You’ve gone through several prototyping phases of your product and are ready to test it with real users, but you don’t know which tool to use for prototype testing? In this article, we will help you find the right one for you!
It is crucial to validate your websites and apps before going live. By thorough prototype testing before launch, you avoid wasting extra money and time you would need to spend on fixing a fully developed live product.
We’ve compiled a list of the 6 best prototype testing platforms on the market. Enjoy!
For each of these tools, we will look at several aspects, including:
- Integrations with prototyping tools
- Pros and Cons
- Options for recruiting test participants
- Reviews
- Pricing
Hopefully, by the end of our list, you will have your favorite.
1. UXtweak
UXtweak is an all-in-one UX research tool, which makes testing prototypes a piece of cake. It makes uploading your prototype super easy, you can set up the entire study in only a few easy steps. UXtweak analyzes all the results for you providing you with pleasant UI and in-depth insights! It specializes in unmoderated usability testing and provides several options for recruiting test participants.
Integrated prototyping tools:
Pros
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Comprehensive analytics reports
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PDF exports
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Can use with any existing prototype
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Extensive portfolio of other user testing tools included
Cons
Recruitment options
UXtweak offers several recruiting options to find participants for your prototype test:
- Copy the link to the study and share it with whomever you want.
- Recruit real visitors to your website as study participants for free, using UXtweak’s Onsite Recruiting Widget.
- Choosing users from UXtweak’s User Panel with over 155M engaged respondents.
- Recruit users from your Own Database, a CRM-like tool for your user research projects. The tool allows you to easily manage your participants and invite them into any UXtweak. Perfect if you have a base of existing users.
Reviews
Based on user reviews from Capterra.
Overall: 4.9/5
Ease of use: 4.7/5
Quality of support: 5/5
Pricing
Do you know what is the best part? All of this (except the User Panel) UXtweak offers for free. Just create an account and you are all set.
If you wish to construct larger studies you can register for a Plus Plan that starts at €80/month. Business Plan starts at €144/month and you can add more seats.
Alternatively, you can ask for a custom pricing solution. Enterprise plans start at around $5K/year.
2. Maze
Maze is a cloud-based user research platform with a set of remote usability testing tools intended to support businesses in conducting product prototype tests, testing advertising campaigns, web and mobile apps, customer input, and design concepts.
Integrated tools for prototyping:
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Adobe XD
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Figma
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InVision
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Marvel
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Sketch
Pros
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A short learning curve, according to many users.
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A community where you can go if you need assistance.
Cons
Recruitment options
Maze gives you access to 70K+ user panel. Alternatively, you can bring your own testers at no additional cost.
Reviews
Based on user reviews from Capterra.
Overall: 4.4/5
Ease of use: 4.2/5
Quality of support: 3.8/5
Pricing
Maze offers a Free Plan for 1 active project.
If one active project is not enough for you, Maze also has a Professional Plan for $75/month, billed annually, or you can get a custom quote.
3. UserTesting
UserTesting was one of the first sites ever to offer unmoderated usability tests. It provides a range of customer experience (CX) solutions and user testing tools to designers, product managers, marketers, and executives. The platform offers options to collect user feedback, conduct moderated and unmoderated usability tests and prototype testing tool among other things.
Integrated prototyping tool:
UserTesting also supports other tools for a prototype test, however, these are not fully integrated and may come with limitations: Axure, Figma, Flinto (Lite/ Mac), Framer, InVision, Justinmind, Marvel, Proto.io, ProtoPie.
Pros
Cons
Recruitment options
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Get testers from their 400K+ User Panel.
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Share a study link with your own testers – however, UserTesting charges you for this.
Reviews
Based on user reviews from Capterra.
Overall: 4.5/5
Ease of use: 4.4/5
Quality of support: 4.3/5
Pricing
UserTesting plans start at around $30,000/year, the price is upon request. There is no free plan.
🐝Compare UserTesting with UXtweak.
4. UsabilityHub
Another great user testing tool. You may conduct many sorts of user research tests and spot usability problems using several of the offered usability testing tools. This remote user research platform helps you validate any design choice for animations, logos, packaging, or video.
Integrated prototyping tool:
Pros
Cons
Recruitment options
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Share a link to your study and bring your own participants (at no additional cost)
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Get participants from their 340K+ user panel
Reviews
Based on user reviews from Capterra.
Overall: 4.7/5
Ease of use: 4.7/5
Quality of support: 4.9/5
Pricing
UsabilityHub offers a free version for basic tests up to 2 minutes long. Their Basic plan is $79/month and allows you to test for up to 5 minutes.
The Pro plan costs $199/month and includes multi-user plans, unlimited testing, and bespoke branding.
5. Userlytics
Userlytics is a long-standing international cloud-based usability testing tool that offers usability tests on a variety of digital assets, including websites, apps and prototypes. It is a great option with rather unique pricing solutions. They offer unlimited admin seats regardless of the plan.
Supported tools for prototyping:
Proto.io, Invision, Figma, Marvel, Axure, JustInMind, UxPin
Pros
Cons
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Rather outdated UI
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No PDF reports
Recruitment options
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You can bring your own participants
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1M+ user panel
Reviews
Based on user reviews from Capterra.
Overall: 4.6/5
Ease of use: 4.5/5
Quality of support: 4.9/5
Pricing
Unlike most usability testing tools, with Userlytics you pay for each participant, and not for a monthly/yearly plan. The Quick & Easy program’s entry-level price is 49€/participant, while the Enterprise option is 69€/participant.
Alternatively, they have the choice of providing customized pricing.
6. Lookback
Lookback is a user experience (UX) screen recording tool, for designers and product managers who are interested in seeing how users engage with their apps and moderated testing. Using Lookback you can observe what your users do and gauge their reactions via session recording or live, via a video, or in person. You can easily test low to high-fidelity prototypes with this platform and get actionable insights and gain valuable qualitative data.
Integrated tools for prototyping
Although Lookback doesn’t integrate with tools for prototyping in itself, it allows you to test prototypes viewable via browser or within a prototyping app.
You just need to have a link to a publically accessible prototype and share it with Lookback, to run the prototype usability test.
Pros
Cons
Recruitment options
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The only option is to bring your own participants (at no additional cost)
Reviews
Based on user reviews from Capterra.
Overall: 3.4/5
Ease of use: 3.5/5
Quality of support: 2.1/5
Pricing
Lookback offers a 60-day trial of all the plans available, but no free version forever.
Freelance: A modest $25/month solo plan. Each year, there are 10 sessions available.
Team: $149/month for 100 sessions overall.
Insights Hub: For 300 sessions a year, costs $344/month.
Why is prototype testing important?
Prototype testing is the process of evaluating the usability of a prototype with real target users. It serves to uncover potential issues and pain points and as a way to identify areas of improvement at an early stage of software development.
Development is a costly process and changing a fully developed app takes a lot of time and effort.
Prototype testing provides a great option for usability testing and gathering user feedback, early in the development process, when fixing mistakes is as easy as changing a prototype design. It is a lower cost option for optimizing the UX of your product than testing already launched apps of websites.
Still deciding whether to prototype or not? Take a look at this post about why prototyping is good for your website in further detail.
How does prototype testing work?
The first thing you should do, before even creating your prototypes, is to set a clear goal. What are you going to test? What are you hoping to discover? This will help you in determining the sort of prototype you need.
The complexity of prototypes can range from simple sketches to fully functional and interactive prototypes. High-fidelity prototypes are excellent for evaluating usability and finding problems in the process, whilst low-fidelity prototypes are mostly used to test out concepts.
When the prototype is complete, it’s time to create tasks and questions for your study and recruit the participants. Choose participants who are a good representation of your intended audience as they will provide the most valuable feedback.
You can iterate and test again until you are satisfied with the user experience the prototype provides. This way, when you develop and launch the final product, there should be minimal usability issues and pain points for the users.
Although usability testing of prototypes may sound difficult, using the appropriate prototype testing software greatly eases the process.
Test your prototypes!
Did you find the right usability testing tool to test your prototypes with? We hope our list helped you pick the right one for your needs.
Testing your prototypes early on in the design process will help you and your business save a ton of money and time by revealing all the drawbacks of your concepts before they are developed. The tools we listed here are all great options to help you along the way.
If UXtweak ended up your top pick try it out now! Register for free and create a prototype testing study in just a few minutes.
