Request Metrics vs. Smartlook

Request Metrics is great for small web development teams that want to make fast web applications. It was quick for us to get started and we could use the reports right away without having to read through documentation. If you just need to get some performance metrics, Request Metrics is perfect. It would not be so good for a larger team or a complex backend application as it is pretty limited in what it can measure.

Smartlook is best for screen recordings. Especially when you are running MVPs. However, its pricing is very high. If your daily visitors are too much then either you will have to lose many of your recordings or you will have to pay too much money.

Incentivized

• Performance charts are really simple and easy for us to understand what is happening
• It was easy to get started and doesn't need administration or training
• It's affordable for our team
• It's fast

• Funnels are both easy to configure yet comprehensive enough to detect complicated customer journeys.
• Real-time recording provides exceptional insights to our design & engineering teams.
• Session recording is surprisingly lightweight and seems to cause no substantial performance degradation for our customers.

Incentivized

• I wish that it could also do uptime checking of the site
• There is not enough detail to drill into individual users

• I feel nickel and dimed with the events and funnels.
• We came from sessions being 30 mins of inactivity and now it's 5-10 mins. Session count has gone up significantly which we weren't prepared for.
• Recording playback isn't as clean and maneuverable like FullStory.

Incentivized

As my ratings show, I have been absolutely delighted with Smartlook in terms of usability, cost, support, and its benefit to our organization. I have given it such high ratings because I think it has really benefitted our organization and I think it could do the same for other companies too.

Incentivized

Every page, the tool setup pages and dashboards are built very well, the site structure is perfectly designed and intuitive to use. All functions are well documented and the help sections are really everywhere, you don't have to search for answers, as they are just popped up or max. a click away for your service.

Incentivized

Sofia P. is being our point of contact with the issues we faced. I was unsure about how to explain to her what was going on with the recording numbers (the recording has stopped before we were expecting to), but she readily understood and came with a solution for us in the same day. The problem was blocking our developer to test the integration, so it was great to have support so fast that he could continue his work.

Incentivized

We also consider Speedcurve and Calibre for monitoring. Speedcurve was really nice, but the reports were slow. We had to wait a lot to get information. It was also out of our budget and would require extra justification to use it. Calibre was also nice, but the numbers were based on synthetic rather than real user performance. We felt that this wasn't as helpful for us.

It has been a year between the time when I last used Hotjar and first started using Smartlook. I would say both tools are more or less equal when it comes to features, the only 2 differences I can think of are - price and customer support. Smartlook is cheaper and has superior customer services. You have the feeling when interacting with them that they genuinely care.

Incentivized

• The launch of our project dashboard was much smoother and more successful because we could fix problems earlier
• It fit without our existing operations budget

• Smartlook is used by different individuals from different organizations to have insights into different parts of products. It is used as the sole developer of our website as well as marketing campaigns.
• Smartlook has an amazing feature which is tracking the activities of return users.
• It gives reliable and efficient services.

Incentivized