We gave a ghost user the same job in GhostUser four days later: find out where its own signup loses people.

“Landing page is confident and well-written but it's all claims. 'AI users that use your product before real ones do' — fine, that's exactly the pitch I've heard from three synthetic-user panels, two of which sold me a tidy report full of things I already knew. The only line here I actually care about is 'RESEARCH: we give ghost users a job in a product they have never used, and publish what happens' plus 'See the format'. That's a real artifact I can judge. I am not typing my URL into a box before I've seen one single piece of output — I have a pricing experiment running and I'm not turning a bot loose on my funnel blind. So: Research first. If the sample writeup is generic persona fluff, I'm out in four minutes.”

“Right, this is the first thing on this site that's made me sit up. They published a run against their OWN product and the headline finding is that their pricing is unfindable and 'nothing here can be taken to a budget conversation'. Publishing your own damning result is either genuine confidence or very good theatre, and either way it's more than any panel vendor has ever shown me. Two things pull me: [6] is the real run on their own product — and the job is literally mine, 'find out where its own signup loses people' — and [7] is the Fluxboard sample, which they've flagged as invented. Invented samples are exactly the tidy fiction I distrust, so I want the real one. I also note, with a sinking feeling, that the real run already told me the answer to my cost question: there isn't one on the site. Clicking [6] to see the actual trace — I want to know whether the reasoning reads like a person or like an LLM narrating a screenshot.”

“Genuinely odd moment: the persona in this published run is me. 'Wisp-21, head of growth at a Series A B2B AI company, Amplitude/Mixpanel/Hotjar/Maze/UserTesting, board deck Thursday, two other tools in tabs, a pricing experiment I mustn't break' — that is my exact situation down to the Thursday deck. Either their ICP guess is uncomfortably good or this page is being tailored to me, and I can't tell which, which makes me trust the numbers slightly less even as the content lands. Setting that aside: the format itself is the best thing I've seen here. A clock down the side, one forced-choice wall, and the sentence the user was thinking at the moment they stalled — that is precisely what my Amplitude funnel can't give me. Amplitude tells me 62% drop at step two; it cannot tell me the person was looking for the price and couldn't find it. I can picture that in front of my CEO. So criterion one is close to met on format. But I'm not taking a vendor's self-published run as proof of its own facts. It claims: no access needed, first run free no card, no price anywhere after that, and 'skip the call' loops back to the same box. Two of those are cost questions and they're my Thursday problem, so I go check the FAQ myself rather than believe the marketing.”

“This FAQ is better than the site deserves and it answers the access half of my cost question outright: nothing to integrate, no install, they start at my homepage like a prospect, they never enter payment details, never leave my domain, and they sign up from an address on their own domain — which matters, because a pricing experiment is running and I cannot have bots creating accounts under fake identities that land in my funnel numbers unattributed. 'If someone on your side asks who signed up, we tell them' is the line I'd repeat to my CEO. Also worth noting against the writeup I just read: its wall was that the FAQ never says what it costs after the free run, and this FAQ now does say — 'we quote it rather than publish it... a human comes back, no call to sit through first'. So they fixed the thing their own ghost caught. That is either impressive or convenient, but it's the first evidence that the loop they sell actually gets acted on. What I still don't have is a NUMBER. 'We quote it' is not something I can put on a board slide on Thursday; I need at least a shape — per run, per seat, per month, four figures or five. Clicking 'Ask what a run would cost' because that is simultaneously my cost question and my next-step question, and I want to see whether it's a form, a calendar, or a price.”

“So the price answer is a form. Credit where it's due: the 'What's this about?' dropdown arrived pre-set to Pricing, so the link did carry my intent, and 'we reply within a day, a human does' is at least a promise with a clock on it. But let's be honest about what just happened — I asked what a run costs and the product said 'tell us your name, your work email, optionally your LinkedIn, and we'll get back to you'. That is a lead-gen gate dressed as an answer, and for a tool whose entire pitch is 'no integration, no setup, no permission', making me hand over my identity to learn a number is the one place the self-serve story breaks. I'm not sending it — I'm not putting a fake lead in a channel a person reads for real ones, and I'm not giving my work email to a vendor I've known for four minutes. What I WOULD send, for the record: name, my work email, topic Pricing, our product URL, and 'One run a fortnight against our self-serve signup, one persona — a technical founder evaluating us on a Tuesday afternoon. What does that cost annually, and is it priced per run or per seat?' Before I decide whether that's worth sending, there's one thing I still don't know and it's the thing that decides it: if I take the free run instead, what does the run need from ME? The homepage says 'describe your customers and their jobs to be done' but the self-serve box is a single URL field with nowhere to say who my customer is. A ghost user with the wrong persona tells me nothing about my funnel. Going to 'How it works' to find out what a run needs from me and what happens once it starts.”

“That was a waste of thirty seconds and it's the second time this site has done it to me. 'How it works' in the nav is not a page — it's an anchor that dumps me back on the homepage at three marketing cards I'd already read. 'Create a ghost user — seeded from your ideal customer profile: role, seniority, tool history, patience.' Lovely. Seeded HOW? By me, in a field somewhere? By them, from a call? There is no answer here and the only input the site ever offers me is one URL box. That gap matters more than the price does, honestly: if I hand over our URL and they invent a persona, I get a report about a generic evaluator, not about the technical founders who are actually dropping out of our signup at step two. I'd be back where I started with a prettier artifact. There WAS a link on the research page I skipped — 'What a run needs from you, and what it does once it starts' — which is exactly this question, so I'm going back for it. I'm not guessing at a URL for it because this site's nav has already misled me twice.”

“Back on Research. The link I want is [8], 'What a run needs from you, and what it does once it starts' — buried at the bottom of a page about published research, which is a strange place to hide the one page that explains the mechanics of buying. That is the page I've been looking for since minute three and nothing in the top nav points at it. Clicking it.”

“Third loop, and this one actually annoys me. The link said 'What a run needs from you, and what it does once it starts' — I went back to the research page specifically for it — and it lands me on the FAQ I read four minutes ago. That is a mislabelled link, and it is the one label on this site that promised to answer the question I still have. Sitting here at 3m30, the whole site is four destinations: home, /research, /faq, /contact. Everything points at one of them and several things point at the wrong one. So the mechanics question has no answer on this site: nowhere does it tell me how MY ideal customer profile gets into the ghost. 'Seeded from your ideal customer profile' on the homepage, 'personas are built from archetypes' in the FAQ, and one URL field as the only input I'm ever offered. Those three don't reconcile, and I'd have to ask. Fine — there's exactly one thing left I can learn without emailing anyone: what actually happens when I hand over the URL. That's the free run, no card, and it's the step I'd really take. Going to the CTA box to do it. To be clear about what I'm typing: I'd normally put our real product URL in, but I'm not firing a bot at a live third-party site from an evaluation, so I'll use a reserved stand-in domain and watch what the form does with it.”

“Four minutes. Would I still be doing this? Yes — but only for about one more minute, and only because of one thing. The published writeup earned it. I came in expecting the panel pitch and instead they showed me a run against their own product whose headline finding was that their pricing is unfindable, and the format of that writeup is genuinely the thing my Amplitude funnel can't do: a clock, one forced-choice wall, and the sentence the person was thinking while they stalled. I can picture that slide in front of my CEO on Thursday. What I still cannot picture is the line item next to it. 'We quote it' plus a contact form is not a number, and the three loops — nav 'How it works' going to a homepage anchor, 'skip the call' coming back to this same box, and 'what a run needs from you' landing on the FAQ — have cost me more time than the answers were worth. So: one action left. The box in front of me is the actual next step, it needs no card and no email, and I genuinely do not know what happens when I press it — whether I get a run, a queue, or a login wall. That's the last thing worth knowing and then I'm back to the deck. Typing a URL. Note for the record that I'd put our real product URL here; I'm using a reserved stand-in because I'm not turning a bot loose on somebody else's live site from an evaluation.”