Compare
Compare Analytics Tools
Rating
4.5/5
5/5
4/5
Summary
A customisable and free web analytics tool. Get insights into user behavior with an event-based tracking model, and know what drives sales and traffic with extensive attribution methods.
Lightweight and open source web analytics. No cookies and fully compliant with GDPR, CCPA and PECR. Made and hosted in the EU, on European cloud infrastructure.
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.
An open-source product analytics for developers. It helps engineers understand their product usage, automate events, and user data collection.
Pros
- GA4 is free to use
- Many functionalities
- The reports are customisable
- Large community
- Extensive documentation
- GA4 is easily scalable
- Lightweight
- Open-source
- Cookieless
- EU cloud infrastructure
- Comes with great heatmaps
- Includes session recordings
- Good polling function
- Hotjar features exit surveys
- Easy to set up
- Great interface design
- Reasonable pricing
- Good session recordings
Cons
- Steep learning curve
- Implementation can be hard
- Inaccurate data sampling
- UI is not easy to use
- Limited features
- No audience reporting features
- Hotjar is not available for mobile
- Steep pricing for large organisations
- Hard to exclude URLs from reports
- Feature flags are limited
- Limited amount of graph types
- Filtering could be improved
Pricing information
Starting Price
| Standard | Free |
| GA4 360 | $50k+ per year |
| 10k page views | $9 p/m |
| Enterprise | On req. |
| 200k page views | $29 p/m |
| 100k page views | $19 p/m |
| 500k page views | $49 p/m |
| 1M page views | $69 p/m |
| 2M page views | $89 p/m |
| 5M page views | $129 p/m |
| 10M page views | $169 p/m |
| Basic | Free |
| Plus | $49+ p/m |
| Business | On req. |
| Scale | On req. |
| Cloud Lite | Free |
| Cloud | €0.005 per event / recording |
| Enterprise Cloud | €450 p/m minimum |
Free trial period
Free plan
30 days
Free plan
Free plan
Account Management
Trackable Items
100
1-10+ depending on plan
Unlimited
Unlimited
User Seats
Unlimited
1-10+ depending on plan
1
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 Kingdom
- United States
- European Economic Area (EEA)
- European Economic Area (EEA)
- United States
- United States
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
Google Analytics 4
You
Hotjar
You
Data Freshness
4-8 hours (most reports), up to 24-48 hours
Realtime
30 minutes
Realtime
Data Retention
Customizable up to 14 months
3-5+ years depending on plan
12 months
Unlimited
Data Sampling
Explorations might use sampled data
Limited data sampling in reports with over 20M pageviews
Data Import
Import cost, offline or user/client ID data
e.g. import GA data
Send user data to Hotjar to enhance analysis
Historical data ingestion
Data Export
With sheets, BigQuery or API
Export your data to CSV
Export recording meta data
Compliance
- GDPR
- CCPA
- GDPR
- CCPA
- PECR
- GDPR
- CCPA
- GDPR
- CCPA
- HIPAA
- PECR
Cookieless
Google Analytics relies on first-party cookies.
Plausible is cookieless by default.
Hotjar relies on first-party cookies.
Posthog has the option to be used without cookies
Alerts & Automation
Custom Alerts
Custom insights, in interface or via email
Traffic spike notifications through Slack or email
in the interface, via e-mail or Slack
Receive alerts via Slack or email
Email Reports
Recurring shared reporting
Weekly or monthly email reporting
e.g. daily survey responses reports
Subscribe to an Insight or dashboard
Reporting
Trend Reporting
Device Reporting
Device type, browser, OS and more
Device type, browser & OS
See on which device the user was
Funnel Reporting
Customisable funnel exploration
Discover why users drop off
User Flow Reporting
Flexible Sankey chart exploration
Basic reporting by looking at Entry & Exit pages
Segmentation
Segment creation and overlap exploration
Use filters to segment your audience
Create custom filters for recordings
Cohort Reports
Cohort exploration
Retention Reporting
Combined with CLTV metrics
Attribution Reporting
Attribution models comparison
Ecommerce Reporting
Extensive e-commerce reports
Ecommerce revenue tracking
User Experience Features
Heatmaps
GA4 does not offer heatmaps
Unlimited
Session Recordings
GA4 does not offer recordings
Record all interaction with your site
A/B Testing
No A/B testing tool only integrations
Feature flags and A/B testing
User Feedback
Place NPS ratings or a survey pop-up on every page
Surveys
Customizability
Custom Properties
25 user-scoped & 50 event-scoped dimensions
Custom Properties (Business plan and above)
Custom Metrics
50 event-scoped metrics
Custom Reports
All reports are customisable
Custom Events
25 parameters per event
By means of adding CSS classes
Track and filter sessions & heatmaps
Annotations
Notes feature added in 2024
Hotjar does not have annotations
Support
Support description
Support is available via chat and the support center.
Plausible offers extensive documentation which is the first place to find answers. Still haven't found what you're looking for? Contact their email support for knowledgable support.
Hotjar offers extensive documentation and a ticketing support system. Most requests are answered within 1-2 business days, but often faster.
Posthogs' support consists of an extensive knowledge base and community on their website. For enterprise users, support is also available trough a dedicated Slack channel and via e-mail.
Support Options
- Phone
- Live Chat
- Ticketing system
- Knowledge base
- Community
- Phone
- Live Chat
- Ticketing system
- Knowledge base
- Community
- Phone
- Live Chat
- Ticketing system
- Knowledge base
- Community
- Phone
- Live Chat
- Ticketing system
- Knowledge base
- Community