Hotjar helps you perceive how guests behave and work together together with your web site. The knowledge you collect with Hotjar helps you make smart adjustments to enhance the person expertise.

With Hotjar you should utilize heatmaps, person recordings, and surveys to pinpoint issues together with your website and take a look at adjustments to search out one of the best options.

It’s an ideal device, however it isn’t excellent for everybody. Right here’s our tackle Hotjar.

How Does Hotjar Examine to its Closest Opponents

Anybody critical about web site optimization depends on a variety of tools to make that occur. In relation to delivering a seamless person expertise, Hotjar is simply one of many choices. Different instruments like Loopy Egg, Glassbox, and Fullstory are normally within the consideration combine, too.

All these instruments present precious and actionable insights. Not all three do it in the identical means. Right here’s how they stack up towards one another.

Loopy Egg vs. Hotjar

Each Crazy Egg and Hotjar deal with person expertise analytics. You’ll discover a few of the identical performance, like heatmaps and scroll maps, on each platforms. However there are key variations.

Loopy Egg comes out forward in relation to A/B testing, constructing that performance proper into the product. You’ll want a third-party integration to A/B take a look at with Hotjar. Loopy Egg additionally has a well-liked confetti report device that allows you to categorize website exercise by varied metrics. Hotjar doesn’t provide something comparable.

Hotjar provides a free endlessly plan, however it provides you restricted entry to Hotjar’s full performance. You’ll want to improve to Hotjar’s Progress Plan beginning at $95.20 monthly to get extra options. Loopy Egg provides a free 30-day trial, however after that it’s going to price you a minimal of $99 every month.

Glassbox vs. Hotjar

Glassbox and Hotjar are comparable instruments, however deal with barely totally different audiences. Hotjar is an honest all-around person analytics platform, geared toward serving to everybody in any respect expertise ranges, from freelancers and start-ups to small to medium sized companies. Glassbox takes intention at mature and enterprise degree companies or any group that wants or needs superior information evaluation energy.

Each platforms offer you heatmaps and session replays. Nonetheless, Glassbox dives deep into information analytics with each real-time and predictive performance. Hotjar provides solely real-time analytics, and at the next degree.

Glassbox additionally delivers superior buyer mapping instruments, so you may actually dial in to person conduct on a granular degree. Hotjar provides primary buyer journey analytics, however not practically on the depth Glassbox does.

Every platform’s strategy to pricing reinforces the deal with totally different audiences. Glassbox doesn’t provide a free trial immediately on its web site, you’ll must contact them to arrange a demo. Similar with pricing. You’ll want to speak to gross sales to get a personalized quote. 

Hotjar provides a free endlessly plan after which a wide range of paid plan choices, relying on which companies you want. All of it’s spelled out on the Hotjar web site, and you may join with out speaking to a single gross sales agent.

Fullstory vs. Hotjar

Fullstory is one other analytics device aimed on the extra strong wants of enterprise-level organizations or anybody with the necessity for in-depth analytics throughout internet and cell purposes. 

For those who’re eager to grasp your cell customers journey, Fullstory does a a lot cleaner job of natively monitoring and delivering that information. You may seize a few of that information with Hotjar, however it’s going to require heavy lifting out of your software program improvement group.

Each Fullstory and Hotjar have included AI into their platforms, however apply it in several methods. Hotjar focuses on serving to researchers pace up the method with AI-generated survey questions and synthesizing qualitative responses. Fullstory makes use of generative AI to spotlight key ideas, routinely categorize all person interactions, and ship automated insights.

Fullstory additionally has much more integrations than Hotjar. Fullstory has a whole bunch of direct integrations that cowl all the things from safety and privateness to group collaboration and buyer success. It additionally companions with Zapier, providing you with entry to hundreds extra enterprise instruments. 

Hotjar isn’t any slouch in relation to integrations, pairing with instruments like Slack, Google Analytics, Kissmetrics, Trello, Asana, and extra. It additionally integrates with Zapier, providing you with entry to hundreds of different apps. However on the finish of the day, Fullstory provides extra integrations.

Like Glassbox, Fullstory doesn’t put pricing on its web site. You’ll have to speak to somebody in gross sales for a personalized quote. There’s no free trial, both. 

Hotjar: The Good and The Unhealthy

Hotjar makes it straightforward to assemble and perceive person expertise information, and doesn’t break the financial institution. For anybody new to person analytics or smaller organizations with modest budgets, Hotjar is a superb choice.

But it surely does lack top-notch buyer assist, doesn’t go as deep into analytics as a few of its rivals, and tends to decelerate site performance. Relying in your wants, there could also be higher choices.

What Hotjar Is Good At

Straightforward to make use of

Hotjar’s person interface is self-explanatory and intuitive. Even a newbie can get began rapidly and dig into analytics with ease. Straightforward to make use of is a chorus learn usually in person opinions on websites like G2.

Navigation is straightforward, utilizing an icon scheme on the left facet of the display screen. It’s uncluttered and every characteristic is accessible with a single click on. There’s additionally a “Get Began” choice on the high of the web page that walks a brand new person by means of key options and arrange duties.

In-depth session recording filters

Hotjar provides a wide range of filters you may apply to session recordings. With them, you may evaluation all the things from the paths a person took to the session data, conduct, and even units.

One of these filtering helps you rapidly decide and select crucial attributes that will help you make sound enterprise choices.

Informative funnels

Hotjar’s funnels are a fast and simple solution to see the place customers are having issue together with your web site. With a funnel, you may monitor person interactions from begin to end and see the place guests hit roadblocks. Making a funnel just isn’t sophisticated, because of Hotjar’s intuitive person interface. 

Even for those who’re like me and by no means constructed a funnel earlier than, you may have one up and working in minutes.

You begin by selecting what you wish to measure (all periods, new customers, rage clicked, returning customers), then construct and apply every step with a collection of prompts. After you have all the things the best way you need it, click on “Apply” one final time and your funnel is able to go.

Funnel efficiency outcomes are displayed on the backside of the web page in real-time.

Customizable dashboard

As soon as you put in Hotjar, there’s a default dashboard obtainable that covers the fundamentals. It’s effectively designed, straightforward to observe, and gives a stable overview from all the things from session data to rage click on information and high visitors channels.

You could be blissful utilizing the default dashboard “as is.” However if you need extra, Hotjar helps you to simply create a brand new dashboard with just some clicks. There are templates you should utilize to keep away from reinventing the wheel for frequent metrics, together with web page points, efficiency monitoring, and advertising and marketing outcomes. Or, you may create a dashboard from scratch.

Complete heatmaps

Hotjar customers actually love the platform’s heatmaps. It’s a characteristic constantly commented on in G2 opinions. Organising a heatmaps is a breeze utilizing the step-by-step information supplied. Simply select the URL you wish to monitor and information is delivered in seconds.

You may rapidly change the info you see by selecting the map kind you wish to view. Additional down the web page you get much more related stats, like whole web page clicks, rage clicks, common time on web page, and drop-off charge.

Accessible analytics

Hotjar’s Impression characteristic places key metrics in a single place, accessible by a single click on. Impression helps you perceive how person conduct is affecting conversions by means of a collection of colourful graphs and charts.

You may monitor periods or visitors distribution and break issues down much more by taking a look at new customers, returning customers, and even rage-clicked components in your website. Even for those who’re model new to heatmaps, Hotjar makes it straightforward to get began and perceive the info.

Straightforward to implement person surveys 

Gathering person suggestions in realtime is straightforward with Hotjar. Along with a suggestions button you may incorporate onto any web site web page, you too can use Hotjar’s 42 survey templates to get actual time suggestions on all the things from Web Promoter Rating (NPS) and exit intent to usability and product suggestions.

The templates stroll you thru the complete course of. You can too lean into Hotjar’s generative AI characteristic to have survey questions written for you.

Potential Hotjar Drawbacks

Hotjar has its professionals, however it’s removed from excellent. A few of these cons could also be a deal-breaker for you.

Difficult set up course of: There are 3 ways to put in Hotjar in your web site. So as of seemingly best to most advanced, they’re:

  • Obtain the location building-specific plugin from Hotjar’s web site
  • Discover the Hotjar plugin in your website builder’s plugin add device
  • Manually add Hotjar code into your website’s present header code

I exploit self-hosted WordPress as my web site builder, however I don’t prefer to code. So I opted to obtain Hotjar’s plugin to make issues simpler. Sadly, the ZIP file for WordPress installations didn’t work. After I tried to add it to WordPress, I acquired an error message of “Incompatible archive.”

I then tried the second route of looking out within the WordPress plugin library. I did discover the Hotjar plugin, however acquired scared off by a number of issues. One was the variety of one-star opinions and evaluation feedback. One other was the message that the plugin had not been examined with my model of WordPress (6.6.2). The nail within the coffin was seeing that the plugin had not been up to date in over one 12 months. All added as much as an enormous no.

So my solely choice to get Hotjar up and working on my website was to go the coding route. 

Except you’re snug including code manually to your website–or have a developer obtainable to help–Hotjar makes issues difficult to get began.

Poor customer support: Hotjar has a meager 2.5 ranking on TrustPilot. The truth is, Hotjar has extra one-star scores than five-star scores on the location. That’s fairly abysmal. Most of the complaints cite poor customer support. This contains the shortage of dwell assist choices and chatbots that don’t present useful data. 

Hotjar does have a big useful resource library, so you could find some good data that means. However for those who want assist in real-time, you’re out of luck. The one choice you will have is to submit a assist ticket by way of the web chat operate, then wait for somebody to get again to you. Based on some reviewers, that response by no means comes.

Given my expertise attempting to make use of Hotjar’s set up obtain, I acquired to check out Hotjar assist first-hand.

I went the assist ticket submission route. It was a surprisingly painful course of to slog by means of. In what I can solely describe as some critical gatekeeping, Hotjar requires you to fill out a number of fields within the on-line chat window, which in itself is annoying. Then, the AI chatbot required me to re-enter my URL thrice earlier than it acknowledged it as legitimate. The identical URL, typed in thrice, precisely the identical. 

I persevered and ultimately submitted my request. However total, it was a really irritating expertise attempting to get assist with Hotjar. Irritating sufficient to get me to mud off my coding expertise and set up Hotjar myself with no plugin help.

I did ultimately obtain an e mail from assist the day after I submitted my ticket. By then, although, I had resolved my unique drawback. Hotjar assist additionally despatched a follow-up e mail two days later after I didn’t reply to the primary message.

Useful resource Hog: Issues look a little bit brighter for Hotjar over on G2 and Capterra, the place the model has scores of 4.3 and 4.7 stars, respectively. However one recurring remark exhibits up all through the largely optimistic scores–as soon as you put in the monitoring code, Hotjar slows down your website.

Sluggish load instances are a problem for any website. It negatively impacts Google’s rating and annoys website guests. The instruments you utilize to optimize your website shouldn’t even be creating new issues to repair.

Hotjar Pricing, Plans, and Add-Ons

Hotjar was acquired by Contentsquare in 2021. Since then, Hotjar’s pricing has gone by means of vital transformation. Not in a great way, based on quite a few buyer opinions on TrustPilot, G2, and Capterra. Escalating prices and complicated plan choices are sometimes famous. The latter is justified.

Hotjar breaks down its companies into three buckets. Inside every bucket, you may select from totally different plan ranges and pay by the month or yearly. While you select to pay yearly, there’s a 20 % financial savings. 

When you select a paid plan, then you should select what number of every day periods you need. Plan pricing will increase as session quantity will increase. The costs beneath are primarily based on 500 every day periods.

Observe: heatmaps and person recordings

  • Fundamental plan – free endlessly – contains automated information seize, limitless heatmaps, potential to filter and phase information
  • Marketing strategy – $99 monthly or $960 yearly – provides {custom} integrations, occasions API, establish API, plus frustration and confusion indicators
  • Scale plan – $213 monthly or $2,052 yearly – provides funnels, developments, console monitoring (errors), SAML SSO, Hotjar API, devoted buyer success supervisor and precedence assist (just for plans with 4,000 every day periods or extra) 

Ask – surveys and suggestions

  • Fundamental plan – free endlessly – contains three surveys and three suggestions widgets, Hotjar AI for surveys, 40+ predefined languages, limitless questions for surveys, 40+ survey templates, filter responses
  • Plus plan – $59 monthly or $576 yearly – provides limitless surveys and suggestions widgets, occasions API
  • Marketing strategy – $79 monthly or $768 yearly – provides AI-powered sentiment evaluation, establish API, personalized branding (no Hotjar brand), survey efficiency evaluation, custom-built integrations
  • Scale plan – $159 monthly or $1,536 yearly – provides Hotjar API, webhooks, SAML SSO, devoted buyer success supervisor and precedence assist (just for plans with 4,000 every day periods or extra)

Have interaction – person interviews

  • Fundamental plan – free endlessly – three interviews monthly (your personal community), one spectator, 30 minute most length for every interview, two week recording retention
  • Plus plan – $50 month-to-month or $492 yearly – provides 36 interview per 12 months from the Hotjar participant pool, limitless interviews from your personal community, 30 minute most length for every interview, participant rewards of as much as $52, one co-moderator per interview, two spectators per interview, two 12 months recording retention
  • Marketing strategy – $572 month-to-month or $5,496 yearly – provides as much as 144 interviews per 12 months from the Hotjar pool, limitless interviews from your personal community, 90 minute most length for every interview, participant rewards of as much as $156, two co-moderators per interview, 4 spectators per interview, automated transcriptions, clip and obtain recording
  • Scale plan – priced on request – provides as much as 240 interviews per 12 months from the Hotjar pool, limitless interviews from your personal community, 120 minute most interview length, 4 co-moderators per interview, 10 spectators per interview, SAML SSO, devoted buyer success supervisor

For those who go for an Have interaction plan, you routinely get entry to each the Observe and Ask plan performance at that very same degree.

However wait, there’s extra. 

Hotjar additionally helps you to customise your plan by selecting from the totally different choices within the Observe and Ask buckets. You can too pay both month-to-month or yearly, with the identical 20 % low cost while you pay yearly.

Is Hotjar Proper for You?

When you get previous the difficult set up course of, Hotjar is a stable device–particularly for anybody new to heatmaps, person surveys, or web site customer analytics basically. Hotjar may be very intuitive to make use of as soon as it’s up and working, and the best way it lays out information is crystal clear. Whereas it could gradual your website down, for those who’re working a low-volume website and have sufficient sources behind the scenes, the pace ding is probably going negligible.

Nonetheless, for those who’re a big or enterprise-level group, it’s possible you’ll discover Hotjar’s lack of in-depth analytics a problem. There are higher instruments in the marketplace, like Glassbox and Fullstory, that offers you the deep-dive analytics energy wanted.


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