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Rating
4/5
5/5
Summary
The only digital insights platform that gives you complete understanding of your customers’ digital journeys, so you can quickly improve conversion, retention, and customer delight.
Hotjar provides Product Experience Insights about your website that show how users behave and what they feel strongly about, so product teams can deliver real value to them.
Open Web Analytics is the free and open source web analytics framework that lets you stay in control of how you instrument and analyze the use of your websites and application
Pirsch is a simple, cookie-free, open-source web analytics solution that integrates easily into your website or backend.
Pros
  • It is easy to implement
  • It has data science capabilities
  • Reports are easy to build
  • Interface is user-friendly
  • Comes with great heatmaps
  • Includes session recordings
  • Good polling function
  • Hotjar features exit surveys
  • The software is open source
  • It is very customizable
  • Ecommerce reporting
  • Privacy friendly
  • The script is lightweight
  • Lightweight, cookie-free and open-source
  • Pirsch's backend integration requires no client-side scripts and delivers the same accurate results without the interference of adblockers
  • Extensive API
  • Fully-fledged access management
  • Comprehensive filtering by any metric including event metadata
Cons
  • Tech support is quite basic
  • Difficult to share dasboards
  • Onboarding could be improved
  • Hotjar is not available for mobile
  • Steep pricing for large organisations
  • Hard to exclude URLs from reports
  • Limited reporting features
  • Technical skill required
  • Comply with data privacy regulations
  • You need a secure server
  • Visitors are only recognized for up to 24 hours to comply with the privacy policy
  • Heatmaps and session recordings are not available

Pricing information

Starting Price
FreeFree
GrowthOn req.
ProOn req.
PremierOn req.
BasicFree
Plus$49+ p/m
BusinessOn req.
ScaleOn req.
Free trial period
Free plan
Free plan
Free plan
30 days

Account Management

Trackable Items
1
Unlimited
Unlimited
Unlimited
User Seats
Unlimited
1
Unlimited
Unlimited
Account Security
  • Single Sign-on
  • Two-factor Authentication
  • Single Sign-on
  • Two-factor Authentication
  • Single Sign-on
  • Two-factor Authentication
  • Single Sign-on
  • Two-factor Authentication

Data Processing

Data Center Locations
  • European Economic Area (EEA)
  • United States
  • European Economic Area (EEA)
  • United States
  • Not applicable
  • European Economic Area (EEA)
Software Hosting
  • Public Cloud
  • Private Cloud
  • On-Premise
  • Public Cloud
  • Private Cloud
  • On-Premise
  • Public Cloud
  • Private Cloud
  • On-Premise
  • Public Cloud
  • Private Cloud
  • On-Premise
Data Ownership
You
Hotjar
You
You
Data Freshness
Realtime
30 minutes
Realtime
Realtime
Data Retention
12 months
12 months
Unlimited
Unlimited
Data Sampling
Data Import
Send user data to Hotjar to enhance analysis
by means of the REST API
Import from Plausible, Fathom or Google Analytics
Data Export
Via CSV or API
Export recording meta data
by means of the REST API
via API or CSV
Compliance
  • GDPR
  • CCPA
  • HIPAA
  • GDPR
  • CCPA
  • GDPR
  • CCPA
  • GDPR
  • CCPA
  • ePrivacy
  • PECR
Cookieless
Heap relies on first-party cookies
Hotjar relies on first-party cookies.
Sets first-party cookies (owa_v, owa_c, session). Lifetimes can be shortened or made session-only.
Pirsch Analytics does not use cookies

Alerts & Automation

Custom Alerts
Via Slack or email
in the interface, via e-mail or Slack
Email Reports
Schedule regular emails for important charts
e.g. daily survey responses reports
Daily, Weekly, Bi-weekly, Monthly

Reporting

Trend Reporting
Device Reporting
See on which device the user was
Device type, OS, Browser, Browser version, Screen size
Funnel Reporting
With quantitative measurement of user friction & step suggestions
Discover why users drop off
Analyze Funnels
User Flow Reporting
Sankey chart with path comparison
Entry and exit pages
Segmentation
Quickly identify patterns in user behavior
Create custom filters for recordings
Extensive filtering by any metric
Cohort Reports
Retention Reporting
Attribution Reporting
Track UTM parameters or initial referrer sources
Ecommerce Reporting
Easy setup with eCommerce Activation Kit
Possible with custom events and goals

User Experience Features

Heatmaps
Unlimited
Session Recordings
Automatically filters relevant replays
Record all interaction with your site
Domstream
A/B Testing
No A/B testing tool only integrations
Tag-based A/B testing and segmentation
User Feedback
Track NPS score events in surveys
Place NPS ratings or a survey pop-up on every page

Customizability

Custom Properties
As part of custom events
Custom Metrics
Custom Reports
Custom Events
Track and filter sessions & heatmaps
With additional metadata fields (key-value pairs).
Annotations
Hotjar does not have annotations

Support

Support description
Heap offers extensive documentation and access to their in-depth collection of Heap University courses to get up and running. Need more help? Join the community or contact their knowledgable support staff through email.
Hotjar offers extensive documentation and a ticketing support system. Most requests are answered within 1-2 business days, but often faster.
Because Open Web Analytics is open source, all documentation is found on GitHub. Apart from the community, there are no support options available.
Email support, public Discord server
Support Options
  • Phone
  • Email
  • Live Chat
  • Ticketing system
  • Knowledge base
  • Community
  • Phone
  • Email
  • Live Chat
  • Ticketing system
  • Knowledge base
  • Community
  • Phone
  • Email
  • Live Chat
  • Ticketing system
  • Knowledge base
  • Community
  • Phone
  • Email
  • Live Chat
  • Ticketing system
  • Knowledge base
  • Community

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