![Verified User in Information Technology and Services](/assets/icons/anonymous-avatar-purple-4ae1032bdb50ee5682003170c8184aee790d25958bd397abbd384ba52c596a7b.svg "Verified User in Information Technology and Services")
UI

Verified User in Information Technology and Services

Enterprise (\> 1000 emp.)

7/23/2026

"Best-in-Class Card Sorting & Tree Testing with Powerful Visualizations"

5/5

What do you like best about Optimal?

Optimal is one of our critical tools for conducting information architecture research, especially for methods like card sorting and tree testing. Compared with UserTesting, the tests are much easier to set up with modern usability patterns, and most importantly, the results options and visualizations are best in class. Optimal offers multiple ways to view the same data, which helps us spot patterns from different angles and make more nuanced decisions that UserTesting’s very limited outputs simply don’t support.

Optimal also has more mature survey capabilities than what UserTesting allows, with stronger conditional-logic flows that let me route different responses into different lines of questioning, something UserTesting still hasn’t implemented well. I also appreciate that I've never run into the same types of slow performance and page-load bugs in Optimal that I encounter in UserTesting. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Optimal?

I wish Optimal would seriously rethink its licensing and pricing model. Right now, our account is licensed by the number of “Studies,” which ends up penalizing teams that prioritize smaller, faster research. A study with 10 responses counts the same as a study with 200 responses, so the structure doesn’t reflect the actual scale of the work.

Because of this, our research team has to be very deliberate about using Optimal only when we truly need its analytical power. For smaller, quicker studies (and because UserTesting has a superior customer panel) we often keep that work in UserTesting so we don’t burn through our allotted Optimal studies for the year. In a large corporate environment, getting additional funding mid-cycle is basically impossible, so this licensing approach ultimately hurts Optimal’s adoption and new business rather than helping it. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Optimal solving and how is that benefiting you?

On a recent project, two competing organizations within our company had different, mutually exclusive ideas about how to build the information architecture for product integration. Arguments boiled down to personal preferences and organizational philosophy. With Optimal, I built a customer-informed IA that came from open card sorts, then tree tested against current state IAs. The clear tree testing results showing failures, direct/indirect success, time on task, and likely candidates for IA restructuring were instrumental in reshaping and retesting the IA, showing that customers navigated the new model up to 3x more successfully and 60% faster than the status quo model. This helped us cut through the organizational politics and make a data-driven decision for our customers. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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Current UserValidated ReviewerIncentivizedSource: Seller invite

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