Dovetail Pros and Cons

Dovetail simplifies the way we compile, organize, and share research and insights with internal and external stakeholders. From all the apps I tested, it was the only one flexible enough to match our process. It helps us get done with research faster and with the added bonus of working with their beautiful interface. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The transcription editor could use some work. If you have to edit your transcripts heavily or do many interviews, you'll want a more powerful editor that helps you work faster.

Lots of little details could be improved, like seeing inline comments all in one place, creating your own shortcuts to move faster through the data, or being able to add an image to each project icon.

I'd like to get more users for the money I'm paying. 5 users can be filled in really fast if you work with a team. Also, providing access to certain projects to different users can be cumbersome. This should be simplified. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The Dovetail team understand their audience. Every new feature they release makes my job as UX Researcher easier. I can collaborate effortlessly with stakeholders across all depeartments, that's how easy it is to work with. After I set up a project and create a tag board literally anyone can analyse and synthesise interviews and user tests. This is sooo helpful for scaling research. Also, nothing gets lost. With the global tags we can collect insights across all projects and over time build an extensive opportunity backlog. Every customer need or pain point is stored and can easily be prioritized. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

For data privacy reasons I can't make research reports public. This means every stakeholder needs to log into Dovetail to view the report and watch the interview snippets. This is tricky when you're dealing with busy execs who have no patience to sign up for a new tool, even with SSO. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Dovetail has made it easy for our team to collect, organize, bundle, and review user research data all in one place. I really appreciate the ability to tag key insights and keep everything structured. It helps me revisit information quickly, even if I haven’t touched it for weeks or months. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

When I first took over as the main user, I found there was a bit of a learning curve. Our researcher had everything set up well, but as a product designer who doesn’t spend every day in research tools, it took some time to feel comfortable navigating and making the most of its features.

Now that we no longer have a full-time researcher, the cost feels a bit steep for how much use I get out of it. It’s definitely worth it for larger teams, but for someone like me who dips in and out, it feels like I’m not getting full value from the subscription. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Dovetail has well thought-out flexibility and functionality. I like that I can tag information and then see it together, and that they're always making intuitive updates to the functionality (for example, the Canvas format has come strides since it was first released). Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Taxonomizing and tagging the information is a challenge that Dovetail does not provide a lot of support for. They suggest leading workshops across teams, but at a company of 100k+ employees and low UX maturity, this is not realistic. I also get nervous about the focus they're putting on AI. I'm all for adopting new technology, but the AI features are annoying, unreliable, inaccurate, and now I can't easily search for simple information like in what Notes the word "bulk" appeared. It doesn't always make sense to semantic search for insights across products when I'm looking for very specific information. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Dovetail is by fair my favorite and most important research tool we use at Geoforce, I use it all the time. My favorite feature is probably the ability to highlight with specific tags and then use those tags to surface trends accross multiple interviews. We've also set up our users with personas, which allow us to filter quotes based on their role or internal employee vs external customer. Dovetail has done an amazing job at being flexible so that I can customize and set it up the way that works best for our customer and four each project. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The transcripts aren't always perfect. Sometimes I have to edit. When voices are similar, sometimes it gets confused on who was talking.

We also have some calls where two languages are spoken on the same call (English and Portugeuse). So the ability to translate both for tagging and timing purposes would be really helpful. At the moment the transcript just gets super lost when someone talks in Portugeuse. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

My team and I have been using Dovetail for three years now, and it’s our go-to platform for processing user interviews. It's incredibly easy to upload a recording and start tagging insights. The UI is simple and beautiful, and we love it! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The navigation within the app can sometimes be confusing, and we've struggled to expand its use cases. While we use it extensively for processing user interviews, other types of feedback are kept separate, which creates some friction that we haven't been able to resolve yet. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like the fact that with dovetail we have consolidated all of our research projects including the recorsings, analysis and reports into a single platform.

Also for international companies, the transcriptions in multiple languages and using AI for analysis in a valuable time saving feature.

I also love the AI's help with directly extracting the answers to the initial research questions from the transcripts which streamlines the analysis process. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I've witnessed that navigating through Dovetail (notes, insights, highlights, etc) is a bit challenging for non researchers. As a researcher, I appreciate the flexiblity but it might not work for other roles. and also it can lead to inconsistent documentation styles across different research projects conducted by different researchers, making it yet more dificult for others to navigate.

on the other hand, I also find dovetail not an ideal tool for managing analysing survey data. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I'm excited to share my experience with Dovetail! This user research data repository is constantly evolving, and the enhancements—especially with the addition of AI—truly elevate the experience! It’s clear that the team genuinely cares about making data manipulation easier with every update.

Importing data from CSV files and video recordings is incredibly straightforward, making our workflow so much smoother.

My team and I are absolutely loving our journey with Dovetail, and we can't wait to explore all the amazing features it has to offer! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

For those storing research data in places like Figma the migration of old insights is slow and manual. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I’ve been using Dovetail for years; I first became a user when I acquired and implemented it at a Series C startup as their first and only UXR. I’m continually impressed with their dedication to iterating on its features and functionalities. I really appreciate their community channel where we can ask questions, give feedback, and make feature requests. Dovetail has done taxonomy right from the start, which is the most important aspect of a repository tool. The maturity of the analysis features has grown a ton in the last year alone, especially with their introduction of advanced AI—even now expanding it to auto-tagging and tagging suggestions. I was recently on a contract with a company that had extremely outdated tooling… it was painful to go from doing work that previously took me a few hours with Dovetail to then taking many days. Thankfully I still use Dovetail for my volunteer and side projects, but yea I gained a new level of appreciation for Dovetail this year. It’s the best on the market and certainly worth the investment if you have the budget. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Initially, it was difficult to use it for survey research but I found a good workaround for how they designed it at the time. For me, one of the most exciting things in the pipeline for Dovetail 3.0 is better support for survey data. It’s a good starting point, and I look forward to how they scale it to support large surveys. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

We’ve been using Dovetail at Catarse during a critical redesign of our crowdfunding platform, and it’s been an invaluable tool. With a large, active user base, gathering and making sense of feedback could have easily become overwhelming. Dovetail streamlined the process, helping us structure input efficiently and focus on the most impactful improvements. It’s played a crucial role in shaping the direction of our platform’s evolution. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Honestly, we don’t have anything we dislike about Dovetail. If we had to complain about something, it’s that we wish we had discovered it sooner! It’s made such a positive impact on our workflow that imagining how we managed without it feels like a distant memory. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.