When looking for Hotjar alternatives there are two main features that you should really check for if they are included:

The first and most important one is the Heatmaps technology which helps you understand how website visitors use your site, where they click and which areas of pages they mostly focus on. Hotjar as you might probably know already, has click heatmaps, move heatmaps and scroll heatmaps.

The second feature is “Session Recordings” which helps you really see how your website visitors interact with your website and its various elements. Hotjar includes a “Session Recordings” feature which you can use to see clicks, taps and mouse movements. 

I have identified the best four Hotjar alternatives with really powerful features and unlimited pageviews, unlimited heatmaps or both.

All four Hotjar alternatives serve the same purpose as Hotjar: to help you improve your website and increase its conversion rate (the rate of website visitors taking a desired action).

Helpful link: In case you would like to know more about a range of tools that can help you increase website conversions, I have created a page with mini reviews on the best conversion rate optimization tools

If you are looking for a lower price based on pageviews then all four are cheaper than Hotjar. In addition, all Hotjar alternatives include “Session Recordings”. You will also find information on some other website conversion features that are included with these tools and that are indeed very powerful and helpful.

The Best Hotjar Alternatives

1. Mouseflow (from €29 per month)

Mouseflow (offices in Austin, Texas and Copenhagen Denmark) has over 165,000 clients globally and it is used by some very big brands such as Virgin, Vodafone, Samsung, UNICEF, University of Washington, General Electric Healthcare, E.ON, Dyson and Deloitte.

Mouseflow Heatmaps

There are five (5) different types of heatmaps on Mouseflow:

• Click Heatmaps
• Scroll Heatmaps
• Attention Heatmaps
• Movement Heatmaps
• Geographical Heatmaps

Click, Scroll and Move Heat maps you know them from Hotjar already. The Attention Heat map uses a colored overlay that helps you see what parts of the page are most and least actively engaged. All Heatmaps will automatically be set up for all your website pages, all your visitors – and for all time. This will provide you with heatmaps that are:

• Dynamic
• Based on a full dataset
• Automatically maintained
• Continually updated with the newest data.

There is also an extensive filtering option that lets you slice your data in any way you want.

Mouseflow Session Recordings

Data from the whole user experience is recorded (like CCTV) and not just a snapshot of the session. You can record session-based pages such as shopping carts or checkout pages so that you can understand what to improve. You can also record pages behind a login without any problems.

With Mouseflow session recordings you can easily find:

• clicks,
• mouse movements,
• and even points of hesitation

Mouseflow helps you take your analysis to the next level with Friction score. This is a number that indicates the level of user frustration on each page of your website. Therefore, you can easily find “problematic” pages on your site and start improving them right away.

In many cases failing to convert your website visitors to clients or leads, might be because of frustration on how your website functions. There might be click errors that you don’t know about. Mouseflow watches these “frustration points” and automatically tags the session recordings with information that isolate those pages or recordings that are causing these problems.

Other Features of Mouseflow

Mouseflow has indeed some amazing features such as Funnels reporting which you can use to examine visitor behavior throughout a journey. You can understand more at which part of their journey they are dropping out and make improvements.

Furthermore, I personally consider the Forms conversion reporting feature as key in improving your website conversions. With this you can find out how users on your site interact with forms. Find reports on every form field. Drop-off, refills, blank submissions, errors, and more can all be filtered in real time.

Mouseflow main features:

Anonymous Session Recordings	Filters & Segments	HeatMap
Session Replays	Funnels	Feedback Forms
Funnels Analysis	Form Interaction Analysis	Interactive Surveys

Helpful Link: Check all Mouseflow features in detail

Mouseflow Pricing

If you decide to go for the annual plan you will save 15%. Compared to Hotjar, Mouseflow provides unlimited pageviews and charges only per recordings monthly. Find more details on Mouseflow pricing and plans and get a FREE Account or start with a free trial.

2. Lucky Orange (from $10 per month)

Lucky Orange (based in Kansas) is used on more than 200.000 websites worldwide and it has the lowest price per month among all website heatmap tools with session recordings.

Interview about Lucky Orange with Sr. Director of Marketing Sarah Bond

Lucky Orange Heatmaps

Like Hotjar, it also includes click heatmaps, move heatmaps and scroll heatmaps.

The dynamic Heatmaps of Lucky Orange enables you to:

• See clicks, scrolls and mouse movements
• Watch the heatmaps update in real-time
• Take screenshots and share with others
• Learn more about your users (i.e. Source of traffic)
• Dive deep with analytics about every element on your website
• Compare and segment by device type

Lucky Orange Session Recordings

Lucky Orange tracks every visitor and allows you to see in recordings all their clicks, scrolls and mouse movements. You can filter through millions of recording and segment the data by browser, OS, referring source, location, device, behaviors, and more.

Session recordings can also work with member’s only pages without any complicated setup. You can pause, play, speed, skip idle activity and jump to any page of the visitor’s session.

Other features of Lucky Orange

Lucky Orange comes with a range of other features including:

• Live Chat – Mobile friendly with 3 ways to chat: Ask to chat, Available to chat, Auto-Invite
• Conversion Funnels – Create funnels based on behavior tags and quickly see where people abandon a process on your website
• Form Analytics – Identify which fields of your forms cause abandonment
• Polls – Dynamic polls based on triggers. Show the right poll at the right time. Wait until a user visits a specific page, or catch them just before they leave your site.

Here’s a list of Lucky Orange main features:

Recordings	Interactive Heatmaps	Chat
Visitor Polls	Conversion Funnels	Form Analytics
Analytics & Reporting	Element Analytics	Segmentation

Helpful link: Lucky Orange features in detail

Lucky Orange Pricing

At only $10 per month Lucky Orange has the lower pricing per month among all Hotjar alternatives.

Lucky Orange offers unlimited recordings and unlimited heatmap reports. These reports are stored for 30 days. Check the Lucky orange pricing details and comparison table for more information and for a Free Trial.

3. Smartlook (from $31 per month)

Smartlook was founded in 2016 and is based in the Czech Republic. Smartlook is the conversion rate optimization tool of choice of more than 250.000 users. It offers unlimited heatmaps. It is used by some well known brands too including Miele, Hostinger, Student.com.

Smartlook Heatmaps

Generate heatmap reports in minutes and view heatmaps based on type of users: all, new and returning visitors.

You can also download and share heatmaps as well as analyze based on device type. Like Hotjar you can view:

• Click heatmaps,
• Scroll heatmaps and
• Move heatmaps.

Smartlook integrates with all well-known platforms such as WordPress, Shopify, Prestashop, Magento and also with Google Analytics, zendesk, intercom and more.

Smartlook Session Recordings

Smart look has probably the most powerful session recording tool and like Hotjar it offers recordings filtering. You can choose from over 30 filters to quickly find the recordings that you need.

Smartlook will automatically detect any interaction and record it as an event. There is an analytical toolkit that gives you limitless segments and immediate answers to questions you may have about the behavior of your website visitors.

Another advantage of Smartlook is that it combines data from multiple user visits in order to provide you with a comprehensive overview of their behavior on your site and across different devices.

Some other Smartlook Session Recording features are:

• Data optimization for playback (for quick loading)
• Devtools – helps your developers find errors fast
• Event drop in –  takes you to the exact moment in the recording
• Skipping inactivity – one click option to cut to the action (saves time)
• Filterable notes – leave notes for your team
• Recording sharing

Other features of Smartlook

With Smartlook you can use event statistics and event breakdowns to see how often people use a specific element on your website. You can even track automatically events and see their statistics as well as watch related videos.

Furthermore Smartlook provides a number of other important features that help you increase website conversions:

• Use funnels reporting to see why people drop out of a funnel
• Create funnels directly from events to get insights on the functionality of your website
• Rage clicks – Find videos of users who furiously click on any element
• Javascript errors – Watch replays with JavaScript errors popping up in the console. 
• Anomalies alerting – Get informed when there are sudden drops and increases in JavaScript errors.
• Retention tables – Improve user engagement

Here’s a list of the main Smartlook features:

Advanced Recordings Filtering	Identify Customers	Heatmaps
Heatmaps Segmentation	Event Statistics	Automatic Event Tracking
Funnel Statistics	Create Funnels from Events	Find User Engagement
Bug/Anomalis Alerts	IP Blocking	Analytics & Reporting

Helful link: All Smartlook features in detail

Smartlook Pricing

Smartlook has two plans and a third one which is the free one to try it out.

The starter plan is at $31 per month and the Power plan is at $79 per month and includes unlimited funnels and unlimited events. Find more details on Smartlook plans and pricing and start with a free trial. Do note that each plan can be customized according to how many website sessions you want to track.

4. Plerdy (from $29 per month)

Plerdy was founded in 2017, is based in Ukraine and it is used by companies such as Honda, Subaru and Huggies as well as other well know global brands. It has 99% click collection accuracy.

Check my interview with CEO of Plerdy Andriy Chornyy to find out more about how Plerdy can help you and about website optimization in general.

It consists of four (4) products: A Heatmap software, a Popup forms software, a Search Engine Optimization Checker and a Session User Recordings Software.

Plerdy Heatmaps

The Plerdy Heatmap like Hotjar, helps you generate reports on click, mouse movements and scrolls.

Apart from the website click heatmaps, Plerdy include a feature called “Hot Segments” which shows which parts of a web page has low or high click-through rate.

You can also use the “click path analysis” feature to find out the order that selected elements were clicked but also how website visitors switch between pages.

Other Plerdy Heatmap features

• Option to tracks clicks or mouse hovers only for selected page elements
• Custom tracking tool to view what website elements users select with the mouse while reading the content.
• See how website visitors move their mouse and which page areas they hover most often.
• Automatic synchronization of events with Google Analytics
• Automatically hides clicks that have no value in a heatmap analysis
• Website visitor segmentation (i.e. by device or traffic source)

Plerdy Session Recording

Session recordings on Plerdy are called Session replays. It records how mobile and desktop visitors behave on a web page.

Here’s what you can do with the Plerdy Session Replays:

• Analyze behavioral patterns of website visitors
• Find out where people get stuck on your site to improve website browsing
• Use advanced segmentation to relate behavioral patterns with specific type of users
• Find out at which stage of the conversion funnel something goes wrong

Helpful link: Plerdy features in detail

Other features of Plerdy

Plerdy is actually a conversion rate optimization toolkit that includes four different software tools. Apart from the website heatmap tool and the session recordings tool it also includes an SEO checker that helps you optimize your website for Google and increase your website traffic.

It also provides keyword analysis as well as a complete analysis (on-page) of your site so that you know what needs improvements in terms of the search engine optimization. In addition it includes a Pop up forms software which you can use to easily create pop ups on your website for the purpose of lead generation, various promotions or to grow your email list.

You can use the form builder to create your own pop up forms, or you can simply choose one of the ready made templates that help you easily create popup forms for email collection, phone number collection or for other marketing activities. You can even use segmentation to show specific forms to specific type of users only.

Here’s a list of the main Plerdy features:

Email Collecting Forms	Feedback Forms	Promo Popups
Order In 1 Click Forms	Track Clicks & Mouseovers	Track Performance of Elements
View Scroll Depth	More than 40 reports	SEO Audit
On-Page SEO	Keyword Analysis	User Session Recordings

Plerdy Pricing

There are three main plans apart from the Enterprise one. Plans starts at $29 per month for 10.000 pageviews per day. The business plan is at $59 for 25.000 pageviews per day and the Premium plan is at $99 per month for 50.000 pageviews per day. If you go for an annual plan you will save 20%.

All plans include unlimited heatmaps and there is also a free version so that you can try out Plerdy. Visit the Plerdy website for details on all the plans and pricing and for a Free Trial.