The Google Optimize alternative: what to use now that it is gone

Name: BusinessMCP
Brand: BusinessMCP

Google Optimize ended on September 30, 2023; here is what replaced its free split tests, and the one option that also finds the test and writes the variant.

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Price: Google Optimize: free, discontinued Sept 30, 2023 · Google’s partners (VWO, Optimizely, AB Tasty): free tier to $40k+/yr · BusinessMCP: $199/mo Scale
Switching gets you: Split tests that propose themselves from your heatmaps, get built as a GitHub PR, and are measured with a peeking guard — plus analytics and replay on the same plan.
Stay with Google Optimize if: You want the free, visual-editor experience Optimize gave you — VWO’s Starter tier is the closest thing left, and we have no visual editor.

Feature comparison — pricing verified September 2026. Sources: public pricing pages + published teardowns.
	BusinessMCP	Google Optimize (discontinued)
Entry price	$199/mo (Scale) — analytics, replay + CRM included	Was free — ended Sept 30, 2023
Visual (no-code) editor	No	Had one — gone
Finds the test for you from friction data	Yes — 8 failure modes, ranked by ICE	No — you proposed the test
Who builds the variant	AI opens a GitHub PR you review	You, in the visual editor
Flicker-free assignment	Yes — inline pre-paint bootstrap, CSS-only variants	Anti-flicker snippet (async hide)
Peeking guard (minimum sample AND 14 days)	Yes — 300 visitors + 25 conversions per arm, 14 days	Bayesian probability; no minimum duration
Session replay + heatmaps included	Yes	No (GA reporting only)
Requires GitHub	Yes — the PR review is the approval gate	No

The full picture

Google Optimize was the free A/B testing tool bolted onto Google Analytics: a visual editor, redirect tests, up to five experiments on the free tier, and results inside GA. Google discontinued it and Optimize 360 on September 30, 2023, made the GA4 measurement APIs public so third-party tools could report into Analytics, and listed AB Tasty, Optimizely and VWO as the partners it was building integrations with. Three years on, the sites that used Optimize because it was free mostly stopped testing.

If what you miss is the free visual editor, VWO’s Starter tier (free up to 50,000 monthly tested visitors as of September 2026) is the nearest survivor, and Convert Experiences is the cheapest tool with published pricing at $299 a month annual. If what you miss is having any tests running at all, BusinessMCP is a different answer: a CRO engine reads your heatmaps and session replays for eight named failure modes, proposes the test with a hypothesis and evidence, and the AI opens a GitHub pull request implementing variant B. It is part of the $199 Scale plan with analytics, replay, the CRM and the AI business analyst.

Why teams switch

Optimize waited for an idea; this proposes one

Optimize gave you an editor and an empty experiments list, which is why most free accounts never ran a second test. BusinessMCP scores each page against dead clicks, rage clicks, a buried CTA, deep-scroll-but-no-conversion, message mismatch, form abandon, mobile gaps and attention leaks, ranks them by ICE and proposes the test.

The variant is built for you

The AI writes variant B as a CSS-only change gated on the visitor’s arm and opens a pull request in your GitHub repository. A human reviews and merges; nothing lands on your site unreviewed.

Results you can trust without a statistician

Optimize reported Bayesian probabilities that people read on day two. BusinessMCP hides the verdict until each arm has 300 visitors and 25 conversions and the test has run 14 days, then reports a two-proportion z-test with lift intervals, per visitor.

Analytics and replay are on the same plan

Optimize’s draw was living inside Google Analytics. BusinessMCP’s tests live inside its own cookieless analytics, session replay and heatmaps — the same snippet, the same $199 plan, and the friction data is what the proposals come from.

Real data, not a mockup

What it looks like in BusinessMCP

Recorded on our own site, PII scrubbed — the same product you get on the free plan.

app.businessmcp.com/insights

Today's insights

4 from the daily analysis · Sep 22

Risk

Visitors are getting frustrated on /

17% of clicks on / are rage or dead clicks (32 of 184, 6 people) — a sign of broken, unresponsive or misleading UI.

Ask the analyst

Opportunity

18 "striking distance" keywords to win

You rank on page 1–2 (pos 5–20) for 18 queries with real impressions — e.g. "skills directory" at position 11. Small on-page moves could push these into the top 3.

Opportunity

HubSpot is cited 26 points more often than you

Across your tracked prompts, AI answers name HubSpot in 48% of grounded answers vs your 22% — and 1 other tracked brand also out-rank you. The sources those answers cite are the fastest lever.

Anomaly

Visitors jumped 58%

visitors moved from 118 to 186 week-over-week.

Runs every morning, on every plan. Real cards from our own workspace.

What Google Optimize cost, and what the alternatives cost now

Google Optimize and Optimize 360 stopped working on September 30, 2023 (Google’s own notice: support.google.com/optimize/answer/12979939). Google did not ship a replacement; it published its GA4 APIs and named AB Tasty, Optimizely and VWO as integration partners. This page was last checked on September 15, 2026.

Plan	Price	Notes
Google Optimize	Free — discontinued	stopped working September 30, 2023; up to 5 experiments, visual editor, GA reporting
Optimize 360	Part of GA 360 — discontinued	same date; enterprise bundle
VWO (Google-named partner)	Starter free (50k MTU); paid custom, ~$314/mo+	closest free visual-editor option left; see the VWO teardown
Optimizely (Google-named partner)	Custom, ~$40k+/yr	enterprise; per published 2026 teardowns
AB Tasty (Google-named partner)	Custom, ~$15k–$150k+/yr	per published 2026 teardowns; merged with VWO in Jan 2026
Convert Experiences	$299/mo annual ($399 monthly)	Growth plan, 100k tested users/mo; the cheapest published price with a visual editor
BusinessMCP	$199/mo (Scale)	no visual editor; the engine proposes the test and the AI opens the PR; analytics + replay + CRM included

Google Optimize is gone, so there is no “cheaper than Optimize”. The honest comparison is against the tools Google named as partners and against not testing at all.

Where BusinessMCP is NOT the right choice

An alternatives page you can trust has to cut both ways. Honestly:

There is no visual or WYSIWYG editor. VWO, Optimizely, AB Tasty, Convert and Kameleoon all let a marketer click a headline and retype it; in BusinessMCP every variant is code in a pull request, so someone on your side has to be comfortable reviewing a diff.
It needs a codebase on GitHub and a human to review and merge the PR. A site on a hosted builder with no repository (a Webflow, Wix or Squarespace site, a Shopify theme nobody keeps in git) cannot run our split tests at all.
We only split-test web pages. There is no multivariate testing, no personalization engine, no server-side SDKs for mobile or backend experiments, and no feature flags — if you need any of those, the tools on this page are the right category and we are not.
A/B testing sits on the Scale plan at $199/mo. VWO’s free Starter tier, Kameleoon’s 30-day trial and Convert’s 15-day trial all cost less to start, and the $199 buys you the whole platform whether or not you use the rest of it.
Our stats module is deliberately simple: a two-proportion z-test behind a fixed minimum-sample-and-14-day guard. Optimizely’s sequential Stats Engine and the Bayesian engines in VWO and AB Tasty let a statistically literate team stop early on purpose; ours will not let you.

Frequently asked questions

Is Google Optimize really gone?

Yes. Google’s notice states that Google Optimize and Optimize 360 are no longer available as of September 30, 2023. There is no successor product inside Google Analytics; Google published its APIs and named AB Tasty, Optimizely and VWO as integration partners.

What is the closest free replacement for Google Optimize?

VWO’s Starter plan, free up to 50,000 monthly tested visitors as of September 2026, with a visual editor. Several 2026 teardowns report it being withdrawn for new accounts, so check the current page. BusinessMCP is not free — A/B testing is on the $199 Scale plan.

Does BusinessMCP have a visual editor like Optimize did?

No. The AI writes the variant as a pull request in your GitHub repository and a human reviews it. That is more rigour than Optimize asked of you and it needs a codebase; it is the right trade for a team that wants tests to happen without someone designing them.

Can BusinessMCP report test results into Google Analytics?

No. Results live in BusinessMCP’s own dashboard and Insights feed, alongside its cookieless analytics. It can import your GA4 history at day level for context, but experiments are measured on first-party data.

Other honest alternatives

VWO

Google-named partner with a free Starter tier and a visual editor — the closest thing to Optimize left.

Compare

Optimizely

Google-named partner; enterprise-priced from roughly $40k/yr.

Compare

AB Tasty

Google-named partner; custom-priced, now merged with VWO.

Compare

How to migrate

1
There is nothing to export from Optimize any more; if you kept screenshots of past results, treat them as history, not baselines.
2
Install the BusinessMCP snippet and let heatmaps and replay collect for two weeks before expecting a proposal.
3
Connect GitHub and pick the marketing-site repository and framework on the Connections page.
4
If your site has no repository (Wix, Squarespace, a Shopify theme outside git), pick VWO or Convert instead — BusinessMCP cannot run a split test without a PR to open.

Sources & verification

Every price on this page traces to a public source, last verified September 15, 2026. Spotted a change? Tell us and we'll re-verify.

Keep reading

Automated split testing, explained Session replay & heatmaps (where the friction comes from)Website personalization for B2B A/B testing tools compared Cookieless web analytics

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