When I started Optimizely with my co-founder, Pete Koomen, our goal was to enable anyone in the world to do website A/B testing. I believed then, as I do now, that we are democratizing the scientific method. That said, when a company doesn’t consider experimentation a business critical process, they are unlikely to dedicate the internal resources necessary to make it successful. We experimented (ha!) with a free plan to see if it would be a good model for getting customers to dip their toe into A/B testing. Turns out, the data showed it wasn’t as effective as a robust free trial, which we continue to offer for all products.
Also, A/B testing is far from dead. Companies that have a culture of experimentation have grown their market cap by 756% in the last five years. See our Opticon keynote for more context: https://www.optimizely.com/opticon/
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When I started Optimizely with my co-founder, Pete Koomen, our goal was to enable anyone in the world to do website A/B testing. I believed then, as I do now, that we are democratizing the scientific method. That said, when a company doesn’t consider experimentation a business critical process, they are unlikely to dedicate the internal resources necessary to make it successful. We experimented (ha!) with a free plan to see if it would be a good model for getting customers to dip their toe into A/B testing. Turns out, the data showed it wasn’t as effective as a robust free trial, which we continue to offer for all products.
Also, A/B testing is far from dead. Companies that have a culture of experimentation have grown their market cap by 756% in the last five years. See our Opticon keynote for more context: https://www.optimizely.com/opticon/