Hotjar vs VWO | TrustRadius

What users are saying about

Score 8.7 out of 10

Based on 224 reviews and ratings

Score 6.1 out of 10

Based on 176 reviews and ratings

Feature Rating Comparison

Hotjar

VWO

a/b experiment testing

Split URL testing

Multivariate testing

Multi-page/funnel testing

Cross-browser testing

Test significance

Visual / WYSIWYG editor

Advanced code editor

Visitor recordings

Preview mode

Test duration calculator

Hotjar

VWO

Standard visitor segmentation

Behavioral visitor segmentation

Traffic allocation control

Website personalization

Hotjar

VWO

Heatmap tool

Click analytics

Scroll maps

Conversion tracking

Goal tracking

Test reporting

Results segmentation

Experiments results dashboard

Pros

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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Sarah O'Donnell

UX & CRO Executive

Epiphany SearchMarketing and Advertising, 51-200 employees

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VWO has a strong support team willing to help provide answers to questions during the setup process. During setup, we had some questions regarding implementation across a significant number of sites and they were able to ease dev team concerns and provide detailed best practices to streamline integration.
Some of the initial results of a few of the initial tests raised some questions internally. We setup a call and were able to quickly address the questions and find some opportunities to leverage moving forward.
I discovered a bug within the UI that lead to some questions internally. I was able to report it and the problem was fixed rather quickly and their team followed up with a thank you for reporting it and to report the issue was now resolved.

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Real Estate, 51-200 employees

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Cons

Customization of in-page user surveys - Although it is a great tool to be able to publish and update user surveys that appear on our web page, the customization options (mostly UI) are somewhat limited, making the survey either stick out like a sore thumb, or look like an advertisement or error on our site. It would be great to get a little bit more control over how the survey appears on our site.
Honestly, I have not run into any other major examples I can detail where HotJar has not been able to do what I have needed it to do!

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Verified User

Employee in Other

Computer Software Company, 201-500 employees

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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).

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Account Supervisor

Digital CurrentMarketing and Advertising, 11-50 employees

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Likelihood to Renew

Hotjar 5.1

Based on 2 answers

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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Marketing Technologist

Direct Development, Inc.Marketing and Advertising, 11-50 employees

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VWO 8.7

Based on 20 answers

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

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Head of User Experience

streetlife.comInternet, 11-50 employees

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Usability

Hotjar 9.5

Based on 6 answers

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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Digital Optimisation Lead

Pets at HomeRetail, 10,001+ employees

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VWO 8.2

Based on 2 answers

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.

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Verified User

Employee in Information Technology

5001-10,000 employees

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Reliability and Availability

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

VWO 9.1

Based on 6 answers

I have not experienced an application error or unplanned outage with VWO.

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Verified User

Strategist in Marketing

Facilities Services Company, 51-200 employees

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Performance

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

VWO 8.2

Based on 2 answers

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.

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Verified User

Strategist in Marketing

Facilities Services Company, 51-200 employees

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Support Rating

Hotjar 9.5

Based on 4 answers

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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Director, Digital Innovation

Kin + CartaMarketing and Advertising, 1001-5000 employees

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VWO 9.1

Based on 8 answers

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.

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Verified User

Employee in Information Technology

5001-10,000 employees

View all 8 answers on this topic

Online Training

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

VWO 6.4

Based on 1 answer

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.

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Verified User

Strategist in Marketing

Facilities Services Company, 51-200 employees

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Implementation Rating

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

VWO 9.1

Based on 6 answers

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.

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Verified User

Professional in Marketing

Events Services Company, 1001-5000 employees

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Alternatives Considered

To be honest, we have only tried Hotjar session recording. I know there are some alternatives but we haven't tried any of them. I think there are none as complete as Hotjar for what you pay (some do heatmaps, other video recording, other polls). And the thing is that all of that is done pretty decent on Hotjar, so I'm not looking for any alternative right now.

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Santiago Valdés

Cofounder / Marketing, Growth, Technology, Experience

VestuáRetail, 11-50 employees

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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 for instance prefer the Hotjar heatmaps, because I can elect to ignore certain elements on the webpage, such as a cookie consent pop up. A simple difference which makes me like Hotjar recordings more is that I can view a recording and click next, rather than going back to the overview and selecting the next recording.

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Michel Zurkirchen

Content manager

Fontem Ventures B.V.Tobacco, 201-500 employees

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Scalability

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

VWO 8.2

Based on 1 answer

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.

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Verified User

Strategist in Marketing

Facilities Services Company, 51-200 employees

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Return on Investment

User Testing Alternative - Instead of hiring UX testers, we can leverage our actual customers to determine how they use our website. This has helped frame website redesign discussions on several occasions.
Landing Page Design - We've designed our landing pages based on user feedback from heatmaps we've gathered from Hotjar. Understanding where to place CTAs and other pieces based on user interaction has helped us streamline our landing page design.
Device Usage - Part of the data provided by Hotjar includes which device a user is visiting from. This helps us understand how mobile users work differently than desktop users.

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Digital Marketing Specialist

Essense of AustraliaMarketing and Advertising, 11-50 employees

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The ability to offer a CRO service is greatly enhanced by VWO, as it allows us to run tests for clients
The editor means to some extent we don't need much developer resource to run the tests, lowering costs of doing so

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Verified User

Analyst in Other

Marketing and Advertising Company, 51-200 employees

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Screenshots

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See Both VWO Screenshots

Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

Yes

Free/Freemium Version

Yes

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

Hotjar Editions & Modules

Edition

Basic	$0¹
Plus	39.00²
Business	$99³

2k pageviews/per day
10k pageviews per day/per month
20k pageviews per day/per month

Additional Pricing Details

—

General

Free Trial

Yes

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Yes

Entry-level set up fee?

No

VWO Editions & Modules

Edition

TESTING	Get a Demo¹
CONVERSION OPTIMIZATION	Get a Demo²
ENTERPRISE	Get a Demo³
Subscription	$99.00⁴

The classic VWO A/B testing solution
The all-in-one platform for all your optimization needs
Customized solution with advanced AB testing and conversion optimization capabilities
Per Month

Additional Pricing Details

—

Rating Summary

Hotjar

VWO

Hotjar

VWO

Hotjar

VWO

Hotjar

VWO

Hotjar

VWO

Hotjar

VWO

Hotjar

VWO

Hotjar

VWO

Hotjar

VWO

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