Great Question vs Optimal Workshop
Feature checklists rarely decide anything. What decides it is the pricing metric, who has to write the tests, and which limitation you can live with.
Entry price
From $129 per seat/month (self-serve; $1,290/year annually)
Free tierFrom $199 per month (billed annually, includes 5 launched studies)
Free tierWhat drives the bill
The metric that actually scales your invoice.
Self-serve is $129 per seat/month, or $1,290 a year paid annually; enterprise is quoted. Recruitment from external panels is billed on top of the subscription.
Annual plans reduce the effective monthly rate substantially; recruitment is separate.
Free tier
Free trial rather than a lasting free plan.
Free plan with limited participants per study.
Open source
Self-hostable
No-code authoring
Languages
Platforms
Fits teams
Adoption
Emerging
Great Question · since 2020
Established
Optimal Workshop · since 2008
Strengths
- 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.
- 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.
Limitations
- Breadth means individual modules are less deep than specialists.
- Smaller vendor than the enterprise incumbents.
- Own-customer recruiting needs clean CRM data to work.
- Narrow scope — it does not do usability testing of interfaces.
- Expensive per seat for occasional use.
- Interface is dated in places.
Best for
Research-ops teams consolidating a fragmented toolchain.
Teams restructuring navigation, taxonomy or content on a large site.
All of these integrate with: Slack.
Pricing last reviewed August 2026 and is indicative only — confirm on each vendor’s own page.