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A Comprehensive Hotjar Review – Is It Worth the Money?

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Eric Vardon
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Are you thinking about using Hotjar to better understand customers and their behaviour?

Great choice.

But, you need to know the details before you dive in headfirst.

You want to guarantee that it’s a good purchase and has a clear return.

I’m right there with you.

Marketing analytics software is one of the best investments marketers make.

Understanding how assets and users behave means we can optimize and tweak them to generate better engagement.

With that being said, one of the most popular tools to achieve this is Hotjar.

But, is it worth the money? Is it easy to use? Keep reading to learn that and more in today’s Hotjar review.

Make sure to try Morphio’s AI marketing software to get the most out of Hotjar campaigns too.

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Start off the Hotjar review: What is Hotjar?

Hotjar, simply put, is a heatmap analysis tool. Or, as they say, “The fast & visual way to understand your users.”

Hotjar homepage

The Hotjar software works by simply connecting to a website and recording user behaviour. This is displayed as a visual representation on your website via heat sources.

The brighter the colour, the more activity. It looks like this:

Hotjar heatmap

This information can be used to re-organize a website for maximum conversions, clicks, and engagement. Or, perhaps, certain elements are distracting from what matters.

But, what do customers have to say about using Hotjar?

Hotjar review

This customer raved about the user-friendly UI, free demo, and features like session recordings. Being GDPR compliant was the icing on the cake.

However, you can’t track logged-in users. Nor can you integrate Google Analytics or download session recordings. 

While that’s a nice introduction to Hotjar, let’s touch on the pros and cons of Hotjar in-depth next.

Hotjar benefits

One of the first benefits and major uses of Hotjar is its heatmap feature. But, you don’t get a single heatmap. You have access to:

  • Click heatmaps
  • Move heatmaps
  • Scroll heatmaps
  • Heatmaps split by device
  • Sharable heatmaps

That’s right. You’ll know precisely how users clicked, moved, scrolled, and on what devices. You can also share it with your team for further analysis and brainstorming.

This is what the scroll heatmap looks like, for instance:

Hotjar features

All of Hotjar’s heat-mapping displays a user’s motivation and desire—all of which can be used to optimize a site for conversions and performance.

Another unique Hotjar feature is visitor recordings. Stop guessing what users are doing and see it with your own eyes. This technology records visitor’s clicks, scrolls, and mouse movements to identify usability issues.

Hotjar screenshot

Not only can you replay recordings of visits, but they can also be tagged and integrated with notes. This improves the organization and helps team members understand important areas.

Next, Hotjar funnels are another key feature. Do you know when, where, and why users are dropping off? If you don’t, you’ll continue to lose money. Hotjar’s conversion funnels display where users churn in different stages to prevent this.

Hotjar test funnel

With all of these findings, you’re sure to make some changes, right?

It’d be nice to know exactly what customers think. That’s precisely why Hotjar includes both feedback polls and forms. These tell you exactly what users like and don’t like to adjust design and experience accordingly.

For example, you can create a form that collects input from users directly on a website.

Hotjar feedback forms

Alternatively, set up feedback forms connected to features, images, and more like this:

Hotjar feedback

Why go through lengthy and time-consuming questionnaires when you can collect it directly while respecting the user’s time?

Furthermore, all of this can be a little daunting. Especially if you’ve never used heatmap or user-recording software.

Have peace of mind knowing that Hotjar offers several different types of training support, including:

  1. Live online training
  2. Documentation and FAQs
  3. Webinars

This will see to it that you adopt the software effortlessly and get the best return out of it.

As you can tell, Hotjar does a lot of unique things and does them well. But, I want to give you the full picture. So, let’s talk about some of its drawbacks.

Hotjar disadvantages

These are disadvantages to the Hotjar software that you’ll find when using it.

No predictive analytics

Predictive analytics is a technology found in software like Google Analytics, Morphio, and others. It uses machine learning to forecast performance based on current and historical data.

That’d be amazing in Hotjar, right?

It would give you suggestions for what areas of your website need enhancement, what users will do, etc. But, it doesn’t.

If you’re interested in predictive analytics marketing software, take a look at what Morphio can do for you.

No ROI tracking

Yes, you can track funnels, behaviour, and feedback. But, unfortunately, there’s no way to track ROI or spending that enables all of those things.

After all, you’re going to assign a value to customers once you understand their lifetime value and how much they generate for your business.

This would be a killer metric in their software because it would allow us to better understand where (and how much) we’re spending during the conversion funnel analysis.

No customer profiles or segmentation

Every user is different. They have distinct actions, behaviours, and profiles. Unfortunately, Hotjar doesn’t segment customers automatically nor is it an available feature.

So, all of the user and data is bunched up into one group. Don’t get me wrong. It’s still useful.

But, you’ll have to invest more sweat equity to pseudo-segment. What I mean by this is you’ll need to different heatmaps on assets designed for different buyer personas.

For instance, you might run Hotjar’s software on landing pages designed for different types of customers and then create ideas based on those findings.

Limited integrations

Integrations are very, very important. They help marketers save time and get the most bang for their buck by connecting tools. How many times have you jumped between tools so much that your fingers were sore?

Well, unfortunately, according to Hotjar’s documentation page, they only offer integrations for HubSpot, Ominconvert, and Optimizely.

Hotjar suggest a feature

While it does make using the software simpler, you’ll miss out on cross-connecting data, analytics, and creating feature chains.

Hotjar pricing

So, how much does Hotjar cost? They currently offer three plans: 

  • Personal Basic: (Free)
  • Personal Plus: ($29/month)
  • Business: (Starts at $89/month)
  • Agency: (Custom quote)
Hotjar pricing

All of these come with increasingly better features and limits. You can also use their website’s calculator to customize the Business plan’s features and pricing.

I recommend that you try the free version as it offers the heatmap feature and will let you test the software.

Hotjar alternatives

Maybe Hotjar doesn’t suit your company or you’d like to know what other options are. Cool. These are some of the major Hotjar competitors you can try:

  1. Crazy Egg: Heatmaps, visitor recordings, A/B testing, and surveys.
  2. Mouseflow: Tracks clicks, mouse movement, scrolls, and records each visitor’s activity. Think of it as CCTV for websites.
  3. Smartlook: Records the screens of users on a website including clicks, form entries, and more.
  4. Clicktale: Behavioural reports, video playback, and heatmaps.
  5. Dynatrace: AI-powered platform that provides deep insight into customer behaviour, transactions, and channels.
  6. Lucky Orange: Chat with visitors in real-time while offering polls and tracking user behaviour.
  7. UserTesting: See, hear, and talk to customers as they engage with products, apps, and other assets. 
  8. FullStory: Conversion funnels, video-replay of user behaviour, developer tools, and designed for SaaS products.
  9. UserZoom: Plan, design, and measure the customer experience and user experience of projects. 
  10. Instapage: Build high-converting landing pages and track how customers interact with them for continual improvements.

Conclusion

That’s a lot to take in. Let’s sum up everything I covered in today’s Hotjar review.

Firstly, Hotjar is a user recording and heatmap software that gives real-time insight into how users are behaving. No more guessing or presuming. Watch it with your own eyes. 

Some of the main benefits include heatmaps, visitor recordings, polls, instant feedback, and conversion funnel analysis. You can also try it for free.

Unfortunately, Hotjar lacks integrations, predictive analytics, no ROI tracking, or segmenting customers. It’s purely made for dissecting the customer journey.

It’s ideal for SaaS companies, digital agencies, e-commerce businesses, and blogs. All of these organizations can benefit from understanding how users are interacting with their pages, products, and other assets.

Alternatively, if you want to see the power of predictive analytics, automated customer segmentation, and features we wish Hotjar had, try Morphio today for free.

Eric Vardon Profile image

Eric Vardon

CEO, Co-Founder @ Morphio

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