BrightEdge vs. Hotjar

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
BrightEdge
Score 7.6 out of 10
N/A
BrightEdge is an enterprise-level SEO (Search Engine Optimization) platform from the company of the same name in San Mateo, California. It includes customizable dashboards, reporting, forecasting, SEO recommendations, backlink management and competitive analysis. It covers local, global, mobile, social and content centric SEO. Presently BrightEdge's platform supports the marketing efforts of many well-brands, like Nike, Microsoft, and Netflix.
$0
per month
Hotjar
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
Hotjar is a conversion rate optimization tool for digital marketers. Features include heatmapping, visual session recording, conversion funnel analytics, form analytics, feedback polls and surveys, and usability testing. The tool is used by digital analysts, UX designers, web developers and product marketers. Hotjar was acquired by Contentsquare September 2021, and is now a Contentsquare brand.
$39
per month 100 daily sessions
Pricing
BrightEdgeHotjar
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Hotjar Observe - Plus
$39
per month 100 daily sessions
Hotjar Ask - Plus
$59
per month 250 monthly responses
Hotjar Ask - Business
$79
per month Starting from 500 monthly responses
Hotjar Observe - Business
$99
per month Starting from 500 daily sessions
Hotjar Scale - Business
$213
per month Starting from 500 daily sessions
Hotjar Ask - Scale
Contact Sales
per month unlimited volume
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BrightEdgeHotjar
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsDiscount available for annual pricing.
More Pricing Information
Features
BrightEdgeHotjar
SEO
Comparison of SEO features of Product A and Product B
BrightEdge
8.8
46 Ratings
12% above category average
Hotjar
-
Ratings
Keyword analysis9.646 Ratings00 Ratings
Backlink management7.240 Ratings00 Ratings
SERP ranking tracking9.444 Ratings00 Ratings
Page grader8.239 Ratings00 Ratings
Competitive analysis9.246 Ratings00 Ratings
Site audit / diagnostics9.543 Ratings00 Ratings
Site recommendations8.046 Ratings00 Ratings
Task management8.941 Ratings00 Ratings
SEO Channels
Comparison of SEO Channels features of Product A and Product B
BrightEdge
8.2
44 Ratings
7% above category average
Hotjar
-
Ratings
Local SEO8.535 Ratings00 Ratings
Social SEO8.030 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile SEO7.241 Ratings00 Ratings
Global SEO9.034 Ratings00 Ratings
SEO Platform & Account Management
Comparison of SEO Platform & Account Management features of Product A and Product B
BrightEdge
8.9
44 Ratings
5% above category average
Hotjar
-
Ratings
Multi-domain support9.035 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with web analytics tools8.743 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
BrightEdgeHotjar
Small Businesses
Nozzle
Nozzle
Score 9.9 out of 10
Smartlook
Smartlook
Score 8.5 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Advanced Web Ranking
Advanced Web Ranking
Score 8.3 out of 10
Siteimprove
Siteimprove
Score 8.8 out of 10
Enterprises
Dupli Checker (DupliChecker.com)
Dupli Checker (DupliChecker.com)
Score 8.7 out of 10
Contentsquare
Contentsquare
Score 8.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
BrightEdgeHotjar
Likelihood to Recommend
8.6
(78 ratings)
8.7
(101 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(35 ratings)
5.1
(2 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(10 ratings)
9.7
(6 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(14 ratings)
9.6
(4 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.3
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
BrightEdgeHotjar
Likelihood to Recommend
BrightEdge
BrightEdge has been a long-standing partner with us. I have had 10 years of experience with using their platform. It is a very large robust platform that allows us to find the information we need and quickly. Unfortunately with the company being so large, they are unable to make quick changes and customers suggested enhancements as quickly as other platforms.
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Contentsquare
Hotjar is good for a first pass at understanding user sentiment or locating potential usability issues. There are features such as "rage clicked" which shows recordings or instances when a user rage clicked or had an issue with your site. Hotjar has also been helpful to launch intercept surveys on mobile, desktop, and app, which not all competitor software allow. Hotjar recordings are fun to watch. "Watching Hotjar like Netflix" is a favorite pastime at work.
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Pros
BrightEdge
  • Strong analytics
  • Integrates with other tools
  • Instant provides real time research, ranking and recommendations
  • The Client Success team is truly an extension of my team with experts in the industry to help support our team and growing the organic channel
  • Education and career growth opportunity—constantly providing ways to connect with others in the industry, user groups, events, and conferences
  • Onboard process is very thorough and customized
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Contentsquare
  • Heat mapping is great on Hotjar. It is a good place to start when you are looking at the UX & CRO on your website. You can see the % of people clicking on elements on a page, how far they scroll, and mouse movements.
  • Hotjar is great for session recordings. These record the mouse movements, clicks, pages and scrolls of a user in video format. You can watch these to investigate what works well on a site and identify potential roadblocks and bugs.
  • Hotjar is great as it ensures that users details are anonymous; for instance, if you are watching a session recording, you cannot see what a user types in a form field, as Hotjar blanks this out.
  • Hotjar has a poll function, so you can have polls on your website.
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Cons
BrightEdge
  • The storybuilder feature isn't anything outstanding. I feel like I can get the same type of data and format from Google Data Studio.
  • I feel like the Hyperlocal feature is still very junior compared to other features. It provides you good insights, but you have to set all the data fields before you can get a picture as well as it doesn't really give you an idea of how you can improve.
  • The mobile SEO solution is a good concept, but it needs some tweaks to be better, especially when building out a mobile story builder. Some of the data isn't simple to read and the mobile keywords functions don't also account for voice searches.
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Contentsquare
  • Hotjar is primarily used for web-based experiences. Not that easy to use on mobile apps.
  • I'd love to see Hotjar integrated with Google Analytics for an even deeper view.
  • Hotjar is primarily used by smaller organizations...pricing can get steep quickly for larger organizations.
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Likelihood to Renew
BrightEdge
I would renew, as I don't feel there is a product out there that would have the impact on our SEO efforts as effectively as BrightEdge. It provides the information I need and integrates with other tools like Google Webmaster Tools, to truly have the depth of information that makes their suggestions for SEO changes so valued.
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Contentsquare
Even though the heat maps and user recordings were useful, our website was significantly slowed down after we installed Hotjar, so much so, that it took over a minute for our blog to load. The data that we gathered was not worth the length that it took our website to load.
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Usability
BrightEdge
Easy-to-use and intuitive design make using the BrightEdge platform a joy. Yes, I have familiarity with it and know where to go but there are definitely not a ton of extraneous bells and whistles or unnecessary tools which is part of the brilliance of their UX. Sometimes I get hung up on where keywords and keyword groups are under settings but it is typically because I am moving too quickly, and not because they've moved it.
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Contentsquare
So easy and simple to use! Straightforward anyone in the team is able to easily go in and set up anything in Hotjar. The UI is really simple. Whenever you give feedback to Hotjar they continously take on board the feedback and improve the tool.
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Support Rating
BrightEdge
This is a area where the BrightEdge team really shines. Their commitment to training and product support is unmatched not only for SEO platforms, but life in general. I often find myself wishing my internet provide and similar would go to BrightEdge for training on support and attitude. I would rank them an 11 if I could.
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Contentsquare
Hotjar is a SaaS-based company, and as such has a good support service. Users can quickly submit support tickets through Hotjar's online portal. Enterprise customers get access to additional support members and have SLAs to support their larger, more complex needs. Overall, Hotjar is extremely reliable and I've never had to reach out to customer support.
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Implementation Rating
BrightEdge
For the most part it was seamless. The load time of clients was a little long, but otherwise was quite easy.
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Contentsquare
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
BrightEdge
While relatively expensive, Brightedge really does offer the best quality product but just as importantly (if not more so) the level of client/agency support. We have biweekly training with the entire team to continually stay up to date on Brightedge's offerings and strategies. They also offer the ability to do ad hoc reporting using some of their tools that can help us win new business and recommend Brightedge to additional clients, expanding our business as well.
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Contentsquare
HotJar was selected for a few reasons:
  • Video Capture - HotJars video capture of user sessions is nothing short of amazing. It is so useful (not to mention cool) to see, in real time, how users interact with our software. It makes our jobs so much easier and more enjoyable to get this type of d
  • User Surveys - The ease and flexibility of surveys we can make available on our website are an awesome tool to get additional data.
  • Simple implementation - Adding a very small amount of code to our website gives us the ability to use all of HotJars features without having to touch our code again.
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Return on Investment
BrightEdge
  • We have only started with BE a few months ago and so I don't have any hard numbers from an ROI perspective, but i can say that what we spent on BE is a fraction of what we were spending with agencies and we are actually getting results by doing this ourselves. From that perspective we have seen a cost savings.
  • With focused SEO campaigns and projects we have been able to move the needle on our SEO rankings for specific products and services. This is going to have a great impact for us in 2019 as we have some specific product goals and campaigns for 2019 that we have been working to build up over the last couple months of 2018.
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Contentsquare
  • We have fixed many issues, for example, checkout usability problems with the video recording feature. You can catch bugs and get an overall idea of how a particular page is working.
  • Polls have helped us pair intent with the video sessions, so we can understand better why certain users answered different things. You get greedy and try to ask everything but that won't work. Keep it simple and it will give you small but important insights.
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