Google Optimize

Was one of the most widely used A/B testing tools globally due to its free availability and deep Google Analytics integration, before being discontinued in 2023.

Google Optimize was a web experimentation and personalization platform offered by Google as part of the Google Marketing Platform suite. Launched in 2016 (with a beta period prior), it allowed marketers and developers to run A/B tests, multivariate tests, and redirect experiments on their websites without requiring deep technical expertise. Its seamless integration with Google Analytics made it particularly attractive, enabling teams to use existing Analytics goals and audience data to measure experiment outcomes. A premium tier, Optimize 360, was available as part of the paid Google Marketing Platform stack for enterprise customers requiring higher experiment limits and deeper integrations. At its peak, Google Optimize was one of the most widely adopted A/B testing tools in the market, largely due to its free tier, ease of use, and tight coupling with the Google ecosystem. It served a broad range of users from small businesses to large enterprises, and its visual editor allowed non-technical users to create experiments without writing code. The platform supported personalization use cases as well, letting teams deliver targeted content variations to specific audience segments defined in Google Analytics. On September 30, 2023, Google officially sunset both Google Optimize and Optimize 360, citing a desire to focus on building more durable and integrated experimentation solutions. Google directed users toward Google Analytics 4's native A/B testing capabilities — widely considered a limited replacement — and recommended third-party platforms such as Optimizely, AB Tasty, VWO, and Convert as alternatives. The shutdown left a significant gap in the market, particularly for small and mid-sized businesses that had relied on the free tier, and accelerated adoption of competing experimentation platforms.