If you’re looking for the perfect research repository tool for your organization, you’ve come to the right place.
We shall first look into what is a user research repository, followed by a detailed review of Condens and its alternatives. We’ll compare them based on pricing, quality of analysis, transcription, features offered and ease of use.
What is a user research repository?
A UX (User Experience) Research Repository stores research data, notes, and insights. These can be accessed when needed, ideally by everyone in the organization.
Check out our complete guide to repositories, and how to set one up from scratch here.
A good repository makes it easy for teams across the organization to find whatever data they need, whenever they need it.
A user research repository can be as simple as a Notion doc or a Google Drive folder, or be a complex library of insights inside dedicated applications that can run AI qualitative analysis, organize your notes, share insight snippets with stakeholders, and make research much faster.
If you’re already a Condens user, nice to see you! Let us know what your experience with the product has been like here.
Here are the most popular repository tools in 2024 with detailed review, features and pricing.
Condens
Before we jump into the alternatives, here’s a quick summary on everything Condens.
What is Condens?
Condens is a UX research repository tool that’s known for its simple, user-friendly interface and affordable pricing.
You can upload calls, and have them transcribed automatically on Condens. You can also tag sections on the transcripts of every call, and review tagged data in a filterable view or an affinity map like “canvas”.
It also offers the following:
- Automatic transcription, video clips, and highlight reels
- AI-assisted tagging and auto-summarization
- Handy tools to track and manage participants.
- Dedicated Stakeholder Repository for colleagues to find past research
- A drag-and-drop feature to add highlights to affinity maps, empathy maps, etc.
Pros of Condens
Condens fans love its clean UI and simple interface, especially when compared to more complex competitors like Dovetail.
Condens also makes it easier to share insights with your team (pretty important, we’d say). Instead of requiring users to log in to view insights, you can share them as public links. You don’t have to purchase extra seats for just viewing files.
The Condens support team is also very responsive and helpful. The pricing is affordable, which makes it a great option for easy report building and data analysis.
Cons of Condens
Condens is great for storing and sharing research data, but it's best as a post-interview project. It doesn't offer any support with setting up user interviews, live recording or note-taking.
Condens does not provide a lot of features for data management like auto-tagging, custom vocabulary, and API.
The integrations are also limited, with a lot of users complaining about how difficult it is to migrate data to Miro boards, for instance.
Transcription
We tested the same clip on every repository tool on this list. Condens transcripts were of good quality, but struggled a little to distinguish between speakers.
Read More: Tips on repositories from researchers at Google & Razorpay
How much does Condens cost?
Condens has four pricing plans: Individual, Team, Business, and Enterprise.
For Freelancers
Condens offers a great plan for Individual researchers at $15/month. It’s quite affordable compared to the other products on this list.
Condens include unlimited projects, unlimited sharing of findings, and unlimited file storage in all plans.
For Small Teams
The Condens Team plan offers unlimited storage, projects, and access to all analysis features for up to 3 researchers at $190/month.
Condens Team plan will also provide a stakeholder repository.
However, it does not offer granular permission management, single sign-on (SSO), or data security assessments.
Teams of 2-5 Researchers
The Condens Business plan costs $450/month. It allows up to 5 researchers, unlimited transcription hours, unlimited projects, unlimited sharing of findings, unlimited file storage, and all analysis features.
Unlike the Team plan, Condens Business and Enterprise offers granular permission management, single sign-on (SSO), and data security assessments.
Teams of 5+ Researchers
Costing $1200/month, the Condens Enterprise plan allows up to 10 researchers. It offers the same analysis and repository features as the Business plan.
Condens Community Reviews
Here’s a summary of Condens reviews across popular platforms like G2, ProductHunt, and Reddit.
G2 Condens Review: 4.8/5 Stars
We also fed user reviews in Claude.ai (of course) for a quick summary.
TLDR: The reviews for Condens are quite positive, with users praising its ease of use, frequent updates, and effective sharing options. While there are a few minor criticisms, most users find it to be a valuable tool for research analysis and management.
Positive aspects:
- Very easy to use, especially for analyzing video recordings and open-ended survey responses
- Regular addition of new features and enhancements
- Effective sharing options that work well for teams
- Responsive and helpful customer support
- Atomic approach allows for identifying global patterns across projects
- Helps in managing participant pools with custom fields
Negative aspects:
- Navigation can take some getting used to
- Can't reach out to participants directly from the tool
- Some users wish for more specific keyboard shortcuts to improve workflow
- Transcriptions, while good, still have room for improvement
- Performance issues when used with Grammarly on long transcripts (though this may be a Grammarly issue)
“Condens user here! I’m a huge fan. I’ve found it very easy to use, new features/enhancements are added regularly, and the sharing options work well for my team. I’ve used it for probably 3-4 years primarily to analyze video recordings of interviews, but I’m currently using it to analyze open-ended survey responses and I’m happy with it so far!” — Condens Review Quote from Reddit.
Looppanel
Automate all the tedious, manual parts of a researcher's job. This is us!
What is Looppanel?
Looppanel is an AI-powered research analysis & repository tool for UX Researchers.
The product has been built based on how researchers actually do research—using a discussion guide, notes, and tags.
Calls that are already scheduled on your Google Calendar will automatically show up in the calendar view.
During the call, notes can be taken on the web app or on the Looppanel extension.
Any part of the transcript can be easily turned into a highlight, tagged, and turned into a clip that can be shared with anyone.
As your project takes shape, you can find all your highlights and insights, arranged either by questions or by tags.
All the sharing features in Looppanel are free, starting from bringing in stakeholders to take notes live during user interviews, to watching clips (which you can embed directly into Jira for your engineers to watch) or reviewing insight reports.
We’ve also just launched a smart search that allows Google-like search through your projects and calls, to help you find anything across your projects. It’s basically magic.
How does Looppanel compare to Condens?
Despite both tools having a similar learning curve, Looppanel has an edge over Condens with the auto-generated notes and unlimited collaborators features, along with additional analysis capabilities.
Comparison in terms of features
Transcription
Looppanel wins out when it comes to transcription. We tested the same clip from Forrest Gump 😌and not to brag, but even the sentiment analysis was top-notch.
Interviews
- Condens requires uploading recorded user interviews while Looppanel lets you auto-record and transcribe your calls live.
- Looppanel’s in-app calendar also lets you track your upcoming calls and assign them to projects before they happen.
- Condens offers the additional feature of participant management, which allows you to create profiles and record participant contact information, track administrative tasks etc. Looppanel does not offer this yet.
Analysis
- Looppanel automatically takes AI-generated notes of your calls while recording live. You can also create time-stamps for important moments during the call for later. Condens does not offer this — neither does any other tool in this list.
- Looppanel provides automatic sentiment analysis based on the transcripts, which Condens does not.
- Condens focuses on manual analysis and tagging. Looppanel allows you to tag manually, but offers AI-assisted support for grouping and analysis
Managing Stakeholders
- Looppanel lets you add external notetakers to an ongoing user interview. It also allows for one-click sharing of clips and notes without the need to sign up.
- Looppanel allows you to share your insights as public links and add unlimited collaborators without requiring them to sign up.
Comparison in terms of pricing
Like Condens, Looppanel also offers you 15 days for free to test it out.
You also get 5 transcription hours on the app for free.
Solo Researchers
Looppanel will cost about $30/month and offer 10 transcription hours for teams of up to 3 researchers.
Condens offers the same for $15/month, but without the features of live note-taking, unlimited stakeholder sharing, and Auto-record on Zoom, GMeet or Teams.
Teams of 2-5 Researchers
Looppanel’s pro plan should easily work for a medium-sized team.
It will cost up to $350 per month ($3500 yearly) for 25 transcription hours monthly.
Condens offers the same for $190-$450/month, based on the number of researchers on your team. The Condens Business plan includes security agreements and Single sign-on (SSO).
Teams of 5+ Researchers
For large organizations with legal requirements, the Business plan offers 120 transcription hours/month, SSO, and priority support for $1000 per month.
Condens also offers unlimited transcription hours monthly for its Enterprise plan, costing a higher price of $1200/month instead.
Looppanel also offers a custom Enterprise pricing plan for larger organizations.
Cons of Looppanel
- Compared to Condens, Looppanel doesn’t offer too many options for visual analysis liek heat maps, charts etc..
- You cannot recruit users or build participant profiles on Looppanel, as with Dovetail or Condens.
Check out Looppanel's list of Best Respository Tools in 2024 here.
Looppanel Community Reviews
Here’s a summary of Looppanel reviews across popular platforms like G2, ProductHunt, and Reddit.
G2 Looppanel Review: 4.8/5 Stars
We also fed user reviews in Claude.ai for a quick summary.
TLDR: The reviews for Looppanel are overwhelmingly positive, with users praising its efficiency, AI-powered features, and time-saving capabilities. While there are a few minor criticisms, most users find it to be an exceptional tool for research analysis and management.
Positive aspects:
- Auto-note generation and AI-tagging features save significant time
- Extremely efficient for analyzing user interviews
- Best transcription tool among AI-powered options
- Dramatically reduces analysis time (e.g., 40 hours to 1 hour for 10 interviews)
- Helpful for understanding foreign accents and summarizing calls
- Rapid feature releases and updates
- Great for uncovering and sharing user opinions quickly
- Streamlines the process of collecting and analyzing interview data
Negative aspects:
- Transcript editing could be more robust
- Some file formats (like mk4) are not supported
“As a researcher with 14 years of experience and over a decade in UX, I can confidently say that Looppanel is the best product I have ever used for research. I've tried six different transcription tools that utilize AI, and Looppanel stands out as the clear winner. ” — Looppanel Review Quote from G2
Dovetail
What is Dovetail?
Dovetail is a popular UX research repository. It is a web-based platform that lets you organize research data, make notes, and collaborate with team members.
Dovetail is built on the academic approach of qualitative data analysis.
Some bonus features Dovetail offers are:
- AI summaries for research data and insights, highlighting key themes and trends
- Setting a custom vocabulary for your organization, to standardize terminology and analysis across teams
- Interactive visualization features such as charts, graphs, and heat maps.
- Templates for projects, which can come in handy for teams in a rush.
- Participant management capabilities (you can add the name and details of participants here to track over studies)
- A great API that’s powerful and flexible enough to integrate with Zapier, Airtable, or Google Sheets.
What is similar to Dovetail?
While Dovetail has gained popularity among researchers for its comprehensive features, it's not the only player in the field. Several competitors offer similar functionalities, and some even outperform Dovetail in specific areas. For instance, Condens can be seen as a "Dovetail lite”, providing a more streamlined and simplified user experience for those who don't need all of Dovetail's advanced features. On the other hand, Looppanel has carved out a niche as an excellent Dovetail alternative, offering superior transcription and AI analysis. Looppanel’s new auto-tagging feature has particularly impressed users, giving it quite an edge over Dovetail and other competitors.
How does Dovetail compare to Condens?
Condens and Dovetail are both visually appealing UX Research repository tools. Dovetail is a more fleshed-out version of Condens— both have the same basic workflow, with Dovetail being slightly more complex to navigate and learn.
Comparison in terms of features
Dovetail has better participant management compared to Condens. You’re able to track who you’ve spoken to over time.
If you prefer an academic approach to building and applying taxonomies, Dovetail also has a robust multi-layer taxonomy system.
Dovetail also has a stronger community of users who you can turn to with questions or concerns on how to use the product. This can be handy when you hit a roadblock or don’t know the best way to set the product up!
Transcription
We tested the same clip (from Forrest Gump 😌) on both applications. Both transcriptions are of great quality, but only Dovetail identified the two speakers accurately.
Dovetail fan? Find our notes + reviews of alternative research repository tools here.
Comparison in terms of pricing
Dovetail is free to use for 14 days. After this, the starting price is $30 per month or $300 per year.
Dovetail offers 4 paid plans: Starter, Team, Business and Enterprise
Dovetail Starter Plan | For Freelancers
Dovetail’s Starter plan is double that of Condens at $30/month.
However, the Dovetail Starter plan allows up to 3 contributors and unlimited free viewer accounts, while Condens does not.
On the other hand, Dovetail limits the number of projects, transcript hours, and storage space depending on the plan. Condens offers these features in an unlimited capacity.
Dovetail Teams Plan | Teams of 2-3 researchers
Dovetail Teams offers 10 hours of transcription, and 50 GB storage for teams up to 3 researchers for $375/month. The team plan also offers the ability to keep certain project folders private.
Condens is significantly cheaper in comparison, with unlimited storage, projects, and access to all analysis features, and a stakeholder repository.
Unlike Condens, Dovetail Teams does offer granular permission management, single sign-on (SSO), or data security assessments, as well as EU and USA data hosting options.
Dovetail Business Plan | For teams of 2-10 researchers
At $1800/month, Dovetail’s Business plan is waay more expensive than Condens’ Business Plan at $450 monthly. However, it allows for more contributors, despite a limitation of 100 transcription hours and 500 GB of storage.
Dovetail Business is also built to keep high-strung legal teams happy: you can have different user groups with different permissions, security reviews, and Single Sign-on.
Dovetail Enterprise Plan
This plan is handy if you have a ginormous team, HIPAA / auto data deletion requirements, or the need for custom legal contracting/support. The pricing is quote-based, contact the Dovetail sales team to know more.
Cons of Dovetail
Dovetail is a complex product that will slow down your research process.
Everything from confusing navigation to building a tagging taxonomy before you analyze any data makes Dovetail extremely complicated to use.
It’s also likely to slow down your research process, because you will need to rewatch every user interview (likely multiple times) in order to tag all the data you need.
There is also no room for notes in Dovetail. The only kind of annotation you can do is tagging - which means any notes taken by you or your teammates during the calls end up elsewhere. If you prefer to work with notes rather than tags, you’re also out of luck.
Also horror of horrors, Dovetail now deletes your workspace permanently if you’ve had a free trial version, and choose to not upgrade.
Read More: Tips on repositories from researchers at Google & Razorpay
EnjoyHQ
The most grown-up tool on our list, EnjoyHQ has had enough time to grow and flesh out. It has also gotten some exciting additional features after being acquired by UserZoom (which has now been bought by UserTesting.com). The price hikes however, yikes.
For a small team, EnjoyHQ can still be powerful in the beginning.
- Its unlimited storage capacity helps to upload files of all sizes and formats with no additional charges.
- Unlimited transcription allows you to run studies big and small with the help of the product.
- Enjoy’s powerful filter options are also loved—you can discover any data or insights you need in seconds.
How does EnjoyHQ compare to Condens?
Comparison in terms of features
Transcription
EnjoyHQ’s transcription quality is good, but not as accurate as the other tools on this list.
Managing Stakeholders
EnjoyHQ provides a stakeholder repository feature, which allows researchers to create and share interactive reports and dashboards with stakeholders, partners, and clients. Condens offers this feature too, but not as extensively for the Individual and Team plans.
Integrations
It also integrates with UserTesting (no surprise). You can easily import data and insights from UserTesting directly into EnjoyHQ and analyze them alongside other sources of feedback. Condens doesn’t offer this, but supports Slack, Zoom, Google Drive, and other tools through Zapier.
Comparison in terms of pricing
The starting plan on EnjoyHQ is free with features like unlimited transcription and uploads, video editing features, unlimited research projects and (nearly) any integration your heart desires.
The Grow plan is for teams upto 10 people, while Scale is for packs of 25 seats. Pricing is customized based on team size and requirements, so you’ll have to contact Enjoy’s sales team for more information.
Aurelius
What is Aurelius?
Aurelius prides itself on being a UXR tool created by researchers for researchers.
Much like Condens, Aurelius is also suited for after you’ve had your user interview.
While tools like Looppanel and Condens are meant for faster research, Aurelius is more academic in nature.
How does Aurelius compare to Condens?
Comparison in terms of features
Transcription
The transcript generated by Aurelius was just as accurate as the one by Condens. They could do a better job at the way the transcript looks.
Interviews
Aurelius also requires users to upload separately recorded videos under the “documents” section.
Overall, Aurelius does not add much during the interview process and does not offer basic discussion guides either. It should be considered a post-call tool.
Analysis
- Aurelius does not provide automatic sentiment analysis based on interview transcripts, unlike Looppanel and Dovetail
- Working with Condens is relatively more intuitive. Aurelius requires more or a learning curve.
- Aurelius is better at creating research reports. As soon as your project starts, the report builder generates a report with insights, recommendations, etc.
Comparison in terms of pricing
Solo Researchers
Aurelius will cost about $49 a month and offer unlimited stakeholders, storage, projects, and transcription. Condens will cost $15 a month in comparison but offer just 12 hours of transcription.
Teams of 2-5 Researchers
Aurelius Premium works best for smaller in-house teams. The cost would be $199 a month.
Condens would cost $190-$450 a month depending on team size, with significantly fewer features, limited stakeholder involvement, report generation, and transcription hours.
Teams of 5+ Researchers
Aurelius Premium could work for larger teams as well! In case your team is large enough to require advanced features such as priority support, penetration testing reports, personalized training, etc. — you might want to look into their Enterprise plan with custom pricing. Condens would cost $1200 for 10 users. At this stage, Condens’ price against Aurelius is not justified by the relative ease of using it.
Great Question
The most cleverly named tool by far, and not the easiest to search for!
What is Great Question?
Great Question aims to be a one-stop solution for all things research.
They already have solutions for use cases ranging from ReOps to Marketing and design.
We have only approached the tool from the lens of a researcher, since you’re who we write for.
- You can start a study based on one of the templates they’ve already provided or start from scratch.
- In the planning step, you can decide to offer incentives and add screeners, consent forms, etc.
- Over the next steps, you connect your calendar, decide on the incentives, and add screener questions.
- Finally, you can create your assets and finish setting up the study. The assets include landing pages, invites to screener and participation questions, and a discussion guide.
How does Great Question compare to Condens?
Great Question is more of a fleshed-out product than Condens, with a decent learning curve.
Great Question might get overwhelming for researchers along the way, comparatively. The tool does try to do A LOT at once, which can be off-putting.
We can compare the two on the basis of pricing and features.
Comparison in terms of features
Transcription
As of writing this article, Great Question is still working on the transcript for our Forrest Gump clip 🤔.
Interviews
Great Question is by far the most comprehensive tool to set up your interview. None of these features are available on Condens.
- The basic workflow ensures that you quickly set up your study and get started with inviting participants.
- In the planning step, you can decide to offer incentives and add screeners, consent forms, etc.
- You can also create landing pages to invite participants to interviews.
However, both Great Question and Condens don't offer call recording like Looppanel. Uploading screen recordings of your interviews can be inconvenient.
Analysis
- Condens has visual analysis features that are missing from Great Question. Great Question’s analysis features are quite rudimentary.
- Condens has better analysis features, and works as a great post-interview tool. Great Question works as a significantly better pre-interview tool.
Comparison in terms of pricing
Great Question offers a decent free version, and four priced plans. The pricing is per seat, unlike Condens’s plans.
Solo Researchers
Great Question’s free plan is good for solo researchers, allowing 5 interview hours monthly, with 3GB storage and unlimited viewers.
It also offers the option of unlimited studies, which is great for freelancers with multiple clients.
Teams of 2-5 Researchers
Teams of up to 4 researchers can go for Great Question’s Pro Plan. Each seat costs $15 monthly, with 10 transcription hours and 50 GB storage.
Additionally, you also get the option of rolling and round-robin interview scheduling, with highlight reels to share with stakeholders, and incentives for customers.
Condens’s Team and Business Plans costs $190 - $450 monthly. You don’t get any of the interview scheduling or planning features that Great Question offers.
Teams of 5+ Researchers
The Team plan is a great option allowing for unlimited seat options, with each seat costing $35 monthly. It offers 30 interview hours monthly, unlimited viewers, focus groups and study/email templates.
The Scale plan also allows unlimited seats at $85/month, offering custom consent and NDA forms, branding, Qualtrics integration, and concierge repository migration with 65 interview hours monthly.
Larger teams can also explore the Custom plan with custom transcription hour requirements and more options.
Top pick for a research repository (per different criterias)
We get it—it’s hard to read all these long reviews and choose one tool that’ll fit your organization’s needs best. We’ve tried to make it a little easier. Here’s our top pick based on the criteria you’re assessing research repository tools on—be it transcription, analysis, or sharing insights with stakeholders.
Transcription
When it comes to transcription quality, Looppanel and Dovetail stand out as the top performers. Both tools demonstrated excellent accuracy in transcribing the test clip we gave them. Looppanel's live transcription feature might give it a slight advantage for those conducting real-time interviews.
Looppanel also provides sentiment analysis based on the transcripts, adding an extra layer of insight to the data. Looppanel's ability to auto-record and transcribe calls live gives it an edge over competitors.
While slightly behind Looppanel, Dovetail still offers great transcription quality. It accurately identified speakers in the test clip, which is crucial for multi-participant interviews. For researchers prioritizing transcription quality, either Looppanel or Dovetail would be excellent choices.
Analysis
In terms of analysis capabilities, Looppanel stands out for its AI-powered features. It offers automatic note-taking during live calls, sentiment analysis, and AI-assisted support for grouping and analysis. The auto-generated notes and smart search functionality make it easier to find insights across projects quickly.
For researchers who prefer a more academic approach, Dovetail offers a robust multi-layer taxonomy system.
The choice between these tools for analysis depends on the researcher's preferred approach. Looppanel is ideal for those who want AI assistance and quick insights, Dovetail for those who prefer a more structured, academic approach.
Sharing
For teams prioritizing easy and flexible sharing of research insights, Looppanel appears to be the top choice. Its combination of unlimited collaborators, public link sharing, and easy clip sharing makes it highly effective for distributing findings. However, for teams that need more advanced reporting features, EnjoyHQ might be a better fit.
While not as feature-rich as Looppanel in sharing, Condens still offers robust options. It allows sharing of insights as public links and provides unlimited viewers.
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