8 Best Optimizely Alternatives in 2024
,
When Optimizely removed its free A/B testing plan, thousands of businesses began searching for an Optimizely alternative. Three years on, we ask whether the so-called “death of A/B testing” really occurred, and what the best Optimizely alternatives are in 2024.
The Best Optimizely Alternatives in [year]
To understand why the changes introduced by Optimizely in 2018 were so significant, you have to understand when and why the company became so influential. Strangely, the story of Optimizely’s success begins with a failed A/B test.
Why Was Optimizely So Popular?
On 27 February 2000, engineers at Google ran the first of what would become the company’s most valuable projects. It was an A/B test designed to find the optimal number of results to display on a search engine results page. There were a number of different scenarios: some visitors were given 10 results, some 20 and others 30. The test was a disaster.
Because each of the scenarios affected the page’s loading speed, none of the data was reliable. However, the experiment did illustrate an important fact: loading speed was key. Alongside this, the experience taught Google’s engineers something even more valuable.
If you need to understand how people think and act, the internet offers a resource that real-world experimenters can only dream of. Without meaning to, Google’s engineers had stumbled upon hundreds of thousands of test subjects whose behaviour could be measured with digital precision. That lesson had a big impact on one of Google’s young engineers, a computer scientist who saw the potential for a tool that would put A/B testing in the hands of ordinary people. Ten years later, Dan Siroker launched his own company with a simple slogan:
Our goal is to make it absurdly simple to run A/B tests on your website.
The Growth Of Optimizely and A/B Testing
The first year of operations was only a minor success. By October 2011, Optimizely was cash-flow positive (a significant milestone for any startup). However, the subsequent years were a phenomenon. Between March 2012 and 2013, the company grew 400%. Having started just two years earlier, it was now working with over 4000 businesses in 53 countries.
Why Did Optimizely Change Its Pricing?
Between 2011 and 2014, Optimizely was installed and used by over 350,000 business websites. The problem was, most of these users had unrealistic expectations about what A/B testing would do for their website.
Many of Optimizely’s hundreds of thousands of freemium users did not appreciate the sample size required to run successful A/B tests, nor did they appreciate the complexities of A/B testing statistics. The result was that Optimizely was flooded with negative reviews. There was another problem, too…
Optimizely And The Google Effect
In early 2015, a new product was launched that began to dismantle Optimizely’s monopoly on free A/B testing. Google’s new Optimizely alternative threatened to do what Gmail and Google Analytics had done to Outlook Express, Webtrends and Omniture. The combination of a free product (Google Optimize) with an alternative enterprise solution (Google Optimize 360) was exactly the same strategy that had allowed Google to create a monopoly on website analytics and email. The following charts, showing the growth of Google Optimize in the five years since its release, demonstrates how effective Google’s market positioning has been.
With Google taking a substantial share of the A/B testing market by the end of 2017, Optimizely made a strategic decision to remove its affordable plans and compete exclusively with Google Optimize 360 as an enterprise product. The result was that, in February 2018, tens of thousands of business websites were left looking for the best Optimizely alternative.
What Makes An Optimizely Alternative?
To find the best Optimizely alternative, you need to think about what the software is used for and what kind of features are necessary. They can be divided into two groups: “nice to have” and “must-have”.
| A/B Testing | Multivariate Testing | Visual Editor | Built-In Statistics | Flicker Reduction | Personalization | Ideas Library | Autopilot | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Must Have | ||||||||
| Nice To Have |
Multi-Variate Testing: Multivariate testing (or “MVT”) is like a normal A/B test, except it compares a number of different variables independently and in combination. For example, you might test whether the combination of title A with button A or button B is better than title B with button A or button B. However, these kinds of tests only produce significant and reliable results if they are conducted on sites with many hundreds of thousands of visitors a month. As a result, we consider it a “nice-to-have” feature.
Visual Editor: When Optimizely was launched in 2010, it offered a powerful visual page builder that meant anyone could create A/B tests. You still needed to access the page’s code to make more structural changes, but the visual editor gave every member of the marketing team a chance to test their content. For modern marketing teams, this is a “must-have” feature.
Built-In Statistics: One of the major obstacles for Optimizely’s free plan was how difficult users found the statistics. A built-in statistics package that provides everything needed to achieve significant results is a “must-have” feature.
Flicker Reduction: “A/B testing page flicker” is a common problem with older A/B testing tools. When the “B” version of a page loads slowly, the original version sometimes appears for a split second. To avoid this, A/B testing tools that operate on the Client Side need to have an exceptionally light pixel and a powerful web server. This is a “must-have” feature.
Personalization: At some point, optimizing your webpages is likely to involve some element of personalization (either dynamic text or geolocation). An A/B testing tool that has these built in, ideally as plugins, is much more valuable. However, this is only a “nice-to-have” feature.
Ideas Library: One of Optimizely’s most popular features is its ideas library, which provides suggestions of things to test on each page. An optimization project should be guided by data and hypotheses, rather than best-practice suggestions, but a library of suggestions is a useful way to get over the “blank page” effect.
Autopilot: What happens if one of your page versions is a disaster? An Autopilot feature is essential, because it ensures that your traffic is sent to the best-performing version of your webpage. This is a “must-have” feature.
We explored every A/B testing tool available to find the best Optimizely alternative in 2024. These are the solutions that performed best…
The 8 Best Optimizely Alternatives in 2024
There are over 24 popular A/B testing tools available, but most of them are missing the “must-have” features that set Optimizely apart. These Optimizely alternatives have all the must-haves, plus some unique features.
1. Glassbox (Convertize)
| 20,000 monthly visitors | 100,000 monthly visitors | 500,000 monthly visitors | 1,000,000monthly visitors | |
| Cost/month | $49/month | $199/month | $329/month | $499/month |
Starting from just $49 for 20,000 visitors a month (the minimum required for statistically significant results), Convertize allows you to test up to 1,000,000 visitors with unlimited variations for only $499 a month.
 |
|
|---|---|
| Setup & Subscription | $49/month |
| Number of Tests | Unlimited |
| How Pages are Loaded | Client-side script with "Lightning Mode" |
| A/B/n Testing & Split Testing | Yes |
| Multivariate Testing (MVT) | No |
| Autopilot Mode or Multi-Armed Bandit | Yes: Autopilot with Hybrid Statistics |
| Page Editing | SmartEditor |
| Tactic Library | Yes: Neuromarketing Tactics |
Convertize is a professional-standard A/B testing tool with all the plugins and features that Optimizely users are accustomed to. However, the platform is designed to be affordable and usable for normal business websites.
Alongside the visual editor, Convertize gives users the ability to add personalization plugins to any page. Simply by dragging the widget to the relevant part of your content, you can add dynamic text, geolocation or notifications.
In addition to these plugins, Convertize includes a number of features that make A/B testing easier and more reliable.
- Autopilot manages your traffic dynamically, saving you the money you would lose by sending visitors to a less effective version of your webpage.
- The Hybrid Statistics engine works using a combination of Bayesian and Frequentist statistics, so you reach significant results faster.
- A super-light Pixel means your pages load faster than they would with other tools.
2. VWO
| Testing Growth | Testing Pro | Testing Enterprise | |
| Price per month (monthly plan) | Gated price | Gated price | Gated price |
| Annual Price | Gated price | Gated price | Gated price |
The pricing scale for VWO is based on both features and traffic. The cheapest options for each of the three main packages include only 50,000 monthly visitors. As of Jan 2019 (when pricing was not gated) you needed to pay at least $4,000 per year on any VWO Testing plan.
 |
|
|---|---|
| Setup and Subscription | Gated price (at least $4,000 per year) |
| Number of Tests | Unlimited |
| How Pages are Loaded | Client-Side |
| A/B/n Testing & Split Testing | Yes |
| Multivariate Testing (MVT) | Yes |
| Autopilot Mode or Multi-Armed Bandit | No |
| Page Editing | WYSIWYG Editor |
| Tactics Library | Yes: Idea Factory |
Wingify, the company that produced VWO, was founded in 2010 by the computational biologist Paras Chopra. Launched at the same time as Optimizely, VWO enjoyed similarly explosive growth. Within two years the company had reached the $1 million revenue mark and it is still the fourth most-popular A/B testing solution globally.
Like Google Optimize, VWO comes with a chrome extension that allows you to create experiments from your browser. There are also some nice features, such as the built-in project boards and learning repository, designed to help larger businesses run sequential experiments. The only downside is the pricing, which makes VWO a solution exclusively for enterprise customers.
3. OmniConvert
| 50,000 unique visitors | 100,000 unique visitors | 300,000 unique visitors | |
| Cost/month | $167 | $324 | $608 |
OmniConvert’s website optimization package has a completely transparent pricing scheme and comes with a generous 30-day trial. Once you subscribe to a paid plan, there is a 30-minute 1-on-1 on-boarding session, so you don’t miss any of the platform’s unique features.
 |
|
|---|---|
| Setup and Subscription | $324/month |
| Number of Tests | Unlimited |
| How Pages are Loaded | Client Side |
| A/B/n Testing & Split Testing | Yes |
| Multivariate Testing (MVT) | Yes |
| Autopilot Mode or Multi-Armed Bandit | No |
| Page Editing | WYSIWYG Editor |
| Tactics Library | No |
Launched in 2013, OmniConvert (originally Marketizor) gathered over 500 users in its first year. A grant in 2016 allowed the company to expand to over 50 people and it was rebranded as OmniConvert.
Many of the unique features are quite technical, for example the reporting which comes in either Frequentist or Bayesian statistics. There is also a strong assumption that the user has coding experience, and Javascript in particular.
4. Google Optimize
Google Optimize is free of charge, but Google Optimize 360 is one of the most expensive Optimizely alternatives available. In fact, it does not advertise the full price online.
 |
|
|---|---|
| Setup and Subscription | Free |
| Number of Tests | 3 at a time |
| How Pages are Loaded | Client Side |
| A/B/n Testing & Split Testing | Yes |
| Multivariate Testing (MVT) | Yes, in Beta |
| Autopilot or Multi-Armed Bandit | No |
| Page Editing | WYSIWYG Editor |
| Tactics Library | No |
Launched in 2015, Google Optimize 360 has become the dominant force in A/B testing. You can edit your website using a Chrome extension and can run up to 3 tests at any time.
By far the biggest selling point of Google Optimize is its native integration with the rest of the Google-verse. Switching between Google Analytics, Google Ads and Google Optimize is simpler than integrating other tools with those platforms. Unfortunately, it does not come with personalization plugins or an ideas library.
5. A/B Tasty
 |
|
|---|---|
| Setup and Subscription | $1000 Setup (min.) and $200/month |
| Number of Tests | Unlimited |
| How Pages are Loaded | Client Side |
| A/B/n Testing & Split Testing | Yes |
| Multivariate Testing (MVT) | Yes |
| Autopilot or Multi-Armed Bandit | Multi-Armed Bandit |
| Page Editing | WYSIWYG Editor |
| Tactics Library | No |
AB-Tasty is a direct Optimizely alternative, offering enterprise-level A/B testing with a number of distinctive features. In the years since Optimizely’s move away from Freemium A/B testing, AB-Tasty have attempted to differentiate their product in two ways: firstly, as a “Customer Experience Optimization” platform and secondly, through AI-driven automation.
In the past year, AB-Tasty have added a new Nudge Engagement feature, based on Convertize’s Smart Notifications, now called Nudgify.
6. Crazy Egg
| 30,000 tracked page views | 75,000 tracked page views | 150,000 tracked pageviews | 500,000 tracked pageviews | |
| Cost/month | $24 | $49 | $99 | $249 |
The use of “tracked page views” to calculate pricing is unusual, and potentially deceptive. However, this is a high-value option compared to the traditional Optimizely alternatives.
 |
|
|---|---|
| Setup and Subscription | $24-249/month |
| Number of Tests | Unlimited |
| How Pages are Loaded | Client Side |
| A/B/n Testing & Split Testing | Yes |
| Multivariate Testing (MVT) | No |
| Autopilot or Multi-Armed Bandit | Yes |
| Page Editing | WYSIWYG Editor |
| Tactics Library | No |
Crazy Egg is another combined heat map and A/B testing tool. The visual editor is slightly less robust than alternative solutions, but the interface is exceptionally user-friendly and it is very easy to move between recordings, reports and test results. The results are given in an accessible format, which means that anyone can compare different page versions without learning new statistical skills. Professional CROs may find the reports limited, but the platform allows you to export your data in a CSV file.
7. ZOHO Pagesense
| 20,000 Visitors | 30,000 Visitors | 50,000 Visitors | 100,000 Visitors | |
| Standard (3 Projects) | $32/month | $55/month | - | - |
| Professional (5 Projects) | - | - | $88/month | $133/month |
ZOHO gives fantastic value for the range of tools it offers. Although the performance reports are probably not detailed enough to replace a more comprehensive platform like Google Analytics, they could provide a quick and easy way to compile monthly marketing reports.
| A/B Testing Tool Features | |
|---|---|
| Setup and Subscription | $18-435/month |
| Number of Tests | 3-25 |
| How Pages are Loaded | Client side |
| A/B/n Testing & Split Testing | Yes |
| Multivariate Testing (MVT) | No |
| Autopilot Mode or Multi-Armed Bandit | No |
| Page Editing | WYSIWYG Editor |
| Tactics Library | No |
As with Freshmarketer, ZOHO Pagesense is a not a dedicated testing platform, so it doesn’t have the additional features that make the other Optimizely alternatives more efficient. However, you do have access to a number of visual reports alongside the conversion rate graphs you would expect with A/B testing. Whilst it might not be the most efficient way to optimize individual elements, Zoho is a great tool for analysing how your treatment affects your visitors’ behaviour.
8. Freshmarketer
| 5000 Contacts | 10,000 Contacts | 20,000 Contact | 25,000+ Contacts | |
| Cost/month | $79 | $129 | $207 | Hidden |
As one of the most affordable Optimizely alternatives, Freshmarketer is a great option for small businesses who can also take advantage of its other tools (such as a contact list management system). However, it is important to note that this is not a pure A/B testing tool; the focus is on engaging and developing your leads.
 |
|
|---|---|
| Setup and Subscription | $49/month |
| Number of Tests | Unlimited |
| How Pages are Loaded | Client Side |
| A/B/n Testing & Split Testing | Yes |
| Multivariate Testing (MVT) | Yes |
| Autopilot Mode or Multi-Armed Bandit | No |
| Page Editing | Yes |
| Tactics Library | No |
Freshworks bought Zarget in 2017 and renamed it Freshmarketer. The A/B testing tool is part of a Conversion Rate Optimization package that includes a bewildering array of seemingly unrelated tools. However, the platform does provide heat-maps, on-page surveys and a visual page-editor.
The Best Optimizely Alternatives Compared
This table shows the “nice-to-have” and “must-have” features for Optimizely and each of the alternatives. We have used a weighted scale to give each option a Features Score out of ten.
| A/B Tests | 20,000 visitors/month | Value (1-3) | MVT Tests | Visual Editor | Hybrid Statistics | Flicker Reduction | Personalization | Ideas Library | Autopilot | Features Score | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Convertize | $49 | 3 | 9 | ||||||||
| VWO | $284 | 2 | 9 | ||||||||
| Omniconvert | $167/month | 2 | 7 | ||||||||
| Optimizely | Hidden | 1 | 7 | ||||||||
| Google Optimize | $0 | 3 | 6 | ||||||||
| AB Tasty | Hidden | 1 | 6 | ||||||||
| Crazy Egg | $24 | 3 | 5 | ||||||||
| ZOHO Pagesense | $23 | 3 | 5 | ||||||||
| FreshMarketer (Zarget) | $207 | 2 | 5 |
The following “must-have” features were given double weighting:
- Hybrid Statistics
- Flicker Reduction
- Autopilot
Which Are The Best Optimizely Alternatives For You?
Optimizely is a great product for enterprise customers who want a familiar platform and are not concerned about monthly costs. However, these are our recommendations for everyone else:
- If you need an all-round A/B testing platform to run reliable tests, your best Optimizely alternative is… Convertize
- Businesses who need an enterprise-level solution at a lower price could try Omniconvert or VWO as an alternative.
- For startups and small businesses who need a lot of different features, including A/B testing, Freshmarketer is the best alternative.
- If you only want to run one or two tests and you are an experienced A/B tester, try Google Optimize.
by Charlotte Franssen
Charlotte is Customer Success and Product Specialist at Convertize. Our customers love Charlotte so much that she only receives 5-star reviews on Capterra and TrustPilot.
This is a really useful article- I have used Optimizely in the past and have defaulted to the Google products, definitely worth looking at and revisiting what we’re doing as a business in light of the alternatives presented here
Thanks! Optimizely is a great tool for eCommerce sites in particular – and they have recently introduced a new set of packages for app developers to test new features, but it’s always worth looking for competitor products. Our survey of the best A/B testing tools for website optimization found over 20 different options.
Great stuff! As a former Optimizely user, some of the alternative products listed here appear to tick all the boxes and I’ll certainly be looking into them.
Nice article! Used Google Optimize a few times for homepage A/B testing which has worked well. Are any of these tools shown to work more reliably for low traffic websites?
Thanks for the feedback! Unfortunately, none of these tools remove the need for a large-enough sample size, but Optimizely, VWO, OmniConvert and Convertize all have advanced statistics packages that let you interpret your results according to different statistical methods (for example, combining traditional “Frequentist” statistics with Bayesian probability).
All of these tools allow you to adjust your goals to measure different kinds of conversions (engagement, read time, video plays, button clicks). Because these tend to occur more frequently than “True” conversions, your results will achieve statistical significance faster. However, that will only make your data more reliable – not your conclusions!
I may be too skeptical, but it seems like when an alternative software gets popular, the price goes up on that as well. Convertize does look VERY promising though for smaller sites.
Do you have recommendations for tools for A/B testing for mobile apps?