What Is UserZoom?: And How Does It Compare to Sprig

Example H2

Introduction

UserZoom is a user experience research platform, founded in 2007, that teams use to run usability tests, card sorts, tree tests, and surveys inside user experience studies, and to benchmark digital experiences with a 100-point score called QXscore. UserTesting merged with UserZoom in April 2023, and UserZoom is now marketed as a platform within UserTesting. UserZoom measures how people perform on tasks. For survey-based quantitative research across a product, email, and research panels, Sprig is the stronger fit.

Key takeaways

UserZoom's history and current status are the two points this guide sources most carefully. The essentials:

UserZoom is a user experience research platform for usability testing, information architecture testing, and experience benchmarking.
Thoma Bravo invested in UserZoom in April 2022, acquired UserTesting in January 2023, and merged the two companies in April 2023.
UserZoom still exists as a named platform inside UserTesting, and no sunset date has been published.
QXscore combines behavioral and attitudinal measures into one 0 to 100 score used for competitive benchmarking.
UserZoom is strongest at task-based user experience measurement, and it is not built for survey programs that reach a known population at scale.
Sprig is built for quantitative customer and market research, and most research programs need both kinds of instrument.

The rest of this guide explains each point with its source, then gives two decision tools for teams deciding where a research question belongs.

What Is UserZoom, in One Definition?

UserZoom is a user experience research platform that measures how people interact with websites, apps, and prototypes. Teams typically use it to run moderated and unmoderated usability tests, card sorts, tree tests, click tests, and surveys attached to those studies. Its signature output is QXscore, a standardized experience score built for benchmarking against competitors.

UserZoom described itself as "the pioneer of the Digital User Experience (UX) Insights category" when it closed a growth investment from Thoma Bravo in April 2022.

Co-founder Alfonso de la Nuez led the company as co-chief executive at the time, and it was headquartered in San Francisco.

UserZoom's reporting centered on task metrics.

Rather than centering on a handful of recorded sessions, UserZoom built its reputation on larger unmoderated studies that produced task success rates, time on task, and benchmark scores a design team could track over releases.

That heritage matters for anyone comparing UserZoom with a survey platform. UserZoom does produce numbers, but the numbers describe task performance inside a test environment rather than attitudes and choices across a customer base.

Is UserZoom Still Available in 2026?

UserZoom is still available as a named platform in 2026. The userzoom.com domain now redirects to a page on UserTesting's site that markets the "UserZoom UX Research Platform" for usability testing, surveys, and information architecture testing. UserTesting has not published a sunset date for UserZoom.

What UserTesting's help center says about UserZoom customers

UserTesting's help center frames the move from UserZoom to UserTesting as an upgrade path rather than a forced migration.

Its quick guide for UserZoom customers is written for teams "considering upgrading to UserTesting or in the process of doing so," and maps each UserZoom feature to a UserTesting equivalent.

No end-of-life date appears in that guide. Treat that as the published position, and confirm your own contract terms directly with your account team.

Why third-party summaries often get UserZoom's status wrong

Some third-party comparison pages describe UserZoom as fully absorbed or discontinued, and at least one dates the acquisition to 2022. Both claims conflict with the primary sources.

Thoma Bravo's 2022 transaction was a growth investment in UserZoom, and the merger with UserTesting was announced on April 3, 2023.

The practical read for a buyer: UserZoom is a live product line inside UserTesting, with an actively promoted path toward the core UserTesting platform.

Who Owns UserZoom? A Timeline From 2007 to 2026

UserTesting owns UserZoom, and UserTesting is owned by Thoma Bravo and Sunstone Partners. The ownership chain took shape over 12 months, between April 2022 and April 2023, and the merger itself was announced on April 3, 2023, with the combined company keeping the UserTesting name.

At the merger, UserTesting said the combined company served more than 3,400 customers in over 45 countries, including 75 of the Fortune 100, with more than 100 customers already using both platforms.

Those are the company's 2023 figures and have not been independently verified.

The merger announcement named what UserZoom contributed: breadth of research capabilities, consultative services, the QXscore benchmarking methodology, and an experience insights hub.

What Does UserZoom Do?

UserZoom runs task-based user experience studies and turns them into metrics. Its capabilities fall into five groups, and each has a documented equivalent in the core UserTesting platform. The sections below describe each one and name what it measures.

Usability testing, moderated and unmoderated

Usability testing is UserZoom's core. Participants attempt tasks on a website, app, or prototype while the platform records their screen, clicks, and often their voice.

Unmoderated studies run without a facilitator and generally reach larger samples, which is what allowed UserZoom to report task success rates rather than anecdotes.

UserTesting's help center maintains a dedicated section on unmoderated studies with UserZoom, and its merger mapping sends UserZoom's advanced and basic usability tests to UserTesting's think-out-loud and interaction tests.

Card sorting and tree testing

Card sorting asks participants to group labels in a way that makes sense to them. Tree testing asks participants to find items in a proposed navigation structure without visual design. Both are information architecture methods, and UserZoom documents both.

These methods answer one question: whether people can find things in a proposed structure. Teams typically run them before a redesign ships rather than after.

Surveys inside user experience studies

UserZoom includes a survey study type, and UserTesting's help center publishes instructions for creating a survey with UserZoom. Surveys commonly run before or after tasks, capturing satisfaction, ease of use, or Net Promoter Score (NPS) alongside the behavioral data.

The survey capability is built to support a user experience study rather than to run a standalone survey program.

Clickstream and heat maps

UserZoom records where participants click and how they move between pages. The UserTesting mapping sends UserZoom clickstream to Interactive Path Flows and UserZoom heat maps to click maps.

The IntelliZoom participant network

IntelliZoom was UserZoom's participant recruitment network. UserTesting's mapping sends IntelliZoom to the UserTesting Network, which it says now reaches 7.6 million participants, including 3.2 million verified professionals, as of its July 2026 release.

What Is QXscore?

QXscore is a standardized experience score, on a 0 to 100 scale, that combines behavioral and attitudinal metrics into one number. UserTesting describes it as "a standard score that combines these attitudinal and behavioral metrics to provide a complete measure of the digital experience." It came to UserTesting through the UserZoom merger.

The published components are task success, usability, customer satisfaction, reliability and trust, appearance, and Net Promoter Score. Teams often use QXscore to compare one release against another, and to benchmark their score against industry standards and named competitors.

QXscore is the clearest example of what UserZoom does well. Rather than reporting that five participants struggled with checkout, it reports a checkout score that a design organization can track quarter over quarter.

Its limit is scope. QXscore measures an experience as participants perform it in a study, which is a different population and a different setting from customers using a live product.

A team that wants to know how satisfied its actual customer base is, segmented by plan or region, typically needs a survey fielded to that base.

Who Uses UserZoom?

UserZoom is typically used by user experience research teams, design organizations, and research operations groups at large enterprises that run usability studies at volume. At the 2023 merger, UserTesting said the combined company served 75 of the Fortune 100.

The common buyer is a centralized research team that owns benchmarking across several digital products. Rather than running one study per launch, these teams often run recurring QXscore benchmarks so executives can see experience quality move over time.

Product designers and content strategists commonly use the information architecture tools, since card sorting and tree testing answer navigation questions before engineering starts.

Survey-heavy teams in marketing, customer experience, and product management generally sit outside UserZoom's core audience. Their questions are about attitudes across a customer base, which is the job survey platforms are built for.

UserZoom vs. UserTesting: How the Two Platforms Map

UserZoom and UserTesting are one company, and most UserZoom capabilities have a UserTesting equivalent. UserTesting historically centered on video-based think-aloud feedback, while UserZoom centered on larger-sample measurement and benchmarking. UserTesting's help center mapping shows how the two now line up.

For a UserZoom customer, the mapping means most UserZoom features have a named equivalent. The larger changes sit elsewhere: study workflow, contract structure, and account coverage.

UserTesting's chief executive acknowledged that disruption directly. In a February 11, 2026 note to customers, Eric Johnson wrote that customers had reported slower innovation and account team changes after the merger, and he announced a move to team-based unlimited pricing.

Where UserZoom Is Strong

UserZoom is strongest where a team needs to measure how people perform on tasks and compare that performance over time or against competitors. Four capabilities stand out, and in each one UserZoom leads Sprig outright:

Benchmarks task performance with QXscore against competitors and industry norms
Tests information architecture through card sorting and tree testing before design begins
Runs moderated interviews and live observed sessions with think-aloud video
Recruits participants for user experience tests through a large combined network

Sprig does not match the first three. Sprig publishes no competitive experience benchmark comparable to QXscore, does not offer card sorting or tree testing, and does not run moderated sessions or live screen observation.

Recruitment is the exception. The UserTesting Network is the larger pool for general-population testers, but Sprig is often the better way to recruit a team's own customers, because it can screen and invite people inside the live product.

Winner: UserZoom. UserZoom is the better choice for task-based usability measurement and information architecture testing.

Where UserZoom Is Not the Right Instrument

UserZoom is not built for survey programs that measure attitudes, preferences, and choices across a known customer base. A participant in a usability test is often recruited for the test rather than drawn from your own users, and the setting is a study rather than the live product.

Three kinds of research question typically sit outside UserZoom's design:

Measuring satisfaction or NPS across thousands of real customers, segmented by plan or region
Estimating preference and tradeoffs with MaxDiff or conjoint analysis for pricing and packaging
Triggering a survey in the live product at the moment a customer completes an action

Each of these is a survey question rather than a task question. The instrument that answers it needs distribution to a defined population, advanced question types, and repeatable fielding, which is the category Sprig is built for.

Winner: Sprig. UserZoom is the wrong instrument when the population is your customer base and the method is a survey.

Task-Based User Experience Measurement vs. Survey-Based Quantitative Research

Task-based user experience measurement and survey-based quantitative research both produce numbers, but they measure different things. Task-based measurement records what participants do in a controlled study, while survey-based research records what a defined population thinks and chooses.

Both tools report percentages, which is why the two are often confused. A 72 percent task success rate and a 72 percent satisfaction rate look alike on a slide, but they answer different questions with different evidence.

A question type is not a methodology. UserZoom can ask a satisfaction question, and Sprig can capture a prototype task, but the design of each platform determines which answers a team can defend.

Rather than choosing one platform, research teams increasingly route each question by its population: recruited participants go to a task-based tool such as UserTesting, and a team's own customers or a targeted market go to Sprig.

Where Sprig Fits as the Quantitative Research Platform

Sprig is an enterprise research platform powered by AI agents, built for survey-based quantitative customer and market research. It fields studies in the product on web and native mobile, by email with a custom sending domain, through shareable links and QR codes, and through external research panels filtered by more than 300 targeting attributes.

How Sprig covers survey measurement

Sprig documents 14 question types, including MaxDiff on the Enterprise plan for surveys and conjoint for Enterprise teams on link surveys.

Its logic covers skip logic, display logic, response and attribute piping, and randomization at three levels. Longitudinal programs run as multiple survey runs from one study.

Three AI agents handle the manual work between a research question and a result.

The Design Agent builds a programmed study from a document or a research goal, the Field Agent adds real-time follow-up questions during fielding, and the Synthesize Agent produces themes and reports with supporting quotes.

Researchers remain responsible for approving every study before it reaches a respondent and for deciding what the findings mean.

Sprig also covers part of UserZoom's ground.

It publishes System Usability Scale and SUPR-Q templates for questionnaire-based user experience measurement, runs prototype studies with a Recorded Task question that captures screen, voice, and video, and offers session replays and heatmaps around in-product responses.

How Sprig works as a recruitment platform

Sprig is a strong recruitment platform for research that needs a team's own users. Rather than buying testers from a general network, a team can trigger a short screener inside its product, target people by behavior and attributes, and invite qualified users to a follow-up study on any platform, including a UserTesting session.

Sprig publishes templates for recruiting participants directly, running a demographic screener, and identifying participants for follow-up. For people outside the customer base, Sprig's panels add more than 300 targeting attributes.

This is where the two platforms frequently work together. Sprig finds the right customers at the right moment, and the task-based tool observes what those customers do.

What Sprig does not do

Sprig does not run moderated interviews, live screen observation, card sorting, or tree testing, and it publishes no competitive experience benchmark comparable to QXscore.

It does not publish its MaxDiff estimation methodology, weighting approach, or significance testing guidance, and it hosts data on Amazon Web Services facilities in the United States with no regional hosting option.

MCP support is not a differentiator in this comparison, since UserTesting released an MCP server in July 2026.

Sprig documents its MCP governance model: role-scoped access, a cap of 1,000 responses per call, no model training on response data, and human approval before any study goes live.

Winner: Sprig. Sprig is the stronger choice for quantitative survey research across a customer base or a targeted market.

Which Lane Is Your Research Question In?

A research question belongs with task-based measurement when it asks what people do, and with survey-based research when it asks what a population thinks or chooses. The decision table below routes common questions to the right instrument.

The last row is the useful one. Usability can be measured both ways, and the two methods often disagree in informative ways: a design can test well in a study and still frustrate customers in the live product.

What Legacy UserZoom Customers Should Check Before Renewal

Legacy UserZoom customers should confirm five things before a renewal, because the February 2026 pricing change affects contract structure. The checklist:

Confirm whether your UserZoom workspace renews as UserZoom or converts to UserTesting.
Export historical study data, recordings, and QXscore baselines before any platform change.
Check that benchmark methodology stays constant, so QXscore trends remain comparable across the transition.
Map every active study type to its UserTesting equivalent using the help center guide.
List the survey-based questions your team runs today and decide whether they belong on a survey platform.

The fifth step separates survey questions that need a defined population from the task studies that stay on UserTesting.

What Are the Main UserZoom Alternatives?

The main UserZoom alternatives depend on which part of UserZoom a team is replacing. For task-based usability testing and information architecture work, the core UserTesting platform is the direct successor. For the survey work some teams run inside UserZoom, a dedicated survey platform is the better category.

UserTesting is best for teams that want continuity with UserZoom, since the help center maps nearly every UserZoom study type to a UserTesting equivalent and QXscore carries over.

Lighter unmoderated testing tools such as Maze and Lyssna are also commonly evaluated by design teams. This guide did not verify their current capabilities, so confirm them against each vendor's own documentation before shortlisting.

Sprig is best for teams moving survey measurement off UserZoom, including satisfaction, NPS, MaxDiff, and conjoint studies fielded in the product, by email, or through panels, and for teams that want to recruit their own users into research.

Sprig is not a usability testing replacement, and teams that need observed sessions should keep a task-based tool alongside it.

UserZoom and Sprig Ratings on Third-Party Review Sites

UserZoom no longer has a standalone rating on G2. The G2 UserZoom reviews URL now resolves to a user research tools category page, and reviewers discuss UserZoom inside the UserTesting listing. Ratings below were retrieved on September 24, 2026.

On G2, UserTesting holds 4.4 out of 5 across 793 reviews and Sprig holds 4.3 out of 5 across 199 reviews.

Sprig's review base is about a quarter the size of UserTesting's, and the two products are reviewed for different jobs, so the scores are not a like-for-like comparison.

Sprig publishes no free tier and no self-serve signup, and UserTesting announced team-based unlimited pricing in February 2026. No prices appear in this guide, as verified against each vendor's published pages on September 24, 2026.

Frequently Asked Questions

Short answers to the questions buyers most often ask about UserZoom.

What is UserZoom used for?

UserZoom is used for task-based user experience research: moderated and unmoderated usability tests, card sorting, tree testing, click tests, and surveys attached to those studies.

Teams also use QXscore to benchmark digital experiences against competitors on a 0 to 100 scale.

Is UserZoom the same as UserTesting?

UserZoom and UserTesting are one company since their April 3, 2023 merger, but UserZoom is still marketed as a named platform within UserTesting.

Most UserZoom features map to UserTesting equivalents, and UserTesting's help center describes moving to the core platform as an upgrade.

Did UserTesting acquire UserZoom in 2022?

No, UserTesting did not acquire UserZoom in 2022. Thoma Bravo made a growth investment in UserZoom in April 2022 and acquired UserTesting in January 2023, and the two companies merged on April 3, 2023.

Is UserZoom being discontinued?

UserTesting has not published a discontinuation date for UserZoom as of September 2026. Its help center encourages UserZoom customers to move to the UserTesting platform, so renewal is the moment to confirm which platform your contract covers.

What is IntelliZoom?

IntelliZoom was UserZoom's participant recruitment network, used to find people who match a study's screener criteria. UserTesting's migration guide for UserZoom customers maps IntelliZoom to the UserTesting Network, which UserTesting says reaches 7.6 million participants, including 3.2 million verified professionals, as of its July 2026 release.

Is UserZoom quantitative or qualitative?

UserZoom is both, with a quantitative lean. It produces task success rates, time on task, and QXscore benchmarks from larger unmoderated studies, alongside recorded qualitative sessions.

Its numbers describe task performance rather than attitudes across a customer base.

Can Sprig replace UserZoom?

Sprig can replace the survey work a team runs inside UserZoom, and it can recruit a team's own users into task-based studies, but it does not replace the task-based testing itself.

Sprig does not run card sorting, tree testing, moderated sessions, or QXscore benchmarking. Teams that use both commonly route usability testing to UserTesting and survey measurement to Sprig.

How much does UserZoom cost?

UserTesting does not publish UserZoom prices, and this guide does not state prices for any vendor. In a February 11, 2026 note to customers, UserTesting's chief executive announced a move to team-based unlimited pricing, so pricing for UserZoom and UserTesting is typically quoted through the account team.

Can new customers still buy UserZoom?

UserTesting still markets the UserZoom UX Research Platform on its site, but it has not published whether new contracts are sold as UserZoom or only as UserTesting. Its help center steers existing UserZoom customers toward the core UserTesting platform, so new buyers should ask the account team which platform a contract covers.

Does UserZoom have an MCP server?

UserTesting, which owns UserZoom, released a Model Context Protocol server in July 2026 that connects recruitment, test creation, and results to AI clients such as Claude and ChatGPT. Sprig also publishes an MCP server with a documented governance model.

Bottom Line

UserZoom is a user experience research platform with a quantitative heritage, now owned by UserTesting and still sold as a named platform. It is the stronger instrument for usability testing, information architecture testing, and QXscore benchmarking, and teams with those needs should evaluate it and the core UserTesting platform together.

If your team needs to measure what customers think, prefer, and choose across a product, an email list, or a targeted market, Sprig is the platform built for that work.