Most buyers in these interviews use Optimizely for experimentation — web and feature testing — and a smaller group uses its CMS, formerly Episerver. Across companies naming Optimizely in these interviews — including users of its experimentation products and its CMS — experience-analytics tools such as Contentsquare, Hotjar and Quantum Metric appear more than twice as often as at similarly sized companies without Optimizely, and Amplitude about two and a half times as often. Buyers using Optimizely for experimentation describe these tools as helping them identify opportunities and interpret results. About one in five companies naming Optimizely also name another experimentation, personalization or feature-management tool, such as Adobe Target or LaunchDarkly; buyers describe some serving different teams or use cases and others as candidates for consolidation. Some experimentation buyers describe using Optimizely to run tests while evaluating broader customer behavior or business outcomes in an analytics tool or through their own data teams.
What tools do companies commonly run alongside Optimizely?
Google Analytics 4 is one of the most commonly named tools alongside Optimizely, appearing in about three in five stacks. Companies using Optimizely also frequently name BI tools, experience-analytics platforms such as Contentsquare and Hotjar, and product analytics tools such as Amplitude. Some use additional CMS, CDP, warehouse or experimentation products, such as Contentful, Tealium, Snowflake or Adobe Target, depending on which Optimizely capabilities they operate.
More common at Optimizely companies
About the same
Where do companies read their Optimizely test results?
Some buyers evaluate Optimizely experiments using additional analytics tools or internal analysis, particularly when they need to understand outcomes beyond the tested page. One company finds Optimizely “gives you the results you need at the page level, but it won't give you the full journey, which Adobe does, right?” and another says “KPIs is a big problem in Optimizely tool, so we have to deploy our data science team or give couple data scientists to do the job after a test is completed.” Others are satisfied with the link to their analytics — “I love how it works with Google Analytics so seamlessly. I never have issues with Optimizely,” one says — and one describes Optimizely's own framework as one that “provides disciplined and statistically sound results, which is important.”
How do Contentsquare, Hotjar and other experience-analytics tools fit with Optimizely?
Buyers describe using experience-analytics tools to identify opportunities for testing and to investigate visitor behavior alongside experiment results. Some compare behavioral evidence from tools such as Contentsquare with what Optimizely reports — one team plans conversion tests around peak trading and then uses “the Optimizely data and the content map together with the ContentSquare data to justify and ensure that the Optimizely data is accurate.” Others struggle to connect individual sessions to the test variant a visitor saw — of its session-replay tool, one buyer says: “Only issue that I see is segmenting A/B testing.”
Why do some companies use Optimizely alongside other testing or feature-management tools?
About one in five companies naming Optimizely also name another experimentation, personalization or feature-management tool, and these products can serve overlapping but distinct purposes. Buyers describe different reasons. Some split by job or team: one company uses Optimizely for one product area — “That's easier to test landing pages. So we've got Optimizely as well as Adobe Target,” the buyer says — and another finds Optimizely “more agile and fluid in terms of a solution compared to Test and Target.” Others run Optimizely beside a feature-flagging tool and want to consolidate: “We're actually looking at the potential consolidation of Optimizely and LaunchDarkly.” A few have consolidated away from Optimizely onto Adobe's suite or another tool, citing cost or one vendor, while others have moved onto it from Google Optimize or in-house feature flags.
Who runs tests in Optimizely?
In many of these companies, engineers as well as marketers. Buyers describe server-side setup, environment variables and custom layers that keep most real tests with developers — “There are so many nuances that are hard for marketers to consume and understand. So engineering bandwidth, product bandwidth, et cetera, is always the case,” one says. Smaller teams describe the cost in time: “it just is time-consuming and pretty resource intensive to keep running experiments on Optimizely.”
How does the Optimizely CMS fit with the rest of the stack?
A smaller group in these interviews uses Optimizely as its content management or commerce platform, and their experiences differ from the testing users'. A company moving off an older CMS chose it because “we can use more of the out of the box features, less custom code,” while a company already on it says “we have to heavily customize it and strategically utilize the CMS on several occasions because we can't rely on the logic that Optimizely provides out of the box.” Where Optimizely runs the store, one buyer finds “very few platforms from a loyalty perspective that integrate very seamlessly with Optimizely.” Some companies pair Optimizely testing with a separate headless CMS instead, and one using Contentful reports “we're not running into issues with pace of testing and development between Optimizely and Contentful.”
The Optimizely stack, layer by layer
How often Optimizely companies name a tool in each layer, against companies of similar size, which tools they name, and how buyers describe the connection to Optimizely. How often tools appear together is separate from how well they connect, which is what the last column reports.
| Layer | Optimizely companies naming one | Tools named | How buyers describe the connection to Optimizely |
|---|---|---|---|
| Web and product analytics | about three in four (about 1⅓×) | Google Analytics 4, Adobe Analytics, Amplitude, Mixpanel, Heap | Often where test results are judged; some describe a seamless link, others custom integration or no link to their product analytics. |
| Experience analytics | about one in three (over 2×) | Contentsquare, Hotjar, Quantum Metric, FullStory | Used to find test ideas and investigate visitor behavior alongside results; some cannot tie a session to the variant a visitor saw. |
| Other experimentation, personalization and feature management | about one in five (about the same) | Adobe Target, VWO, Monetate, LaunchDarkly, Statsig | Some serve different teams or use cases; others are candidates for consolidation, in either direction. |
| CMS | about two in five (about 1½×) | Adobe Experience Manager, Contentful, WordPress, Drupal, Sitecore, Optimizely CMS | Includes companies using Optimizely CMS itself as well as companies pairing Optimizely experimentation with another CMS. Some value out-of-the-box CMS capabilities, while others report extensive customization. |
| CDP and activation | about two in five (nearly 2×) | Tealium, Salesforce Data Cloud, Segment, Hightouch, Bloomreach, Adobe Real-Time CDP | Some buyers use CDP or activation tools to supply audiences for personalization; direct audience synchronization with Optimizely is not consistently described. |
| Data warehouse | about two in five (about 1½×) | Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery | Where some teams analyse test data themselves. |
| BI | about three in five (about 1½×) | Tableau, Power BI, Looker | Rarely described as connected to Optimizely directly. |
Want this read against your own stack?
Get my read →The stories behind the stack
The counter-current: consolidating the testing tool
A few companies here have moved away from Optimizely — onto Adobe's suite as part of consolidating vendors, to a lower-cost tool, or to no dedicated tool after a budget cut — while others have moved onto it from Google Optimize, in-house feature flags or an older CMS. Those leaving cite cost and fewer vendors; those arriving cite ease of use and out-of-the-box features. Several describe the decision as tied to the rest of their stack rather than to the testing tool alone.
What this means for your stack
Companies naming Optimizely, whether for experimentation or its CMS, frequently also name web, product and experience analytics, a CMS, a CDP and a warehouse. Some experimentation buyers describe Optimizely as the layer that runs tests while other tools or data teams provide behavioral context and broader performance analysis, and buyers describe connections to the rest of the stack ranging from seamless to custom work. Our recommendation, not a practice buyers describe: before running tests at scale, decide where results will be evaluated and confirm that the analytics system can associate outcomes with the experiment variant each visitor received; and if you run a second testing or feature-flagging tool, decide which owns which kind of test.
What this page does not show
It shows which tools Optimizely companies run, not which ones they should. How often tools appear together says nothing about satisfaction, and a tool appearing beside Optimizely does not mean the two are connected. Interviews do not always separate Optimizely's testing product from its CMS, so the comparison covers companies naming either. Optimizely companies are compared with companies of similar size, but they may still differ in industry and in how much they invest in analytics, so part of the difference reflects the kind of company rather than the choice of Optimizely.
Common questions
What tools integrate with Optimizely?
In Alium's verified buyer interviews, companies using Optimizely most often also name Google Analytics 4, Amplitude, Contentsquare, Hotjar, Quantum Metric, Contentful, Snowflake, Looker and a CDP such as Tealium or Hightouch. Not every tool named alongside Optimizely is directly connected to it, and buyers describe some connections as seamless and others as custom work.
Where do you analyze Optimizely test results?
Some buyers read results in Optimizely, and some describe its statistics as sound. Some also evaluate tests in an analytics tool such as Google Analytics, Amplitude or Adobe Analytics, or through their own data team, particularly when they need journey-level or sub-segment views.
Should you use Contentsquare or Hotjar with Optimizely?
Some companies in these interviews pair them, using session replay and heatmaps to find test ideas and to investigate visitor behavior alongside test results. Buyers note that connecting a session to the variant a visitor saw is not always possible.
Do companies run Optimizely and Adobe Target together?
Some do, usually splitting them by team or job, such as Optimizely for landing pages and Adobe Target for journeys in the Adobe ecosystem. Others have consolidated onto one, in either direction.
Is the Optimizely CMS the same as Optimizely testing?
No. Optimizely sells experimentation and a CMS, formerly Episerver, as separate products. In these interviews most buyers use the testing product; those on the CMS describe a different set of experiences, and one buyer using two Optimizely products says they felt like products from different companies.
Get this research made for your stack
How does your Optimizely stack compare? A 15-minute interview helps put your stack in context, including the analytics, testing tools and connections reported by companies with similar needs.
Get my personalized read — 15-min interviewNo password · your interview is anonymized before it ever informs a page like this one.