Product Analytics

Hotjar Pricing - How much does Hotjar Cost in 2025?

June 28, 2023

Zuzanna Sobczyk

Content Marketer
Table of content

Are you ready to unveil the secrets of your website’s performance and user insights? Hotjar, one of the popular tools for websites, has become a go-to solution for many businesses seeking to understand their website users’ behavior. Marketers around the world use Hotjar as a Heatmap and Session Replay solution.

But how much do you have to pay to use this solution in 2025, when budget matters more than anything and new behavior analytics tools are created every month?

In this article, we’ll delve into Hotjar’s pricing plans, helping you discover the perfect fit for your budget and needs

And hey, we’ll even explore some alternatives that might surprise you.

So, buckle up and get ready to navigate the world of website analytics and beyond!

What is Hotjar?

Hotjar is one solution from the suite of tools made for website owners with various features to analyze user behavior and gather feedback.

Overall, Hotjar aims to help businesses understand their website visitors, optimize their websites, and enhance the user experience.

Worth paying for: Hotjar top features

Hotjar offers features such as heatmaps, visitor recordings, conversion funnels, form analytics, and feedback polls.

Hotjar heatmaps

Heatmaps visually represent user interaction on web pages, showing clicks, mouse movements, and scrolling patterns.

Benefits:

  • get visual representations of user interactions
  • understand user behavior and identify areas of interest or confusion
  • optimize website layout, navigation, and content placement with the heatmap software

Recording user sessions

Visitor recordings allow website owners to watch recordings of user sessions.

Benefits:

  • watch recordings of user sessions
  • gain insights into user behavior and website interaction
  • identify usability issues and improve website design

Conversion funnels

Conversion tracking allows users to follow the steps visitors take on a website towards a desired action.

Benefits:

  • track user steps towards desired actions
  • understand conversion effectiveness and drop-off points
  • optimize user journey and improve conversion rates

Form analytics

Form analytics provide insights into how users interact with forms.

Benefits:

  • gain insights into user feedback or product performance with forms
  • identify pain points and optimize form design
  • identify errors and ensure smooth form submission

Feedback polls

Hotjar also offers feedback polls and surveys to gather direct feedback from visitors.

Benefits:

  • gather direct visitor feedback from users with surveys
  • measure user satisfaction and identify areas for improvement with various types of surveys
  • foster user engagement and enhance user experience

Not worth paying for: dark side of Hotjar

Hotjar’s pricing is often a point of dissatisfaction for users.

Some of them have expressed their disappointment, feeling that the features offered by Hotjar don’t justify the cost.

The perceived lack of value for money can leave users questioning whether the investment in Hotjar is truly worthwhile.

We’ll let you judge it yourself:

High pricing

One of the major concerns voiced by users is the high pricing of Hotjar.

Particularly for smaller businesses or startups with limited budgets, the cost of Hotjar’s plans can be prohibitive.

The pricing structure may make it difficult for these businesses to justify the expense, especially if they are just starting out and have other pressing financial priorities.

The high pricing may lead some users to seek alternative tools that offer similar functionalities at a more affordable price point.

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Payment issues

Some users have reported experiencing payment issues with Hotjar.

This can include difficulties in processing payments, delayed invoicing, or problems with billing cycles.

These payment-related hiccups can be frustrating and disruptive for businesses relying on Hotjar’s services.

While not everyone encounters them, it’s important to be aware of potential payment complications.

So do consider the impact they may have on your experience with the tool.

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Underdeveloped features

Hotjar offers a range of features, as we’ve already discovered.

However, some users have expressed dissatisfaction with the level of development and improvements to these features.

The perception is that certain functionalities could be more robust.

Users may find themselves limited in their ability to extract specific insights or tailor the tool to their unique requirements.

If advanced or highly customizable features are essential for your analytics needs, you may want to explore alternative solutions that better cater to your specific demands.

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Short term solution

Hotjar’s effectiveness as a long-term solution has been a point of discussion among users.

Some users feel that while Hotjar provides valuable insights in the short term, it may not offer sustainable solutions for ongoing analysis and optimization.

Businesses seeking comprehensive, long-term analytics strategies may find Hotjar lacking in certain areas.

We recommend carefully evaluating your long-term goals and determining if Hotjar aligns with your vision for sustained growth and optimization.

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Lack of support

Another concern raised by users is the perceived lack of effective support from Hotjar’s customer service team.

Users have reported difficulties in obtaining prompt assistance or solutions to their inquiries.

When issues arise, having responsive and knowledgeable customer support can be crucial for a smooth user experience.

If robust customer support is a priority for you, it may be worth exploring alternatives that offer more reliable and accessible support channels.

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Note: while these issues have been raised by some users, experiences can vary greatly. It’s advisable to consider these concerns alongside the positive aspects of Hotjar and assess whether the tool aligns with your specific needs, budget, and long-term goals. Exploring alternative options may also help in finding a tool that addresses any concerns you may have and provides a more satisfactory experience.

The real pricing options of Hotjar in 2023

So let’s look at the price tag with both the positive and negative sides of Hotjar we’ve just explored in mind:

Hotjar Products

Observe Module

The Observe Plan is available at no cost or with paid options starting at $39 monthly. Making it a popular option for marketers and those testing user experience analytics.

This plan is appealing for individuals and teams seeking valuable insights into user behavior.

It includes:

  • Heatmaps: Visualize user engagement on your site, helping you identify areas of interest and improvement.
  • Session Replay: Watch recordings of user sessions to understand navigational patterns and pain points.

This plan serves as a foundational tool for those looking to analyze effectively. While it provides basic features, it’s important to note that there’s no free support from a dedicated customer success manager, which may limit deeper insights.

Ask Module

The Ask Plan is free to try, with upgrades starting at $59 per month.

This plan is designed for marketers looking to engage users through surveys and feedback without additional tools complicating their analytics. It's particularly appealing to startups and those testing or scaling their user experience.

It includes:

  • Surveys: Gather valuable insights directly from users to enhance engagement.
  • Three Feedback Widgets: Easily collect real-time feedback embedded in your site, streamlining the process of understanding user sentiment.

While there’s no free option beyond the trial, this plan is a way to explore user experience feedback. However, keep in mind that to access priority support or a dedicated customer success manager, you may need to consider custom pricing.

Engage Module

The Engage Plan is offered free forever, making it a good choice for professionals seeking to connect directly with users. This plan is ideal for those with easy access to their user base, allowing for regular interviews and tests to gather valuable insights.

It includes:

  • 3 Interviews per month: Conduct engaging sessions with users from your own network, providing you with critical feedback per interview.
  • Up to 30-Minute Interview: Maximize your time with concise sessions that yield impactful insights.
  • 1 Spectator per Interview: Invite a team member to observe and analyze the interaction, enhancing collaborative learning.
  • 2 Weeks' Recording Retention: Keep recordings accessible for two weeks, enabling thorough review and analysis

This plan acts as a foundation for startups and professionals aiming to scale their user engagement strategies, a crucial aspect highlighted in any Hotjar review. Explore the potential of the Engage Plan, where Hotjar support and features like survey templates can elevate your user research efforts.

Pros and Cons of Hotjar Pricing Plans

Looking at how Hotjar is priced, we notice some obvious pros and cons.

Benefits of Hotjar’s pricing:

  • wide range of plans to choose from (but fixed)
  • 30-day money-back guarantee (however, user reviews don’t suggest that)
  • custom package available
  • monthly or annual billing option

Disadvantages of Hotjar’s pricing:

  • the wide range of plans is confusing, an inexperienced user may be lost (Like Hotjar Plus, Scale, Business)
  • not flexible pricing plans
  • high differences in prices between plans
  • potential hidden costs
  • limited free plan
  • lack of guidance on plans
  • the necessity to contact sales for help with choosing a plan

All Hotjar plans to choose from: basic plan, plus plan, business plan, scale plan in 3 different categories (Hotjar Observe, Hotjar Ask, Hotjar Engage) + custom package plan. To say the least, the Hotjar pricing model is just too complex.

Hotjar starts for $ 32 per month or $ 39 per month if billed annually. This will be enough to view heatmaps and session replays of 100 daily sessions.

So is the tool worth the price? Is there enough flexibility to cater to the needs of various businesses?

Not necessarily.

Okay, but what is the best Hotjar alternative?

After reading all this, you might be thinking that it’ll be best if you just pick another solution.

If that’s the case, we come with a helping hand.

Are you seeking a tool that will offer you the best value to cost ratio?

Look no further than LiveSession - our powerful website and user behavior analytics software with advanced features.

Hotjar vs LiveSession: feature comparison

As you can see, LiveSession offers far more key features to their users. Hotjar lacks a significant number of them.

Ultimately, this aspect makes Hotjar a less powerful tool than LiveSession.

But that’s not everything. What else makes LiveSession a better pick?

Flexible & transparent pricing

LiveSession is available at affordable prices, starting at $0 per month and granting you access to its features.

The plans offer flexibility, allowing you to modify your preferences as needed.

What’s more, you have the option to opt for a monthly subscription instead of committing to an annual one.

This means you’re not bound to a full year and you don’t have to make a lump sum payment for 12 months upfront.

The subscription can be customized to suit your specific requirements.

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Product Analytics

LiveSession's Product Analytics Feature has emerged as the best Hotjar alternative, rivaling even Fullstory in its comprehensive capabilities.

Compared to Hotjar, LiveSession provides more robust session replay analytics, making it a superior choice for businesses looking to understand user behavior. Hotjar has become known for its heat maps, but Hotjar doesn't offer the depth of interaction analytics that LiveSession delivers.

LiveSession unlike Hotjar offers advanced analytics to its users with free plans while Hotjar asks a starting $213 per month just for 500 sessions.

Developer first platform

When considering Hotjar alternatives, LiveSession emerges as the best Hotjar alternative for development teams. Unlike Hotjar, which primarily focuses on marketing analytics, LiveSession delivers a powerful addition to session replay and user behavior analysis - Dev Tools.

Our technical users are able to replicate the issues much faster and save their resources on building products not fixing bugs.

While Hotjar has become popular among marketers, many Hotjar users find that Hotjar doesn't offer the technical depth developers need. LiveSession offers a Forever Free plan.

LiveSession integrates seamlessly with another analytics tool ecosystem like Google Analytics. At LiveSession we are working hard to make our API more user friendly and accessible for users. Unlike basic Hotjar API offering little usability.

Engagement score

You don’t have to spend time searching through sessions manually to find the most engaging ones.

With LiveSession’s engagement score feature, you can easily discover recordings that have the highest activity levels.

The rating is based on various factors like the number of pages visited and the number of clicks.

By using the engagement score, you’ll be able to automatically identify the most significant sessions.

Inspect mode

When you’re watching a recording, you have the option to choose a specific item on your website.

This means you can specifically look for recordings where users interact with that particular element.

You can browse sessions based on CSS selectors or text values, depending on what suits your requirements.

The inspect mode feature is extremely useful for understanding A/B tests and gaining insights into how users engage with specific features on your website.

It simplifies the process of analyzing user behavior and helps you make informed decisions about your website’s design and functionality.

Rage clicks & error clicks

With the help of rage clicks and error clicks, identifying pain points and errors on your website becomes a breeze.

Rage clicks occur when users repeatedly click or tap on the same area, signaling their frustration in not being able to accomplish a specific goal.

This feature simplifies the process of identifying urgent problems, allowing you to focus your attention on resolving them promptly.

It empowers you to boost the user experience by addressing pain points and rectifying errors.

With all of this in mind, we invite you to give LiveSession a try. You’ll get the most out of your subscription plan with us.

Take advantage of our 14-day free trial and get ready to discover the world of website and user behavior analytics at a far budget-friendly price tag.

Other strengths of the LiveSession software solution:

  • Third-party integrations (e.g. Google Analytics),
  • powerful session recordings,
  • real time analytics and actionable insights,
  • unlimited heatmaps,
  • custom user actions,
  • high number of daily sessions available,
  • monthly or yearly payments with personal plans,funnel drop-offs tracking.

Don’t wait - try it out today.

Wrap up

And that’s it for today.

We hope you liked this article from our blog.

If you’re interested in similar releases, be sure to come back for more in the future.

Other than that, we can’t wait for you to try LiveSession out (The best alternative to Hotjar). So don’t hesitate and open yourself to a whole new level of cost-effective website analytics.

Zuzanna Sobczyk

Content Marketer
CEO and Founder of Royal Krakow Mint with passion for collector coins. Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer at DinoLabs. Interested in precious metals, Web3 and marketing. One of Brainy Bees.
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