Heap vs. Hotjar

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Heap
Score 8.2 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
Heap is a web analytics platform captures every user interaction on web iOS with no extra code. The tool allows you to track events and set up funnels to understand user flow and dropoff. It also provides visualization tools to track trends over time.
$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
HeapHotjar
Editions & Modules
Free
$0
Up to 10k sessions/month
Growth
Starting at $3,600 annually
Up to 300k sessions/year
Pro
Contact Heap Sales
Custom sessions per month and unlimited projects
Premier
Contact Heap Sales
Custom sessions per month
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
HeapHotjar
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional DetailsHeap pricing is based on session volume. A session is a period of activity from a single user on your app or website. It can include many pageviews or events.Discount available for annual pricing.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
HeapHotjar
Considered Both Products
Heap
Chose Heap
Heap has an edge on Google Analytics due to auto-capture and ease of defining events. Heap has an edge on Hotjar, as it helps build funnels and has powerful filter/group by capabilities. FullStory is just session recording and focuses on one aspect of [the] engagement.
Chose Heap
We are actually using both Heap and Hotjar conjunctly. The only reason I use Heap more than Hotjar is because I don't want to have to learn a new application.
Chose Heap
I didn't select heap. Someone else did. I wasn't consulted during the process either, it was there before I arrived and we recently renewed, but I wasn't part of that process. Hotjar was alright, the heapmap is a neat way to quickly show non-experts where we might have an …
Chose Heap
The ability to view events in real time as they occur, restrict them to just show mine, and then create dashboards using those events is the finest feature for me. It eliminates the requirement for constant 100% accuracy in documentation maintenance and guessing. I can monitor …
Chose Heap
What really stood out was the auto capture functionality and the ability to do as many custom reporting as we can, and it had very comparable features to a lot of other user analytics tools, but we liked how clean it was at pulling in data as well. definitely recommend for …
Chose Heap
User tagging and Live tracking is one of the best implementation I've seen with Heap compare to GA & HJ
Chose Heap
Heap is analytics ready and already gathering insights. You don't need to know which metrics to track then wait for data to be collected. You just choose to report on them and the data is already available.
Chose Heap
I think Heap is more powerful overall than the other tools I've used. GA is great for getting started with analytics and understanding the basic concepts. They are a lot more boxed in, in terms of what the user can do. Mixpanel is really powerful for tracking on mobile apps and …
Hotjar

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
HeapHotjar
Small Businesses
Fullstory
Fullstory
Score 8.4 out of 10
Smartlook
Smartlook
Score 8.5 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Whatfix
Whatfix
Score 9.3 out of 10
Siteimprove
Siteimprove
Score 8.7 out of 10
Enterprises
Whatfix
Whatfix
Score 9.3 out of 10
Contentsquare
Contentsquare
Score 8.6 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
HeapHotjar
Likelihood to Recommend
8.2
(233 ratings)
8.7
(101 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.8
(9 ratings)
5.1
(2 ratings)
Usability
8.9
(64 ratings)
9.7
(6 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.4
(61 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(8 ratings)
9.6
(4 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.1
(1 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
7.3
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
HeapHotjar
Likelihood to Recommend
Heap
Scenarios when Heap was well suited: It is when a user claims that he encountered a bug without giving us the details of the error message. Scenarios where it is less appropriate: Its when we try to capture user interaction in our mobile app
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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
Heap
  • Realtime interactions which are captured automatically is a unique feature which no other product offers.
  • Low code implementation is a big plus for marketing teams, as there is less dependency on engineering
  • Detailed customer behaviours can be studied with captured replay sessions
  • Due to all the above points - it helped to improve customer experience
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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.
Read full review
Cons
Heap
  • I think Heap can improve its onboarding; I would love to see some info that is helpful for someone who isn't in Heap every single day.
  • Sharing dashboards can be tricky, it feels like a huge learning curve that I already have forgotten how to do.
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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
Heap
It's a great platform. I'm glad that one of our product managers introduced it because it has allowed us to create all kinds of new functionality. We're not only able to create a better product experience from our communications because of Heap, but we're also able to generate all kinds of helpful analysis.
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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
Heap
On a scale from 1-10, I find Heap to be incredibly user-friendly and easy to use. I enjoyed the training videos available and was quickly able to pick up how to create events and reports to track user interactions on our product. I would recommend Heap for its usability first and foremost.
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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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Reliability and Availability
Heap
I've never run into any issues with Heap's availability, Heap is always there when I need it. I haven't run into any issues like application errors or unplanned outages during my 2+ years of using Heap. Each and every time I log in to Heap I have a completely functional experience
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Contentsquare
No answers on this topic
Performance
Heap
Heap doesn't affect page load times considerably nor has a large impact [on] our overall score, as far as page loading times inside of the tool its pretty reliable to retrieve data as much as "instant" that it can be the delay seems to be on data getting tracked into the servers to be read but it's not significant.
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Contentsquare
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Heap
Heap support has allowed us to troubleshoot and test a lot of different items. Their support team is always helpful and friendly, even when we come to them with the most complicated questions. I think this greatly improves the value proposition of the product because their support team is knowledgable and friendly.
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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
Heap
The implementation was smooth and easy. The Heap team helped us with implementation and it went great! Within a few weeks, we were fully up and running and utilizing the platform to its full capability. This is an additional thing that has made this platform so great and we couldn't recommend it enough.
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Contentsquare
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Heap
Heap offers a ton of functionality on a single platform.It also has an smart data science layer to offers suggestions for next steps in the analysis, allowing us to explore alternative paths we may not think to take. The low-code option for updating data is appealing, and there is a lot of automation with minimal engineering effort.
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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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Scalability
Heap
The most challenging part of using Heap in a growing organization is the naming and structure in which reports and dashboards are organized. I work within the marketing department and our Heap leader internally works within the IT/Product department, which makes it challenging because we often don't speak the same language, so the learning curve has been steep without any specific use-case examples to leverage online.
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Contentsquare
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Heap
  • It has helped us make decisions on what products to scope for our MVP based on the usage data.
  • It's allowed us to measure success with our beta product.
  • It's helped us view our conversion rates in an easy and usable manner.
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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.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Heap Screenshots

Screenshot of Dashboard in Heap (Use to get Product or User Behavior Insights)Screenshot of Effort Analysis provides the first-ever quantitative measurement of user friction, capturing the difficulty users face when moving through every step of every user flow across the digital experience.Screenshot of Heap Illuminate looks for the most common events between two steps in a funnel and generates a Top Events table that displays how well paths including different events convert to the next step so you can understand how that behavior is helping or hurting conversion.Screenshot of From Top Events you can choose an event and use Path Comparison to fork your funnel and see how the selected behavior impacts conversion downstream.