Hotjar vs FullStory: Features, Price, & In-depth Comparison

Hotjar and FullStory are examples of behavior analytics tools that help you to monitor user behavior, optimize your website and increase conversions. While they share similar features, like session recordings and heat maps, key differences also set them apart.

In this article, we’ll discuss these key differences and how they affect your user experience analysis. We’ll also highlight a great alternative — FullSession, our web analytics platform. 

It provides you with session recordings and replays, interactive heatmaps, customer feedback forms, and advanced analytics. These features help you identify friction points and frustration signals, collect customer feedback and improve product performance. To get a first-hand experience, you can start a 14-day free trial or Get A Demo.

Let’s begin this in-depth comparison article by explaining the basics of Hotjar, FullStory, and FullSession as an alternative to both.

What is Hotjar?

Image source: G2

Hotjar is a behavioral and product experience analytics software designed to help product teams and e-commerce brands understand user behavior via session recordings, heatmaps, and customer feedback tools.

Hotjar also helps you eliminate guesswork by asking customers where they encounter issues and have objections to your website. With Hotjar, you can observe what website visitors do on your site and track actions like button clicks, scrolls, and mouse hovering. You can use these insights to improve the overall user experience. 

To learn more about this tool, you can read our Hotjar review.

What is FullStory?

Image source: G2

FullStory is a website analytics software that helps businesses analyze how users interact with various web and mobile elements like drop-down menus, call-to-action buttons, form fields, and more.

FullStory helps you identify website bugs and challenges that various user segments experience when using your website. This way, you can use the data to provide support, improve your site and optimize the customer experience.

What is FullSession?

FullSession is our customer experience analytics software that helps you collect user feedback and track and analyze user behavior while interacting with your website, web app, or landing page. 

It allows you to identify areas where web visitors rage click, experience issues on your site, and fail to convert into paying customers. With this data, you can fix bugs, improve the user experience and increase conversion rates.

Moreover, our user behavioral analytics tool helps product managers, digital marketing teams, web designers, UX researchers, and UX designers visualize user events and track the customer journey. They have session recordings and replay tools, heat maps, customer feedback tools, and UX analytics at their disposal.

Hotjar vs FullStory: How they compare and contrast

At first glance, Hotjar and FullStory are pretty similar. They’re both web analytics tools that focus on helping you collect and interpret quantitative and qualitative data on the user behavior of website visitors.

While both tools have similarities, they also have key differences that set them apart. In this section, we’ll explore how both solutions compare and contrast.

Hotjar vs FullStory: Basic differences

Here are the primary differences between Hotjar and FullStory:

1. Hotjar combines user behavioral data with user feedback to help you understand how website visitors behave across various web pages and what they think about your site. FullStory, on the other hand, lets you analyze user behavior through funnel analysis to identify areas where users drop off the funnel.
2. The Hotjar platform gives you an overview of user behavior and the insights you need to improve the user interface. FullStory provides search functionality, and it records each user interaction. You use its search functionality to find user events and support your customers.
3. Hotjar doesn’t let you analyze user behavior on mobile apps, while FullStory helps you analyze user behavioral data on mobile apps and websites.
4. Hotjar focuses on helping UX teams to monitor user behavior and get customer feedback to improve website usability and lead generation. FullStory enables you to identify the user experiences of specific user segments and fix website bugs.

Hotjar vs FullStory: User rating

According to Capterra, Hotjar scores 4.7 out of 5 based on 443 user reviews, while FullStory scores 4.6 out of 5 based on 63 user reviews. 

Hotjar vs FullStory: Use cases

Hotjar and FullStory serve similar industries, starting from e-commerce, digital marketing, and product development.

Hotjar vs FullStory: Deployment

You can deploy both Hotjar and Fullstory the same way. You need to copy their Javascript codes into your website source code. The code snippet logs user actions like scrolls, page views, button clicks, mouse movements, and much more.

Hotjar vs FullStory: Features

Here, we’ll get into a feature-by-feature comparison. First, we’ll begin with the features both platforms share and move on to those that differentiate them.

Heatmaps

Both Hotjar and FullStory provide the heatmap user behavioral tool. With Hotjar, you can use heatmaps to identify friction in the customer experience. You can see where users spend the most time and what impacts their customer journey. 

Heatmaps also reveal how users interact with key elements on your web pages, including where users click and scroll. 

When using heatmaps, you can visualize user behavioral data via colors. Red indicates the sections of your web pages with the highest engagement, while blue indicates those with the least interaction. A heatmap, in this context, is divided into other facets of on-site user interaction. 

      1. Scroll maps

Scroll maps show how far users scroll on your website, including the specific percentage for each page section. This way, you can figure out if your pages are too long and why some web page elements don’t get attention.

      2. Click maps

Click maps show you where users click on your website. You can use the data to know the buttons, links, and CTAs that users click the most.

      3. Movement maps

While both tools offer scroll and click maps, there’s another case where they differ.

Hotjar provides another type of heatmap that you won’t find on the FullStory platform – movement maps. This feature shows you user mouse movement patterns so you can see the web elements your users like to interact with the most. For example, if customers keep navigating around your page’s header, it’ll be ideal for placing CTAs or lead capture links at that spot.

Session recording

While heatmaps are ideal for showing you the web elements that gain the most and least attention, you’ll still want to see how users act when navigating your web pages, and this is where session recordings come into play.

Hotjar and FullStory provide this feature, but FullStory names it “Session Replay.” FullStory offers advanced functionality in its session recordings feature. For instance, you can link customer complaints to a session replay so that customer support can quickly understand the context and solve customer problems.

Unlike heatmaps, the session replay functionality does not provide aggregated statistical data. Instead, The FullStory session replay lets you see exactly how the user navigated your website, how they moved their mouse, and what they clicked. 

This important feature lets you gain a bird’s eye view of the user experience. How do all of your customers navigate across various web pages? Do they get stuck hopelessly on the same page? Or do most of them gravitate towards the About Us section instead of your blog? 

Analytics data from session recordings answer these questions, and you can use the information to tweak your site’s UI. For instance, if you notice that a particular button shows a dead click, you can quickly fix the issue, optimize your site accordingly and increase conversion rates.

While Hotjar and FullStory provide session recording features, FullStory is a winner due to the added usability of session recordings for supporting your customers. For instance, when a customer submits a ticket complaining about an issue, FullStory will provide a session replay showing what the user did before and after submitting a ticket.

Feedback widget and survey

You can use the Hotjar “ask” feature to insert surveys on specific web pages to know what users feel and think about your site’s functionality. FullStory doesn’t provide a survey feature. Instead, it lets you build conversion funnels that you can use to map out each step of a user flow. With this feature, you can see where most customers drop off and fail to convert.

Hotjar vs FullStory: Languages

Both Hotjar and FullStory provide services in the English language.

Hotjar vs FullStory: Integrations

When connecting with third-party tools, Hotjar and FullStory integrate with popular apps like Optimizely, Hubspot, Slack, Segment, Omniconvert, WordPress, Shopify, and more.

In contrast, FullStory has a much larger base of integrations than Hotjar, which only has seven native integrations. You can connect with more apps via Zapier.

Hotjar vs FullStory: Support

Support is where both tools differ a lot. Hotjar provides support via a knowledge base and email, while FullStory provides support via LiveChat and email tickets.

Hotjar vs FullStory: Pricing

Now, let’s move on to how the pricing for each tool can affect your budget. Both products have the same pricing model—they offer a free plan and charge a monthly fee for their premium packages.

Hotjar pricing

Hotjar offers two premium plans—Observe and Ask divided into various tiers. The Observe plan allows you to visualize user behavior using heatmaps and session recording. it is divided into

• Basic—costs $0 and allows you to track up to 1050 sessions/month
• Plus—costs $48/month and lets you track up to 3,000 sessions/month
• Business—starts from $80/month and lets you track up to 500 daily sessions
• Scale—offers customized pricing and lets you track daily session recordings

The Ask plan enables you to ask customers about their digital experience via a feedback tool and it is divided into

• Basic—costs $0 with access to 20 monthly responses
• Plus—costs $48/month with access to 250 monthly responses
• Business—starts from $64/month and lets you receive up to 500 monthly responses
• Scale—offers customized pricing and access to unlimited monthly responses

FullStory pricing

As for FullStory, it offers a free plan that provides basic behavioral analytics. The free plan enables you to track up to 1000 session replays per month.

The FullStory paid plans are divided into two—Business and Enterprise.

1. The Business plan offers a 14-day trial and allows you to track up to 5000 sessions 
2. The Enterprise plan offers a customized plan, so you’d have to contact sales or request a demo

A downside is that the company does not provide transparent pricing, meaning you’ll have to contact their sales team to get a quote.

So far, we’ve covered how Hotjar and FullStory compare and contrast. Let’s move on to an alternative web analytics solution – FullSession, which also helps analyze user behavior.  

What is FullSession?

FullSession, our web analytics software, helps you analyze customer behavioral data and visualize how users interact with your website, web applications, and landing pages. This way, you can identify areas where users encounter issues on your site, fix them accordingly, and help them convert to paying customers.

What features does FullSession provide?

FullSession provides powerful behavioral analytics tools that show how web visitors and customers interact with your website elements like headers, call-to-action buttons, drop-down menus, and more. Let’s go deep into each feature.

Session recordings and replays

This web analytics feature lets you see your users’ actions as they navigate your website pages. Session recording and replay go beyond quantitative data and provide specific behavioral data showing

• User scroll behavior
• Mouse movements
• Button clicks
• Text inputs in real-time

With our session recording and replay, you can gain access to data such as

• User location and IP address
• The URL user visited
• Referrals
• Average time on page
• Total active time on page
• Session list
• Session event

You can skip periods of user inactivity, save time and focus on what matters. You can also drop notes or share the user session recordings with your team for better collaboration.

Interactive heatmaps

Our website heatmap tool visually represent how individual users interact with your website elements. It highlights areas where users give the most attention and lets you see the buttons, links, form fields, call-to-actions, blog content, and website copy that are most engaging. This way, you can use the insights to optimize your web pages to increase conversions.

With FullSession interactive heatmaps, you can:

• Preview the heatmap on different devices
• See the URL the user visited
• Track clicks and see the number of total views and total clicks
• See the error, rage, and dead clicks
• Get the average load time on page
• Get the average time on page
• See the number of users that visited the page

Click map example

 

Mouse movement map example

Scroll map example

Insights

FullSession provides detailed insights and gives you an easy-to-understand overview of customer behavior across your web pages to identify frustration signals that lead to funnel dropoffs and decreased conversion rates.

Customer feedback widget

The customer feedback form lets you ask users what they feel and think about their digital experience in real-time. You also get access to the customer feedback report to see the user ID, URL, comment the user left, device type, and feedback date.

Even better, you can watch a user session connected to negative feedback to figure out what led to a negative customer experience. It all leads to creating a customer-centric strategy for your product.

Segments

Our segments feature helps you to build specific user segments and use them to filter major events in user sessions. It saves your time during analysis as you can find necessary data quickly.

Notes

The FullSession platform provides notes that enable you to leave comments about customer behavior and share them with your team. You can assess the challenging areas and improve your product performance.

Conversions

This feature lets you track conversion goals using metrics like time to convert, percentage of users, etc. With this information, you can gain more insight into your overall marketing strategy. You can identify the successful marketing campaigns and the ones you need to improve. 

You can sign up for a 14-day free trial or book a demo today to learn more.

What makes FullSession stand out

While FullSession provides similar features to Hotjar and FullStory, many traits make it stand out. Here are some of the major ones:

1. FullSession helps you quickly filter user sessions to identify significant events via user segments, user feedback, and more.
2. While Hotjar will significantly slow your site’s loading speed, FullSession will enable you to analyze user behavioral data without affecting your site’s performance. 
3. The FullSession insights provide a comprehensive analysis of user behavior and help you to identify friction points and funnel drop-offs that affect conversions quickly. 
4. Our web analytics solution helps you to gather customer feedback and run user surveys to know what users think and feel about their digital experience with your product.

Now that you know some of the traits that make FullSession unique, let’s move on to some of the reasons why FullSession is ideal for your web analytics needs. 

4 reasons to use FullSession

Here are four key reasons why you should use FullSession for your web analytics needs.

1. FullSession enables you to spot user pain points and bugs via its session replay feature.
2. Our web analytics tool categorizes analytics data so you can conduct a thorough analysis of performance issues across your web pages.
3. FullSession provides advanced filtering options that help you better understand user events and spot Javascript errors during a session recording.
4. The FullSession platform is easy to set up and use. You don’t need any advanced technical knowledge to get the insights you need.

Before we conclude this in-depth piece, let’s briefly highlight the key features of each tool we mentioned in this article. 

Hotjar vs FullStory vs FullSession: A summary

This table highlights a summary of the main points so that you can grasp the features of each tool.

Features	Hotjar	FullStory	FullSession
Real-time session recording	✔	✔	✔
Funnel analysis	✘	✔	✘
Customer segmentation	✔	✔	✔
Customer journey mapping	✔	✔	✔
Conversion tracking	✔	✔	✔
Interactive heatmaps	✘	✘	✔
Customer feedback	✔	✘	✔
Insights	✘	✘	✔
Free version	✔	✔	✘
Free trial	✔	✔	✔

Hotjar vs FullStory: Final words

It’s without a doubt that both Hotjar and FullStory are known for helping people analyze user behavior data. However, each tool has its strengths and weaknesses. While FullStory offers more ways to provide support to customers, it cannot collect customer feedback to uncover objections and customer struggles.

On the other hand, Hotjar is a good option for collecting direct feedback that you can use to improve your site’s UI. In the end, you’ll need to choose the right tool that is affordable and can meet your business’s needs. However, don’t get stuck deciding between the two – there are other great alternatives you can consider.

FullSession is an excellent alternative that provides real-time session recordings and dynamic heatmaps that help you visualize your users’ actions on your site. 

Even better, FullSession allows you to gather data and make the correct CX analysis without slowing down your site, unlike Hotjar, which slows down a site’s loading speed. You can also use our customer feedback forms to ask customers about their experience using your website. 

We’ve written about other analytics tools and how they compare to Hotjar. Feel free to check some of our unbiased reviews like Hotjar vs Crazy Egg, Lucky Orange vs Hotjar, and Hotjar vs Mixpanel vs ClickTale.

Try FullSession for free

Don’t hesitate to start analyzing user behavior data by giving our tool a try. You can start a 14-day free trial to gain actionable insights and optimize your site for increased conversion rates. If you need more information, you can also easily book a demo today.

Hotjar vs FullStory: FAQ

Here are additional answers that will throw more light on Hotjar.

How is Hotjar different from Google Analytics?

Hotjar is one web analytics and conversion tool that will provide you with qualitative data you won’t get from Google analytics. On the other hand, Google Analytics provides raw statistical data that require interpretation as users can’t see the customer behavior and understand actions.

What is Hotjar good for?

Hotjar is good for monitoring user behavior across various web pages and collecting customer feedback to increase the website usability and lead generation.

Is Hotjar for free?

Hotjar provides a free plan you can use to analyze basic user behavior data.

What can Hotjar track?

Hotjar can track what users do on your websites like button clicks, text inputs, scrolls, mouse hovering, and more.