UserTestingReviews 148

Look, they give you tests based on ratings... the better rating the more tests you get... heres the issue... the very first test they give you is them testing you NOT a client. I was brand new so I didnt relize their strict instructions, the video was supposed to be 5 minutes, mine was 5 minutes and 30 seconds, so they gave me 4 stars and said the video should have not been over 5 minutes... Youd think companys would be happy with more feedback about their sites. Certainly not a reason for a bad rating. So my overall rating became 4 stars... I thought... hey itll go up over time. NOPE... because all other tests ive done the companys NEVER rate.,... not even once have i gotten any rating at all. No rating no feedback... BUT because user testing decided to give me 4 stars for doing more then what they asked for i'm now stuck with this rating... and that means their system de-prioritize me from getting tests over 5 star users... the rating system is trash! And then the tests they give me for i don't qualify for... why did they ask me so many qustions only to provide me tests i cant even do. Stay Away

The company UserTesting.com has dumped me. They ended my account after my last user test. They said something about the video not playing properly after being uploaded. This is not my fault or problem. It is their software that is being used. Everything went fine on my end. When you sign up they tell you that is something goes wrong with your recording or you are unable to complete the test then you will not get paid. I did not get paid but closing my account do to their problem is crooked and unfair. This is just another reason not to expect anything from this company. I'm guessing other user testing sites work in a similar fashion since I get no work from a few that I signed up for a year ago.

I joined UserTesting two months ago. I was excited about the long list of tasks I had in my profile just after joining. I passed their initial test. However when I went to access that list of tasks that was originally in my profile, they had all disappeared except for one. I have only earned $10 so far just from that one task and it took them over a week to review it and pay me for it. Since then I've been offered only 3 tasks that require prequalification and for some reason I have not qualified for any of them despite being a 5-star user tester. I have yet to receive any additional assignments. Although the tasks themselves are interesting and fun it is not worth the low payout, the time spent waiting to get paid, or waiting to qualify for a test. It seems like a scam to me. Don't expect to make much money from this site.

I've tested with User Testing for years so I'll give a little background, I live in Canada so my tests are very limited compared to the US Tests and this makes using the site mush more difficult and making money even harder.

The one thing I hate more than anything is unfair treatment the Testers who write the tests for you to take are very touchy and will rate you one star for the slightest mistake, even if it's poorly written with spelling and confusing grammar mistakes.

When I do a test I give my honest review and thoughts on the site app or whatever they need reviewed but if you even as give a little bit of criticism or get frustrated with a buggy or unstable app the site the test maker will take it personally and rate you one star, the annoying thing is the review process takes forever and every time they come back agreeing with the test maker.

I worked very hard to work up a perfect 5 star rating and it was ruined by a bunch of one stars one after another.

Most of the time you can't even find a test you qualify for and when I do I am very reluctant to even take it.

A while back my account got hacked and someone changed my Paypal to some other email I have never seen before I lost 30 bucks from some tests I did a few weeks earlier, I E-mailed them told them I did not change this Paypal email and they should have an E-mail system to inform you it was changed, there is no security at all. I have to change all my passwords just to be safe on all websites. I got an email back two months later saying that the "security" department did find any evidence of a hack and that the money was sent the the right address even though it was not and anyone can see that in there department, they even sent me the Paypal of the hacker and said this was always my Paypal address a flat out lie.

I have many more horror stories like that with User Testing.

User Testing needs to take a huge step back and look at themselves and remember the User in User Testing.

To sum it all up stay away from User Testing and tell your friends to stay away too, these guys need to go out of business.

Almost all of the reviews that I have read here are negative. The majority of people writing them are obviously not educated on what UserTesting is for.
UserTesting is for extra cash and not meant to be a part-time job.
They never claim to be an alternative to a job nor do they say they will send tests at a specific time to specific people. The amount of tests you receive depends largely on your demographics and your diligence to check for them.
With that said I will go on with my review:
I have been usertesting for over a year now. The first few months, I was not very impressed just like the rest of the people reviewing. I didn't get many tests and didn't qualify for many.
However in the past 4 months UserTesting has been amazing for extra income. Last month I made $300 USD just by testing websites.
I will say, though, that I am signed up with multiple usability testing websites; not just UserTesting. I probably made around half of that with UserTesting though and the other half with another company.
I think they are incredibly generous to offer a $10 payout for 10 minutes of your time. So what if you have to wait a while, just leave the site on in the background and take it when you get one.
I love this website! UserTesting and the other one I use are the best usability testing sites I have ever used.

I cannot believe I used to love work for them, I got about 1-2 tests daily and usually I get around 50 per week doing tests after work or during break time. I have 4.9 average score, and it was all good. After about a year, about last week, they suddenly stopped payment for few days, all pending. Then they posted "payment fixed, payment all processing", so I went online to check my pending payment. It showed 0, which I didn't think is right, because I should have about 50 pending even after payments. I got into my completed tests, they gave me 1 star on one of the test, saying they think I was using multiple accounts, which is totally bull$#*!. And voided all those pending payment I had. I bet they still charged their clients for those and used my "intellectual property", without paying me. What a joke. Just be careful, unless you have a unique voice, otherwise one day they will bs about what you did and just not pay you anymore. Totally bs.
Also, the android app has problem, sometimes you spent 15~20mins on the test, the recorder just quits, or it freeze, or even after you spent half an hour doing the test, it will not upload. I once tried 2hours to upload a 15mins test, and no luck. Reported it and they never really came up with any solution.

I joined in August trying to make a little extra money and never received a test after their initial lessons on the program. Nothing. I've emailed them three times and each time I get the same response about making sure my information is up to date, that my wifi is strong, and that I'm not leaving on vacation. Even though I have clarified in the last two that those were not issues, I still get the same automatic response. I'm done trying with these guys all together and it seems like a lot of other people have been ripped off worse.

I used this website multiple times and got 5 star rating on all of my tests (around 5 or 6 tests) that I completed. I test websites for multiple companies and this was just a fun little way to try another web.
But few days ago I got a review back that had just 1 star on it. Why, you may ask? Because the test asked me to share my personal information such as names of my co-workers, messages and all the meeting I ever did with the software. I declined on showing the messages, which was unnecessary in the situation and I did hide my co-workers names. I followed the instructions and everything was good. Took me even more than 15 minutes.
I got a bad review, because I didn't share my company information which is agains the rules of both usertesting and my company policy.
I reported the fact that this happened and the response? They knew about it and I was right to not share my information but they will not give me the money or get rid of the bad rating. Because I had one bad rating, they took not only $10 that I made from the test, but for some reason all my pending payments that were from the same day. They apologized for the mistake and I never got around $40 that they told me I would have.
I will definitely stop using this website and you should do the same.

I just started one week ago. First ten dollars was great, and a five star rating! But then I did another test and I got one test that was just docked one star, and another that I answered all questions and reviewed it well, as I tend to try my best and I got zero stars. So three tests altogether. I thought the lowest was one star, but i guess not. There is no way to dispute the grading. And as a result of my new average i have receive no tests in five days. They should NOT have the clients reviewing the workers, there should be a second grader. The client can rate, but so should user testing. This tells me they don't stand by their employees... the testers themselves. And i guess they don't need to. They have an unlimited supply of people looking to make a fast buck. And i tell ya its fast, but don't count on earning any more that 30$. I wish i could say it was better, but its not. I am very disappointed. My average is 3.5 and i have little hope to receive any more tests. :(

Most of hou are complaining about usertesting. But in their website they will tell you that it will not make you rich which is true. If you will sit all day long in front of your computer waiting for test to come then you will really suck on it.

I made a lot already in usertesting without wasting time waitimpng for test to arrive. This is not the only source of money online! Search for more and do other jobs! And when a test arrive go try and take it before anything else, I believe that 10 dollar / 20 minutes test is far more way better than any other sites!

Their mobile app for conducting tests have problems too often. You ended wasting a lot of time because the app can force close during the middle of the test or sometimes the video won't upload. When that happens you cannot restart the test, you just waste whatever 15 or 20 min already spent.
The desktop website works just fine.
Overall, there aren't many tests you can test. Lucky if you qualify for 1 or 2 a week. Quite a joke if you are looking to make extra money with this website.

They play a little game with you. They give you a test that anyone can take and give you $10 to get you excited. They even give you a tip on how to make it better. Then they recommend a test that anyone can take. After that, you have to take "screener" surveys before you take any test. No matter what you write, you don't quality for a test. They also have unpaid surveys that you fill out to potentially get future testing jobs. Um, no. What they are doing is getting your information via survey and then not paying by saying you don't qualify. It's not a scam because money did go to my Paypal and they haven't been making fraudulent charges. However, I think it's a scam that they trick you into taking surveys, collecting all the information they need, and then not paying you. There are survey sites that pay you to take surveys.

I'm a UX Designer and I was going to propose that my company use UserTesting on the app we just released, and on subsequent releases as a good way to mix testing into our process.

First of all, UserTesting is very cagey about their pricing, but after chatting with an agent I learned that I can buy tests for $90/each (introductory pricing lets me have the first 10 for $45/each). Pricey. I asked if I would be able to select for a specific type of professionals and they said I would.

Out of curiosity, I signed up to be a tester. Man---what a mess. As a tester, I felt like I was treated poorly and unfairly. Information was just taken from me through surveys with no compensation. I was docked a point on my first mini-test for taking 4 minutes instead of 5 minutes even though I was thoughtful about what I said. Who cares?... but it left me feeling a little resentful after spending over an hour setting up an account, setting up a user profile on my machine to maintain my privacy, etc... and a whole lot of time finding out that I didn't qualify for tests after taking very long surveys.

Today, I took my first full length test. It was actually pretty interesting as a UX Designer to see how other designers are working. In no way was the compensation fair. I spent 25 minutes in the test, but another 20 minutes finding a test that I actually qualified for and some extra time making sure I was in a quiet environment with a good connection and no interruptions. All of that time and effort for $10 (maybe). Totally not worth it.

The real story is that I don't feel like buying user tests from usertesting.com would be a worthwhile spend of our design budget. I get that hosting video and developing software is not free, but what is usertesting doing with all the revenue coming in? They could at least compensate testers something that would come out to $30/hour after setup and failed starts---about $40 per test (still less than half of what they charge their clients). Instead they pay out 10% of revenue and waste peoples time.

It's a neat idea and a useful app... just not fair to the people at the heart of the research and therefore I wouldn't trust the results or feel good about using the service. I would not recommend usertesting.com as a good way to make money unless you are just bored and wasting your time anyway. I'm very skeptical that they could recruit the professional users I would need to interview for the amount they are willing to compensate.

I used to love doing user testing tests... they were simple, didn't take too long and paid well. I also did a few studies with them and was usually rated highly. They continued to send out surveys for studies they believed I would fit into, but within the past year, I have not been accepted to any studies- which is extremely strange (I would typically be accepted to 2-3 every month and my user testing rating is 4.5 stars). The last straw was when I completed my last test, the "customer" and user testing both believed that I did not complete the task successfully and rated me at 1 star which meant no payment. I was completely bewildered because I was positive I had successfully completed the tasks and even had proof of that because of the submitted written answers as well. I emailed Usertesting to let them know that and even stated that if they believed I did not successfully complete one part of the task, why would that be rated as 1 star vs 3-4? 1 star is the same rating as an individual who completely did not read directions or complete any of the task, but to rate someone as one star when they did complete the tasks and objective is not right. I will no longer waste my time doing these tests because they are obviously now rating lower just to avoid payment and they showed that they do not care about their testers.

Ive been doing testing for them for years. In the beginning it was great. I would qualify for many tests and the client would give me high marks for my detailed testing. Then the problems began. Clients and even User Testing would find any way they could to decline payment. Id go through the recorded video with User Testing and show them I did exactly what was requested. They would then pay out the fee for my work. Kind of like an insurance company. Deny the claim and maybe deny the appeal.
Then there was a lull where I would get no tests at all. I wrote to them and they told me to keep waiting for tests. I just stopped looking at that point because I figured there were too many testers and not enough work. Then the test requests started rolling in again about a year ago. I never qualified for any tests. What I think User Testing is doing (or their clients) is to phrase the qualification / survey in such a way that they get the information they need without you actually having to take a test. Think of the questions as free marketing research. For example, you get questions like what is your income, what is your age, what auto insurance do you use, what brands do you use?
Now its even worse, if thats even possible. I am hit with a ton of test requests. They still gather the data for marketing research purposes in the guise of qualifying questions. But now they will send you the same test request multiple times on different dates. They will send you requests for high paying qualifying tests which have already expired. I hadnt checked my inbox there and I had SIX pages of tests to go through. After going through about 30 tests and not qualifying for a single one, I tried to decline all the tests in bulk. You cant do it. You can only do one page at a time. I dont know if declining tests hurt you for getting future tests but at this point I dont care. The company has lost all credibility in my book.