users may find advanced plans expensive
- Advanced customization options are limited
UXArmy is a cloud-based remote user research platform designed to assist designers, user researchers, and product developers in enhancing the user experience of their digital products.
Why I picked UXArmy: I like its support for both unmoderated and moderated usability testing. Unmoderated testing allows for the evaluation of prototypes, websites, and mobile apps without the need for a facilitator. On the other hand, its moderated research capability involves live video conversations with users, providing in-depth insights and the ability to probe deeper into user behaviors and preferences.
Additionally, UXArmy offers specialized tools like card sorting and tree testing, which are essential for designing intuitive information architectures and navigation systems. UXArmy even automates the recruitment of test participants from a diverse and independent user panel to ensure unbiased and reliable feedback. The platform also provides real-time screen videos, heat maps, and navigation paths, offering clear visualizations of user interactions.
UXArmy Standout Features and Integrations:
Standout features include the dashboard that provides a centralized page to access and analyze research data, enabling users to see updated patterns and trends in user responses. Additionally, the task logic feature enables the creation of custom paths through tasks based on user responses or preset conditions, enhancing the flexibility and depth of usability testing. The video recording feature also captures user interactions with screen and verbalized feedback
Integrations include Figma and Zoom.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Wide range of options for usability testing
- User-friendly interface
- Has a good database of panelists
Cons:
- Limited social media integration for broader user engagement
- Reports could be more flexible
Lightster is a user testing and survey platform that enables product managers, designers, and researchers to gather feedback from their target audience.
Why I picked Lightster: I like that you can use this platform as a usability testing tool for user-focused feedback collection. Lightster facilitates direct interactions with users, offering real-time reactions, ideas, and insights. These insights are crucial for validating assumptions and making informed decisions about your product.
Lightster also offers a wide range of options for these interactions to take place with your target audience, including live sessions, screen recordings, direct messaging, customer interviews, and surveys. This direct connection with users ensures that feedback is relevant and actionable, making it a valuable tool for anyone looking to gain insights into product development and overall usability.
Lightser Standout Features and Integrations:
Standout features include UX testing functionalities that allow you to observe your target audience's reactions to designs, prototypes, or products. You can also send surveys or unmoderated tests to your targeted demographic and receive responses quickly. Furthermore, Lightster enables team members to join each session, allowing for collaborative efforts in user testing and data gathering.
Integrations include Google Calendar, Outlook Calendar, and more.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Multiple ways to collect insights
- User-focused feedback
- Easy to connect directly with target audience
Cons:
- Occasional candidate cancellations
- Integration limitations
The team behind Userlytics boasts over 14 years of experience in UX research. Userlytics is a remote user testing platform that allows you to build a study, select participants, and gather UX insights.
Why I picked Userlytics: I’m delighted at the prospect of testing your concept sketches and prototypes, even before a product goes live. Userlytics helps you to conduct prototype testing throughout the product development lifecycle (PDLC). Moreover, the Userlytics platform is compatible with popular prototyping tools like Figma and Axure.
Userlytics helps you define the right target audience with advanced demographic filters. For instance, if your app targets middle-aged men in India, you can create a similar test audience to get highly curated testing responses.
Userlytics Standout Features and Integrations:
Standout features include integrated multimodal testing, which combines screen recording, auditory feedback, webcam recording, and eye-tracking. Userlytics also supports virtual reality (VR) testing of apps and prototypes designed for Oculus.
Integrations include Adobe XD, Axure, Figma, and Protopie.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Multimodal insights
- Global Participant Panel
- Flexibility in test design
Cons:
- Occasional platform stability issues
- Participant recruitment challenges
The team behind UXtweak amassed tremendous experience in UX research before building this platform. UXtweak has always been looking to add new testing tools like the first click test, preference test, prototype testing, and others.
Why I picked UXtweak: As a customer experience specialist, I relish understanding what users feel about my digital products. With UXtweak, you can leverage several user empathy tools.
One popular user empathy tool is the five second test; the objective is to gauge participants’ memory of your design after five seconds. The test results can quickly articulate how cluttered or straightforward your website UI is. As a result, UXtweak actually helps you intelligently tweak your UI.
UXtweak Standout Features and Integrations:
One standout feature is UXtweak’s robust mobile app usability testing tool that screen records participants’ interactions with your app. You can design a well-curated target user base using the Online Recruiting feature.
Integration details are currently not available.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Great UI/UX research tools
- Robust prototype testing
- Comprehensive product documentation
Cons:
- Lack of sufficient video tutorials
- Occasional application glitches
Datadog offers a plethora of critical application key performance indicators (KPIs) like mean time to resolution (MTTR). The Datadog platform collects helpful metrics that are useful for different stakeholders, including IT operations, developers, security, customer support, and business.
Why I picked Datadog: I’m amazed by the number of use cases that Datadog supports. Datadog collates information from several sources, including logs, traces, metrics, and metadata.
Datadog is an absolute blessing for your operations team, as the tool helps reduce MTTR with a full-stack visibility platform. Furthermore, Datadog offers API tests to evaluate various system layers, including HTTP, DNS, SSL, etc. In a nutshell, Datadog elegantly combines usability testing features with security prowess to precisely monitor the performance and health of your cloud infrastructure and apps.
Datadog Standout Features and Integrations:
Standout features include full-stack observability and anomaly detection. Datadog harnesses machine learning to impart intelligent alerting and anomaly detection for proactively identifying and handling issues in real time, assuring optimal system performance and dependability.
Integrations include 25+ tools like AWS, Azure, Bonsai, Boundary, Docker, DoControl, Drata, Google Cloud, Jira, Kubernetes, New Relic, PagerDuty, Slack and others.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Constant updates and improvements
- Extensive documentation and support resources
- Intelligent alerting and anomaly detection for proactive issue resolution
Cons:
- A slightly steep learning curve
- Some users may find the interface overwhelming with a high volume of data
SmartBear has a comprehensive collection of usability testing tools that serve several use cases, including UI testing, API quality testing, application stability testing, and performance bottleneck testing. SmartBear claims that its testing tools can help shorten your test cycle timelines by over 90%.
Why I picked SmartBear: As a former API developer, the sheer firepower that SmartBear packs is impressive. TestComplete, which is SmartBear’s automated UI testing tool, helps test different kinds of web applications. Additionally, SmartBear makes it easy to perform cross-browser tests in a matter of clicks.
Testing usually involves setting up predefined test environments. BitBar, another SmartBear tool, grants you instant access to over 2,050 testing environments. Furthermore, VisualTest is another UI testing tool that leverages AI to streamline testing processes.
SmartBear Standout Features and Integrations:
SmartBear’s biggest standout feature, in my opinion, is it's easy-to-create test scripts. SmartBear’s InstaPlay Recorder helps you create and execute complex scripting transactions. BitBar enables you to simulate parallel automated tests on several devices and browsers. As a result, your testing productivity grows substantially.
Integrations include Bitbucket, Confluence, GitHub, HipChat, Jenkins, Jira, Selenium, Slack, TestRail, Trello and others.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Data-driven testing
- Continuous Integration (CI) support
- Helpful online community
Cons:
- Occasional false positives with testing
- Jenkins integration is slightly complicated
Userbrain is a user testing tool that’s very easy to use. With tons of starter templates and a tester pool of over 100,000 people, it’s incredibly straightforward to design and conduct usability tests for your digital products.
Why I picked Userbrain: I’m a huge fan of internal collaboration. With Userbrain, you can effortlessly collaborate with your UX team. The platform allows you to assign tags and comments at any time stamp of the usability test recordings. Additionally, you can download comments as CSV resources to share with your team.
Userbrain’s reporting features are handy with several quantitative metrics like task completion rate and time on task. What’s remarkable is that these reports get updated in real-time as and when users complete testing your application or prototype.
Userbrain Standout Features and Integrations:
One standout feature for Userbrain is its testing scheduler that enables you to automate user testing. You can schedule weekly or monthly tests to build up the habit of user testing. Furthermore, Userbrain allows you to invite other testers (apart from the application’s tester pool). As a result, you can enroll your colleagues as testers to get their take on an application or website too.
Integration details are currently not available.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Easy to set up
- Video annotations and commenting
- Multi-lingual support
Cons:
- Limited interaction analytics
- Limited testers in basic plans
UserZoom collects measurable and actionable experience insights from your product development journey. UserZoom has a tagline “the UX insights company,” and their platform is a testament to its mission.
Why I picked UserZoom: UserZoom offers several user research techniques, such as remote usability testing, questionnaires, card sorting, and tree testing. Consequently, your user research process becomes concrete and simplified. UserZoom specializes in remote usability testing, enabling you to collect feedback from people worldwide.
Additionally, UserZoom helps garner valuable insights into user behavior through screen recording and task-based testing. UserZoom's powerful analytics and reporting tools help analyze user data, spot trends, and produce actionable insights.
UserZoom Standout Features and Integrations:
UserZoom’s biggest standout feature is their massive participant pool of over 120 million. As a result, you can onboard people possessing varying industry experience for your UX research. UserZoom also has enterprise-level scalability, which makes it appropriate for large-scale usability testing projects and organizations with a significant user base.
Integrations include Figma, Google Analytics 360, InVision, Marvel, Mixpanel, Tableau, Tealium Customer Data Hub, Unbounce, and others.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Outstanding customer support
- User-friendly UI
- Extensive research capabilities
Cons:
- Certain features have limited customization options
- A steep learning curve for novices
Maze is a usability testing tool that optimizes your customer experience research process. With Maze, you can effectively integrate the customer’s voice into your development cycles.
Why I picked Maze: I’m enthralled by the feedback-prompting feature that Maze offers. You can prompt users to leave feedback if you seek inputs on a particular section of a webpage or an application.
Moreover, Maze also offers practical resources like the “participants in-app” and “measure NPS over time” templates. Maze also packs a unique feature that allows you to measure user deviations from predefined paths on a website. With such a microscopic emphasis on your digital users’ behavior, you can quickly identify potential areas of improvement.
Maze Standout Features and Integrations:
Standout features include great visual and context-rich reporting that cumulates various parameters into a usability score. You can also A/B test different web elements to improve the usability score. Additionally, Maze enables you to embed screener surveys on specific web pages to recruit new users for UX research.
Integrations include Adobe XD, Figma, Notion, Sketch, and Slack.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Task-based testing
- Exportable reports
- User insights and demographics
Cons:
- Scalability concerns
- Integration limitations
10 Best Usability Testing Tools Comparison Chart
This comparison chart summarizes basic details about each of my top usability testing tool selections. You can view pricing details and the availability of free trials or demos side-by-side to help you find the best tool for your budget and business needs.
| Tools | Price | |
|---|---|---|
| testRigor | From $900/Month | Website |
| UXArmy | Pricing upon request | Website |
| Lightster | From $50/month | Website |
| Userlytics | From $499/month | Website |
| UXtweak | From $80/month (billed annually) | Website |
| Datadog | From $15/user/month (billed annually) | Website |
| SmartBear | Prices vary by product | Website |
| Userbrain | From $99/month | Website |
| UserZoom | Pricing upon request | Website |
| Maze | From $99/month | Website |
Compare Software Specs Side by Side
Use our comparison chart to review and evaluate software specs side-by-side.
Compare SoftwareOther Options
Here are a few more usability testing tools that didn’t make my list, but are definitely worth checking out:
Selection Criteria for Usability Testing Tools
To create this list, I relied on my own personal experience using usability testing tools, as well as recent market data to build my initial long list of options to vet. Here’s a summary of the primary selection and evaluation criteria I used to develop my shortlist of the best usability testing tools for this article:
Core Functionalities
Here are some critical essentials that every usability testing tool has to offer to clinch a spot on my shortlist:
- Enables you to create and customize usability tests
- Allows you to select participants from the application provider’s talent pool
- Facilitates report generation based on collected insights
Key Features
Apart from the functionalities mentioned above, here are some important features that make a usability testing tool more valuable. I considered these criteria while building my final shortlist:
- Inviting third-party testers: You must be able to invite colleagues or friends to test out a digital product.
- Template Collection: A comprehensive template collection can help you draw inspiration and start building usability tests quickly.
- Testing mechanisms: Ideally, you should have many testing methods and at your disposal; this allows you to collect research from various perspectives.
Interesting Read: How to Recruit Users for Research Studies (With Strategies and Pro Tips)
Usability
While endeavoring to test usability, the very usability of your testing application plays a vital role. An easy-to-use interface can go a long way in streamlining your testing efforts. I prioritized usability testing tools that ship a clean and straightforward UI.
Software Integrations
I shortlisted tools that integrate with other software systems, like collaboration and design platforms. To aid your decision-making, I’ve listed the key integrations for each tool.
Pricing
Many usability testing tools employ a per-month subscription pricing model. Most of these tools charge around $30 - $100 per user per month. However, some advanced usability testing tools catering to a more developer-based audience charge between $100 - $500 per user per month. Lastly, I’ve also mentioned each tool’s free trial availability as well.
People Also Ask
Got any queries on usability testing tools? Check out these FAQs to learn more:
Why is usability testing important?
Usability testing tools help you uncover usability issues, providing you with valuable insights into enhancing your user experience. Early identification of usability issues can help reduce development costs and go-to-market timelines. Additionally, usability testing revitalizes the conversion funnel by addressing user behavior.
Are there different types of usability testing?
Yes, there are quite a few different types of usability testing. Here are some popular ones:
- Explorative usability testing: At the inception of new product development, explorative usability testing helps uncover potential usability issues. Consider a fitness app, for instance. The developers would conduct exploratory testing to understand how users track workouts and set goals. Consequently, they can identify areas of improvement.
- Comparative usability testing: This testing technique primarily compares multiple designs or versions. The objective is to figure out which version yields the best usability results. A/B testing is a popular type of comparative testing.
- Remote usability testing: When you have remote participants testing your product, remote usability testing is your go-to option. Remote usability tests are either moderated or unmoderated.
- Benchmark usability testing: This method compares your product with the industry standard benchmark. For instance, if you are designing a music streaming application, Spotify could be your benchmark.
Need help researching user experience? Check out A Quick Guide to Choosing the Right User Experience Research Methods for Your Goals.
How does usability testing affect UX?
Usability testing helps you positively tweak the UX design of your digital products. Through usability testing, you unravel user pain points, which help roll out iterative design improvements. Moreover, usability testing enables you to experience user empathy and build products keeping the customer in mind.
Intriguing read: User Experience Website Testing: How to Do It The Smarter Way
What’s the difference between UX testing and UAT testing?
UX testing evaluates the user experience and usability of your digital products. On the other hand, User Acceptance Testing (UAT) helps determine whether your software systems are ready for deployment. UAT emphasizes the overall functionality of your products, while UX testing is more usability-centric.
Software Reviews for Other Types of Usability Testing Tools
To save you time, here are some additional resources to help you elevate your usability testing game:
- Best A/B Testing Tools for Data-Driven Experiments
- Best Heatmap Software for Websites and Apps
- Best Design Thinking Tools
- Best User Research Tools
- Best Beta Test Management Software
- Best UX Testing Software
Signing Off
Selecting the right usability testing tool can help you identify pain points that appear as revelations to your product development journey. I hope my guide helps you choose the right usability testing tool that aligns with your CX goals.
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