Kevin JohnsonHotjar is a product experience insights platform offering visual behavior analytics insights, user feedback, and one-to-one interviews. The company was founded in 2014 by Dr. David Darmanin in Saint Julian’s, Malta, to build research and optimization tools for web-based businesses. Hotjar has been a fully remote company with no headquarters since its founding. In 2022, the firm acquired PingPong and renamed it Hotjar Engage. Organizations can use Hotjar Engage to set up interviews, recruit user interviewees, and schedule calls to stay updated with users’ behavior and needs. Over 1.1 million sites use Hotjar’s product experience insights software. In 2023, the company had around 350 team members in 48 countries. [1]
Hotjar is a global leader in behavior analytics. Its 5-in-1 platform combines behavior insights, heatmaps, recordings, surveys, and feedback in single solutions. These features help product teams optimize user experiences. Around 1.7 billion sessions are tracked by Hotjar each year. In Sep 2023, Hotjar introduced an AI-powered research assistant. The tool uses Hotjar AI to help product teams and marketers analyze surveys and customer responses and provide actionable recommendations. In 2023, the company served customers in over 180 countries. However, Hotjar faces stiff competition from Glassbox, Mouseflow, Contentsquare, LogRocket, Heap, FullStory, Smartlook, Pendo, and Mixpanel. [2]
Here is an in-depth analysis of Hotjar’s top competitors and alternatives:
1. Glassbox
Year founded: 2010
Headquarter: Petah Tikva, Israel
Glassbox is a digital experience intelligence platform. It captures, visualizes, and analyzes digital journeys across websites and mobile apps, allowing teams to improve their digital experience. According to G2, Glassbox has a 4.9-star rating out of 5 from 604 customer reviews versus 4.3 stars for Hotjar from 301 reviews.
Glassbox serves product, UX, marketing, IT, and analytics teams from hundreds of global companies. In Aug 2023, the company won the “Customer Experience Innovation Award” in the MarTech Breakthrough Awards program. Glassbox is the top Hotjar competitor and alternative. [3]
2. Mouseflow
Year founded: 2009
Headquarter: Copenhagen, Denmark
Mouseflow is a behavior analytics platform. The solution offers e-commerce and marketing analytics, session replay, and heat maps. As of Dec 2023, Mouseflow served over 210,000 customers worldwide.
Mouseflow helps businesses optimize website experiences using behavior analytics insights. In Dec 2023, G2 recognized Mouseflow as a Leader in Session Replay, Heatmaps, and e-commerce Analytics. The platform ranked #1 in the marketing analytics implementation segment, with a 9.35 overall score. Mouseflow is one of Hotjar’s top competitors. [4]
3. Contentsquare
Year founded: 2012
Headquarter: Paris, France
Contentsquare is a leader in digital experience intelligence and analytics. Its AI-powered platform offers extensive and contextual insight into customer behaviors, feelings, and intent across their journey. As of Aug 2023, Contentsquare served over 1.3 million customers.
Contentsquare brings the human touch into digital experiences. Businesses can use its AI-powered platform to build empathy, create long-lasting impact, and enhance customer trust with security, privacy, and accessibility. In Aug 2023, Contentsquare was named to the Forbes Cloud 100 list. This list names the top 100 private cloud companies in the world. The company was No. 66 in the global ranking. Contentsquare is a formidable competitor for Hotjar. [5]
4. LogRocket
Year founded: 2016
Headquarter: Boston, Massachusetts
LogRocket is a digital experience analytics provider. Its platform helps product and software teams create the best web and mobile experience. In Jun 2022, LogRocket raised $25 million to expand its intelligent app analytics. The company had around 3,000 customers as of Dec 2023.
LogRocket combines user experience insights with session replay, performance monitoring, and product analytics in a single, award-winning platform. In Dec 2023, LogRocket released its Galileo AI to reinvent how digital product teams create the best user experiences. This AI tool leverages the data captured by the LogRocket platform to visualize impactful and actionable user behavior patterns. LogRocket is an innovative alternative to Hotjar. [6]
5. Heap
Year founded: 2013
Headquarter: San Francisco, California
Heap is a leading digital experience insights provider. The platform helps product developers and marketing teams create the best digital experiences and accelerate business growth. As of Nov 2023, Heap served over 8,000 business clients.
Heap offers low-code analytics software. Companies use the platform to improve conversion, accelerate decision-making, and drive business impact. In Nov 2023, the company launched new features to guide users to actionable insights. Product and marketing teams can now access robust tools to identify friction points across the customer journey. Heap is one of the best alternatives to Hotjar. [7]
6. Smartlook
Year founded: 2016
Headquarter: Brno, Czech Republic
Smartlook is a qualitative analytics tool for websites and mobile apps. In Apr 2023, Cisco announced its plan to acquire Smartlook. Smartlook will boost Cisco’s AppDynamics Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) to its Full-Stack Observability (FSO) solution. [8]
Smartlook and Hotjar are analytics platforms offering heatmaps and recordings. Both provide insights into website performance and user behavior. However, Smartlook is more expensive than Hotjar but doesn’t offer voice-of-the-customer (VOC) tools. Smartlook is a worthy alternative to Hotjar for small businesses. [9]
7. FullStory
Year founded: 2014
Headquarter: Atlanta, Georgia
FullStory is a leading digital experience intelligence platform. It helps companies deliver the best digital experiences across their websites and apps. On G2.com, FullStory has a 4.5-star rating out of 5 versus 4.3 stars for Hotjar.
FullStory caters to product, engineering, marketing, and customer support teams. Users can transform unstructured and unindexed information into actionable digital experience insights. In Sep 2023, FullStory unveiled product enhancements powered by FullStory’s patented privacy-first Data Engine to enable data-driven business decisions. FullStory is one of Hotjar’s top competitors. [10]
8. Pendo
Year founded: 2013
Headquarter: Raleigh, North Carolina
Pendo is a customer analytics platform offering software usage analytics, in-app guidance, and user feedback capabilities. These features streamline and enhance product adoption. In Jun 2023, the company cut around 100 jobs, reducing its workforce by 12%. [11]
Pendo tracks user engagement data to help product managers and teams improve software and deliver the best digital experience. In 2023, Pendo served over 8,700 customers. The company was recognized as a leader in The Forrester New Wave: Digital Adoption Platforms in Feb 2023. Pendo is one of the best alternatives to Hotjar.
9. Mixpanel
Year founded: 2009
Headquarter: San Francisco, California
Mixpanel is an event analytics service platform. It helps businesses track user interactions with websites and mobile apps. In May 2023, the company launched Mixpanel Marketing Analytics. Marketers can use this platform to leverage the data in Mixpanel to understand the target audience and improve the customer experience. [12]
Mixpanel helps teams and executives at 8,000 leading digital firms get answers from their customer and revenue data. It offers real-time charts and visualizations for displaying user interactions with digital products. In July 2023, Mixpanel integrated generative AI into its platform. Companies can use AI to improve their product and marketing decisions. Mixpanel is an innovative competitor for Hotjar. [13]
10. Quantum Metric
Year founded: 2015
Headquarter: Colorado Springs, Colorado
Quantum Metric is a customer-centered digital analytics platform. It helps organizations monitor, diagnose, and optimize business-critical digital journeys. In Aug 2023, Quantum Metric won the “2023 Google Cloud Technology Partner of the Year Award” for Google Marketplace – Collaboration. [14]
Quantum Metric captures insights from internet users to help businesses understand their customers. In Jul 2023, Quantum Metric unveiled new features to enhance the visibility of the customer experience. The platform now offers outcome-oriented navigation and industry-specific guides with in-built KPI alerting. Quantum Metric is a worthy alternative to Hotjar. [15]
11. VWO
Year founded: 2010
Headquarter: New Delhi, India
VWO, a conversion rate optimization (CRO) platform, offers a robust A/B testing tool. Users can leverage customer behavior data to improve digital experiences on server, web, and mobile. In Jan 2023, VWO launched a free plan. The firm seeks to attract new customers after Google shut down Google Optimize and Google Optimize 360. [16]
VWO offers testing abilities, behavior analytics with heatmaps and session replays, and personalization options for web and mobile apps, IoT, OTT, server-side code, and APIs. It helps businesses unify customer data, discover behavioral insights, build hypotheses, and run A/B tests to improve the shopping experience. In Oct 2023, VWO won 32 badges in G2’s Fall Report. VWO is one of the best alternatives to Hotjar. [17]
12. Crazy Egg, Inc.
Year founded: 2005
Headquarter: La Mirada, California
Crazy Egg is a marketing application that helps teams analyze customers’ responses. The app offers heat maps, scroll maps, and visual reports. According to TrustRadius, Crazy Egg has a 7.6-star rating out of 10 from 126 reviews. [18]
Crazy Egg and Hotjar offer heatmaps and scroll maps to visualize visitors’ clicks and taps on the webpage. However, Hotjar stands out by providing a move heatmap report. This feature shows where visitors move their mouse cursors on the site. As of Apr 2023, Crazy Egg was used by around 290,000 websites. The firm serves iconic brands like Dell, Etsy, Optimizely, and Yahoo. Crazy Egg is one of the best alternatives to Hotjar. [19]
13. Lucky Orange
Year founded: 2012
Headquarter: Overland Park, Kansas
Lucky Orange is a software company offering a conversion rate optimization (CRO) toolkit. It specializes in the e-commerce sector. As of Oct 2023, Lucky Orange was used by over 450,000 websites worldwide.
Lucky Orange and Hotjar offer heatmaps, session recordings, and survey features. Users can access CRO live chat and popup announcements. In Oct 2023, the company launched a new update using Shopify’s Checkout Extensibility. This integration offers preloaded checkout events for tracking and understanding customer behavior. Lucky Orange is one of the best alternatives to Hotjar for e-commerce sites. [20]
14. Inspectlet
Year founded: 2011
Headquarter: Cupertino, California
Inspectlet is a web heat mapping tool. It records videos of site visitors to visualize everything they do on the website. Since its founding in 2011, Inspectlet has helped over 90,000 clients extract insights hidden in their data.
Inspectlet offers session recording, dynamic heatmaps, A/B testing, feedback surveys, form analytics, and error logging. However, the main competitive advantage of Inspectlet is its eye-tracking heat map. This feature visualizes where website visitors are looking and what they are reading. Inspectlet is one of Hotjar’s top competitors. [21]
15. Plerdy
Year founded: 2017
Headquarter: Lviv, Ukraine
Plerdy is an IT company offering CRO, SEO tools, and website UX audit services. Its features include heatmap, session replay, SEO, popup survey, and e-commerce tracking. On G2.com, Plerdy has a 4.7-star rating out of 5 from 246 customer reviews. Thousands of companies, including Honda, Huggies, and Subaru, use Plerdy’s CRO tools. [22]
Plerdy offers comprehensive CRO, SEO, and A/B testing tools to help e-commerce businesses boost conversion, enhance user experience, and optimize online store performance. In Aug 2023, Plerdy unveiled its new AI UX Assistant. This tool analyzes website pages to provide CRO insights, allowing teams to help enhance the webpage. Plerdy is one of the best alternatives to Hotjar for optimizing online stores. [23]
16. Microsoft Clarity
Year founded: 2020
Headquarter: Redmond, Washington
Clarity is a free user behavior analytics tool offered by Microsoft Corp., a multinational tech company. The platform helps businesses understand how users interact with their websites via session replays and heatmaps. In 2023, Microsoft had 221,000 full-time employees.
Clarity offers session recordings, heatmaps, automated insights, and integration with Google Analytics. It provides unlimited heatmaps and over 25 filter options and tracks every user’s site visit. In Dec 2023, Clarity introduced customizable dashboards. As a subsidiary of Microsoft, Clarity has enough resources to compete and poach some customers from Hotjar. It is one of the best free Hotjar alternatives. [24]
17. Survicate
Year founded: 2013
Headquarter: Warsaw, Poland
Survicate is a software company offering a robust survey tool. Users can create engaging surveys, including net promoter score (NPS), customer satisfaction (CSAT), and customer effort score (CES). According to G2, Survicate has 4.6 stars out of 5 from 147 reviews. [25]
Survicate provides tools for collecting and managing customer feedback for CX, marketing, and product experience. Users can send surveys via email, web, in-product, and mobile apps. However, the main selling point of Survicate is its integration with popular software such as BigQuery, FullStory, GetResponse, Google Sheets, HubSpot, Mailchimp, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Salesforce, and Zoho. Survicate is one of the best alternatives to Hotjar for surveys.
18. Qualaroo
Year founded: 2012
Headquarter: San Antonio, Texas
Qualaroo is an automated research platform owned by ProProfs. Teams and businesses use Qualaroo to create targeted surveys and collect insights from software users. As of Jan 2024, Qualaroo served global brands like eBay and TripAdvisor.
Qualaroo delivers advanced targeting options that help businesses reach their ideal audience. In Jan 2024, Digital.com recognized Qualaroo as one of the best survey software companies. Its Nudges micro popup surveys are better than email surveys in visualizing the best strategies to improve the user experience. Qualaroo is a worthy Hotjar competitor. [26]
19. Freshworks, Inc.
Year founded: 2010
Headquarter: San Mateo, California
Freshworks is an AI-driven business software provider. The company offers Freshmarketer, a conversion rate optimization (CRO) tool. As of Jan 2024, Freshworks served over 66,000 customers. Its clientele includes global companies like Fila, American Express, Blue Nile, Bridgestone, Databricks, Klarna, and OfficeMax. [27]
Freshmarketer offers A/B testing, heatmaps, and funnel analysis modules for streamlining the website user experience. However, Freshmarketer’s main competitive advantage is its advanced CRO features and analytics tool. Sales teams can use Freshsales Suite to improve customer experience. In Aug 2023, Freshworks released a free plan update for Freshsales and Freshsales Suite. Freshworks is a formidable competitor for Hotjar. [28]
20. Zonka Feedback
Year founded: 2014
Headquarter: Gurugram, Haryana, India
Zonka is a customer experience management (CEM) platform. It helps businesses capture and analyze feedback surveys and collect insights. According to G2, Zonka has a 4.7-star rating out of 5 from 65 reviews.
Zonka empowers businesses to improve, innovate, and grow by listening to their customers. Users can create surveys in two ways and distribute them via emails, web, SMS, in-app, in-product, and other channels. First, they can build a survey from scratch by choosing a unique question type. Second, users can select a ready-to-use template and design a questionnaire that suits their needs. Zonka Feedback is one of the best alternatives to Hotjar. [29]
21. Appzi
Year founded: 2017
Headquarter: Monroe, Washington
Appzi is a web-based user feedback platform. SaaS companies use Appzi to gather valuable product feedback directly from their websites and apps. On G2.com, Appzi has 4.5 stars out of 5 from only one customer review.
Appzi and Hotjar help businesses leverage user feedback to improve software products. However, Appzi only caters to SaaS companies. In Jul 2023, Appzi released new features to enhance its platform. Users can now create surveys with personalized questions and leverage targeting hints to determine where and how often their surveys are being displayed. Appzi is a fast-rising competitor for Hotjar. [30]
References & more information
- Hotjar (2023, Jan 18). Hotjar Welcomes Three New Executives to Support Next Phase of Global Expansion. Globe Newswire
- DGR Staff (2023, Sep 12). Hotjar Introduces AI-Powered Research Assistant. Demand Gen Report
- Glassbox (2023, Aug 17). Glassbox Wins 2023 MarTech Breakthrough Award. Market Screener
- Mouseflow (2023, Dec 20). Mouseflow Named Leader in G2 Winter 2024 Report. Open PR
- Contentsquare (2023, Aug 8). Contentsquare was honored in the 2023 Forbes Cloud 100 list. Business Wire
- LogRocket (2023, Dec 5). LogRocket Reinvents How Digital Product Teams Create Ideal Experiences with the Release of Galileo AI. Business Wire
- Heap Editor (2023, Nov 16). Heap Announces New Features to Swiftly Reveal Valuable Product Insights. Heap.io
- Narcisi, G. (2023, Apr 20). Cisco to scoop up Smartlook as Tech Giant prioritizes Observability and Digital Experience. CRN
- Hotjar Team (2023, Jul 7). Hotjar vs. Smartlook: Choosing the best platform for your business. Hotjar.com
- FullStory (2023, Sep 14). FullStory introduces new features that connect Digital Experience Data organization-wide to unlock insights faster. Business Wire
- Eanes, Z. (2023, Jun 13). Raleigh software unicorn Pendo lays off 12% of workers. Axios
- Miller, R. (2023, May 2). Mixpanel moves into marketing data with its latest product. TechCrunch
- Mixpanel, Inc. (2023, Jul 6). Mixpanel adds generative AI so companies can chat with their data. PRNewswire
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- EIN Presswire (2023, Oct 3). VWO Excels in G2’S Fall Reports 2023, Winning 21 Leader Badges across 8 Categories. WFXR TV
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- WatchThem (2023, Jan 14). Inspectlet Review in 2023: Is It Worth the Money? + Best Alternative. WatchThem.live
- G2 (2023, Dec 28). What is Plerdy? G2.com
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- Denzil, N. (2023, Aug 10). Freshsales Release Notes – August 2023. Freshworks.com
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- G2 (2024, Feb 14). Hotjar Reviews 2024: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2 com
- G2 (2024, Feb 14). FullStory Reviews 2024: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2 com
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- Hotjar (2024, Feb 14). Watch Users Scrolling, Moving, And Clicking With Recordings (hotjar.com)com
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- G2 (2024, Feb 14). Heap Reviews 2024: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2 com
- PR Newswire (2023, Feb 28). Pendo Ends Financial Year with Record Growth in Enterprise Customers as the Product-Led Movement Expands Beyond Software (prnewswire.com) com
- Plerdy (2024, Feb 14) Conversion Rate Optimization Tools – Plerdy com
- Onmsft.com (2023, Jul 28). Microsoft experiences largest workforce reduction in history, cutting 11,000 jobs in fiscal year 2023 – OnMSFT.com onmsft.com
- Featured image by John Schnobrich.
Tell us what you think? Did you find this article interesting? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments section below.
S.K. Gupta
Ava Abbott
Really well formatted article, very clean and easy to use!
It would be nice if you could add some filtering for the list (based on pricing, or installation method).
You could also add some self-hosted options like Matomo, UXWizz, etc.