Productivity

Hotjar

Heatmaps, session recordings, and on-site surveys

What it does

Hotjar is a behavior analytics tool that bundles heatmaps, session recordings, on-site surveys, and feedback widgets into one dashboard. Where FullStory is enterprise-grade session replay and Clarity is the free option, Hotjar sits in the middle: mid-market pricing, easier to use, popular with marketing and CRO teams. Owned by Contentsquare since 2023.

Free tier

Yes

Starts at

$32/mo

Setup

easy

Key features

HeatmapsSession RecordingsSurveysFeedback WidgetsFunnels

Integrates with

Slack, HubSpot, Zapier, Google Analytics

Who this fits

Marketing and CRO teams optimizing landing pages
E-commerce sites analyzing product page and checkout drop-off
Agencies running CRO audits for clients
SaaS teams running qualitative user research alongside quantitative analytics
Small to mid-market businesses wanting heatmaps and replay in one tool

Who it does NOT fit

Enterprise teams needing deep data governance (FullStory or Contentsquare fits better)
Teams needing free session replay at unlimited scale (use Microsoft Clarity)
Product analytics teams (Hotjar is not a product analytics tool; use Mixpanel, Amplitude, or Heap)
Pure content sites with no conversion goal

Pricing

- **Free (Basic):** 35 daily sessions across heatmaps and recordings, unlimited team members. Enough to sample low-traffic sites. - **Plus:** starts around $32/month (billed annually) for 100 daily sessions, adds filtering. - **Business:** starts around $80/month (billed annually) for 500 daily sessions, adds funnels, integrations, custom API. - **Scale:** starts around $171/month (billed annually) for 500 daily sessions with add-ons for surveys, feedback, interviews. - Each product (Observe = heatmaps and recordings, Ask = surveys, Engage = interviews) has its own tier and pricing. Buying the bundle is more common than picking one product.

Real gotchas

Hotjar samples sessions on lower tiers. Free tier is 35 daily sessions; if you have 1000 daily visitors, you see roughly 3.5% of sessions [source: help.hotjar.com/hc/en-us/articles/115011639927].
The Contentsquare acquisition in 2023 has pulled Hotjar toward the enterprise CX playbook. Pricing has moved up over the last two years; free tier has narrowed.
Heatmaps require a re-generation after major page changes; old heatmaps do not carry to a redesigned page.
Session recordings can capture PII in form fields; the auto-redact is opt-in per field type, not universal.
Session recordings are stored for a limited time on each tier (365 days on Business, less on lower tiers).

Integrations that matter

Google Analytics, Segment, Slack, HubSpot, Zapier, Mixpanel, Amplitude, Jira, Trello, Asana, Instapage, Unbounce, Shopify, WordPress, Optimizely, Google Optimize (deprecated but many still connected).

Otto’s take on this tool

Recommend Hotjar for marketing and CRO teams that want heatmaps, session replay, and surveys in one tool at mid-market pricing. Recommend Microsoft Clarity when the client wants the same core features for free with no session limit. Recommend FullStory when the client is enterprise or needs deep engineering-team workflow integration. Pair with GA4 or Plausible for aggregate traffic.

Affiliate disclosure: if you sign up through the link above, Ottomately may earn a referral commission at no cost to you. We only feature tools we have actually used or vetted through our recommendation engine.

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