Chartbeat vs. Optimizely Web Experimentation

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Chartbeat
Score 6.9 out of 10
N/A
Chartbeat delivers real-time analytics, insights, and transformative tools for content teams around the world, to help improve audience engagement, inform editorial decisions, and increase loyalty.N/A
Optimizely Web Experimentation
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Whether launching a first test or scaling a sophisticated experimentation program, Optimizely Web Experimentation aims to deliver the insights needed to craft high-performing digital experiences that drive engagement, increase conversions, and accelerate growth.N/A
Pricing
ChartbeatOptimizely Web Experimentation
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
ChartbeatOptimizely Web Experimentation
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional DetailsChartbeat pricing is based on monthly site page views. Discounts are applied to multi-year contracts. The Basic Plan includes the Real-time Dashboard, Historical Dashboard, Heads Up Display, Reports, Big Board, iOS and Android app, and Real-time API endpoints. The Plus Plan includes all of the Basic Plan features, plus ONE of the following Premium features: Headline Testing, Advanced Queries, or Multi-Site View. The Premium Plan includes all of the Basic Plan features, plus ALL Premium features: Headline Testing, Advanced Queries, Multi-Site View, and enterprise-level support and custom trainings.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
ChartbeatOptimizely Web Experimentation
Features
ChartbeatOptimizely Web Experimentation
Web Analytics
Comparison of Web Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Chartbeat
7.4
Ratings
8% below category average
Optimizely Web Experimentation
-
Ratings
Lead Conversion Tracking6.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Bounce Rate Measurement6.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Device and Browser Reporting7.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Pageview Tracking7.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Event Tracking7.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting in real-time9.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Referral Source Tracking8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Customizable Dashboards7.60 Ratings00 Ratings
Testing and Experimentation
Comparison of Testing and Experimentation features of Product A and Product B
Chartbeat
-
Ratings
Optimizely Web Experimentation
8.0
Ratings
3% below category average
a/b experiment testing00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Split URL testing00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Multivariate testing00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Multi-page/funnel testing00 Ratings7.90 Ratings
Cross-browser testing00 Ratings8.10 Ratings
Mobile app testing00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Test significance00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Visual / WYSIWYG editor00 Ratings8.10 Ratings
Advanced code editor00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Page surveys00 Ratings6.20 Ratings
Visitor recordings00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Preview mode00 Ratings7.60 Ratings
Test duration calculator00 Ratings7.90 Ratings
Experiment scheduler00 Ratings8.20 Ratings
Experiment workflow and approval00 Ratings7.80 Ratings
Dynamic experiment activation00 Ratings7.50 Ratings
Client-side tests00 Ratings7.80 Ratings
Server-side tests00 Ratings7.20 Ratings
Mutually exclusive tests00 Ratings8.10 Ratings
Audience Segmentation & Targeting
Comparison of Audience Segmentation & Targeting features of Product A and Product B
Chartbeat
-
Ratings
Optimizely Web Experimentation
8.2
Ratings
4% below category average
Standard visitor segmentation00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Behavioral visitor segmentation00 Ratings7.70 Ratings
Traffic allocation control00 Ratings9.10 Ratings
Website personalization00 Ratings7.80 Ratings
Results and Analysis
Comparison of Results and Analysis features of Product A and Product B
Chartbeat
-
Ratings
Optimizely Web Experimentation
8.3
Ratings
1% below category average
Heatmap tool00 Ratings9.30 Ratings
Click analytics00 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Scroll maps00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Form fill analysis00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Conversion tracking00 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Goal tracking00 Ratings8.20 Ratings
Test reporting00 Ratings7.90 Ratings
Results segmentation00 Ratings7.70 Ratings
CSV export00 Ratings7.90 Ratings
Experiments results dashboard00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
ChartbeatOptimizely Web Experimentation
Small Businesses
StatCounter
StatCounter
Score 9.0 out of 10
Convert Experiences
Convert Experiences
Score 9.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Siteimprove
Siteimprove
Score 10.0 out of 10
Dynamic Yield
Dynamic Yield
Score 8.3 out of 10
Enterprises
Optimal
Optimal
Score 9.0 out of 10
Dynamic Yield
Dynamic Yield
Score 8.3 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
ChartbeatOptimizely Web Experimentation
Likelihood to Recommend
8.6
(0 ratings)
8.7
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.9
(0 ratings)
9.5
(0 ratings)
Usability
7.9
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.1
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
3.0
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
6.0
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
ChartbeatOptimizely Web Experimentation
Likelihood to Recommend
It is well suited to keeping me toward a specified goal, and gives me concrete numbers and gives me an idea of what we need to do to meet our goals. It's less appropriate if you want something more than pageviews, and doesn't really do a lot for video views.
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I think it can serve the whole spectrum of experiences from people who are just getting used to web experimentation. It's really easy to pick up and use. If you're more experienced then it works well because it just gets out of the way and lets you really focus on the experimentation side of things. So yeah, strongly recommend. I think it is well suited both to small businesses and large enterprises as well. I think it's got a really low barrier to entry. It's very easy to integrate on your website and get results quickly. Likewise, if you are a big business, it's incrementally adoptable, so you can start out with one component of optimizing and you can build there and start to build in things like data CMS to augment experimentation as well. So it's got a really strong a pathway to grow your MarTech platform if you're a small company or a big company.
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Pros
  • Provides easy at-a-glance look at what people are reading right now
  • Heads-up Display allows you to make sure the homepage is showing the content people want to read
  • Headline testing tool provides fascinating insight into what makes people read a story and improves headline-writing ability
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  • The Platform contains drag-and-drop editor options for creating variations, which ease the A/B tests process, as it does not require any coding or development resources.
  • Establishing it is so simple that even a non-technical person can do it perfectly.
  • It provides real-time results and analytics with robust dashboard access through which you can quickly analyze how different variations perform. With this, your team can easily make data-driven decisions Fastly.
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Cons
  • Source of traffic needs improvement. Search and social make sense, but "internal" and "links" is a grey area. It would be helpful to define those with an organization and provide an information icon so users can easily remember what each of those buckets is tracking.
  • More ways to customize the real-time board. For example, with video content, that's great that I can see a user has started a video, but what is the completion rate, was that only on O&O or can that track Facebook, too?
  • Would like to see demo (age) information included as a way to slice the data so I can see what's working with my older and younger demo.
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  • The results view is dense and difficult to package easily for leadership, and when filtering by segment it's hard to read comparative outcomes without clearing or swapping filters
  • The organization of experiments and statuses is a cluttered list and the search is limited in use - would love to see that improve with time
  • There are so many other MarTech products out there, would love to see more dedicated integrations so we don't have to invest in something like Zapier or Tray to build hacky automations
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Likelihood to Renew
I gave Chartbeat a 5 for a renewal rating, because, while it delivers clear and understandable content, Google Analytics also provides many of the same features for free. For a small to medium website, I believe it would be more cost effective to use Google Analytics. A website with a high amount of traffic, however, could merit spending the money on Chartbeat to maximize their potential.
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Because it's an incredible and essential tool for my line of work as a conversion optimization specialist. Really couldn't do my job nearly as effectively without it. It's paid for itself many times over and I feel like I'm only beginning to unlock the tools potential.
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Usability
Chartbeat is really pretty straightforward. The only things that may cause confusion are the string of sidebar features and tools at the left of the screen. I mostly use the big leader board in real-time and the historical feature (looking at the monthly or weekly performance of my team's content) and then generate reports automatically from there.
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Optimizely Web Experimentation's visual editor is handy for non-technical or quick iterative testing. When it comes to content changes it's as easy as going into wordpress, clicking around, and then seeing your changes live--what you see is what you get. The preview and approval process for sharing built experiments is also handy for sharing experiments across teams for QA purposes or otherwise.
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Reliability and Availability
No answers on this topic
I would rate Optimizely Web Experimentation's availability as a 10 out of 10. The software is reliable and does not experience any application errors or unplanned outages. Additionally, the customer service and technical support teams are always available to help with any issues or questions.
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Performance
No answers on this topic
I would rate Optimizely Web Experimentation's performance as a 9 out of 10. Pages load quickly, reports are complete in a reasonable time frame, and the software does not slow down any other software or systems that it integrates with. Additionally, the customer service and technical support teams are always available to help with any issues or questions.
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Support Rating
I have had limited experience of support for Chartbeat but whenever I have needed help it has been there. Recently there was an issue of seeing different forms of data in real time - app and otherwise effectively, and the issue was being clearly dealt with and communicated back to us.
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They always are quick to respond, and are so friendly and helpful. They always answer the phone right away. And [they are] always willing to not only help you with your problem, but if you need ideas they have suggestions as well.
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Online Training
No answers on this topic
The tool itself is not very difficult to use so training was not very useful in my opinion. It did not also account for success events more complex than a click (which my company being ecommerce is looking to examine more than a mere click).
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Implementation Rating
No answers on this topic
The implementation through the tag management system took a bit of trial and error at first, mostly due to the asynchronous nature of the TMS. We had to manipulate the implementation to assure that the Optimizely code was written to the page at the right time to allow the experiment content load in the browser without showing any of the original content first. We also needed to make some adjustments to the TMS code to get the integration with Site Catalyst timed appropriately.
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Alternatives Considered
Google Analytics has gradually become much more difficult to use, and much slower in its realtime reporting. It was the changes that came in with Google Analytics 4 that gave us the final push to work with Chartbeat - a product some of us were already familiar with from previous jobs. Things are just much harder to find in GA, and when time is always tight you can't afford to spend a long time looking for particular data - it should be quick and easy to locate
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The ability to do A/B testing in Optimizely along with the associated statistical modelling and audience segmentation means it is a much better solution than using something like Google Analytics were a lot more effort is required to identify and isolate the specific data you need to confidently make changes
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Scalability
No answers on this topic
It's incredibly flexible and adapts well to organizations of all sizes, whether you’re running a single site or managing multiple departments and platforms. The ability to deploy experiments seamlessly across different environments is a huge plus, especially for growing businesses. While it’s highly scalable, the last point would depend on the right team leveraging its full potential.
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Return on Investment
  • It has helped us save time in report generation and performance analysis.
  • By helping us evaluate our contributors, we're able to get our money's worth.
  • Seeing our numbers on the Big Board fosters healthy competition among brands, motivating us to distribute our stories better.
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  • we saved money by not implementing certain copy/design
  • we learned that customers from different states react different to a variation
  • we are slowly learning where conversion happens and where to fix the frictions
  • Testing shorter vs longer journeys increased funnel conversion in some states - we avoided implementing this nationwide
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ScreenShots

Chartbeat Screenshots

Screenshot of Big Board: For newsrooms, the leaderboard-style visualization shows the top stories on the biggest screen.Screenshot of Real-time dashboard: Displays how an audience is connecting with content in the moment – across platforms, channels, and devices.Screenshot of Historical Dashboard: To assess content performance, KPIs, and valuable trends over the long term.Screenshot of Heads Up Display: Shows which homepage articles are the top performers, how stories are trending up or down in traffic, and how far visitors are scrolling down the page.Screenshot of Video Dashboard: Reveals how video content captures viewer attention.Screenshot of Conversion Dashboard: Tracks conversion metrics and insights.

Optimizely Web Experimentation Screenshots

Screenshot of AI-Powered Experimentation with Opal:

- Instant Test Ideas: Generates high-quality A/B test ideas based on any goals and audience insights.
- Smarter Experimentation: The AI can suggest impactful variations, reducing guesswork and increasing test velocity.
- More Than Just Ideas: From hypothesis generation to analyzing results, Opal helps optimize every stage of the experimentation process.Screenshot of the Web Experimentation Visual Editor :

- Tweak experiments using the visual editor or dive into custom code when needed.
- Modify elements, update styling, or add dynamic behaviors.
- Ensure perfect variations while keeping control over every detail of the experiment.Screenshot of AI Content Suggestions:

- Generates copy variations to supercharge experiments.
- The AI suggests high-impact messaging for tests when hovering over a field.
- AI-powered content suggestions help skip the brainstorming process.Screenshot of Advanced Audience Targeting:

- Delivers personalized experiences by targeting users based on behaviors, attributes, and real-time conditions.
- Defines precise audience segments using first-party data, geolocation, and device type.
- Can test and optimize for different audience groups to maximize impact and engagement.Screenshot of Custom Templates in the Visual Editor:

- Offers pre-built templates for common test setups.
- Standardized variations and maintains brand integrity with reusable templates.
- Templates can be customized visually or tweak them with code for full flexibility.Screenshot of the Web Experimentation Results Page:

- Data visualizations help interpret experiment performance.
- Displays which variations are winning with built-in statistical significance calculations.
- Results can be filtered by audience segments, events, and conversions to uncover key trends.