Lighthouse Studio Reviews

Pros

Super versatile, completely customizable, love the endless options of implementing PERl, Java, HTML by themselves and with the help of SSI Scripts. Can look overwhelming for somebody who needs simple SurveyMonkey-style surveys, but works as a real powerhouse for those who want more. Customer support is exceptional - very responsive, can create specific pieces of codes tailored for your task. Great response time both via the phone and email.

Cons

Just sad that the standalone version of Sawtooth Web is slowly going away and probably will seize to be at some point.

Pros

We have used Sawtooth Software for many years. Recently, we upgraded to the Lighthouse Studios version 9. I really enjoyed some of the new features like a drag and drop rank, the increased mobile responsiveness, and the next to none learning curve from the original Sawtooth Software. I could go on and one, but overall it is a very easy to use program.

Cons

With all of the good Lighthouse Studios offers there are some things I would really like to see improved; mostly with the market simulator conjoint. In the past, Sawtooth had a program called SMRT. With SMRT, I was able to make banner variables and analyze multiple segments all at one time. That function was not added to the market simulator. Segmentation is not as easy as it had been in the past. Also, while you can customize your layout surveys, it is difficult to change the .css style sheets to change font colors, text sizes, spacing, and text styles. I have a intermediate knowledge of css and it was still very difficult for me.

Alternatives Considered

XM for Strategy & Research and QuestionPro

Reasons for Switching to Lighthouse Studio

Past familiarity with Sawtooth, the ease of making constructed list, and the simplicity of the skip logic. Our surveys are very complex and with Lighthouse Studios, I was able to do everything I needed.

Pros

Efficiency for choice modelling. Not much beyond that.

Cons

Expensive and few usability improvements over the years.

Pros

Nothing is impossible. While many of the new slick, glossy software competing with Sawtooth prioritize aesthetics and wide-spreading integrated functionality, they sacrifice the deeper levels of customization and flexibility that Sawtooth enables with it's native scripting language, unverified perl, and advanced skip logic functionality. While many other softwares offer you a "boxed" solution that may be easier to use for casual users, Sawtooth rewards those willing to learn by empowering them to be able to do whatever they want.

Cons

Some interface items could be streamlined (nested menu only enable you to interact with whatever window is in focus) and the styles could be more robust with animations - Although this has never been Sawtooth's comparitive advantage, in my opinion.

Alternatives Considered

XM for Customer Experience, QuestionPro and SurveySparrow

Reasons for Switching to Lighthouse Studio

All other publishers are boxed solutions without the robust scripting capability of Sawtooth.

Pros

I love the amount of customization you can do with this software. The options available for doing choice modeling are the best of any available software. The expertise behind the product is amazing as well. Customer support has helped me numerous times. The information available on the website is comprehensive and helpful. The forum is particularly well moderated.

Cons

Not quite as user-friendly as Qualtrics for some things such as survey flow.

Alternatives Considered

XM for Customer Experience

Reasons for Switching to Lighthouse Studio

Qualtrics still has a long way to go. Although it has a randomized first choice, there aren't near as many ways to work with it. You also can't do Alternative-specific designs, partial profile designs, conditional displays, and conditional pricing (I think). There's also no way to test your design and look at things like standard errors. They also don't talk about hold-out tasks or make it easy to incorporate them. Have also talked with Saurabh at Knowledge Excel but am so used to using Sawtooth that I just wanted to keep using it.

Pros

It is just so easy to use. And there are a number of options available when creating a design so that if one doesn't work I can try something else. Also the ability to include my own designs for modelling if I need to, which I do sometimes.

Cons

The time taken to design and/or analyse large or complicated experiments. Sometimes it's longer than I have available, but there are other options available to me in the software which I use instead.

Pros

Extensive documentation.

Well defined steps (Design, Run, Analysis, Simulation) with csv input/output between last 3 steps to allow adhoc processing in the middle.

Cons

The interface of the questionnaire design is the weakness, some particular points:
- impossible to keep the documentation opened while editing the questionnaire
- Not possible to copy-paste CBC questions within a questionnaire
- UI design of the surveys is fastiduous. we had difficulties to use standard javascript libraries in survey.

Also the use of a format easier to process for the .ssi files (XML ?) would enable to update questionnaires by script.

Alternatives Considered

SurveyMonkey

Reasons for Switching to Lighthouse Studio

More extensive and better documented analytics. Sawtooth trainings and workshops

Pros

If you are in need of sophisticated analyses (e.g. conjoint, MaxDiff, etc.), there is no comparable to Sawtooth in terms of feature breadth, sophistication of exercises, and overall flexibility in survey design incorporating these complicated exercises.

Cons

The overall UX is built for hardcore programmers, and while there is seemingly infinite flexibility, this is often too much for the modest user, and is not comparable to the other SaaS software options like Qualtrics, SurveyGizmo, Decipher or Dynata.

Pros

MaxDiff and general ease of use. I will be using the simulator as well once I have a better handle on it.

Cons

Can be pretty expensive, and support can be challenging.

Alternatives Considered

XLSTAT

Reasons for Switching to Lighthouse Studio

I have both.... XLSTAT great with some features where Sawtooth not ideal. But for higher level analyses such as MaxDiff & DCM would prefer to use Lighthouse. COST is the biggest hurdle-

Pros

Output of conjoint and maxdiff is very user friendly. Making customized survey is very easy. The best part is data collection in different mode like online/offline and can integrate with other platform is also helpful to sustain in market. Some desired questions are not there by default but can make it using Jquery/CSS/HTML like text highlighter/Heatmap.

Cons

Sometimes data lost for any particular question which should not but we can find the same in history table which is good.

Pros

Highly customisable. Tailored towards people who are developers or have a strong tendency towards developing and therefore more intuitive than other products that do have more pleasing UIs yet more cumbersome UXs.
It's one of the few solutions that provide good functionality when it comes to all types of Conjoint studies, MaxDiff etc.
Backwards compatibility in terms of "the interwebs" is pretty deep (supports browser and platforms way back) although that's also something that holds the software back more than it should.
Offline functionality works ok - although only on Android.

Cons

Innovation is lacking a bit. The overall architecture, look and feel of the software is almost unchanged in the past decade. Still relying heavily on jQuery and other libraries (which is totally unnecessary since almost everything can be done with vanilla JS and much reduced overhead!). The DOM and the structure comprises of a lot of jank. After all it's a web-experience and there are many things that can be improved upon to rise up to modern days web-standards to provide decent loading times, UXs for the respondents and make use of modern APIs and browser capabilities.
I wish there was a more open dialog with developers in terms of roadmaps, development cycles, including suggestions etc.
Offline functionality for iOS would be nice!

Alternatives Considered

XM for Strategy & Research, XM for Customer Experience and SurveyMonkey

Pros

Sawtooth is incredibly flexible and lets the user conduct even the most complex online surveys. Especially the conjoint features are absolutely unbeaten. The design of the online surveys is modern and automatically optimized for mobile use. Even the integration of a dedicated survey server is relatively simple. Customer service is excellent and fast.

Cons

The freedoms come at a price: anything that goes beyond a simple survey is quite complex and requires employees who are at least familiar with a little coding. The design of the user interface could also use a few updates.

Pros

Lighthouse has excellent functionality and everything I need to do my MaxDiff and CBC surveys and analysis. The help section is incredibly useful, as is tech support. Anytime I have a question they really take the time to help me solve the issue, which I absolutely love because I'm newer to this and I need the help. The software is relatively easy to use and figure out

Cons

I have a Mac, so I have to use Parallels to get it to run. Parallels slows down my computer LIKE CRAZY. Sometimes starting up Sawtooth in Parallels takes 25 minutes just to get Sawtooth TO OPEN. It also freezes up on me. I've had to un-install and re-instal Sawtooth a handful of times just to get it to work. I think this is Parallel's issue, not Sawtooth. But if there was ONE thing I could change about Lighthouse is that I would make it run on Macs. It's 2020, you guys need to get past this PC vs Mac war. That is so 2004. Both have been around for decades, neither is going away, and I have a Mac, please make your software work on my computer.

Alternatives Considered

XM for Strategy & Research

Reasons for Switching to Lighthouse Studio

Mostly price

Pros

I have used several kinds of online survey programming platforms and Lighthouse is, by far, the most user-friendly and intuitive. The ability to import most of the survey from Word has also been revolutionary in our ability to get a project programmed and out the door. Additionally, their customer service and support is wonderful. Whenever I run into a road block on a project, they are extremely helpful, knowledgeable, and patient whether that is on the phone or through their support email.

Cons

I have been using this product for over 7 years, so I have become very familiar with the survey flow commands and list-building syntax needed to accomplish most of my needs in a project. I often feel that the help resources and reference guide, though, could be more helpful if more details and more varied examples of HOW to accomplish some of the more technical and advanced functions. There have been several times that I have found that a particular action was possible, but not enough information about how to adjust the one example given for my particular project needs.

Pros

This is the goto software for Conjoint Analysis. Very flexible platform that is approachable for basic needs and can be customized by advanced users. Documentation and resources very thorough, the team seems to be proactive about helping users.

Cons

Steep learning curve for advanced use if the users do not have a strong background in mathematical logic and basic computer programming. The documentation is good, but there could be a better way to pull the most popular topics from the online forum into a secondary documentation center. It would also be nice to be able to run batch commands.

Pros

The capacity for customization, especially if you know JavaScript and CSS. Easy to navigate UI. Easy to transfer text from another source (especially text in tables to create answer options). The forums provide answers to a lot of questions you might have for more customized stuff, and the general Lighthouse help manual has a lot of easy to parse information. Helpful customer service with great solutions. Self-hosting ability.

Cons

Missing some question types and features found in other softwares. Steep learning curve. Hosting on Sawtooth's own server can be frustrating and overly complicated, especially with multiple users involved.

Pros

Advanced analytics features such as MaxDiff, ACA, CBC are very useful from Sawtooth. In addition, the ability to customize the survey beyond the built-in features is great.

Cons

It is somewhat pricey, however, it is comparable to other programming software.

Pros

Honestly, the thing that blows me away from Sawtooth is their support. The software is very intuitive, but if you have questions, you can get answers from A) a real person with expertise or B) their very extensive and active product forum.

Cons

I can't really think of anything. I'm a huge fan

Alternatives Considered

XM for Strategy & Research

Pros

We use Lighthouse Studio for an Adaptive Choice Based Conjoint design. The great benefit is certainly excellent customization possibilities, which gives a lot of flexibility to collect the data the way we intend to. What I enjoyed was the overall great responsiveness of the customer service team/their employees, if I had questions where I could not find an answer. This resulted several times in receiving recommendations/customized solutions to solve my problem. You do get the feeling the employees care about the success of their users.

Cons

The high level of customization comes with the downside of complexity which may need some time to get everything set up and find answer to the specific questions. I higher amount of "how to videos" for the different analyses types/could be helpful here (seeing screens is quicker than reading through their very extensive how to guides.

Pros

We primarily use the analytics portions of Lighthouse. It's easy to use and highly customizable so when we have out of the box needs, we can usually figure out some way to modify things for our needs.

Cons

We don't use the fielding piece often - except when we do ACBC. I don't love having to add in Perl script or modify CSS. As marketing scientists, we would end up spending a lot of time doing trial and error trying to work through aspects that are just not part of our core skill set.

That said, to have the customization that I mentioned previously, it's probably necessary to move away from completely templated or drag-and-drop approach.

Pros

The sanity checks throughout the application that prevents stupid mistakes
The ease of use and diversity of options
The ease of customization

Cons

Nothing comes to mind at the moment, sorry!

Pros

very user friendly, has great customer support and statistical rigor. Sawtooth has great name recognition in the industry and is accepted as a go to software for choice modelling.

Cons

honestly not much, we dont use the scripting or survey hosting as we have our own internal team for data collection and survey scripting so we create designs and generate utilities on our maxdiff and CBC projects with Lighthouse and the tool is great.

Pros

This software is easy to use, and you can create surveys that are very simple, or more complicated surveys with Conjoint or MaxDiff. It's customizable and you can add your own code or HTML to make your surveys look or behave how you want it too.

Cons

I wish that that it was easier to debug the code you write, like in a IDE. I'm not the greatest programmer so I'd appreciate if Lighthouse would eventually be able to tell me things like where specifically the error in my PERL or JavaScript code is occurring and why.

Pros

easy to use
low rate of errors
work on all kind of tablets

Cons

nothing
it is really good
we didn't find any issues with the program

Pros

We work with Sawtooth for both conjoint and maxdiff analyses. It is an easy to work with software. Help and information is easily found online. We can easily integrate conjoints into the rest of our projects using a link.

Cons

It is sometimes a bit cumbursome to integrate the perl script to all attributes and levels, but maybe there is a more easy way of doing that than the way i do it.