Lightster 2026: Benefits, Features & Pricing

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On this page

Overview
Pricing and Plans
Features
User Reviews

Overview

Lightster

4.7

(9)

Pricing

Starting at $50.00 per month

About Lightster

Lightster simplifies user research with a community-centric insights platform. The platform helps product teams, founders, and consultants connect with their target audience for customer discovery, user testing, and user feedback faster and more flexibly. With a thriving community of over 50,000 users and growing, Lightster takes pride on being able to provide instant matches.

What sets Lightster apart is the community-centric approach. Teams can create private communities based on one or more target audience segments using their criteria, and see their community grow organically over time, eliminating the need to recruit each time. This allows them to connect with their target audience more iteratively, in alignment with the iterative nature of how they build their product.

Within each community, teams can engage seamlessly with their audience through scheduling moderated sessions, sending surveys, or simply direct messaging each user. Lightster allows teams to build their product together with their target audience and co-create the best user experience possible.

Start from just $50 monthly and $12.50 per moderated session.

Lightster Screenshots

Lightster Pricing and Plans

Starting price: $50.00 per month

Free Trial

Free Version

Premium Plan

$50.00

per user, per month

Plan includes:

Choose from 100+ criteria (job title, industry, age, location, and more)
Custom screening questions
Double-screen with free messaging
24/7 e-mail support
Unmoderated and moderated testing
Surveys

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Lightster Features

Popular features found in Market Research
Benchmarking
Customizable Templates
Data Import/Export
Data Visualization
Panel Management
Question Branching
Reporting & Statistics
Statistical Analysis
Survey/Poll Management
More features of Lightster
A/B Testing
Access Controls/Permissions
Activity Dashboard
Activity Tracking
Alerts/Notifications
Calendar Management
Collaboration Tools
Commenting/Notes
Conditional Logic
Customer Segmentation
Customizable Categories
Customizable Fields
Customizable Questions
Customizable Reports
Email Reminders
Engagement Tracking
Face-to-Face
For Mobile
For Websites
Generative AI
Moderated Usability Testing
Multi-Channel Distribution
Multiple User Accounts
Offline Access
Phone-Based
Quantitative Metrics
Question Library
Real-Time Analytics
Real-Time Data
Real-Time Notifications
Reminders
Reporting/Analytics
Search/Filter
Single Sign On
Social Media Integration
Software Testing Management
Survey Builder
Surveys & Feedback
Unmoderated Testing
Usability Testing
User Journeys
User Management
User Research Analysis
Video recording/Transcriptions

Lightster User Reviews

Overall Rating

4.7

Ratings Breakdown

67%

33%

Secondary Ratings

Ease of Use

4.4

Value for money

4.6

Customer support

5.0

Functionality

4.4

Have you used Lightster and would like to share your experience with others?

Verified

Reviewer

Real Estate

2-10 employees

Used weekly for free trial

Reviewed March 2024

Excellent solution to validate product and conduct market reasearch

- Overall, the experience has been remarkable. We had not been able to conduct first-hand market research this easily in the past. It's a huge value add for our product, marketing and sales teams. Would highly recommended.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

- Access to prospective clients to conduct first-hand market research such as validate product requirements and test other aspects like pricing, compare products against competitors. - Easy scheduling and connection with support to handle the scheduling whenever there are conflicts, need for reminders, etc. - Simple way to track contacts. - Company prepares a detailed porfile of the target persona and matches with leads are very close to our ICP.

Cons:

- Tracking more detailed information about the prospects might be useful to make sure we ask relevant questions during the interviews.

Courtenay B.

Verified reviewer

Market Research

2-10 employees

Used monthly for free trial

Reviewed May 2024

Great Market Research Tool

I had a great experience using Lightster. My team was trying to narrow down the target customer for a product we were building and wanted to talk to people from outside our networks and fields - Lightster was the perfect solution. We were able to administer a survey to a large audience and gather insights - and if we had decided to proceed further we would have utilized the panel and interview features to dig deeper. However, with just a little bit of research we learned that our idea wasn’t solving a big enough problem so we ditched it. In a way, this product saved us tons of time and money.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Finding participants for our surveys is the hardest part of early market research - when me and my team are just trying to figure out if there is any promise to our idea/ product. Lightster gives us access to our target audience so we can conduct quick and cheap validation.

Cons:

It is still an early stage company so some parts of the product are still a bit limited and manual. The quality of survey candidates can also vary - depending on what you’re looking for.

Reasons for switching to Lightster

I made the switch from Google Forms because Lightster had the additional feature of having a pool of people that we could survey about our product. We switched from UserTesting because Lightster was more affordable and relevant to our needs.

Daniel Z.

Verified reviewer

Internet

2-10 employees

Used monthly for less than 6 months

Reviewed March 2024

Survey Swfty

Very good. I havent done interviews yet.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Getting feedback about questions. I havent done interviews yet.

Cons:

cost was pretty high. I havent done interviews yet.

Ryan G.

Verified reviewer

Computer Software

2-10 employees

Used daily for less than 6 months

Reviewed October 2024

Simple user research recruitment

It has been great and would recommend them to anybody looking to do user research.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Lightster makes recruiting people for user research extremely simple and easy. Before working with them we had to manually reach out to people ourselves which is time consuming.

Cons:

No fault of Lightster but sometimes it's difficult to know if people are the right fit until you speak with them. Job titles may be the same but every company is different.

Gerald N.

Verified reviewer

Food & Beverages

51-200 employees

Used monthly for less than 12 months

Reviewed May 2024

Great for User Testing, UX, and Market Research

My overall experience was excellent. [sensitive content hidden] provided such an amazing experience that it's now my go to user testing and UX software.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

The Lightster team is amazing. [sensitive content hidden] is very responsive and is there to help you out with whatever you need. They take a white glove approach to customer service and will help you out in any way they can. Amazing experience.

Cons:

It was a little hard to understand how the software worked at first. Once I reached out to the team they explained everything to me and walked me through the process and everything made sense from there.

Andrew T.

Verified reviewer

Human Resources

Self-Employed

Used weekly for less than 6 months

Reviewed June 2024

A solid and dependable way to have conversations I would not have otherwise had

Generally a positive one. [sensitive content hidden] was very communicative and proactive. The people with whom I spoke were kind and helpful.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

It was a painless way to find people in the industry and roles I needed to speak with to discover more about them and their needs.

Cons:

I suppose the cost (especially for the US).

Valencia A.

Verified reviewer

Hospitality

11-50 employees

Used weekly for less than 6 months

Reviewed April 2024

Lightster for Product Development

Good, convenient and flexible. There is no sense of urgency to stick with one topic, so things were very flexible. There was little intervention in the research we were doing, so privacy was good.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

The responsive and understanding customer support, as well as the flexibility to reschedule cancel and start/end any round of research. Very quick to get people signed up for interviews.

Cons:

There was no real platform, notifications of reminders, changes to appointment, pre-interview consent signing, a way to compensate either parties for being late, sometimes false or outdated information of the participants background (e.g. interviewee is not a current kitchen owner, but was one many years ago).

Jeff M.

Verified reviewer

Marketing and Advertising

Self-Employed

Used monthly for less than 12 months

Reviewed May 2024

AIO Spot for Testing Needs

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Functionality

Pros:

everything is very simple and straightforward. and all in one source for testing needs.

Cons:

i have not found anything I dislike as of yet.

Dmitry S.

Verified reviewer

Information Technology and Services

11-50 employees

Used daily for less than 6 months

Reviewed February 2024

User friendly and easy-to-use use testing tool

Totally satisfied with the user experience and the results

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Huge audience to target, very intuitive and simple user interface, calendar synchronization, great support

Cons:

I cannot modify the targeting after it's created, but it's not a big deal

Vendor Response

Thank you so much for your feedback! You can certainly change the targeting criteria after it's created by visiting "Update criteria", or by creating a new list!

Replied March 2024

Showing 1 - 9 of 9 Reviews