How to find the best Hotjar alternative?

How to find the best Hotjar alternative?

Zuzanna Sobczyk
Zuzanna Sobczyk12 minDecember 10, 2022

Hotjar is one of the available solutions for people looking to start their journey with tracking and analyzing website user behavior.

After some time though, you will probably start noticing that this software has some drawbacks.

Examples include a lack of funnel analysis features and limited quantitative analysis options. What’s more, some really important features like tracking and defining events require programming skills and an upgraded plan.

For these reasons, and more, you might be interested in opting in for a Hotjar alternative.

If that is indeed the case, join us today for an article explaining how to find a better solution.

What is Hotjar?

Hotjar is a tool created in 2014 used for user experience tracking and analysis. It’s a helpful solution for professionals like UX designers who want to analyze and track user behavior on their websites. 

Hotjar can also be used by product teams, product designers, product managers, researchers and more to do other tasks. Those could include improving websites and products, validating ideas with user data or even uncovering UX issues swiftly.

Hotjar banner

Source: Hotjar

Hotjar features

The Hotjar tool offers its users a relatively interesting range of features to take advantage of.

They cover areas such as conversion optimization, customer feedback and user experience. The degree of access to them depends on your chosen subscription plan.

In general, subscribers can expect to make use of typical for this software type features. 

Examples include:

✔️ website visit recordings,

✔️ form optimization,

✔️ user behavior tracking,

✔️ scroll maps,

✔️ user testing,

✔️ feedback surveys,

✔️ heatmaps.

Hotjar features list

Hotjar’s pricing

As a potential user of Hotjar, you’ve got a few pricing options to choose from.

First of all, it’s possible to use this tool free of charge, thanks to the free version. Second of all, you can choose between two plan categories: Ask and Observe.

We’ll walk you through them briefly now.

Ask plans

Purpose: exploring users’ feedback and feelings

In total, there are 4 types of the Ask plan to choose from:

1️⃣ Basic: 20 responses per month for $0 per month

2️⃣  Plus: 250 responses per month for $59 per month

3️⃣ Business: 500 responses per month for $79 per month

4️⃣ Scale: unlimited responses per month for a customized pricing 

Observe plans

Purpose: tracking users’ actions using session recordings and visualizing user behavior with heatmaps

In total, there are 4 types of the Observe plan to choose from:

1️⃣ Basic: track 1050 sessions per month for $0 per month

2️⃣ Plus: track 3000 sessions per month for $39 per month

3️⃣ Business: track 500 sessions per day for $99 per month

4️⃣ Scale: track all sessions for a customized pricing

Hotjar’s pricing list

Source: Hotjar

💡Read also:

📚 Why tracking customer behavior is important

📚 How to analyse session recordings

📚 Understanding user frustration

Why look for a Hotjar alternative?

Now, you see, all these different pricing plans to choose from, as well as seemingly attractive features, aren’t necessarily enough to guarantee excellent user experience.

And you should know that research points toward the delivery of outstanding customer experience as one of the biggest priorities for businesses in the coming years. 

Whether you like it or not, to do that you need to gather data and analyze it. In this situation, you won’t get far without a reliable tool made for this purpose.

business priorities in the next 5 years

Source: Superoffice

Sadly, Hotjar isn’t one of them. And here’s why:

👎Reason 1: tracking logged-in users isn’t possible with Hotjar

👎Reason 2: predictive analyzing of customer behavior isn’t possible with Hotjar, so you cannot adjust your next steps to your customers’ potential future behavior (as you don’t know what it might be)

👎Reason 3: heatmaps lack interactivity, making the experience of analyzing them worse and more difficult

👎Reason 4: Hotjar lacks criteria-based demographics, so you can’t dive very deep into the data that is collected

👎Reason 5: the limited degree of compatibility with other tools and integrations makes Hotjar outdated compared to other solutions.

👎Reason 6: the user interface appears to be poorly organized sometimes, which, as a result, increases the time needed to spend on analyzing data.

LiveSession and DataBox case study

Read story

Finding your Hotjar alternative: best practices

Perhaps now it’s possible that you’re interested in finding some Hotjar alternative. If that’s so, we suggest following our tips and tricks on how to do it effectively.

Below, we’ve prepared some advice for you that will help you with this not so easy task. By sticking to it, we believe everything will go far more smoothly.

Set your goals

First things first, it’s vital that you have your expectations towards a tool set in advance. In other words, what do you want the tool to do for you?

Some questions worth asking yourself here are:

  • Do I need conversion funnel features or heatmap tools?
  • How many user sessions do I want to record?
  • How important is excellent customer experience for me?
  • What analytics tools could meet my needs?
  • Will a 14-day free trial benefit me?
  • What behavioral tracking features am I interested in?
  • What are some of the key features I need to have?
  • Will my marketing team or sales team benefit from this solution?

Figure out pricing

Next, it’s time to consider your budget. You know what you want to achieve, so now think about how much you want to pay for all of that. 

To make your job easier, we recommend checking various user behavior analytics tools and their pricing plans. Doing this will give you an idea whether you’re setting your budget high, low, or just on the right level. 

Compare features

Similar to pricing, don’t forget to also compare different features of various tools. It’s the only way you can actually dive deep into tools and their functionality, as well as how they perform next to others. 

Look in various places

Moving on, you shouldn’t restrict yourself when it comes to the places you will be looking at for your user behavior analytics software. 

Finding the “one and only” subscription is often a tedious task that requires research. 

So don’t be afraid to really deep dive into this researching phase and do consider checking out places and/or sources like:

  • software review platforms like Q2 or Capterra,
  • question and answer platform called Quora,
  • blog websites,
  • rankings and software reviews published by independent parties,
  • family, friends, business partners and competitors.

The more places you look in, the higher the chance that you will find your perfect match. 

Check out reviews

Last but not least, after doing all of the above, the very last thing you can do is read about your potential choice online. 

And we don’t mean reading their blog posts or websites in general. Instead, you should focus on reading good quality reviews from verified and authentic users. This way, you’ll be able to estimate if a tool is going to meet your demands or not.

Checklist: 

  1. set your goals in advance
  2. figure out your ideal pricing
  3. compare features between tools
  4. search for your tool in various places
  5. check out reviews from reliable sources before signing any contracts

💡Read also:

📚 Using product usage analytics in SaaS

📚 Measuring and improving your product’s success

📚 Why do people choose your business?

Top 5 Hotjar alternative in 2022

Below you can see our top 5 picks for reliable Hotjar alternatives, with LiveSession being our number #1. 

Browse through them now and keep reading to find out what makes LiveSession the best of them all.

#1 LiveSession

Hotjar alternative example: LiveSession

Source: LiveSession

#2 Mouseflow

HotJar alternative example: Mouseflow

Source:Mouseflow

#3 FullStory

Hotjar alternative example: FullStory

Source: FullStory

#4 LogRocket

HotJar alternative example: LogRocket

Source: LogRocket

#5 Smartlook

Hotjar alternative example: Smartlook

Source: SmartLook

LiveSession as your perfect Hotjar alternative

LiveSession is analytics software helping professionals like you to understand your users in the best possible way.

It grants features to perform tasks like:

  • analyze users’ behavior, 
  • improve UX, 
  • find bugs,
  • increase conversion rates using session replays and event-based product analytics.

LiveSession offers a free plan, as well as a broad range of paid plans to take advantage of. What’s more, you get to test the tool out completely for free for 2 months! That’s much longer than Hotjar’s 15 days.

Also, the price:value ratio is better than with Hotjar. 

That’s simply because LiveSession has more powerful features, higher stability and is far easier to use. All of this can be confirmed by reviews from authentic users on platforms like Capterra.

You’ll also be pleased to know that the range of the available integrations is pretty broad. This way, LiveSession makes the perfect choice to keep all your user behavior tracking and analytics in one place.

So try it out today and see how effective it is.

LiveSession’s features

Source: LiveSession

Other than that, we invite you to check our blog out for more insightful content. Thanks for stopping by and good luck with finding your Hotjar alternative!

💡Read also:

📚 Marketing strategies that will boost your conversions

📚 Tips on driving customer loyalty through your website

📚 5 ways to improve your website’s UX design & boost conversion

Bonus: 20+ questions to ask yourself when looking for a Hotjar alternative

  1. What is by-far the best tool I could pick, except for Hotjar?
  2. What are some popular tools with better features than Hotjar?
  3. How many monthly sessions am I looking forward to recording and analyzing?
  4. Can I quickly learn how to use this tool in simple steps?
  5. Will this tool allow me to track clicks on the website?
  6. Are Smartlook and Hotjar similar in features?
  7. Would I like to have access to a forever free plan?
  8. What insights into consumer behavior can this tool give me?
  9. What are some user reviews of this tool?
  10. Do the design elements of the tool play an important role in my customer experience?
  11. Are there any third party integrations I’d like to pair with my new tool?
  12. What are some popular platforms I can look for Hotjar alternatives on?
  13. Do I need to have the “attention heatmap” feature?
  14. Is event tracking an essential feature to have for me?
  15. What insights from an user analytics tool would help my marketing team
  16. What qualitative analysis features am I interested in having?
  17. Will basic features of a product experience insights tool be enough for my needs?
  18. Will this new tool allow me to collect user feedback?
  19. Can I use Google Analytics instead of Hotjar?
  20. Can I integrate Google Analytics with my new user behavior tracking and analytics software?
  21. What are some popular integrations that I would like my perfect tool to have?
  22. What actionable insights should I expect from a high quality user behavior tracking and analytics software? 
  23. What is an average response rate for feedback surveys from user behavior analytics tools I should be aiming for?

 FAQ: Hotjar alternatives

Below you’ll find answers to some of the most commonly asked questions about Hotjar, its alternatives and more.

What is Hotjar?

Hotjar was created in 2014 and is used for user experience tracking and analysis. It helps professionals like UX designers who want to analyze and track user behavior on their websites. It also allows users to improve websites or products, validate ideas with data or even uncover UX issues swiftly.

Is Hotjar expensive?

It’s possible to use Hotjar for free. What’s more, there are 2 subscription categories with 4 plans to choose from in each of them. Paid plans are starting from $39 per month and can reach even a couple hundred dollars for highly customized subscriptions.

Why should I search for a Hotjar alternative?

You might want to consider searching for a Hotjar alternative for the following reasons: tracking logged-in users and predictive analyzing of customer behavior isn’t possible, heatmaps lack interactivity and the user interface appears to be poorly organized sometimes.

What are some Hotjar alternatives worth considering?

Some of the reliable Hotjar alternatives are: LiveSession, FullSession, FullStory, LogRocket, Smartlook, Mouseflow, Glassbox, Plerdy and Dynatrace. Out of these 10 picks, we highly recommend our stable and rich in features software: LiveSession. For more details on it, check out our website.

Where to look for Hotjar alternatives?

Finding a Hotjar alternative can be a tough nut to crack if you don’t know where to look. Personally, we recommend trying the following sources and solutions: blog posts (like this one), Quora, software review platforms, friend/family/business partner recommendations and even independent research.

What are some tips for looking for Hotjar alternatives?

When looking for your Hotjar alternative, consider sticking to the following tips to avoid disappointment and lost time: set your goals and desired pricing in advance, compare features, look in various places and check out software reviews.

Other commonly asked questions: How can I track visitor behavior with Hotjar? How many visitor recordings should I have monthly with Hotjar? Can Google Tag be integrated with Hotjar? Does Hotjar provide real time data? Does Hotjar offer a 30-day free trial? Does Hotjar show visitor recordings on the website from real users? What funnel analysis tools are better than Hotjar? Should there be a chat feature with my Hotjar alternative? Will analyzing my Hotjar alternative data help me increase customer engagement? What types of heatmaps should I look for in my ideal user behavior analytics software? What is customer journey mapping?

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