As an online business owner, you must know how your users interact with your web app, landing page, website, or...
If you’re running a business, you already know the importance of web analytics. While a traditional analytics tool like Google Analytics may show you significant numbers like churn rate, page traffic, or bounce rates, how do you learn how users behave on your site? Advanced web analytics tools such as FullSession, Hotjar, and Smartlook can help you.
Currently, Hotjar and Smartlook are popular web analytics tools on the market. Rather than spending long hours on research trying to figure out which software is ideal for your website, we’ve made the process easier for you. We’ve prepared a Hotjar vs Smartlook comparison.
In this article, we’ll compare these web analytics tools based on their features, pricing, use cases, integrations, languages, and support, so you can save time, resources, and money.
Also, we’ll address a better alternative – our FullSession. FullSession is a web analytics software that provides you actionable insights into customer behavior via helpful features like real-time session recordings, session replays, interactive heatmaps, and customer feedback forms.
Combining these features gives product teams the ability to understand user behavior, identify user issues, improve their products, and ultimately increase conversions. If you want to test all FullSession features, you can sign up and create your free account today.
Before we get into the nitty-gritty of the Hotjar vs Smartlook comparison, let’s begin by introducing each software.
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Hotjar is a conversion optimization tool that tracks your web visitors’ behavior and provides you with insights to help you increase your website performance rate. With Hotjar, product managers, UX designers, and researchers can discover user pain points, understand user actions and improve customer experience (CX).
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Smartlook is an analytics software for websites and mobile apps that lets businesses track customer behavior. With Smartlook, product managers, developers, UX designers, and marketers make an informed decision on how to optimize product performance.
FullSession is a web analytics software that helps businesses monitor user behavior. It helps them capture and analyze digital engagement data to optimize product design, content, or layout and improve the user experience.
Below, you can compare Hotjar and Smartlook to spot where their features overlap and what unique features each solution provides. This insight can make a big difference in analyzing your website visitors’ actions.
Both Hotjar and Smartlook provide session recordings and heatmaps and have an easy set-up process. You’ll learn more about their differences, use cases, deployment, features, user ratings, language, and integrations as you read further. Let’s start with the basics.
You can use Smartlook to track user interaction on websites and mobile apps, while Hotjar doesn’t track user behavior on mobile apps and doesn’t provide mobile analytics.
UX designers, product managers, and digital marketers use Hotjar in their everyday work. Smartlook targets small businesses, agencies, and digital marketers.
One of the most significant differences between Hotjar and Smartlook lies in the filter options for session recordings and heat maps. For example, with Hotjar, you can filter session recordings by user feedback, while Smartlook doesn’t provide this feature.
In another context, Smartlook includes the funnel analysis to help you understand the user navigation, and you can use this feature as a filter for session recordings. In contrast, Hotjar doesn’t provide the funnel analysis.
When it comes to user ratings, both Hotjar and Smartlook have shown promising results in the market. We’ll highlight user ratings based on two popular review sites – TrustRadius and G2.
Since Hotjar and Smartlook have similar features, there’s also some overlap in their use cases.
The deployment between Hotjar and Smartlook is quite different. With Smartlook, there are a few ways to install the software.
For instance, you can add the code snippet by copying the code and pasting it into your website source code. You can also implement Smartlook on your website via Google Tag Manager. You have to create a custom HTML tag with the tracking code.
With Hotjar, there are a couple of installation options available. For instance, you can install the Hotjar Javascript snippet by manually adding the code to your website.
After installing, tracking user actions represents a crucial difference between these solutions. For example, with Hotjar, you need to describe specific events by creating custom Javascript code and using events API to track user-specific actions.
It can be challenging if you don’t have enough technical knowledge. In contrast, once you install the code snippet, Smartlook automatically tracks user interactions.
As we mentioned earlier, Hotjar and Smartlook share similar features, but there are cases where these features differ.
The language is where Hotjar and Smartlook contrast greatly. The Smartlook interface is only available in English.
While the Hotjar interface is also available in English, the software’s user-facing features like surveys and feedback are available in multiple languages like Arabic, Dutch, French, Chinese, Italian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, and more!
Both Hotjar and Smartlook offer many integrations. They share similar integration options with A/B testing and conversion rate optimization tools.
Both software integrates well with tools used by digital marketing experts like Segment, Google Optimize, and Zapier. Another similarity in their integration is that both tools are compatible with WordPress, Shopify, and Joomla.
There are some integration options you can find in Hotjar and not Smartlook. For example, Hotjar integrates with popular project management tools like Basecamp, Asana, Click up, Notion, and Trello. In contrast, Smartlook doesn’t.
No tool is perfect, and issues can arise. For this reason, customers need efficient and reliable support. Hotjar and Smartlook customer support have some differences. Hotjar includes email support, ticket submissions, and training in all pricing plans. The absence of live support puts Hotjar at a disadvantage since most customers prefer to communicate via live support.
In contrast, Smartlook provides email support, ticket submission, training, and live support. Only the Startup and Business plans include access to live support, so you need to upgrade your account.
Both Hotjar and Smartlook offer pricing plans suitable for startups, SMBs, and enterprises.
Hotjar pricing plan is divided into two packages – observe and ask. The Observe plan features heatmaps to visualize user behavior and session recordings to watch what users do on your site. The Ask plan helps you hear from your users and discover how they feel via surveys and feedback.
The observe pricing model:
The ask pricing plan:
The pricing plan for Smartlook includes four plans – Free, Startup, Business, and Ultimate. Here are more details on each plan:
As you can see, Hotjar and Smartlook pricing plans also have some differences. For example, all pricing plans for Smartlook include a 10-day free trial and a 15-day money-back guarantee. All pricing plans for Hotjar don’t include a free trial but offer a 30-day money-back guarantee.
So far, we’ve discussed how Hotjar and Smartlook compare and contrast in terms of pricing, deployment, use cases, integration, features, and languages. At this point, you have gained insights into the possible ways you can use each software. While both software seems like great options for tracking user behavior, could there be a better alternative?
Let us highlight powerful FullSession features and explain why it may be a better alternative.
FullSession shares similar features with Hotjar and Smartlook, but some differences can affect how you track user behavior. Here are the main components of FullSession:
Let’s throw light on each feature.
Session recordings let you watch user actions like mouse movements, clicks, and taps. In other words, you can visualize the entire user journey, including user frustrations and pages where they bounce off.
You can replay session recordings and use the insights to optimize your site to increase conversion rates. You can use advanced segmentation and filters to spot specific events, so you don’t have to lose time watching session recordings that have no relevancy.
Some filters include:
With this feature, you can go beyond static heatmaps. Interactive heatmaps help you monitor how users interact with elements on any web page and track actions like button clicks, mouse hovering, and scrolling in real-time. You can also understand the complexity of your page structure using scroll maps to detect less attractive web page areas and improve them accordingly.
We understand that heatmaps can be hard to interpret, but we have made the process easier. Read this article to learn how to read heatmaps.
Imagine that you watch user sessions and spot an event where a user clicks through to the pricing page but doesn’t complete the payment process. How can you possibly know what went wrong?
While user recordings can show you how users behave, you still need to know what they have in mind while performing specific actions. With the customer feedback feature, you can remove the guesswork and ask your users what they think. You can also find out the Net Promoter Score for each page with custom user segments.
The great thing about the feedback feature is that you can collect customer feedback in real-time via the expandable feedback widget.
Insights is another powerful feature that FullSession provides. It comprehensively analyzes visitors’ behavior and friction points that may lead to funnel dropouts and affect conversion rates. When you log into the FullSession account, you’ll see the Insights feature in the dashboard.
You can try it out now as you read. FullSession starts collecting data after you install our code on your site.
So far, we have highlighted essential features in FullSession. Let’s move on to the benefits of using Fullsession to track user activity on your website:
FullSession offers two pricing plans – Basic and Business. We also offer customized pricing plans based on your business needs. The Basic plan costs $39 per month, while the Business plan costs $99 per month.
If you want to learn more about how FullSession compares to other session recording software like Crazyegg, Mouseflow, and FullStory – check out our Crazyegg, Mouseflow, and Full story comparison.
So far, we have highlighted key features of FullSession and where it overlaps with Hotjar and Smartlook. If you need more details on how Hotjar tracks user activity, check out this article on our unbiased Hotjar review.
To keep things simple and easy to grasp, here’s a detailed table that summarizes FullSession features compared to Hotjar and Smartlook.
Hotjar | Smartlook | FullSession | |
---|---|---|---|
Session recordings | |||
Engagement score | ✘ | ✘ | ✔ |
Session replay | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Advanced user filtering | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Recording timeline with pages and average time on each page | ✘ | ✔ | ✔ |
Real-time session recording | ✘ | ✘ | ✔ |
Sharing option | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Heatmaps | |||
Click/tap heatmaps | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Scroll heatmaps | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Live heatmaps | ✘ | ✘ | ✔ |
Feedback collection | ✔ | ✘ | ✔ |
NPS | ✔ | ✘ | ✔ |
Visual feedback | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Customer surveys | ✔ | ✘ | ✔ |
Other features | |||
API | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Live support | ✘ | ✔ | ✔ |
Click rage detection | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Insights | ✘ | ✘ | ✔ |
Free trial | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Analysis of dynamic elements | ✘ | ✘ | ✔ |
So far, we’ve compared Hotjar and Smartlook based on their features, integration, deployment, pricing, support, use cases, and language. While each software shares similar features like visitor recordings, and heatmaps, there are other cases where their features contrast.
For example, Smartlook relies on features like a funnel, events, and retention tables to understand the why behind customer behavior. In contrast, Hotjar relies on customer feedback forms and surveys to ask customers about their experience.
There are areas where both software lack, such as tracking user behavior in real-time. In this case, FullSession stands as a better alternative. It also provides interactive heatmaps that let you track dynamic web elements like hamburger menus, hidden items, and pop-ups.
What’s more, FullSession Insights help you gain a bird’s eye view of user behavior and pain points that may lead to funnel dropout and impact conversion rates.
You can sign up for a free Full session account and gain instant insights into user interaction on your website. Our solution helps you build a seamless digital customer experience.
Smartlook offers pricing plans suitable for personal use, startups, and businesses. The company also provides a customized solution based on your business needs. The personal use plan is free, while the startup and business plan start at $39/month and $95/month.
Hotjar is a conversion optimization tool that helps you track user interaction on your site. With the Hotjar feedback and survey feature, you can directly ask your customers about their experience on your site.
Yes, Hotjar is safe. It is GDPR and PCI compliant, and it can help you track user activity anonymously.
Hotjar offers a free plan to collect data from up to 2000 page views per day. If you need more data, the paid plans provide higher page views.