Platform comparison
Maze vs Optimal Workshop: Which is right for research with your users?
Maze is a Optimal Workshop alternative that helps scale continuous product research across your entire company.
A tale of two platforms
Investing in research with your users fuels high adoption, activation, and retention. Simply put, it enables you to ship a better product to your users, and more frequently. That said, a lot of the impact research creates is supported by the platform you choose.
Maze and Optimal Workshop are two of the better known platforms in the market, but which is the better choice for your organization?
Maze empowers everyone in product teams to continuously collect user insights at an expert-level. It enables testing anything from prototypes to ideas, and allows you to round up valuable user feedback to help deliver truly customer-centric products—all in one place.
Optimal Workshop helps organizations build more intuitive and successful digital experiences backed by user research through a variety of tools.
Let's take a closer look at both.
Maze vs Optimal Workshop: Overview
Name
Main applications
Price
G2 Rating
Available on
Main applications
Optimal Workshop
Moderated user interviews First-click testing Research repository
Free to start Pro Plan from $208/month Team Plan from $191/user/month Custom Enterprise plans
4.5/5 out of 10+ reviews
Browsers
Moderated user interviews First-click testing Research repository
Maze
Prototype testing Usability testing Participant management
Free to start Pro Plan from $75/month Custom Enterprise plans
4.5/5 out of 90+ reviews
Browsers
Prototype testing Usability testing Participant management
Maze vs Optimal Workshop: Main differences
What really sets Maze and Optimal Workshop apart for teams doing research?
Breadth of research methods
Maze offers a wider range of block types than Optimal Workshop, including card sort, 5-second test, tree test, and opinion scale.
Design integrations
Optimal Workshop does not integrate with design tools (you can only upload images). Maze offers full integrations with popular design tools, such as Figma, Sketch, and InVision to validate designs early on.
Tester management
Sourcing and recruiting test participants is both easier and cheaper with Maze. You can choose from two options: panel recruiting, or creating your very own participant database.
Maze vs Optimal Workshop: Feature comparison
Features
Maze
Optimal Workshop
Maze
Tester panel
Tester management database
Surveys
Tree testing
Heatmaps
Card sorting
Video / screen session recording
Moderated video sessions
First-click testing
Deep integrations with design tools
Adobe XD, Figma, InVision, Sketch
Adobe XD, Figma, InVision, Sketch
Prototype testing
5-Second testing
In-product surveys
Live website testing
Why product and design teams are making the switch to Maze
Intuitive experience
It’s hard enough to source test participants—you don’t want any more friction to get research campaigns completed. Maze is an easy-to-use platform whose tests can be carried out on any device, with no apps, scripts, or plugins installed.
Prototype testing, done right
Integrate with leading design tools to record sessions and set journey paths on your prototypes. Validate usability across your designs with real users, before investing valuable resources.
Works with:
Robust, customizable reporting
Data insights are only as valuable as they are understandable and easy to work with. Maze's reports are visual-rich, automated, and fully customizable. Filter and categorize information in detail to uncover patterns and share valuable insights with stakeholders.
Maze vs Optimal Workshop: Takeaways
Both Maze and Optimal Workshop are great options to conduct product research with your end users. At the end of the day it comes down to which platform aligns better not only with your budget, but also with your workflow and vision as a team.
Optimal Workshop focuses on extracting qualitative insights from moderated interviews and organizing this data through features like note taking. This makes it tailored to larger individual in-depth projects.
On the other hand, Maze is a better fit for those who want to inform smaller everyday decisions. Apart from being a more affordable option if you're hiring from a panel, its superior prototype features and integrations allow to validate concepts and de-risking designs early on and save resources on the long run.
Frequently asked questions
Who is Maze for?
Who is Maze for?
Anyone working in a product team should be empowered to do research—whether you’re a designer, researcher, product manager, or other.
Maze is used by teams that want to empower everyone to collect actionable user insights to make informed decisions, and share learnings across their whole organization.
What kind of teams use Maze?
What kind of teams use Maze?
Maze is used by product, design and research teams that want actionable user insights to make informed decisions with their users, for their users.
Teams from all sizes and industries use Maze, including Financial Services, Travel, Insurance, Technology/Software, Healthcare, and Retail.
What’s continuous discovery and why does it benefit my company?
What’s continuous discovery and why does it benefit my company?
Continuous product research fuels high adoption, activation, and retention—simply put, it enables you to ship more value to your users, and more frequently. Maze empowers anyone who does research to autonomously run expert-level, unmoderated research—facilitating a discovery mindset in product teams so you can build the right product, with your users, for your users.
Can I request a demo?
Can I request a demo?
Absolutely! Tell us a little about your company here and we’ll connect you with someone in our team.
Do you have comparisons with other platforms?
Do you have comparisons with other platforms?
Yes. Read on to discover all comparisons of Maze with other platforms.