Optimal Workshop vs Great Question

From $199 per month (indicative, per user)

From $49 per user/month (indicative)

Annual plans reduce the effective monthly rate substantially; recruitment is separate.

Recruitment from external panels is billed on top of the subscription.

Free plan with limited participants per study.

Free plan with limited studies.

Established

Optimal Workshop · since 2008

Emerging

Great Question · since 2020

• The reference tool for card sorting and tree testing; the analysis visualisations are excellent.
• Tree testing validates navigation before any build effort is spent.
• Well-established methodology support and training material.

• One workflow instead of separate recruiting, scheduling, testing and repository tools.
• Recruits from your own CRM, which reaches real customers rather than panel participants.
• Handles incentive logistics.

• Narrow scope — it does not do usability testing of interfaces.
• Expensive per seat for occasional use.
• Interface is dated in places.

• Breadth means individual modules are less deep than specialists.
• Smaller vendor than the enterprise incumbents.
• Own-customer recruiting needs clean CRM data to work.

Teams restructuring navigation, taxonomy or content on a large site.

Research-ops teams consolidating a fragmented toolchain.