Hotjar is a powerful tool that provides insights into user behavior on your website. It offers heatmaps, session recordings, and surveys to understand how users interact with your site. Hotjar helps identify your site's strengths and weaknesses, enabling you to optimize user experience and engagement. It's an invaluable resource for improving website performance and conversion rates.

  • 01Pros and cons from reviewers
  • 02Main features
  • 03What is Hotjar?
  • 04How Hotjar compare to similar software?
  • 05Who is Hotjar best for according to our reviewers?
  • 06Hotjar Reviews

What is Hotjar?

Hotjar is an advanced analysis tool that aids startups in enhancing their marketing strategies by analyzing website visitor behavior. Unlike other platforms that focus on numerical data, Hotjar generates heatmaps showing areas users interact with most on your site. This information helps identify friction points and improve user experience. The tool also allows for user surveys to continually refine services. It integrates with third-party software for seamless incorporation into business workflows. Used by over a million sites worldwide, including brands like Nintendo and Adobe, Hotjar is available for testing at a discounted rate through the Secret platform.

Pros from reviewers

  • Simplified User Studies: Hotjar simplifies user studies by providing invaluable insights into customer interactions with a website, easing the process of streamlining UI and buying processes

  • Powerful and Easy to Use: Hotjar is straightforward, easy to set up, and incredibly powerful, eliminating guesswork in conversion rate optimization by allowing the study of user behavior and their response to designs, UI/UX, and interfaces

  • Suitable for Small to Medium-Sized Businesses: Given its price, Hotjar provides a variety of impressive features for initiating user testing and CRO. It is easy to set up and use, even for marketers with no technical inclination, and serves perfectly as a value-based beginner UX/CRO tool.

  • Valuable Feedback and Insights: Hotjar enables the creation, personalization, and delivery of surveys and polls for customer feedback, which is quickly updated for immediate analysis. Its heatmap feature displays where users scroll and click on a website, offering valuable insights for marketing teams

  • Easy Integration and Monitoring: Hotjar is easy to integrate using Google Manager or by directly pasting the code, allowing for the monitoring of user activity on a website. Its heatmap feature indicates which areas of a website are performing well

Cons from reviewers

  • Incompatibility issues: Hotjar's form tracking system is incompatible with Angular-Js websites and it doesn't display data from text fields due to GDPR guidelines

  • Limited session recording: Hotjar seems to miss recording organic traffic - those visitors who find the website through search engines, which can be a significant drawback for understanding user navigation

  • Poor customer service: Some users have reported issues with Hotjar's customer service, including slow response times and difficulty resolving technical issues.

  • Limited heatmap creation: Users on smaller Hotjar plans can only create three heatmaps at a time, which can feel restrictive for those who wish to set up more heatmaps and use fewer of the other available features

  • High cost: Hotjar has been criticized for its high pricing, especially after recent price increases, which can be a deterrent for small businesses or beginners

Main features

Starting Price

$41

/ month

Free Plan

No

Incoming feedback

Form analysis

Surveys

Visitor recordings

Feedback polls

As we delve into the comparison of Hotjar vs Mixpanel, we uncover the nuanced differences that set these two tools apart. One key distinction lies in their user segmentation capabilities, with Mixpanel showcasing its prowess in this area. The extensive toolkit it offers enables users to craft highly specific and intricate user segments based on a multitude of attributes and behaviors. This level of granularity empowers businesses to precisely pinpoint user groups, extracting insights that drive targeted actions and optimizations. In contrast, Hotjar provides a more streamlined user segmentation experience, which may be well-suited for simpler analyses and quicker insights.


Moving on to cohort analysis, Mixpanel once again takes the lead. Its cohort analysis feature allows users to create cohorts by grouping individuals who share common characteristics or behaviors within a specific time frame. This functionality provides invaluable insights into user retention, engagement patterns,...

logo hotjar

Hotjar

Easily improve user experience on your website

1 month free on Business plan on Hotjar

Save up to $99

Get Hotjar deal
logo mixpanel

Mixpanel

Product analytics platform

1 year free on Mixpanel

Save up to $50,000

Who is Hotjar best for according to our reviewers?

  • Website Optimizers: Hotjar's recording feature is highly recommended for website optimization. It provides context to issues seen in GA and allows for a deeper understanding of the user's mindset

  • Website Designers: These professionals can use Hotjar to streamline their UI and buying process. The software provides invaluable insights into customer interactions with their websites, making it easier to optimize conversion rates

  • Small to Medium-sized Businesses: Hotjar is an excellent tool for these businesses, providing a variety of impressive features for initiating user testing and CRO. It is easy to set up and use, even for marketers with no technical inclination.

  • Data Analysts: Hotjar is a useful tool for creating, personalizing, and delivering surveys and polls. It also offers a Form Analysis feature that provides valuable data on user interaction with forms, helping to reduce unsuccessful attempts to complete them

  • Marketers: Hotjar is a straightforward and simple tool that marketers can use for basic research. It offers features like scrollmaps and polls, which can provide valuable insights into user behavior

  • Hotjar Reviews

    4.5

    Hotjar rating

    4.5

    Ease of use

    4.5

    Customer service

    4.5

    Value for money

    4.4

    Likelihood to recommend

    4.5

    Features

    24 Hotjar Reviews

    4.5 (24 reviews)
    Leave a review
    • Heather Johnson

      Hotjar: Empowering Data-Driven Decisions with Visual Insights

      As a data analyst, I appreciate the depth of insights Hotjar provides. Its visual representation of data makes it easy to understand user behavior and make data-driven decisions

      September 14, 2024

    • Grace Williams

      Enjoying HotJar for User Tracking

      My overall rating for Hotjar is 9 out of 10. It's an incredibly useful tool and one of the best available. Hotjar allows me to monitor user activity on my website and it's very easy to integrate using Google Manager or by directly pasting the code. One of Hotjar's standout features is its Heatmaps, which indicate which areas of my website are performing well. However, due to GDPR guidelines, it doesn't display data from text fields and its form tracking system is incompatible with Angular-Js websites. I switched to Hotjar because unlike Hubstaff, it doesn't show data from input fields like text or text area.

      September 7, 2024

    • Roy M

      Hotjar's Form Analysis for E-commerce Checkout Process

      As an e-commerce business owner, I found Hotjar's form analysis extremely useful. It helped me understand which fields in our checkout process were causing customers to abandon their carts

      August 31, 2024

    • Frances W

      Boosting WebShop Performance with Hotjar

      I recently incorporated Hotjar into my WebShop and it's been an absolute game-changer! It's been instrumental in helping me pinpoint areas where customers might be facing challenges. For example, I discovered that the root element of the DropDown menu wasn't clickable, which was causing some customers to leave as they didn't realize they needed to click on the sub menu. But thanks to Hotjar, I was able to identify this issue and I'm confident that rectifying it will significantly boost my website's conversion rate. I've become a huge fan of this tool already!

      August 26, 2024

    • Judith M

      Excellent Starter Kit for UX Research

      I wouldn't be surprised if there's a CRO or UX team that hasn't heard of Hotjar. It's a great tool, especially considering its price, but it lacks the flexibility to be my main on-site research tool. It's perfect for beginners and basic research. It's straightforward and simple! I think marketers could benefit the most from this. I appreciate its price, ease of implementation, and good customer service. I primarily use the scrollmaps and polls features. However, it can potentially slow down the site and loads the entire JavaScript even when only running a poll, which unnecessarily burdens the page speed. The forms have almost never worked on any of the websites I've used it on. I don't really use the funnel - I don't see the point. Free GA is still far superior and more useful. The polls have very basic targeting methods. It would be great if they added one or two new targeting triggers, but they haven't released any new features in a long time.

      August 17, 2024

    • Eulalia

      Exemplary Customer Service Experience with Hotjar

      I had a unique experience with Hotjar where I encountered a technical glitch that wouldn't allow me to add my VAT number to my account. I reached out to their support team and was impressed by their commitment to resolving my issue. Over three consecutive days, we worked together to find a solution. As a paying customer, I felt valued and appreciated their dedication. Ultimately, they were able to fix the issue, and although it took a bit of time, I was thrilled with their perseverance and commitment to customer satisfaction.

      August 11, 2024

    • Steven S

      Superb for Monitoring Website Visitors and Guiding Future Decisions

      As a data analyst, I find HotJar incredibly helpful for creating, personalizing, and delivering surveys and polls to our customers. It enables them to give feedback on our business, which is quickly updated to our HotJar account for immediate analysis. The most valuable feature of this platform, and the one that has made it popular among our research teams, is the heatmaps. These display where users scroll and click on our website, offering valuable insights for our marketing teams. However, this feature is only beneficial if our website has a sign-up form or requires visitors to fill out forms. The Form Analysis feature informs me of how users interact with our forms, helping me reduce the number of unsuccessful attempts to complete them. Despite its benefits, there are areas where HotJar could improve, such as pricing customization and enhancing the heatmaps feature. I switched to HotJar because its Form Analysis provides valuable data on user interaction with our forms, helping me reduce failed attempts.

      August 4, 2024

    • Jack

      Hotjar's Heatmaps: Boosting SEO with Attention-Grabbing Website Optimization

      As an SEO specialist, I used Hotjar's heatmaps to understand what elements of our website attract the most attention. This helped us optimize our site for better search engine ranking

      July 27, 2024

    • Lauren Garcia

      Excellent Software for My Team

      I've been using Hotjar for about 6 months now and my team and I love it. It has helped us improve our conversions by tweaking a few things. We're still using the trial version and haven't encountered any issues. I can't compare it to other companies as I haven't tried them, but so far, we're very satisfied with Hotjar.

      July 23, 2024

    • Stephen Williams

      Monitoring Client Interaction with Hotjar

      Hotjar is great for monitoring customer engagement on my pages and their visit duration. However, it's somewhat pricey just for the heatmap feature.

      July 13, 2024

    • Logan E

      Insightful Scroll Maps: Enhancing Content Placement Strategy with Hotjar

      As a content strategist, I found Hotjar's scroll maps very insightful. They showed me which parts of our pages were most engaging to users, helping us improve our content placement strategy

      July 6, 2024

    • Brandon B

      Outstanding, Yet Slightly Pricey

      I had a positive experience with Hotjar, but I'm disappointed that the manual heatmaps are no longer available after the update. The heatmaps and recordings are essential for creating a user-focused product. However, I'm frustrated that the daily recordings are not adjustable, which is crucial for tracking different session amounts. I selected Hotjar for its widgets and features that allow for adding conditionals.

      June 29, 2024

    • Ryan

      Hotjar: Enhancing Collaboration for Effective Website Improvement

      As a project manager, I found Hotjar's collaborative features very useful. It allowed our team to share insights and work together more effectively on improving our website's user experience

      June 22, 2024

    • Michael A

      Hotjar's User Session Recordings: A Web Developer's Bug-Fixing Savior

      As a web developer, I found Hotjar's user session recordings incredibly helpful. They allowed me to identify and fix bugs that were not reported by users

      June 17, 2024

    • Matthew

      Essential Tool for Your Needs: Hotjar Review

      I believe that Hotjar is a necessary tool for analyzing customer traffic and enhancing the user experience on your website. However, I gave it 4 stars due to its slightly higher cost.

      June 9, 2024

    • Carolyn Smith

      Hotjar's Feedback Feature: A Product Manager's Perspective

      As a product manager, I found the feedback polls and surveys feature of Hotjar very beneficial. It allowed us to gather direct user feedback and understand what features our users love and what needs improvement

      June 1, 2024

    • Indigo S

      Excellent Heatmap Solution for Website Optimization

      I highly value Hotjar's recording feature and strongly recommend it for website optimization. However, sometimes the multitude of features can make it challenging to locate what I need. Also, I'm constantly worried about our site's performance.

      May 26, 2024

    • Enoch M

      Hotjar's Conversion Funnel: A Digital Marketer's Tool for Improving Conversion Rates

      As a digital marketer, I appreciate Hotjar's conversion funnel feature. It allowed me to identify at which point we were losing customers, enabling us to make necessary adjustments and improve our conversion rate

      May 18, 2024

    • Sophia W

      Optimizing Website Layout with Heatmaps and Session Recordings

      its heatmaps provided clear visual data that helped me optimize our website's layout. The session recordings feature was particularly insightful, allowing me to see exactly how users interact with our site

      May 14, 2024

    • Carol S

      Maximizing Returns with Hotjar: A Worthwhile Investment

      Working with Hotjar is an absolute game-changer if you have a substantial initial budget. It's an investment that can truly pay off! They offer a range of pricing options, and while it may seem a bit steep at first, the value you get is incredible. In my experience, I found that the returns were three times my initial investment. If you're looking to make a worthwhile investment, Hotjar is definitely the way to go!

      May 6, 2024

    • Joyce Jones

      Incredible Tool for Monitoring Visitors

      Hotjar is an amazing software for tracking visitors on my website. However, they recently raised their prices, making them a bit expensive. But if you need to gain insights about your website, I highly recommend them. They've helped me improve my website!

      April 29, 2024

    • Greta

      Unthinkable to do CRO without Hotjar

      My experience with Hotjar has been outstanding. It has simplified our user studies and given us invaluable insights into our customers' interactions with our website. This has greatly eased our process of streamlining our UI and buying process. Hotjar is straightforward, functions as expected, and is easy to set up and configure. Furthermore, it is incredibly powerful. It's like turning on a light when working on conversion rate optimization - no more guessing. Now, we can study user behavior and see exactly how they respond to our designs, UI/UX, and interfaces. Since we started using Hotjar, we have made millions of extra dollars. There's hardly anything we dislike about Hotjar - it just works and is easy to use. We chose Hotjar because it had more features, numerous positive reviews, and we received several word-of-mouth recommendations. We believed it had more to offer than Smartlook.

      April 22, 2024

    • Zane G

      Hotjar: A UX Designer's Invaluable Tool

      As a UX designer, I found Hotjar to be an invaluable tool for understanding user behavior

      April 13, 2024

    • Celeste G

      Experienced User of Hotjar Software

      I've been using Hotjar for some time now and it's been great for gaining insights into our website's performance and understanding our users' behavior. However, I've been slightly bothered by the session recording feature. Despite Hotjar's overall effectiveness, it seems to miss recording organic traffic - those visitors who find us through search engines. It's disappointing that it doesn't capture their sessions, as it would be incredibly useful to understand how they navigate our site.

      April 13, 2024