21+ Hotjar Alternatives – Unleash the Power of AI

In my pursuit of finding the most effective website analytics tools, I closely examined over 21 alternatives to Hotjar, each equipped with unique features to enhance user engagement and site performance. This comprehensive guide provides insights into each alternative capabilities, such as heatmaps, session recordings, and visitor analytics. It caters to businesses seeking detailed insights into visitor behavior and website performance, highlighting tools that offer specific strengths in areas where Hotjar might not be the perfect fit. The article serves as a valuable resource for making informed decisions in selecting an analytics tool tailored to one's specific needs.

It has been some time I was in search of an analytics tool that could help me dig into ‘who’ visits my website and ‘what’ exactly they do. If you are a business owner or a blogger, I’m sure you have the same thoughts too. The very first tool I used for this purpose was Hotjar, and followed by this tool used some of the Hotjar alternatives.

Hotjar is not a replacement for Google Analytics. Rather, I would say Hotjar will supplement you with all those website analytics metrics that you cannot get in the free Google Analytics account.

You can hear David Darmanin, founder of Hotjar, speak on how Hotjar can fuel conversion.

Source

Google Analytics has been of great help, but it is always better to have more insights into data. In this article, I will walk you through the features and other details of Hotjar.

Also, I will tell you about some of the Hotjar alternatives that I have found. So, let’s start with Hotjar.

6 Hotjar Alternatives

6 Hotjar Alternatives for Website Visitor Engagement via Heatmaps

What is Hotjar?

hotjar

Hotjar is an all-in-one Analysis and customer Feedback tool. It provides you with a bigger picture on how to improve your website’s performance and user experience (conversion rates). 

Hotjar lets you see how your users are using your site. 

One thing that I loved about Hotjar is the page for their Founding Members.

It lists down all the beta testers who used Hotjar first, gave feedback and has helped in making Hotjar what it is today.

The important aspect is, the company took the effort to mention all of them. This is like a brownie point! 🙂

Hotjar combines:

  • Analytics tools: Allows you to observe and measure the visitor behaviour while they visit your site.
  • Feedback tools: Allows you to hear your users opinion about your product (voice of customer/ users).
hotjar survey

All the impressive features of Hotjar gets a lot more elevated when you see the pricing of this tool Undoubtedly, this tool beats all others in the market with its affordability.

Let’s be honest here.

However, good a product is, if it’s too pricey we kind of cringe away! So, here’s a win-win situation for Hotjar- excellent features+pocket-friendly price.

I saw it on Product Hunt. I was using Crazy Egg and Optimizely, but when I started using Hotjar as a BETA tester, I was blown away. The price point was and still is unbeatable, and it’s just straight up a better product all the way around. It was a no-brainer. I was hooked immediately. ~ Garrett Mehrguth, CEO of Directive Consulting on How Hotjar helped him.

Let’s move on with how Hotjar can help you have more engagements and conversions, before we discuss the pricing plans.

Analyzing the Website with Hotjar

Hotjar’s Heatmaps is the most sought after tool. The heatmaps are fabulous and easy to use.

They will give you a detailed insight into the areas where your website visitors are spending the maximum time.

If this wasn’t cool enough, Hotjar’s heatmaps will also show you heatmaps by device: Desktops, Mobiles, and tablets.

hotjar heatmaps

Heatmaps from Hotjar covers all the requisite functionalities- from Clicks, taps to Scrolling.

You can easily create a heatmap for any given page.

While using Hotjar, more than the heatmaps, the Session Recordings became my favourite part which is also know as Session Replay.

You can get real time insight as you see how your visitors are moving and navigating around your website. It is simply a delight.

With the session Recording feature, you can capture every visitor’s sessions the moment they hit the website.

While you find it creepy that someone can watch you over as you navigate through their site, you can do the same!

Starting with the clicks to scrolls and movement of each visitor – you can track it all in real time. And not just track, Hotjar also allows you to record and tag it.

The tagging feature is new on Hotjar and is amazing.

This is how tagging works: For instance, you have an eCommerce website. You see a large chunk of the audience making mobile accessories’ purchase.

You can tag them as “Electronic accessories”.

hotjar tagging

Many visitors come via your blog, whom you can tag as “Blogs”, and so on. I think this is a great feature. It gives me details that matter the most. 

Here’s what exactly you can do:

  • Replay the sessions of real website visitors
  • Tag Recordings
  • View the actions of your users and take note for reference
  • Share recordings with anyone
  • Filter recordings according to your needs.

Hotjar’s Funnels feature did attract me. Although I’d still turn to ClickFunnels, I went ahead and tried Hotjar’s funnel feature too.

You can easily create a simple funnel for your website with unlimited steps.

It is a powerful feature. You can improve your website on specific spots, especially where you find your users leaving your website.

hotjar funnels

Next feature in the queue is the Forms Feature. Without any second thoughts, Forms feature is the best from Hotjar.

Suppose you need a contact form or a membership signup form, the Hotjar Forms will come in handy. However, this isn’t the best part.

Every other form builder does that!

Forms on Hotjar show you how far your visitors have filled in and exactly where or when are they dropping off.

This means you have the option to test different forms and decide on the one that your visitors will not ditch half-way.

Let me give you an example.

Suppose you have a question like “Where did you find ABC (your website name)?”, And you see a continuous drop-off to this question.

Thus, the next move will be to remove this question.

You can either test your form without this question or replace it with another question.

The Forms also gives your detailed reports on:

  • Time your visitors require to fill out each field
  • Conversion rate of the form
  • Total number of form sessions
  • Graphic representation of the drop-offs
  • Total number of failed and successful submissions of the form

Without user feedback, it is nearly impossible to improve your website.

Hotjar’s Poll feature is downright simple and easy to use. The interface is smooth, and all it takes is just 30 seconds to create a poll.

Although I was never keen on running polls on my website, Hotjar’s Polling feature is a convincing one. You can garner some really helpful data and feedback through the Hotjar Polls.

The results are easily understandable. You can choose to get the result in replies or result format.

Along with the data and feedback, you also get details like screen size (device from which the poll was taken by the user), country, date, page, etc.

The most striking part of the result is the desktop vs. mobile part! You can easily customise your Poll to get the desired results.

Another feature that I wasn’t aware of is Hotjar’s WordCloud. Hotjar basically takes into account all the frequently used words in polls from your users and creates a word cloud out of them.

Similar to Polls feature, Hotjar provides yet another feature to know your users better.

The Survey feature allows you to get constructive feedback from your users. You can select the kind of questions that you need to be answered.

Hotjar lets build a survey for various kinds of answers, like:

  • Short and/or long answers
  • Radio buttons
  • Checkboxes
  • Net promoter score
hotjar survey builder

The interface is immaculate that is sure to click with your users. The Survey forms from Hotjar picks up the look and feel of your site, blending it nicely with the user experience you want your visitors to get on your website.

Lastly, we have the Recruiter feature. Now this is not about recruiting talents for your company!

Jokes apart, the Recruiter feature lets you connect with the best testers for user research and testing right from your site.

hotjar surveys

I’d like to call it an advanced version of Polls. If you are a software company or engaged in making a web plugin, this feature will come handy.

The widget is customizable to suit your needs.

Hotjar Pricing Plans

The two things that caught my eyes are:

  1. 15-Day Free Trial on all the plans
  2. 30-Day Money Back Guarantee

Yep! That’s right. The free trial and the money back guarantee options lured me to a great extent.

Hotjar has three categories for pricing plans- Plus, Business, and Scale. All plans include unlimited team members, data storage for 365 days, and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

hotjar pricing

The basic Plan is free forever. It includes up to 35 daily sessions and up to 1050 recordings per month.

PLUS comes at just $39 per month when paid monthly and $31 per month when paid annually. You get up to 3000 recordings, and 100 daily sessions.

BUSINESS is for enterprises and SMBs and starts from $99 per month when you pay monthly and $32 per month when paid annually. You get 500- 2500 daily sessions.

The SCALE plan is priced at $213/mo and you get 4000+ daily sessions.

This brings us to the conclusion of the Hotjar Review. 

Hotjar is constantly updating the tool to make it better.

Some time back Hotjar touched a milestone of 60,000+ users, including clients like Hubspot, Booking.com, Pingdom, and many more.

Hotjar Integration

Hotjar integrates with these tools mainly:

  1. Hubspot
  2. Optimizely
  3. Omniconvert
  4. Slack
  5. Google optimize

However, Hotjar integration with Hubspot is possible and is pretty easy too. To get things rolling, two major requirements are:

  • Active HubSpot and Hotjar accounts.
  • The HubSpot tracking code and the Hotjar tracking code need to be installed on the site.

For further steps and details, check the guide here.

Hotjar integration with Omniconvert is also an easy process. It supports Hotjar Recordings and Heatmaps. Requirements for this integration would be:

  • Active Omniconvert and Hotjar accounts (paid plan of Hotjar)

Hotjar Support

Hotjar does a lot to provide support to all its users. Here’s what you get:

Documentation

Hotjar has laid down step by step guide on all the features – how to use and what to do. Whether you are stuck with the installation or wondering how to use one of the features – Hotjar has it all covered.

Along with that, there are links to FAQs that you can refer.

The most important document is on “How Hotjar is different from Google Analytics“.

Data Security

Hotjar knows how sensitive data can be, and does everything to keep your website’s data safe and secured. Even the visitor’s privacy is kept in mind.

To know more details on how data is stored and secured, check out the Data Security Page.

Site Performance

Often it happens that a new tool brings down your website’s performance. This is a persistent question, and Hotjar has it answered. It goes on to explain the impact Hotjar will have on your site performace.

So, before you start using, you can very well be aware of what you are geting into. I’d say, you MUST read the information given on Site Performance before proceeding.

Action-Plan

Optimize your website the ‘Hotjar Way’ to tap on the hottest opportunities for growth. You will get a full-on detail on how to use Hotjar and get the best out of this tool.

The 9-step guide is comprehensive and crucial as well:

hotjar action plan

Useful Hotjar Alternatives

Useful Hotjar Alternatives in 2024

It is foolish to draw conclusions without comparison. Even Hotjar urges its users to make a price comparison before buying.

It makes sense – only when you compare two things, you get a better understanding of which one you need.

So, in this guide now I will compare Hotjar alternatives with more other tools: Mouseflow, Freshmarketer, Luckyorange, Crazy Egg.

Mouseflow

Mouseflow – Powerful Hotjar alternative

Mouseflow opens with the main objective of using the tool-

Stop guessing why your visitors leave your site

The features of Hotjar and Mouseflow are very similar: Heatmaps, forms, conversion funnels and session replay.

You can integrate Mouseflow with platforms like Joomla, Shopify, WordPress, Google Analytics, Hubspot, and many more.

The powerful RESTful API gives you full control over your data. Let’s quickly go over the feature of Mouseflow-

Session Replay

Mouseflow’s tracking system will remind you of a CCTV footage! Starting with clicks, mouse movements, scrolls, to filling out forms – Mouseflow tracks every single move of your visitor.

mousleflow session recording

It is all possible with this session replay feature.

Filters and Segments

Pinpoint a session easily within seconds. Sorting and filtering get a tad more seamless- segment your audience by location, OS, platform, traffic source, etc.

The best part: You can save each filter to use later or quick analysis.

Compatibility

Mouseflow works efficiently on all the devices with a modern browser- desktops, tablets, and phones.

You get complete support for checkout, dynamic content, or member-only pages.

Also, all these doesn’t slow down your site.

Heatmaps

Ah! The reason we are here! Mouseflow has click/touch and movement heatmaps. It grabs your attention to the elements that attract your visitors most.

You can track their navigation and keep working on improving your site tractions.

The other feature inclusive is the scroll and attention heatmap.

This lets you know which part of your site exactly manages to retain, attract, and engage your visitors most.

heatmaps

If you are looking for information like which part of the world is viewing your site more, the Geo Heatmaps from Mouseflow can come handy.

You can discover the geological patterns and target visitors based on such real-time data.

Funnels

You can get an overview of your visitor’s journey- from start to end. Mouseflow gives you a page-to-page overview through which you can analyze your visitor’s journey.

You can know where your visitors are dropping off, and fix that.

The entire navigation process is right in front of you!

mouseflow funnnesl

Form Analytics

The way every visitor interacts or engages in your forms is an important metric. And Mouseflow gives you that.

You can measure where they dropped off, which question triggered a negative response, errors, blank submissions, and much more.

With details like these, you can work to increase conversions.

Affiliates

Mouseflow claims to rely on word-of-mouth for their growth. Thus, they provide a recurring commission to all those who contribute to their growth!

The benefits are somewhat like this:

  • 10% on All Referral Plans {The payment happens on a monthly basis till the time you have a paid account and is an active user}
  • 60-Day Tracking Cookie.

The Branding Guide is available for further reference.

mouseflow g2 review

Mouseflow offers multiple ways to contact the company such as via email, phone, or through the support center, which is very helpful because it means you don’t have to contact them via a form. Mouseflow has offices in the United States, Canada, and the UK, but also is reachable by phone in Australia, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, and by email in Australia, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain.

Hotjar vs. Mouseflow

If it’s about users’ trust and confidentiality, then Hotjar takes the winner’s cup! Hotjar offers an open standard for users to develop confidence with them with their transparency.

The likelihood of users’ recommendation to Hotjar over mouse flow is a lot higher. Points of differences: 

  • No polling or survey feature in Mouseflow
  • No free plan like Hotjar

As per customer review, Hotjar is a better option in terms of:

  • Value for money
    • Ease of use
    • Customer support
  • Affiliate Program in Hotjar is absent
ParametersHotjar vsMouseflow
What is good?Free plan
Ease of use
Great website analytics
Innovative screen recording capabilities.
Very affordable and easy to use.

What is not good?The mobile app is not very good.
The interface is clunky.
No polling feature
The design is certainly flat and not as good.
Best forSmall and big businessesSmall-sized businesses
PricingPaid plan starts at $39/moPaid plan starts at $39/mo
Hotjar vs Mouseflow

Hockeystack

Hockeystack – Reliable Hotjar alternative

Hockeystack is a tool that promises to increase your landing page conversions and is the fastest way to track your website visitors.

You might be wondering what’s with its name and how it makes sense.

I visited their website and found the answer, and it impressed me.

As per the website: 

“HockeyStack is the easiest way for your website to reach hockey-stick growth. Hockey-stick growth refers to a sharp increase in your metrics that HockeyStack provides as you track your visitors and understand their needs.” 

Now let us see how this tool can help you get the hockey-stick growth through its features: 

Automated insights

Hockeystack emphasizes the power of automation and no code. It helps you understand and find who will convert better with simple clicks.

This feature allows you to find out which visitor is more likely to complete your goal, filter visitors based on your goals, and help identify customer pain points and optimize it accordingly. 

Track user journey

Hockeystack makes tracking user journey very easy where you do not have to create any tags for events. Each scroll, click is automatically collected to create a user journey.

You can also filter your visitors by session properties, user properties, pageviews, and goal completions.

With Hockeystack, you also get page based analytics quickly with minimum efforts.

hockeystack track user journey

Create conversion goals

It is another handy feature to create goals with pageviews and clicks. You can also analyze your goal performance over time.

Filters on the dashboard help you identify which pages converting visitors viewed, which devices they use and their session details.

Visual funnels

You can create funnels in about just less than 30 secs. It will help you find out the points where your uses drop-off usually and use it to optimize accordingly.

You can also duplicate funnels and change the steps, add UTM tags, or create multiple funnels with the same start steps & different end goals.

Multiple domains

You do not have to go back and forth to manage your numerous business domains. With Hockeystack, you can add all your domains to one place and track them from the same dashboard.

It offers popular integrations with tools like Wix, Shopify, WordPress, Squarespace and many more. 

Hockeystack Pricing plans:

Hockeystack offers a 14-days free trial with no credit card details and also 30 days money-back guarantee.

 It comes in 4 plans: 

  • Forever free – 5k pageviews/domain/mo
  • Accelerate @ $99/domain/mo – 10 domains and 100k pageviews
  • Boost @ $249/domain/mo  – unlimited domains and 350k pageviews every month
  • Dominate that comes with custom pricing. where you get unlimited domains and custom pageviews.

All the plans offer the same set of features; just the number of pageviews, team members and data history varies.

The most popular plan is the accelerate plan that allows 100k pageviews per domain per month.

ParametersHotjar vsHockeystack
What is good?Free plan
Ease of use
Great website analytics
Manage multiple domains from one dashboard.
What is not good?The mobile app is not very good.
The interface is clunky.
Misses some really advanced features.
No heatmaps
No session recordings.
Best forSmall and big businessesSmall-sized businesses
PricingPaid plan starts at $39/moPaid plan starts at $1399/mo
Hotjar vs Hockeystack comparison

Freshmarketer

Freshmarketer – Most popular Alternative to Hotjar

freshmarketer

The next Hotjar alternative we have is Freshmarketer. Freshmarketer is more of a conversion rate optimization tool.

Features like A/B testing, Heatmaps, and Funnel Analysis modules take the limelight.

With a 30-Day free trial for 5000 unique visitors, Freshmarketer provides a smooth website experience. Recently, Freshmarketer also announced the Polls and Feedback feature.

Features of Freshmarketer include:

  • Live heatmaps for interactive elements
  • A/B testing via Chrome plugin
  • Split URL testing
  • Funnel analysis
  • Form analytics
  • Polls and Feedback

Before you sign up for the trial version, you can even request a demo. Freshmarketer offers a very detailed documentation.

The integration with Google analytics, and with some third party integrations like Google Tag Manager, Unbounce, WordPress, Squarespace, GoDaddy, Magento, Joomla, Wix, and Weebly makes Freshmarketer a great Hotjar alternative.

Freshmarketer launched its next version Freshmarketer 2.0 with more enhanced features.

The existing features got a make-over and some new features got released. Here’s what Freshmarketer 2.0 version is all about:

Increased Web Form Conversions

You can now drill down the specific visitor behaviour on the web forms.

Things like how much average time they spent on the form, how many unique views and responses you got, what are the drop-off numbers, rate of form abandonment, blank rates of fields, etc can be known real-time.

Read your Visitors’ Mind

Polls and Feedback feature lets you ask your visitors timely questions.

After all, the right timing is very important in business and helps a lot with improving the conversion rates. Questions like these help in understanding what the visitors are looking for and how satisfied they are.

If you can set up a good set of questions, then kudos! You just made it as an omnipresent listener.

Multiple Users on Freshmarketer

You can have multiple accounts to increase efficiency and easy task delegation. Features like this are very helpful for marketing agencies!

Funnel Analysis

In the new Freshmarketer version, you can track visitor interactions on ‘virtual pages’. These pages do not have a unique URL but are a part of the funnel.

Heatmap

The updated version of Freshmarketer lets you restrict the tracking of visitor counts or percentage of traffic to be used in an experiment.

This measure helps in avoiding spamming errors. This increases the heatmap accuracy.

Last is the revenue tracking. You can now track the monetary value of every action or event for each variety in the experiments.

freshmarketer g2 review

Hotjar vs. Freshmarketer

Interestingly, Freshmarketer itself provides a detailed comparison with all the popular tools in the market.

There is a separate document for this!

Things that are common to both Hotjar and Freshmarketer are:

  • Heatmaps
  • Scrollmaps
  • Funnel analysis
  • Form analytics
  • Polls and Feedback
  • Support

Hotjar and Freshmarketer are almost similar. However, there are some major points where they are strikingly different. The first point of difference is the pricing plan.

Apart from the difference in the amount of each plan, the way calculations are done is different for both. Incase of Hotjar, the pricing plans are based on the total pageviews per month.

On the contrary, the pricing plans of Freshmarketer are based on the total number of contacts you have. I find it slightly weird how they charge you! But given the difference in the feature set that Freshmarketer offers, I think it validates their pricing.

Freshmarketer is a full-fledged marketing automation tool where you get email marketing, journey building, in-depth reporting and attribution, and a lot more.

You can also read a detailed Freshmarketer – Website conversion optimization app review.

Pricing Plans of Freshmarketer (billed annually):

  • Free is a free plan and allows 500 contacts.
  • Growth at $19/mo for 2000 contacts.
  • Pro at $152/mo for 5000 contacts.
  • Enterprise $304/mo for 10,000 contacts.

Freshmarketer – only Features:

Coming to the features that are unique to Freshmarketer, are:

  • Split URL Testing
  • Security is much advanced-
  • Data backup in multiple locations/GEO regions
  • Integration with Google Universal Analytics
ParametersHotjar Freshmarketer
What is good?Free plan
Ease of use
Great website analytics
A lot of unique features such as split URL testing, integration with Google analytics.
What is not good?The mobile app is not very good.
The interface is clunky.
The interface is very overwhelming.
Best forSmall and big businessesVarying plans for all types of businesses.
PricingPaid plan starts at $39/moPaid plan starts at $19/mo
Hotjar vs Freshmarketer

SquidVision

SquidVision – Best Hotjar Alternative For SaaS Companies

SquidVision is a new entry into the heatmap space. What makes SquidVision different from the other heatmap software tools is they don’t use traditional click or scroll heatmaps.

Instead they use what they term “revenue heatmaps”. 

squidvision

Revenue heatmaps attribute revenue to all of the clicks a user makes which allows you to see exactly how much revenue each button and link has generated on any of your landing pages or blog posts.

SquidVision caters to SaaS companies that use Stripe as a payment processor but they also have a Shopify app for any Shopify store owners.

One feature that stood out to me is their revenue bubbles.

If you hover over the little green revenue bubbles on the heatmap the bubble expands and shows you in depth data about the performance of that button or link.

squidvision heatmap

Features of SquidVision

  1. Revenue Attribution
  2. Revenue Tracking by Page
  3. Dashboard
  4. Conversion Metrics
  5. Interactive Heatmaps

Pricing of SquidVision

SquidVision pricing is based on your current revenue that they will be tracking.

Porthole: $49/mo

Clear Waters: $99/mo

Visionary: $199/mo

ParametersHotjar vsSquidVision
What is good?Free planEase of useGreat analyticsHeatmaps with revenue attribution.
What is not good?Hotjar has no revenue attribution.SquidVision doesn’t have a free plan.
Best forSmall and big businessesSaas companies and Shopify stores
PricingPaid plans start at $39/moPaid plans start at $49/mo

Luckyorange

Luckyorange – Hotjar Alternative with hidden treasures

luckyoranga

The bright orange color on the homepage is attractive enough to keep you scrolling for few seconds.

Luckyorange introduces the platform as “The Original All-in-One Optimization Suite” and starts at just $10 per month.

Now that is cheaper than Hotjar. Let’s find out if it surpasses Hotjar with its features as well.

A quick look at the features:

Dashboard

The tagline that Luckyorange uses is cheesy! You cannot help but keep repeating it. The Dashboard is the one-stop for all the details you need- at a glance.

Luckyorange records dynamic and member's only pages, including even the most advanced sites and single page apps. Click To Tweet

You can see how many people are there on your site, and also how they found you. You get to compare all these information with historical statistics and analyze what is driving traffic to your site.

Recording

We have gone over the details of this feature in all the above-mentioned tool. In session replay if there is anything new to add to this functionality, it is this:

This is new!

Heatmaps

Luckyorange pretty much does all that Hotjar, and Mouseflow does. Starting with the segmenting map by location, browser dates, devices, etc to understand what people are doing and how!

Chat

This is one feature I like about Luckyorange. It integrates with your existing website and is compatible with all devices. With a host of powerful features like multiple operations, canned responses, and auto invites- The Chat feature is like the icing on the cake!

luckyorange chat

Conversion Funnels

Again the functionality remains the same. You get to create funnels based on your users’ activities- where they dropped off, who created an account, etc.

The point of difference is, clicking on a funnel step immediately filters the recordings to those visitors who have dropped off at any of the particular steps.

Form Analytics

Luckyorange gives you five distinct and highly valuable reports. You get detailed insights on the problem areas on your website’s forms.

luckyorange heatmap

Polls

Instant customer feedback is the way to go! And what better option than polls? Polls on Luckyorange are fully customized, can have multiple questions, can be redirected to URLs, and is also triggered at the right moment.

GDPR and CCPA updateLuckyOrange is compliant with GDPR and CCPA and has ensured all the necessary steps to take care of the privacy rights of the EU customers. Their major steps include:

  1. Updated terms of services and privacy agreement.
  2. Privacy shield certification
  3. Improved visitor anonymity and de-identification.

Lucky Orange Support

If you have questions, contact Lucky Orange via telephone, live chat, or email. You should also go through their FAQs, Guides, installation resources. Lucky Orange does not provide an online contact form or e-mail contact. Lucky Orange provides many tools to get the most from your Lucky Orange membership.

Hotjar vs. Luckyorange

The first highlight is, Luckyorange lets you compare historical statistics and takes into consideration keywords, locations, referrers, tweets, languages, etc that are driving traffic to your site.

And all of these are just on your Dashboard.

Features include:

  • Recordings
  • Heatmaps
  • Conversion funnels
  • Form Analytics
  • Chat
  • Polls

Out of all the features, the Chat feature of Luckyorange is highly distinguishable and I literally loved using it.

The ability to predict what your users need and answer them with tailored replies is a great feature.

After all, it’s always great to have the ability to give personalized attention to your users. Honestly, I think Hotjar’s proactive chat is not yet upto this level.

However, I’d still say, Hotjar’s Survey feature alone makes this tool a winner.

The option to get feedback and work upon them is crucial for any business or blogger or website owner.

ParametersHotjar Luckyorange
What is good?Free plan
Ease of use
Great website analytics
Chat functionality where provides tailored answers to your customer queries.
What is not good?The mobile app is not very good.
The interface is clunky.
UX needs improvement in terms of loading times.
Best forSmall and big businessesSmall-sized businesses
PricingPaid plan starts at $39/moPaid plan starts at $39/mo
Hotjar vs Luckyorange

Hotjar is the undisputed one tool in website analytics, having the largest market share in comparison to the tools we discussed above.

Apart from these three, there are some other alternatives that you can try, like Crazy Egg, and Clicktale.

Plerdy

Plerdy – Valuable Hotjar Alternative

plerdy

Plerdy is another Hotjar alternative that is a multifunctional SaaS solution. It helps to enhance the website performance and improve the overall conversion rate.

This tool caters to the needs of professional online marketers and agencies to help them detect roadblocks to the website’s performance.

plerdy pop up software

With Plerdy you have a robust approach on how to improve the conversion rates of websites and e-commerce stores along with pop-up software.

With Plerdy running in the background website owners can have accurate information related to what a website user is doing on their website.

One feature that really stood out to me with Plerdy was their Net promoter score (NPS). Plerdy places a survey form on your website that pops up at set times. After you get some responses it calculates an NPS score that help you improve various website aspects.

Features of Plerdy

SEO Features:

  1. Competitor analysis
  2. Dashboard
  3. Content management
  4. Google analytics integration

Heatmaps:

  1. Behavioral mapping
  2. Dynamic maps
  3. Element analytics
  4. Website analytics

Pricing of Plerdy

Plerdy is available in five plans:

  • Free: Forever free
  • Start : $32/mo billed annually
  • Business: $64/mo billed annually
  • Premium: $108/mo billed annually
  • Enterprise: Unlimited
ParametersHotjar vsPlerdy
What is good?Free plan
Ease of use
Great website analytics
Helps improve usability and increase conversions.
Offers SEO features as well.
What is not good?The mobile app is not very good.
The interface is clunky.
The onboarding is slightly tricky.
Best forSmall and big businessesBusinesses looking for internet marketing and web analytics.
PricingPaid plan starts at $39/moPaid plan starts at $32/mo
Hotjar vs Plerdy

Crazy Egg

Crazy Egg – Professional Hotjar Alternative

crazy egg

The Crazy Egg has incredible heatmap tool. It’s pretty amazing.

It provides a bit more customization. Comparatively Crazy Egg has more organized session recordings.

ParametersHotjar vsCrazyegg
What is good?Free plan
Ease of use
Great website analytics
Powerful customization options at affordable price.
What is not good?The mobile app is not very good.
The interface is clunky.
If a website has a poor load time initially working with Crazyegg may impact it even more.
Best forSmall and big businessesSmall-sized businesses
PricingPaid plan starts at $39/moPaid plan starts at $49/mo
Hotjar vs Crazy egg

More Hotjar Alternatives You Should Try

More Hotjar Alternatives you should try

Smartlook

Smartlook offers advanced user session recording and heatmaps to analyze user behavior. With its affordable price plans, it provides excellent value for small to medium-sized businesses.

Its intuitive interface and seamless integration options make it a user-friendly choice. However, it lacks some of the advanced features and integrations offered by Hotjar.

FullStory

FullStory stands out with its powerful search capabilities and detailed session replay. It offers comprehensive insights into user interactions, enabling businesses to optimize their websites effectively.

Although it offers a higher price point compared to Hotjar, its robust feature set and deep analytics make it worth the investment for businesses looking for advanced analytics capabilities.

Contentsquare

Contentsquare provides an all-in-one platform for customer behavior analysis. Its unique strength lies in its AI-powered insights and predictive analytics. With its detailed heatmaps and funnel analysis, Contentsquare offers a holistic understanding of user journeys.

However, the higher pricing and steeper learning curve may be a drawback for smaller businesses.

Zonka Feedback

Zonka Feedback is a powerful Hotjar alternative for those looking to build surveys and collect feedback from their targeted audience. It offers a comprehensive customer feedback and experience management platform to create surveys in minutes. Like Hotjar, Zonka Feedback also offers multiple feedback widgets, including feedback buttons, slide-up surveys, pop-up surveys, pop-over surveys, and more. In addition to that, businesses can also collect offline surveys, SMS surveys, and email surveys.

While Hotjar basically focuses on website and user analytics, Zonka Feedback helps capture a holistic view of the customer journey. It helps capture feedback regarding website or product usability, design, user experience, and more.

VWO

VWO combines A/B testing, heatmaps, and session recordings to help businesses optimize their websites. It offers a user-friendly interface and an extensive range of targeting options.

The downside is that its pricing can be quite high, especially for businesses with limited budgets. Additionally, some users may find the interface less intuitive compared to Hotjar.

Clarity

Microsoft Clarity provides deep insights into user behavior through session recordings and heatmaps. Its seamless integration with other Microsoft products is a definite advantage for businesses already using Microsoft’s ecosystem.

However, it lacks some of the advanced features and integrations offered by Hotjar, making it less suitable for businesses requiring more comprehensive analytics.

Survicate

Survicate offers advanced survey and feedback collection tools to understand user preferences and improve user experience. Its customizable surveys and targeted feedback options allow businesses to gather valuable insights.

However, it lacks some of the broader analytics features provided by Hotjar, limiting its suitability for businesses that require a more comprehensive analytics solution.

RightMessage

RightMessage provides personalized website messaging and segmentation, allowing businesses to create tailored experiences for their visitors. Its flexible pricing plans make it accessible to businesses of all sizes.

However, it primarily focuses on personalization rather than comprehensive analytics, so businesses requiring advanced analytics capabilities may need to supplement it with other tools.

Glassbox

Glassbox offers comprehensive session replay and advanced analytics to optimize user experience. Its AI-driven insights and anomaly detection features provide valuable data for businesses.

However, the higher pricing and more complex setup process may be barriers for smaller businesses or those with limited technical expertise.

Heap

Heap offers automated event tracking and analytics, making it easy for businesses to gather data without manual tagging. Its intuitive interface and powerful segmentation capabilities streamline data analysis.

However, it lacks some of the advanced features and integrations provided by Hotjar, limiting its suitability for businesses with more extensive analytics requirements.

LogRocket

LogRocket combines session replay and error tracking to help businesses identify and fix website issues efficiently. Its affordable pricing plans make it a cost-effective choice for businesses of all sizes.

However, it focuses primarily on debugging and error tracking, and its analytics capabilities are less comprehensive compared to Hotjar.

UXcam

UXcam offers a user-centric approach to website analytics. With its advanced session replay and heatmap features, it allows you to see exactly how users interact with your website. The pricing plans are flexible, with options for startups and enterprises.

Unlike Hotjar, UXcam also offers comprehensive user journey analysis and form analytics, giving you valuable insights into user behavior and conversion optimization.

UserTesting

UserTesting takes user research to the next level. Its platform enables you to conduct remote user testing and gather feedback from real users. With its diverse pool of testers and comprehensive video recordings, you gain in-depth insights into user experiences.

While Hotjar focuses on website analytics, UserTesting offers usability testing and feedback. Pricing plans are available for individual projects as well as ongoing user testing needs.

Optimizely

Optimizely is a powerful experimentation platform designed to enhance your website’s conversion rates. Its feature-rich A/B testing and personalization capabilities give you the ability to optimize every aspect of your site.

With its visual editor and code-level access, customization is a breeze.

However, compared to Hotjar, Optimizely may have a steeper learning curve and higher price points, making it more suitable for larger organizations with dedicated optimization teams.

Ptengine

Ptengine is a comprehensive website analytics tool that helps you understand user behavior and boost conversions. It offers advanced features like heatmaps, session replays, and conversion funnels. Ptengine provides real-time data, allowing you to make informed decisions quickly.

Compared to Hotjar, Ptengine offers more detailed analytics and customization options. However, it may lack some of the qualitative feedback features that Hotjar excels in.

Zoho Pagesense

Zoho Pagesense is a conversion rate optimization tool that focuses on understanding user behavior and improving website performance. It offers features like heatmaps, A/B testing, and funnel analysis. Zoho Pagesense integrates seamlessly with other Zoho products, providing a holistic marketing solution.

Compared to Hotjar, Zoho Pagesense may have a slightly steeper learning curve and fewer qualitative feedback features. However, it compensates with its extensive integration options and pricing flexibility.

An Overview

An Overview of Hotjar alternatives

Hotjar alternativesPricing Features Summary
MouseflowMouseflow offers 4 plans:
Free: $0/mo
Starter: $39/mo
Growth:$129/mo
Business:$259/mo
Pro:$499/mo
All pricing is based on annual billing
Improves website engagement and help you understand your customer better.

Mouseflow can help you find the problem areas and optimize your website to prevent bounce rates.
FreshmarketerFreshmarketer offer 4 plans:
Growth: $19/user/mo
Pro: $152/user/mo
Enterprise: $304user/mo
All the pricing is based on annual billing
Freshmarketer offers features like heatmaps, A/B testing, funnel analysis, polls, and feedback, and form analytics.

It also comes with dynamic maps, element analysis as well as other marketing automation features.
LuckyorangeLuckyorange offer 4 plans:
Starter: $39/mo
Small business: $79/mo
Medium:$179/mo
Large business: $749/mo
Enterprise: Contact sales
All the pricing is based on monthly billing
Luckyorange is a similar tool to Hotjar and Mouseflow and offer more or less the same feature.

The one distinguishing feature is the chat functionality where it provides tailored answers to your customer queries. It is much better than Hotjar in this field.
Crazy EggCrazyegg offer 4 plans:
Basic: $00/mo
Standard: $49/mo
Plus:$99/mo
Pro: $249/mo
All the plans offer 30-day free trial.
Crazyegg is a powerful Heatmap tool. A perfect tool to understand what your visitors are doing on your website.

Compared to Hotjar the customization offered by Crazyegg is much better and also cheaper.
Comparison of all available Hotjar alternatives

If you have found a better Hotjar alternatives tool, then tell me in comments exactly why you think so.

Else, if you also agree that Hotjar is by-far the best tool in website analytics, give me a buzz.

Competitive grid heatmap tools

FAQs

Questions related to selection of best Hotjar alternative

What are some self-hosted and open source alternatives for HotJar?

There are no self hosted and open source alternatives to Hotjar rather you can check some other cheaper alternatives to HotJar.

Why should I use HotJar when I am using Google analytics?

Google analytics just gives you an overview of how your site is performing but HotJar is all about the smallest details that includes reporting, feedback, analytics, forms , funnels , recruiter feature and more.

Does hotjar offer support for mobile apps?

Unfortunately, hotjar doesn’t support mobile apps.

What are cheaper alternatives to Hotjar?

Some cheaper alternatives to HotJar are:
MouseFlow: $31.98/month
LuckyOrange: $10/month

Does Hotjar slow down a site performance?

Yes, it does. But the site performance will be slow to a negligible rate.
Not to forget that even Google analytics slows down the site performance.

Does Hotjar offer any free version?

Yes, Hotjar offers a forever-free plan where you can collect data up to 2000 pageviews every day.

Is using Hotjar safe?

Yes, Hotjar takes several steps to ensure that your data is completely safe with them.

How can I uninstall Hotjar from my website?

You need to find the tracking code in the header section of your website. Highlighting the tracking code and deleting it will remove Hotjar from your website but do not forget to save these changes.

Is Hotjar able to identify iframes?

No Hotjar cannot track activities on iframes due to security problems that come with the designing of iframes. An iframe in simple words can be explained as a webpage within a webpage.

Ankit Prakash
Ankit Prakash

Ankit is a seasoned technology entrepreneur and founder of Aritic and EasySendy. With over 10 years of experience building product-led B2B SaaS companies, he is focused on ambitious goals and bringing innovative platforms to market. As a Principal Founder, Ankit leads product, engineering, marketing, and strategic partnerships for Aritic's suite of sales and marketing automation tools. He has grown the brand to over $120M valuation and $8M+ in revenue since 2015. Ankit is passionate about analyzing and reviewing software to provide readers with authoritative, in-depth insights. His articles cover martech, SaaS, entrepreneurship, and other technologies based on his hands-on expertise. He stays on top of industry trends and best practices in product marketing, performance marketing, inbound marketing, and content marketing. His work has been featured in leading publications including G2Crowd, Scoop.It, Brandvertisor, Martech Advisor, Smart Insights, and more. Driven by a dedication to shaping the future of B2B SaaS, Ankit enjoys translating his experiences building, marketing, and scaling companies into actionable thought leadership.

Show all Most Helpful Highest Rating Lowest Rating Add your review
  1. Hotjar is really interesting and impressing one, but after watching the alternatives of Hotjar. Am in Shocked, You really done a nice job, Keep it up..!!

  2. Hotjar helps its users to tag the different recording, view the actions of other users’ invariance and taking the reference notes, and share these recording with any other person or user, filter the recordings in accordance to the needs of the users, replay the sessions of visitors of the real websites, etc.

  3. hi

    I’d like to know which live chat toll you suggest for free

    The best,

1 2 3
Sprout24
Logo