Lyssna, the tool formerly called UsabilityHub, suits designers, marketers and CRO teams who want quick unmoderated feedback on a design: five-second tests, first-click tests, preference tests and Figma prototype tests, with a paid panel that returns responses the same day.
Verdict: it is one of the simplest ways to check a headline, hero or navigation before you build an A/B test.
It is not a replacement for the A/B test itself, and panel costs grow quickly with longer studies.
This review draws on Lyssna's own pricing page and help center, plus real tests from our database that show the kind of change a Lyssna study can pressure-test first. We have not used Lyssna ourselves.
What Lyssna is (renamed UsabilityHub)
UsabilityHub started in 2008 as a simple five-second test.
The company announced its rename to Lyssna on October 3, 2023.
The new name means "to listen" in Swedish, and existing UsabilityHub accounts carried over.
So if you search for "UsabilityHub" or "Usability Hub" today, you land on Lyssna.
The product has since grown from one test type into a broader research platform with surveys, card sorting, tree testing, live website tests, recordings and user interviews.
The core idea is still the same: show people a design, give them a short task or question, and see what they notice, click or prefer.
Most studies are unmoderated, so you don't schedule calls or sit in on sessions.
Test types: five-second, first-click, preference and prototype
Lyssna's help center lists its core methods as survey questions, design surveys, first-click tests, navigation tests, five-second tests, preference tests, Figma prototype tests, card sorts and tree testing.
Live website testing is a separate method on paid plans.
- Five-second test: participants see a page briefly, then answer what they remember. Lyssna pitches it for measuring recall and first impressions. For CRO, it answers one question: does the hero say what you sell?
- First-click test: participants get a task ("Where would you go to find returns info?") and click once on a screenshot. Useful for menus, buy boxes and CTA placement.
- Preference test: people pick between two or more designs or copy options and say why. Good for narrowing several headline or image options down to the two worth A/B testing.
- Prototype and navigation tests: participants complete a task in a Figma prototype or a sequence of screens, so you can see where they get lost.
- Live website tests: participants complete tasks on a real site while Lyssna captures screen, camera and audio.
Lyssna splits studies into two kinds, which matters for pricing.
A quick study has a single section (one first-click test, say).
An in-depth study has more than one section, such as a survey followed by a card sort, or two preference tests.
Pricing and panel
As of November 2026, Lyssna's pricing page lists three plans.
Panel responses are not included in any of them and are billed separately.
| Plan | Price (as of November 2026) | What you get | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Unlimited quick studies, 3 seats, 15 self-recruited responses | Trying single-section tests with your own audience |
| Growth | $166/month billed annually ($1,990/year); $199 billed monthly | Unlimited quick studies, 5 in-depth studies per month (60 per year on annual), 5 seats, unlimited self-recruited responses | Small product, design or CRO teams testing every month |
| Enterprise | Contact sales | Unlimited seats, custom in-depth study limits, tailored support and security | Large organizations |
The panel works on credits. Per Lyssna's pricing help article, each panel response costs 1 credit per minute of test length, and 1 credit equals $1 unless you buy credits in bulk.
A screener adds 2 credits per participant, and recording adds 2 credits per response.
That makes short tests cheap and long ones expensive.
A two-minute five-second test with 50 panel responses comes to about 100 credits.
A 10-minute screened study with recording and the same 50 people works out to about 700 credits.
Lyssna says its panel has 690,000+ participants in 124 countries with 395+ targeting attributes.
Its help center says you can order from 1 to 10,000 responses, and that 50 responses for common demographics usually arrive in under two hours.
The free plan's 15 self-recruited responses is a small cap.
In practice, the free plan is for trying the tool, and real use means Growth plus panel credits, or sending the test link to your own customers.
Using Lyssna before an A/B test
Lyssna belongs at the research stage of CRO: customer research gives you a problem, a hypothesis turns it into a change, and an A/B test measures whether the change makes money.
A five-second or preference test tells you whether people understand a design.
It cannot tell you whether that design lifts revenue on your traffic.
Where it helps most is on changes that depend on clarity, so you can check them before spending traffic on them.
Our database has many wins of that kind:
- Kasper Dolk ran a benefits-first hero against the control hero and saw revenue per visitor rise 23.05% (€1.20 to €1.47). A five-second test is the natural way to check whether a new hero communicates the main benefit before it goes live.
- Kasper Dolk also added hero benefit bullets that answered objections from a survey, credited with +$763,679.14 profit per year. The research came first and the test confirmed it, which is the workflow Lyssna's surveys support.
- Dave Diederen tested new headline variations on a listicle landing page for +18% conversion rate. A preference test can narrow five headline ideas to the two worth a live test.
- Kasper Dolk's optimized site-wide navigation beat the current navigation with a revenue lift of +€127,112. Oliver Kenyon's mobile menu with search at the top and Clearance first added +$92,000/month. First-click and tree tests are built for exactly this kind of menu question.
@oliverkenyon
@DaveDiederen
@kasper_dolk@kasper_dolk@kasper_dolk@kasper_dolkTwo cautions. Panel participants are not your buyers, so a preference result reflects general readability more than purchase intent; use a screener, or send the test to your own customers when the audience matters.
And a design that wins a preference test can still lose a live test, so treat Lyssna results as a filter, not a verdict.
Browse all tests in the database to see how often well-reasoned changes still come back flat.
For sites with too little traffic to A/B test, Lyssna studies can be the main evidence you have.
Pair them with whatever live data you have, such as heatmaps or session replays.
Lyssna alternatives
Lyssna's strength is fast, cheap, single-question design tests.
If you need something else, these are the usual alternatives:
- Maze: the closest rival, with a stronger focus on prototype testing for product teams. See our Maze review.
- UserTesting: built for recorded think-aloud sessions and larger enterprise research programs, at a higher price point. See our UserTesting review.
- Wynter: message testing with B2B panels, for SaaS teams checking whether a homepage or pricing page lands with a specific job title. See our Wynter review and message testing tools.
- Session replay and heatmaps: tools like Hotjar show what real visitors do on your live site instead of what panelists say about a mockup. See our Hotjar review.
For broader comparisons, see our roundups of user testing tools and UX research tools.
Who Lyssna is not for: teams that need moderated, long-form research as their main method, B2B companies that need hard-to-reach job titles at scale, and anyone hoping to skip A/B testing.
If you want revenue impact, you still need an A/B testing tool after the research.
Who it is for: designers, marketers and CRO practitioners who want an answer to "do people get this?" within a day, for a few dollars per response, before committing developer time and traffic to a test.