VWO Alternatives to Consider After their Pricing Model Change

Dennis van der Heijden
By
December 15, 2018 ·
VWO Alternatives to Consider After their Pricing Model Change

Don’t Want to Get Tied to Annual Options? Suddenly Your Budget Isn’t Enough for More than 100K Tested Visitors per Month?

Let’s Talk Options.

Pricing has always been one of VWO’s competitive advantages. Just look at the reviews it has on websites like G2 Crowd and you’ll see the theme of its affordable pricing emerge. It’s been an “accessible CRO solution to companies with all kinds of CRO budgets.”

And VWO has certainly offered a sweet deal. With in-built features like heatmaps, visitor recordings, surveys, form analysis, personalization capabilities and others — in addition to the core CRO testing functionalities — VWO has been perceived as “value for money” by users.

In fact, it has also always explained how it’s the “it” CRO solution bringing together everything CROs need to run definitive experiments.

… But That May Change – AKA – VWO’s Plans are Now Getting Pricier

We’ve just learned that VWO has revised its plans and some of the popular existing packages are no longer available.

The VWO pricing page shows that the pared down version of its older, robust platform is now revamped as “Testing” and offers only the bare minimum that you can expect from an AB testing tool. The fancier suite is branded “Conversion Optimization” and provides access to features like session recordings, scrollmaps, and heatmaps that define VWO’s differentiator.

And while we don’t know the exact details of VWO’s new pricing structure, customers have shared that substantial hikes – anywhere between 35% for plans under 100,000 tested visitors and up to a 150% increase for the entire suite are on the cards. And all of this is in yearly pricing (based on inputs from our sales teams).

Before the revision, VWO’s $600/mo plan supported 200,000 tested visitors/mo while its $875/mo plan supported 300,000 tested visitors/mo. Both these plans further came with annual discounted offerings that effectively came to be at $500/mo and $729/mo respectively.

But the story is going to sound a lot different, post the revision.

One user reached out to us with a quote where an annual VWO contract started at $12,500 USD for 100,000 tested visitors/mo. Also, the new plans are only available in the annual contract variant. Users can, however, get discounts for signing up for longer terms (about 10% on bi-annual plans and 15% for signing up for a 3-year term).

It is expected that high-traffic customers (who see or test about 500k visitors/mo) will have to accommodate annual contracts costing about $25k for all the VWO “bells and whistles” they have come to love. Simply put – some contracts will easily hit the 6-figure mark for higher traffic testing needs.

Now, such changes to pricing plans aren’t uncommon for CRO tools as we had Optimizely jumping to a minimum $100,000 USD annually in the last 18 months. The new plans that get introduced are also almost always pretty steep for many companies to handle.

For instance, when Optimizely changed its pricing plans, we heard such stuff:

The amazing Optimizely X upgrade offer!
The amazing Optimizely X upgrade offer!

And this one:

Serdar Usta, a CRO practitioner and Quora user on Optimizely's new plans
Image
Serdar Usta, a CRO practitioner and Quora user on Optimizely’s new plans
Image source

So now that VWO, too, has revised its plans, it might be well out of the budget for quite a few of its existing customers as well as for a lot of people with high-traffic websites who have been considering it.

Drum Roll. Please Meet the VWO Alternatives You Can Consider (If You’re Looking)

Note: Barring Convert Experiences, none of these solutions share their prices upfront. So, you’ll have to reach out to them to get your custom quote.

But we’ve included some pricing probables based on what we’ve learned from our leads and other sources.

The Big Kahuna – Optimizely

Optimizely is the leading experimentation solution for enterprises. In fact, just last year Optimizely introduced newer pricing plans that hinted at its intent to focus primarily on enterprise-level accounts.

Segmentation, Targeting, Personalization, Learning — you name it, and Optimizely offers it. BUT to its business and enterprise-level accounts.

So, if you’re looking to switch from VWO because of your budget constraints (that have surfaced post VWO’s pricing revision), Optimizely might not be an alternative after all.

Some limits:

  • The Essentials plan supports just one project, which can be too restrictive for most users.
  • The more complex tests like multivariate tests and features like personalized campaigns and advanced segmentation options are only available in the Business and Enterprise plans.
  • Targeting options like geotargeting and custom tagging are only available in the higher plans.
  • Optimizely offers two solutions: Web Packages and Optimizely Full Stack Packages. And both of these solutions come in three versions (Essentials, Business, and Enterprise). Here are the details of each.

Another “All-in-One” Player – AB Tasty

If you’re looking to replace your all-in-one VWO CRO subscription with another all-in-one CRO solution, then AB Tasty probably comes the closest to what you need.

Some key features of this platform are as follows:

  • With AB Tasty, you get session recordings and heatmaps. You can use these to collect valuable user behavioral data for fueling your experiments.
  • AB Tasty supports all the different types of experiments like A/B/n tests, Split tests, Multivariate tests, and Funnel tests. You can also do mobile website testing with it.
  • AB Tasty supports a lot of integrations, which means you can get it to work with most of your marketing tech stack.

But there are limits too:

The “Newer” Competitor on the Block – Omniconvert

Omniconvert is another interesting VWO alternative that doesn’t just focus on the experimentation but also on learning. It comes with surveys that let you collect qualitative data that adds another dimension to your experiments.

Some key features of the platform are as follows:

  • Omniconvert supports a host of data inputs for segmentation such as address, location, browser, and cookies among others. You can use these to deliver powerful, personalized website experiences to your different audience segments.
  • You can use Omniconvert to run surveys on your website and then leverage audience responses to the survey questions to deliver even more relevant and personalized content. Omniconvert offers heatmaps as well for behavioral data analysis.
  • Overlays (or popups): Now, this one doesn’t exactly qualify as a CRO feature as such, but if you’d like to show popups or overlay notification bars or ribbons, you get a headstart with Omniconvert’s overlays.

Some limits:

  • A lot of Omniconvert’s integrations with other tools happen via Zapier. So, you can understand how the integration costs could pile up.
  • Omniconvert only supports A/B and Split URL testing. So, if you’re interested in running more complex tests like Multivariate or Multipage/Funnel tests, Omniconvert doesn’t emerge as the best VWO alternative.
  • Omniconvert offers a free plan that supports 50,000 tested views. To learn about its premium plans (that unlock features like advanced segmentation, mobile website testing, support for multiple websites and more), you need to reach out to its support.

The GDPR Compliant VWO Alternative – Convert Experiences

Full Disclaimer – Convert Experiences is our own tool and we think it is awesome. But so do 5000+ plus other sites, and CRO agencies that live and breathe optimization.

So what puts Convert Experiences up top on the list of VWO alternatives?

It is the most logical choice if you want to test with advanced developer options, a great support team and a GDPR compliant testing solution that doesn’t require consent.

Expanding on the features:

  • 100% GDPR-ready: Convert Experiences is a GDPR-compliant tool. In fact, we’re the only enterprise solution that doesn’t store any personal data in the default setting and buckets visitor data in large groups making impossible to trace it back to one individual.
  • 70+ off-the-shelf integrations: We support integrations with most of the popular CRO tools our customers use. Also, all of our integrations are included in every plan – so you don’t have to purchase them separately. (Yes, alternatives like Optimizely actually restrict you for integrations by package and platform!) And we’re always open to requests for newer integrations.

via GIPHY

A seamless integration with Google Analytics (and other analytics solutions): At Convert Experiences, we don’t just offer a seamless integration with Google Analytics but also with a bunch of other analytics solutions like Adobe Analytics, Baidu Tongji, Heap, Matomo, Woopra among others.

Besides, we offer expert guidance on how to make your Convert+Google Analytics integration work flawlessly. Also, our Google Analytics offers these two great features (accessible with one click!):

  • Google Analytics Goal Import
  • Google Analytics Automatic Revenue Tracking

Suitable for both simple and complex tests alike: With Convert Experiences, setting up complex tests is also as easy as setting up simple A/B or A/A tests. In fact, we often get shoutouts for our ability to process even the most complex and technically-demanding testing requirements. So, throw all your complex JS or cookie targeting requests at Convert Experiences, and you’ll be surprised at how well it executes your rules and runs glitch-free and flicker-free tests for you.

Support that’s 4X faster than the industry standard: For Convert Experiences, we’re known to offer 4X faster support experiences in the industry and our NPS is currently about 90%. And we include chat, email, and phone support in all our plans. The enterprise plans that have more complex support requests get access to a Dedicated Account Manager as well. Just give a read to some of our reviews here and here, and you’ll know first-hand from users just like you who trust us with running their CRO experiments.

Flicker-free: With the SmartInsert™ feature, we help our customers run experiments without the “blink”. Most A/B testing tools come with a good degree of blinking or flicker, and this can negatively impact conversions by 10% or more. Convert Experiments is one of the flicker-free testing tools in the CRO space.

Enterprise-grade security: With features like two-step authentication, single sign-on, and LDAP integration, you get the most secure experimentation environment you could ever ask for.

Tens of features most tools only unlock in their higher-tier plans: Every plan of Convert Experiences comes with features like advanced Targeting and Personalization, Two-tailed Testing, Test Collision Protection and more.

Transparent pricing: We like to share all the pricing information upfront (right from our Essentials Plan that supports 500k monthly visitors all the way up to our plans that can take up to 3M visitors).

Oh and it’s not just us, but even CRO experts find Convert Experiences to be an effective VWO alternative:

Convert Experiments is a fantastic tool that should be considered and evaluated by any CRO agency or end-user client that also evaluates Optimizely and VWO. They offer a level of functionality that is globally on par with them for testing, but at a lower price level …

Julien Le Nestour via ConversionXL

Convert Experiences Is Not an All-In-One CRO Platform

We don’t offer tools that let you collect qualitative or quantitative data.

And that’s intentional.

We are fully aware of the fact that optimization is maturing rapidly and businesses that test are now focused on creating credible hypotheses with the best in class analytics tools guiding the way.

Integrating with vendors who have spent years perfecting a certain area of qualitative or quantitative analysis frees our users up to customize their testing stack and make a call on how much of their CRO budget can be allotted to tools.

In short – We have supported 40 billion tests and personalizations to date. And can say with confidence that we ace testing. Our wish is to help users work with analytics tools that are the very best at what they do.

This is why Convert Experiences has a simple pricing structure with affordable plans starting at $699/mo (for up to 500k tested visitors/mo).

Here are all the details on the Convert Pricing.

Wrapping This Up…Looking After “YOU”

Convert is a conscious business. That means:

  • Never putting our full pricing structure behind a sales team
  • Never forcing customers to upgrade to newer plans. We proudly support some of our first users who still work with our tool at our earliest prices. And yes, they too get the benefit of our 4X faster support. Because it’s not nice to forget those who have brought us to the level of success we currently enjoy!

If you’d like to know more about how Convert Experiences compares with VWO in “your case”, send us an email at sales@convert.com or call sales at +1-888-666-9711 (8 a.m. to 6 p.m. CST).

P.S Have questions? Send us your queries via this form and we’ll be in touch.

Originally published December 15, 2018 - Updated November 02, 2022

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Authors
Dennis van der Heijden
Dennis van der Heijden

Co-founder & CEO of Convert, passionate community builder and out-of-the-box thinker. 

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