Hotjar vs. Piwik PRO

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
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
Piwik PRO
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Piwik PRO is a privacy-oriented alternative to Google Analytics. Created in 2013, Piwik PRO Analytics Suite allows for tracking web, app, product and intranet behavior of users. The vendor states their platform ensures compliance with strict EU, US, Chinese and Russian data protection laws, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). The platform includes customer care from implementation and…N/A
Pricing
HotjarPiwik PRO
Editions & Modules
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
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
HotjarPiwik PRO
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional DetailsDiscount available for annual pricing.
More Pricing Information
Best Alternatives
HotjarPiwik PRO
Small Businesses
Smartlook
Smartlook
Score 8.5 out of 10
StatCounter
StatCounter
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Siteimprove
Siteimprove
Score 8.8 out of 10
Siteimprove
Siteimprove
Score 8.8 out of 10
Enterprises
Contentsquare
Contentsquare
Score 8.6 out of 10
Contentsquare
Contentsquare
Score 8.6 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
HotjarPiwik PRO
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(101 ratings)
8.2
(7 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
5.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.7
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.6
(4 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
HotjarPiwik PRO
Likelihood to Recommend
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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Piwik PRO
Piwik Pro Core is especially perfect for smaller businesses that want to have an alternative to Google's ecosystem. You can do a lot of the great stuff you can do with GA UA and GA4. But it still needs some tweaking. Especially for some bigger companies who have a lot of events, it would be great to have some smaller payment steps, as of right now it can be quite steep for some companies to pay the bill if you go above 500.000 events per month. Nevertheless, I believe this is one of the better options available when data ownership and privacy come to mind.
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Pros
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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Piwik PRO
  • Manage all campaigns and increase large volumes of data.
  • It has an excellent activity panel through which you can have complete visibility of each activity you carry out.
  • It's great to track all interactions between users and track all conversions.
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Cons
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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Piwik PRO
  • Filtering: ip ranges, hostnames, regex. These are a few things that aren't possible like we are used to.
  • Tag Manager: not all tags/triggers are possible yet to what we are used to.
  • Are more progressive payment model: more little steps to buy a plan.
  • Custom dimensions: they weren't available but are now. But they aren't that user friendly yet as I'm used to.
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Likelihood to Renew
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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Piwik PRO
No answers on this topic
Usability
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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Piwik PRO
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
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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Piwik PRO
We had to contact the support several times in the beginning and they really took their time to explain the different functions in detail. So in terms of support I can definitely recommend Piwik PRO.
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Alternatives Considered
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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Piwik PRO
Piwik Pro's support for multiple sites saved me a lot of time. To view reports from numerous client sites, I'll have to access a single dashboard. Its digest reports save time and are simple enough for non-technical executives to understand. It gives us access to information about individual users that Google doesn't allow us to see as a whole. It will allow users to express their desires more clearly. As a result, this one is significantly more useful compared to other tools.
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Return on Investment
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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Piwik PRO
  • We have obtained a good impact both economically and in data integration.
  • It has allowed us to collect and analyze all the data of our clients, and to create groups that allow us to divide potential clients and make personalized messages.
  • We use the Enterprise plan because it provides us with the necessary tools and unlimited features.
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ScreenShots

Piwik PRO Screenshots

Screenshot of Piwik PRO Customer Data PlatformScreenshot of Core reportScreenshot of DashboardScreenshot of Funnel reportScreenshot of User flow reportScreenshot of Tag Manager