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
VWO
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
VWO is an A/B testing and conversion optimization platform that enables growing businesses to conduct qualitative and quantitative visitor research, build an experimentation roadmap and run continuous experiments on their digital properties. With its 5 capabilities Plan, Track, Test, Analyze, and Target, it brings the entire CRO (conversion rate optimization) process at one place. VWO helps online businesses follow the process- and data-driven conversion…
$49
per month
Pricing
Hotjar
VWO
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
Subscription
$99.00
per month
TESTING
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The classic VWO A/B testing solution
CONVERSION OPTIMIZATION
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The all-in-one platform for all your optimization needs
ENTERPRISE
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Customized solution with advanced AB testing and conversion optimization capabilities
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Hotjar
VWO
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
Discount available for annual pricing.
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More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Hotjar
VWO
Considered Both Products
Hotjar
Verified User
Analyst
Chose Hotjar
Hotjar has much better heatmaps than offered via VWO. Its polls functionality is also better than VWO.
VWO offers heatmaps linked to AB test variations, but these are not very in-depth, and you cannot get scroll maps like you can with Hotjar.
Hotjar gives us what we need at no cost - great for a small organization. We used VWO when we worked with an agency for some marketing needs. It was a really useful tool that essentially does what Hotjar does for us, but it was cost prohibitive once we were no longer working …
I have moved jobs, so that is why I am now using Hotjar. I think that Decibel Insight has more functionality than what Hotjar does, as it allows you to be able to automatically view pages and heatmaps, rather than needing to wait for the data to gather.
We used different tools but Hotjar combines several functionalities in one tool. So we used and are still using SurveyMonkey for bigger Surveys but it's handy to also have a tool where we can create short single questions surveys. We selected Hotjar because it is a good …
Hotjar is robust and incredibly affordable. It's insane how cheap it is for what it provides. Recordings and heatmaps alone are worth the price tag. Add on the other feedback gathering functionality and it's a really good bargain. It comes at a slight cost at the manual …
VWO is more intuitive to use and with more capable functionalities than Hotjar or Optimizely. VWO provides a broader service than Hotjar or Optimizely by themselves.
VWO is a good compliment to GA and Hotjar but it's expensive. Hotjar has a lot of really good analysis features for a very, very reasonable price. GA is free but comes with a high operational cost and learning curve. GA and its suite of tools is improving but I don't have …
VWO is much better than others at providing an easy way to run tests and gather data, but we do currently supplement it with Hotjar for better heatmap tracking and detailed visitor tracking. We also use Google Analytics for general traffic sourcing and behavior, as well as …
I used Google Optimize when it had just launched. It was therefore not yet a competitor to VWO. I haven't used it in roughly half a year time, so a lot has probably changed.
I still use Hotjar for certain features that VWO offers, but which I think function better in Hotjar. I …
We use VWO not in competition with, but alongside other tools, as we believe a mixture is the best recipe for success. Hotjar is a slightly different offering and has some very strong heatmap/ journey mapping capabilities. We tend to use it for that, with the insight feeding …
As I mentioned, VWO is a great all-in-one tool that lets clients research & test all within one tool. It's a little on the expensive side so it might not deliver the desired ROI for smaller clients and can also encourage the small clients to run small, insignificant A/B tests …
Verified User
Manager
Chose VWO
A unified tool where all data points are shared across the different features is a much-preferred option.
VWO has worse usability and isn't as flexible as the other platforms. Also, the insight that Qubit and Optimizely generates is actually accurate and can be used compared to the reports that VWO provide.
We enquired and looked into using Optimizely and Qubit before deciding on VWO. All appear to be great tools that would have done the job required, however, when compared, we didn't hit the level of traffic for Qubit to consider a partnership, and Optimizely was a lot more …
VWO has come a long way since we first started using their software. With their new full-featured conversion optimization platform, we are able to connect things at a deeper level than ever before. Because of this we have ended our contracts with several vendors in order to …
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.
It works better for either small or big companies because small companies can start with the free plan which is very decent and has everything they need. Also for big companies who get the best paid plans they get a lot of premium functionalities, the insight module, outstanding reports. But for medium size companies who can only afford the basic paid plan, it may not be the best tool as it is very limited. For example, they cannot analize a/b tests for new and ruturning visitors, neither based on the users device category.
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.
VWO is pretty easy to implement on websites and doesn't require a heavy technology lift
The VWO interface is pretty intuitive and let's non-technical users make variants for testing
The VWO reporting dashboard is excellent for determining statistical significance and understanding whether differences in conversion rates are meaningful or not
The user interface within VWO does take a bit of time to get used to, especially as it pertains to switching back and forth between tests. When running multiple experiments on a site at a time, a clear and succinct dashboard for everything in one place would be helpful (as opposed to needing to switch between A/B, multivariate, etc).
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.
It's great value and we think we've ironed out all the major teething troubles. However, if we experience any more bugs or problems that significantly slow us down then we're seriously considering switching to Optimizely, which I haven't personally tested but have heard great things about from my CRO peers
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.
I gave Visual Website Optimizer a rating of 8 because it is overall a great product to use. Setting up and keeping track of various tests is easy and straight forward. The only reason why this product is not rated higher is because the support documents online leave a lot of room for improvement.
VWO doesn't appear to slow down our website at all, though some customers with adblockers like UBlock Origin have been known to not see entire pages if VWO is making changes to the page at a macro level (background, font, etc). This is rare though.
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.
While their online document support is lacking a simple email to their support team will almost always get responded to the next day. It has however taken more than one email to explain the problem to the support team till they understood the problem. The solution I was given also only half fixed the problem the rest I figured out on my own.
Training was good, just limited to the onboarding process. They walked through all of the steps it takes to get started in VWO and each of the modules, along with giving us ideas for starting our first test. I feel like it could be better if there was a guided process within the VWO program to continue to educate you along the way, and a way to turn that off for experienced users.
Overall, the implementation of VWO is straightforward. If you've got a straightforward way of deploying code to all of your test pages, either a good CMS or a TMS, then implementation should be a breeze. There is no tweaking to be done to the code itself, and once deployed it has the flexibility to cope with different VWO modules (tracking, conversion analysis, session analysis) without modification.
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.
There are significant differences in each platform when it comes to Optimizely and vwo. From a functionality and performance perspective they each have their pros and cons. It is important to go through the feature sets of each and ensure the solution you select will work specifically with your business objectives and conversion rate optimization goals
The product seems infinitely scalable for our needs (small business) and we've never had any issue with loading VWO-edited elements. I will say, though, that online customers with ad blockers have been known to not see certain VWO elements as their third-party scripts are disabled.
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.