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Hotjar

Hotjar

Overview

What is Hotjar?

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…

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Hotjar has proven to be extremely valuable in a variety of use cases. Users have found success in utilizing Hotjar to solicit feedback …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

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Pricing

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Hotjar Observe - Plus

$39

Cloud
per month 100 daily sessions

Hotjar Ask - Plus

$59

Cloud
per month 250 monthly responses

Hotjar Ask - Business

$79

Cloud
per month Starting from 500 monthly responses

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.hotjar.com/compare-our-plans

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Details

Hotjar Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

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.

Mixpanel, Crazy Egg, and Lucky Orange are common alternatives for Hotjar.

Reviewers rate Usability highest, with a score of 9.7.

The most common users of Hotjar are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(334)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Hotjar has proven to be extremely valuable in a variety of use cases. Users have found success in utilizing Hotjar to solicit feedback from clients through polls and surveys, allowing them to gain a comprehensive understanding of how design changes affect content consumption. Additionally, marketing services teams have relied on Hotjar's analytics and user behavior insights to review site performance for clients and provide high-level audits during the sales process. The continual user feedback collected by Hotjar has brought immense value to product design and engineering teams, empowering them to make data-driven decisions that improve the overall user experience. Similarly, agencies have leveraged Hotjar's heatmaps and session recordings to track and analyze user behavior on client websites, uncovering valuable insights for optimization initiatives. Growth specialists have also found great value in using Hotjar to analyze user behavior during critical engagements like browsing, lead generation, and checkout. This provides them with invaluable insights into landing page effectiveness and helps identify any technical glitches that may be impacting conversion rates. Furthermore, digital analytics and optimization departments have utilized Hotjar to glean insights for optimization or debugging purposes, enabling them to understand how people react to design or functionality changes in order to drive improvements. Marketing teams have found detailed reports generated by Hotjar particularly useful in identifying user struggles and interactions with different elements on their websites. CRO teams have also benefited from using Hotjar as a way to educate clients about areas of opportunity on their websites. Overall, Hotjar has become an essential tool for tracking visitor behavior, understanding user patterns, identifying areas of improvement, and optimizing website usability and user journeys. Whether it's through heatmaps, scroll maps, video playback, session recordings, or surveys, Hotjar provides users with the data they need to make informed decisions based on real user opinions and behaviors.

Valuable customer insights: Users have found Hotjar to be a valuable tool for gaining quick customer insights. Multiple reviewers mentioned that it provides important data for improving their own software, and some users felt that the product offers a practical way to reveal the online behavior and voice of users.

Effective heat mapping: Hotjar's heat mapping feature was praised by multiple reviewers for its accuracy in representing website traffic and providing accessible data. Some users particularly highlighted its ability to quantify the success of page copy rewrites and identify areas where visitors engage with the content. The visual representations provided by Hotjar's heatmaps were also seen as helpful in understanding user interactions and optimizing website layout.

Useful session recordings: Reviewers have found Hotjar's user session recording feature to be highly useful. Some users described it as a real-life view of users navigating through the website funnel, allowing them to retrace the user journey and identify potential stumbling blocks. The recording features provided by Hotjar were also mentioned as valuable in understanding user behavior, addressing usability issues, and enhancing the overall user experience.

Confusing and Clunky User Interface: Multiple users have expressed frustration with the user interface of Hotjar, describing it as confusing and clunky. They have mentioned that it requires too many clicks to navigate, making it time-consuming and inconvenient to use.

Difficulties in Troubleshooting and Lack of Customer Support: Some users have mentioned difficulties in troubleshooting issues with Hotjar, citing the lack of a direct line for customer support. This absence of immediate assistance can be frustrating for users who encounter problems.

Limited Plan Tiers and Restrictions: Users have found the limited plan tiers of Hotjar to be restrictive, particularly in terms of the number of recordings available. This limitation hinders users who need to gather sufficient data for analysis.

Users of Hotjar have made several recommendations based on their experiences with the product. The three most common recommendations are:

  1. Start with the free version: Many users recommend starting with the free version of Hotjar to track visitor activity on website pages. This allows businesses, especially small businesses or new startups, to gather valuable data on user actions and understand customer behavior and interaction on their website.

  2. Use it as part of a larger data strategy: Hotjar is often recommended as a tool that provides great insights and should be used in conjunction with other software tracking tools for result comparison. Users suggest integrating Hotjar into a larger data strategy and utilizing its features to track user actions and improve marketing plans.

  3. Try before you buy: Several users suggest using the trial version of Hotjar to understand its value and determine if it meets their business and marketing needs. They advise spending more time in Hotjar to improve understanding of users and overall marketing strategy before considering the paid plans.

Overall, users find Hotjar to be an easy-to-use and fully functional tool for understanding website visitors and their behavior. While some caution is advised in drawing unbiased conclusions from the data if there aren't many visits, Hotjar is considered a valuable tool for gathering website analytics and customer feedback.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(26-50 of 81)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Aline Gonçalves Rodrigues | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Mouseflow matches nearly every feature that Hotjar offers – although, they may work a little differently.
The most relevant difference is in data capture. Hotjar offers unlimited options for heat maps, recordings, forms and comments as long as you are a paying customer. In addition to the free plan, it is much more interesting.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Usabilla is a much more feature-rich tool, however, this comes at a cost of much-increased price as well as deployment and usage complexity. For a low-cost solution to quickly and easily collect user feedback, HotJar is very easy to recommend
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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 with the agency. Hotjar has similar tools that work just as well for our small company.
Duane Thompson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It's nice to know what exactly your site visitors like and what they think. Hotjar is the best software in the industry for such purpose. It is so easy-to-use and combines user behavior analysis and customer feedback tools that help you make more effective strategies and execute changes that will improve user experience.
Carl Pieri | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We found that Hotjar has a very powerful and user-friendly interface. You can do more with it with regard to different things you want to measure/learn and it's more flexible to meet your needs. It's less of a point solution, as it has multiple features that many organizations will find useful and might not find in other tools.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Matomo Analytics (formerly Piwik)
We evaluated Hotjar and Matomo. Matomo was more of an overhaul from an analytics perspective but offered things like heat maps and visitor recordings which is why we considered it. We also use it for another client. But for what we need, it's nice to start up Hotjar and shut it off as needed. It's just better for the way our agency is set up.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Google Analytics is for big numbers and traffic analyzation and not about more personalized approach.

Mouseflow is good but has serious gaps if compared with Hotjar:
  • No free version (trial)
  • Hotjar is very user-friendly and easy to use
  • Hotjar has a nice blog with some recommendations
  • Mouseflow has no surveys
  • Hotjar is very easy to install
Ramón Carmona Medina | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Ok Hotjar is more comparable with CrazyEgg, we haven't really [used] CrazyEgg since we get everything we need with Hotjar and the tools work just perfect, let's say HotJar is a very polished product and that's why we haven't changed it.Normal analytics like Google Analytics will let you make events, track desired funnels but HotJar will tell you where or why your funnel is not working. I think Mixpanel is in another level just the implementation is much more complex and it will help you to track all your platform as a business letting you know which part of your engine is failing (which process, internal, external, app, website, etc.) so the idea is if you detect there something across your business then you can use Hotjar as magnify lens in order to fix and improve.
Dwight Zähringer | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I was an early beta tester to HotJar and had previous experience with CrazyEgg. We've looked at a few others however, in using it for multiple clients we need to remove and install scripts. Also, the historic records are important for us to show before and after for UX/UI and showing how improvements, or their lack of contributing to conversions.
Zach Ettelman | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Hotjar is a cheaper alternative to FullStory, but not as robust. FullStory is designed for more use cases, including custom product development. Hotjar's price point is way lower than FullStory, making it a great choice for a startup, mid-market organization, or a lean enterprise. FullStory is more complicated to use than Hotjar because of the additional functionality it provides.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
FullStory is more expensive but much more 'enterprise' than HotJar. Some of its integrations are more valuable and give more user-level data, as well as better archiving on individual sessions. However, it costs significantly more.
Susan Hammiche | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Hotjar has the ability to give you a heatmap that shows you what section of our page has been clicked on the most by visitors. It also records what a user is doing on your website, which gives you great insight. Google Analytics doesn't have that feature but combined they help you make data-driven decisions about your business. As Hotjar has a free version, it is ideal for small businesses as well.
Veronika Baranovska | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I used Crazy Egg ages ago but never got into it! I'm sure the tool is much different now.

Google Optimize is not a direct competitor, but tests can be run, and with funnel and events tracking in Google Analytics, you can get a lot of the data that Hotjar is also telling you it could do. This is the only area where I think Hotjar could be improved.
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