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Hi Chris,

Yes, I will take your call for two reasons:

1. Your product has always been fantastic.

2. Your customer support team has been world class and excellent to deal with over the years.

I'm hopeful there's a resolution, and I'm heartened to see you taking this seriously. you can contact me at FirstName@timesharecmo.com

Best regards,

Melinda

_***Update: August 8, 2016: Chris Hicken, the President and COO of UserTesting.com, resolved my client's issues to my (and most importantly their) satisfaction. Chris also listened carefully to the questions I raised here, and his specific answers and vision for the company demonstrated that to me, to my great relief given that I think usertesting.com is one of the most important and effective tools in my marketing toolbox. __Chris' and Usertesting.com's plans, if executed, should not only benefit their clients but also agencies of all sizes.  _

_In my opinion, usertesting.com acted in good faith to resolve this issue fairly, and they deserve credit for it. Isn't that what social media is for? _

Also, because I know someone will wonder, I'll be clear: neither I nor my company TimeshareCMO, LLC has ever been asked for or ever been offered, or ever received any money or special consideration for writing this addendum or for recommending usertesting.com's (or any other) product or services.

To those competitors and marketers who reached out to me, thank you! I will be following up to learn more about your services and products.***

I am seeking direct competitors to usertesting.com that are appropriate for global brands.

I used to be a big proponent of usertesting.com but have lately become rapidly disillusioned with them. This gives me no satisfaction, as for years I would have said they were one of my favorite SaaS companies, with excellent customer service.m

Allow me to explain.

• There is no middle ground between a very limited, nearly useless $99 test, and a pro plan that appears to only start at about $20,000.
• If you are an agency, plans START at 20,000 and while tests are unlimited, you are REQUIRED to reveal your clients' names. Ostensibly this is so they won't "bother" your clients, but who are we kidding? You know exactly what they plan to do.  Undercut you.
• True story: When client themselves wants to set up account: big brand name. We warned them about the pro pricing and hardline sales tactics, and sure enough, when the trial period was up, usertesting.com blocked access to tests already paid for (anything over 25) including download access and the ability to make highlight reels.  This is a company who is willing to spend the money for the tests at $99/per and probably would spend $5-10k a year with them, minimum, and maybe more as they gain traction inside their organization.  But since they don't want to commit in advance to $20k, usertesting refuses to play ball.
• In short, I will never use or recommend them again, and I'm eagerly researching competitors. if you know of or are one and are interested with working on a global brand who will be willing to endorse you publicly, let me know.

I used to be a big proponent of usertesting.com but have lately become rapidly disillusioned with them. This gives me no satisfaction, as for years I would have said they were one of my favorite SaaS companies, with excellent customer service.

Allow me to explain.

• There is no middle ground between a very limited, nearly useless $99 test, and a pro plan that appears to only start at about $20,000.
• If you are an agency, plans START at 20,000 and while tests are unlimited, you are REQUIRED to reveal your clients' names. Ostensibly this is so they won't "bother" your clients, but who are we kidding? You know exactly what they plan to do.  Undercut you.
• True story: When client themselves wants to set up account: big brand name. We warned them about the pro pricing and hardline sales tactics, and sure enough, when the trial period was up, usertesting.com blocked access to tests already paid for (anything over 25) including download access and the ability to make highlight reels.  This is a company who is willing to spend the money for the tests at $99/per and probably would spend $5-10k a year with them, minimum, and maybe more as they gain traction inside their organization.  But since they don't want to commit in advance to $20k, usertesting refuses to play ball.
• In short, I will never use or recommend them again, and I'm eagerly researching competitors. if you know of or are one and are interested with working on a global brand who will be willing to endorse you publicly, let me know.

I may have found my own lead on this which appears to be some limitations in Google's API.  this is a very, very large site to do a URL parameter proliferation issue creating millions of pages on the site. I bet it's safe to assume that Moz has to use sampled data past a reasonable point, and given the size of this site, it's fair to consider the possibility that Moz couldn't match the internal data as a result.

Will report back as we work with them on reducing duplicate content and see if that pushes things closer together.

Thanks Gyorgy,

As this client is a large public company I can't really post their code but I can tell you it's installed properly.  Anyway, even if it wasn't, if Moz is pulling this data from the GA API, shouldn't it match perfectly?

Melinda

After carefully double checking dates, and views, I have a site that reports via GA an organic traffic number 2x what is seen in Moz. On top of that, Moz shows a steady decline in organic traffic (from all sources) yet GA data is rising.

As you can imagine when a client sees this they get nervous.  Mozzers tried to help but told me essentially there's nothing they can do and I should try disconnecting and reconnecting the GA connection.  I am not sure what will happen when I do this, but when I did it anyway, nothing seemed to change, so I have no idea what to expect from these organic search reports in Moz.

Has anyone experienced this? I have to say I'm now wondering if  GA is the issue, but I am stumped as to how to go about figuring it out.  We have audited the GA code thoroughly.  I suspect there's now some kind of issue with duplicate traffic on their site that might inflate sessions (eg does a 302 read in GA as one session, or two?) but then again, why wouldn't Moz report that data, even if it is wrong?

Has anyone else ever seen this phenomenon?  Google searches revealed nothing....

That's a bummer, but at least it's a truthful answer. so thank you! is there a technical reason why this isn't possible?

Is there a way to duplicate a weekly report and also run it monthly without redesigning it from scratch? I have a great report a client loves but they also want to see it monthly.

Thanks!

Melinda

I used to be a big proponent of usertesting.com but have lately become rapidly disillusioned with them. This gives me no satisfaction, as for years I would have said they were one of my favorite SaaS companies, with excellent customer service.

Allow me to explain.

• There is no middle ground between a very limited, nearly useless $99 test, and a pro plan that appears to only start at about $20,000.
• If you are an agency, plans START at 20,000 and while tests are unlimited, you are REQUIRED to reveal your clients' names. Ostensibly this is so they won't "bother" your clients, but who are we kidding? You know exactly what they plan to do.  Undercut you.
• True story: When client themselves wants to set up account: big brand name. We warned them about the pro pricing and hardline sales tactics, and sure enough, when the trial period was up, usertesting.com blocked access to tests already paid for (anything over 25) including download access and the ability to make highlight reels.  This is a company who is willing to spend the money for the tests at $99/per and probably would spend $5-10k a year with them, minimum, and maybe more as they gain traction inside their organization.  But since they don't want to commit in advance to $20k, usertesting refuses to play ball.
• In short, I will never use or recommend them again, and I'm eagerly researching competitors. if you know of or are one and are interested with working on a global brand who will be willing to endorse you publicly, let me know.

Hi Chris,

Yes, I will take your call for two reasons:

1. Your product has always been fantastic.

2. Your customer support team has been world class and excellent to deal with over the years.

I'm hopeful there's a resolution, and I'm heartened to see you taking this seriously. you can contact me at FirstName@timesharecmo.com

Best regards,

Melinda

I may have found my own lead on this which appears to be some limitations in Google's API.  this is a very, very large site to do a URL parameter proliferation issue creating millions of pages on the site. I bet it's safe to assume that Moz has to use sampled data past a reasonable point, and given the size of this site, it's fair to consider the possibility that Moz couldn't match the internal data as a result.

Will report back as we work with them on reducing duplicate content and see if that pushes things closer together.