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Dovetail is a popular UX research analysis & repository tool. It lets you organize research data, transcribe calls, and tag information.
Keep reading if you're looking for alternatives to Dovetail to:
Centralize your research data in one place
Streamline and analyzing user interviews faster
If you have no prior experience with repositories, check out our definitive guide! Sadly 80% of repositories fail. We've researched the reasons why and how to set yourself up for success in this whitepaper.
What to look for in an analysis and repository tool?
There are tons of research analysis & repository tools cropping up! In this article we'll cover the most popular and cutting edge research tools in 2024.
To set yourself up for success, you should evaluate tools on these criteria:
Collaboration capabilities (make sure there are easy ways to invite non-researchers)
Tagging / analysis capabilities that suit your workflow
Google-like search to find data across your projects
A quick note on searching in repositories: old-school repositories like Dovetail require your team to set up a complex tagging taxonomy and for every person to tag data perfectly. This is one of the reasons repositories most commonly fail. Teams don't have time to set up complex taxonomies, and it's really hard to ensure each person on every project tags perfectly.
New-age repositories like Looppanel have Google-like search features instead, where you can type and question, keyword, or topic and find all the data you need.
Google-like search in new age repositories like Looppanel
This allows you to re-use research data across calls and projects without spending 50% of your time organizing data first.
Now that we know what a repository should include, let's jump into the most popular ones!
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Dovetail
Before we jump into the alternatives, here’s a quick crash course on Dovetail.
What is Dovetail?
Dovetail is a manual user research analysis & repository tool. This means it relies on manual effort to tag your transcripts before you can analyze or search through data.
Tagging taxonomies for a single project and across projects
Ability to analyze data across a trello board, canvas, table and other views
Filter / search across projects based on tags you've created
The backbone of Dovetail is a complex tagging taxonomy (a.k.a. a structure of tags). While it sounds promising in theory, unless you have a full-time librarian at your company, it can become challenging to implement this taxonomy in practice.
When to look for Dovetail alternatives?
It's time to look for Dovetail alternatives if you're struggling with any of these issues:
Find Dovetail complex and confusing to navigate. It's got a significant learning curve for your team.
You do not have a dedicated research librarian who can create, maintain and ensure adoption of your tagging taxonomy.
Your team moves quickly and is interested in efficiency for analysis.
Does that sound like you? Or you're just curious about what's new?
Either way, let's jump into Dovetail alternatives!
Dovetail Alternative: Looppanel
Looppanel is an AI-powered research analysis & repository tool. It's built like a research assistant—to automate all the tedious parts of qualitative research you don't have time for.
What is the difference between Looppanel and Dovetail?
Let's take a look...
Dovetail alternatives: Dovetail vs Looppanel transcription
Transcription quality: 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.
Data types: Dovetail supports more data types, so if you're looking to store tons of surveys or support tickets, it may be a better fit.
Analysis efficiency + AI features: Dovetail hasn't kept pace with the latest tech and you can tell from its AI features—reviews are poor. Looppanel has invested much more in cutting edge tech while making sure researchers can check and edit AI content. If you want to be on the cutting edge of what technology has to offer, Looppanel is a better bet.
Collaboration: While both tools offer collaboration features, if you want to enable collaboration across the broader team, Dovetail's pricing becomes a barrier. Even their $21,000+ business plan comes with only 10 contributors, so if you want to invite PMs, Designers, the broader team to collaborate, you can hit a wall very quickly. In comparison, Looppanel offers unlimited collaborators and viewers for Pro plan onwards.
Condens is basically ‘Dovetail lite’. It's a very similar product interms of workflows, but it has fewer features and a slightly lighter price tag.
Condens' core features include:
Automated transcription
Ability to tag transcripts with themes or topics
Ability to analyze data across calls (including a digital whiteboard)
Filter or search by tag across projects
Condens vs Dovetail
Dovetail alternatives: Condens vs Dovetail transcription
Transcription quality: We compared Dovetail vs Condens on transcript quality (with a clip from Forrest Gump 😌). Both transcripts captured the text correctly, but both struggled with identifying the number of speakers correctly. Condens struggled a bit more than Dovetail—picking up only 1 speaker, when there were 4.
Pricing: Condens offers a far friendly pricing plan than Dovetail's $21,600 for business organizations, but if you're a small team Dovetail's starter plan may be a better fit for you.
Dovetail alternatives: Condens vs Dovetail pricing
Analysis efficiency + AI features: Similar to Dovetail in this respect, Condens hasn't invested heavily in cutting-edge AI features. Both tools offer a manual approach for qualitative data analysis.
EnjoyHQ has been around for a while and was acquired by UserZoom (which has now been bought by UserTesting.com).
We'll be honest, we're yet to find a team that likes EnjoyHQ and their price hikes post acquisition haven't helped. It isn't the greatest Dovetail alternative to consider.
Tagging and taxonomy capabilities (it's a bit complex though!
Dovetail alternatives: EnjoyHQ vs Dovetail
EnjoyHQ vs Dovetail
What is the difference between EnjoyHQ and Dovetail?
Here's the tea:
Dovetail alternatives: Dovetail vs EnjoyHQ transcription
Transcription: EnjoyHQ's transcription is pretty decent. It distinguishes between speakers well enough, although it stumbled a bit with deciphering Forrest Gump's accent.
Ease of Use: EnjoyHQ is a challenging tool to learn and to use. Most teams don't end up using it for analysis at all, but just as a dumping ground for reports and data points.
Tagging efficiency: Although manual tagging is painful, EnjoyHQ has the ability to set tagging rules (E.g., all text mentioning "integration" should be tagged accordingly). This helps with large volumes of tagging, like when you're dealing with support tickets.
Integrations: EnjoyHQ is most useful if you want to pull data in from 10s of sources. They have native integrations with everything from Jira, to UserTesting, to survey tools. Consider this Dovetail alternative if you're looking to gather data from many sources. If you are focused on analyzing interviews / usability tests, stick to Dovetail, Looppanel, or Condens.
Pricing: As soon as your team scales to 2+ people, EnjoyHQ moves you to a custom pricing plan, which means we don't know what they'll charge you but it's probably a lot. Now that Dovetail's pricing plan is $21,600, Enjoy may offer some comparable options depending on your needs.
Dovetail Alternative: Aurelius
Aurelius is an old-school Dovetail alternative (and it shows). It has confusing, clunky UX and its analysis view seems lacking.
Aurelius' key features include:
Transcription and tagging of data
Keyword or tag-based searcha cross the repository
Aurelius vs Dovetail
Transcription: Aurelius' transcription quality and speaker identification was actually better than Dovetail's, but the way the transcript was visually shown left much to be desired. Each line of the transcript shows up as a separate card. An hour long call would generate 100s of these blocks that are visually painful to look at and process.
Dovetail alternatives: Aurelius vs Dovetail transcription
Usability: While Dovetail gets complaints for being confusing and hard to navigate, it's nothing near the usability issues that Aurelius has. The product is clunky and painful to navigate and use.
Tagging: One feature Aurelius offers that stands out: bulk tagging. You can select mulitple notes at once and tag them, saving many clicks. But bulk tagging doesn't make up for the painful UI of the transcript.
Pricing: Aurelius doesn't come cheap, especially if you want to try their monthly plan. If you're a small team, Dovetail's starter plan is probably a better fit. If you're a large team with enterprise requirements, you'll need to contact Aurelius to get a custom quote. Aurelius is also a bit vague about how collaborators are priced on the product.
Dovetail alternatives: Aurelius vs Dovetail Pricing
Would you like to recommend any other analysis and repository tools for review? Reach out to us at support@looppanel.com!
Yes, Dovetail uses AI for transcription and some analysis / call summarization features. But based on user feedback, Dovetail's AI features aren't very useful.
