10 Best Hotjar Alternatives for WordPress

Are you looking for Hotjar alternatives for your WordPress website? You’re in the right spot!

Hotjar is a popular tool that lets you understand user interactions on your site, gather customer feedback, and make connections between what users are doing and why they are doing it.

Understanding these interactions assists in analyzing the customer journey, enhancing your site’s design, refining your content strategy, and improving your website’s usability to boost conversions.

However, Hotjar is not the only option available. Numerous other tools might better fit your business and analytics requirements.

In this article, we’ll explore the top alternatives to Hotjar to help you choose the best behavior analytics and feedback tool for your needs!

But first, let’s cover some important questions…

What is Hotjar?

Hotjar is a platform designed to provide insights into digital experiences.

Its main features include heatmaps, screen recordings, and feedback tools. These allow you to observe user activities such as clicks and scrolling and gather customer feedback through surveys.

Pricing:

Hotjar offers three different plans, but we’ll focus on the first two:

Observe: It covers heat maps, recordings, and analytics, with the initial paid plan starting at $32 per month.
Ask: Focuses on customer feedback, with the starting paid plan priced at $48 monthly.

The third plan, Engage, is tailored for user testing and interviews.

What Is the Downside of Hotjar?

Even though Hotjar provides valuable visualization tools, it has notable shortcomings:

Limited Tracking: You can’t track visitor actions such as link clicks, survey submissions, purchases, and other conversion events without custom code and a paid plan.
Cost: Hotjar’s pricing escalates quickly as your business grows.
Supplementary Tools Needed: You still need Google Analytics or another tool for precise metrics like site traffic, engagement rates, and other quantitative data.
Data Limitations: It doesn’t collect all data and has session and storage limitations, potentially leading to skewed results.
Demographic Analysis: It doesn’t allow for demographic analysis of your website visitors.
Survey Customization: The survey customization options are limited.
Third-party Compatibility: It has limited integration capabilities with third-party applications.

The good news is that numerous better Hotjar alternatives, including free options, can help you track customer journeys, gather user feedback, optimize eCommerce, and improve conversions!

Let’s take a look at them.

Best Hotjar Alternatives for WordPress

UserFeedback – Top option for gathering customer feedback effectively.
MonsterInsights – Ideal choice for tracking user journeys and eCommerce activities.
Clarity – Best free alternative to Hotjar with seamless SEO integration.
Crazy Egg – Excellent for diverse heatmap visualizations.
Lucky Orange – Perfect for live chat feedback and enhancing customer support.
OptinMonster – Great for optimizing dynamic elements and conducting A/B tests.
Smartlook – Best alternative for mobile app developers and agencies.
FullStory – Best suited for large enterprises needing in-depth product analytics.
Clicky by Yoast – Best option for real-time analytics, especially for those not using Google Analytics.
Mouseflow – Superior choice for form analytics and identifying friction points in user interactions.

1. UserFeedback

UserFeedback stands out as the best alternative to Hotjar’s feedback widget. It is designed to boost revenue, enhance engagement, and accelerate business growth through authentic customer feedback.

UserFeedback is the best survey plugin for WordPress websites, offering an extensive range of features and templates that make it easy to gather honest feedback from visitors.

Some of the things that make UserFeedback exceptional:

Customization: Whether you need a quick one-question rating survey or an extensive survey utilizing conditional logic and advanced targeting, UserFeedback lets you create fully customized surveys to meet your specific needs.
High Engagement: By displaying only one question at a time, UserFeedback ensures high user engagement, as long as multi-question surveys often lead to lower completion rates.
Targeting Options: The plugin offers various targeting features, allowing you to display surveys precisely when and where you need them on your site.
Ease of Use: UserFeedback makes survey creation easy with a library of pre-built templates for quick setup, including NPS (Net Promoter Score), CSAT (Customer Satisfaction), and CES (Customer Effort Score) surveys.

UserFeedback seamlessly integrates with MonsterInsights, automatically tracking your surveys and providing detailed reports directly within your WordPress dashboard.

Key Features of UserFeedback:

Unlimited Surveys, questions, and responses
Display surveys based on specific devices or pages to target the right audience
Automatically show the survey widget or embed it anywhere on your site
A wide range of pre-built templates
Tailor the surveys to match your branding
Multiple question types, such as long answers, radio buttons, star ratings, and more
Create surveys with branching logic
Integrated results dashboard in WordPress
Integrates with Google Analytics through MonsterInsights
Plan and schedule surveys in advance
Smart targeting features
Shortcode and popup options
Uncanny Automator integration

UserFeedback is an outstanding option for collecting customer feedback and pairs perfectly with MonsterInsights, which we’ll cover next.

Unlike Hotjar, it offers unlimited survey widgets and responses on all plans.

Get started with UserFeedback now!

MonsterInsights is an excellent alternative to Hotjar for tracking eCommerce and site visitors. It integrates the power of Google Analytics with advanced tracking capabilities and an easy-to-use interface.

As the top Google Analytics plugin for WordPress, MonsterInsights allows you to set up advanced analytics without editing any code.

You’ll receive critical insights within your WordPress dashboard, helping you act on them swiftly.

Notably, MonsterInsights’ Pro plan is more affordable than Hotjar’s initial paid plan, making it a valuable alternative.

MonsterInsights integrates seamlessly with popular WordPress eCommerce plugins such as WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, GiveWP, MemberPress, LifterLMS, Restrict Content Pro, and MemberMouse.

With MonsterInsights’ eCommerce tracking, you can quickly gain insights into:

Add-to-cart / Remove-from-cart events
Top products
Purchases and revenue
Top conversion sources
Abandoned checkouts
And more

Besides eCommerce tracking, MonsterInsights automatically tracks:

Form submissions
Video play clicks
Various link types (outbound, affiliate, file downloads, tel, mailto, and custom links like call-to-action buttons)
Scroll tracking

Additional Features of MonsterInsights:

Page views, traffic, and top landing page reports
Visitor demographic reports (age, gender, and interest groups)
Integration with popular survey builders and feedback plugins
One-click conversion tracking for Google Ads, Microsoft (Bing) Ads, and Facebook Ads
Social media and referral tracking
Custom dimensions and event tracking
Advanced content tracking (keywords, popular posts, and authors)
Real-time analytics
And much more

Regarding analytics features, eCommerce tracking, customer insights, and overall value, MonsterInsights significantly outperforms Hotjar.

Get started with MonsterInsights now!

3. Clarity

Microsoft Clarity is another top-tier and free alternative to Hotjar. It offers open-source software for creating heatmaps and session recordings on your website.

While Google Analytics provides in-depth tracking, Clarity excels in visual data visualization.

Clarity is entirely free, making it an excellent option for startups and smaller businesses that need to visualize user interactions without spending a fortune.

It can be set up easily by installing the software and tracking code yourself or via seamless integration with All in One SEO (AIOSEO) — the leading SEO plugin for WordPress.

This integration allows you to add Clarity to your site effortlessly from the AIOSEO dashboard without writing any code.

Using Clarity alongside AIOSEO enables you to leverage advanced SEO tools to enhance content based on the heatmap data, optimizing the parts of your website that drive the most user engagement.

Key Features of Clarity:

Rage Clicks, Dead Clicks, and Quickback Clicks Detection: Clarity helps you identify problematic user interactions, such as repeated, ineffective clicks (rage clicks), clicks on non-functioning elements (dead clicks), and quick navigation back to previous pages (quickback clicks).
Error Identification: Clarity assists in pinpointing JavaScript and image errors that could affect user experience.
Google Analytics Integration: Extend your analytics capabilities by integrating Clarity with Google Analytics, enabling a combination of visual and numerical data insights.
Mobile App Compatibility: Monitor and analyze user interactions on mobile devices to ensure a seamless user experience across all platforms.

While Clarity may not offer as many advanced features as some other analytics tools, it is an excellent option for beginners, AIOSEO users, and businesses looking for a free tool to visualize user behavior and record site visits.

Get started with Clarity now!

4. Crazy Egg

Crazy Egg is a widely used heatmap tool and an excellent Hotjar alternative for gathering qualitative data.

It provides various types of heatmaps, including click maps, mouse cursor heatmaps, scroll maps, and the unique confetti heatmap. It also offers detailed heatmap analyses, allowing you to understand user interactions based on traffic sources.

One thing to note is that Crazy Egg uses sample data, capturing a percentage of visits to illustrate typical user behavior rather than tracking every visit.

Key Features of Crazy Egg:

Click Maps: Visualize areas on your site that receive the most clicks and attention.
Scroll Maps: Understand how far down users scroll on your pages.
Confetti Heatmaps: Analyze user interactions based on different traffic sources, providing granular insights.
Visitor Screen Recordings: Capture and playback individual user sessions to observe site navigation and identify pain points.
Referral Traffic Reports: Determine where your traffic is coming from and how it engages with your site.
Audience Demographic Reports: Gain insights into your audience’s demographics to tailor content and marketing strategies.
A/B Testing: Test different versions of your pages to see which performs better and optimize accordingly.
Survey Widgets: Add surveys to gather direct feedback from your visitors.

The main downside of Crazy Egg is that it requires manual event tracking to capture quantifiable metrics. Setting up this manual tracking involves adding custom JavaScript code to track specific actions, which can be challenging for average WordPress users.

Despite this, Crazy Egg remains a good Hotjar alternative for heatmap analysis, offering valuable insights into visitor behavior on your website.

Get started with Crazy Egg now!

5. Lucky Orange

Lucky Orange is another robust Hotjar alternative offering more than click tracking.

One of its standout features is its live chat software, which, combined with individual user data collection (30 days of retention), helps streamline customer support, gather feedback, and identify pending user issues.

Key Features of Lucky Orange:

Live Chat Software: Engage with users in real time to address issues and provide support.
Heatmaps: Visualize clicks, movements, and scroll depth.
Screen Recordings: Replay user sessions to see how they interact with your site.
Dynamic Heatmaps: Access dynamic heatmaps that update in real time.
Conversion Funnels: Analyze steps users take before converting to optimize the process.
Visitor Polls: Collect direct feedback from your visitors.

Form Analytics: Identify where users drop off in forms to improve completion rates.

Lucky Orange boasts a user-friendly interface and a wide range of tools, making it a popular choice for heatmap analytics and an excellent Hotjar alternative.

Get started with Lucky Orange now!

6. OptinMonster

OptinMonster differs from many other Hotjar alternatives in focusing on lead generation and conversion campaigns rather than user journeys and analytics.

This WordPress plugin is designed to help you build, track, and optimize various opt-in and attention-grabbing elements.

Key Features of OptinMonster:

Campaign Creation: Build popups, banners, sidebars, inline campaigns, fullscreen welcome mats, and more.
A/B Testing: Conduct built-in A/B tests to determine which elements perform best.
Advanced Targeting: Segment your audience by factors such as scroll depth, location, device, and more.
Custom Triggers: Set campaign triggers based on eCommerce funnel events.
WPForms Integration: Collect customer feedback using WPForms, the top WordPress form builder.
Detailed Analytics: Monitor clicks, impressions, and conversions to evaluate campaign performance.

While OptinMonster doesn’t offer insights into overall user behavior like some Hotjar alternatives, it excels in conversion rate optimization (CRO).

If your primary goal is to improve conversions, OptinMonster allows you to quickly create campaigns, track their effectiveness, perform A/B testing, and refine targeting and triggers to maximize results.

Get started with OptinMonster now!

7. Smartlook

Smartlook is a highly regarded SaaS platform and a popular alternative to Hotjar. It offers a robust set of features for behavior analytics and enhanced customer support.

Smartlook provides heatmaps and screen recordings to help you understand user behavior and optimize conversions by identifying where users deviate from the intended sales funnel.

Key Features of Smartlook:

Heatmaps and Screen Recordings: Visualize user interactions and capture sessions to analyze behavior.
Audience Segmentation: View heatmaps and recorded sessions based on specific audience segments.
Automatic Event Tracking: Automatically track events and sessions for better insights.
Real-time Tracking: Monitor user activities as they happen.
Collaboration Tools: Share insights and collaborate with your team easily.
Mobile App Compatibility: Works with IOS, Android, React Native, Flutter, Cordova, and more.

Smartlook is especially beneficial for analyzing how users interact with specific elements, making it a valuable tool for mobile apps, agencies, and digital marketers.

Unlike Hotjar, which focuses on overall web page interactions, Smartlook zeroes in on element-level engagement.

Get started with Smartlook now!

8. FullStory

FullStory is a comprehensive web analytics platform that is ideal for larger enterprises that need in-depth user experience and product analytics.

It also supports native iOS and Android mobile apps and React Native.

Key Features of FullStory:

Automatic Event Tracking: Seamlessly capture user actions and behaviors.
Session Replay Tool: Replay user sessions to see how they interact with your site.
Integration: Works with customer support software like Zapier and Salesforce.
Team Collaboration: Share insights and collaborate with your team.
User Funnels: Build funnels to understand user journeys.
Custom Pricing Plans: Tailored pricing options for businesses and enterprises.

FullStory’s extensive features make it a powerful all-in-one alternative to Hotjar, particularly for larger eCommerce businesses that need detailed customer behavior analytics.

Get started with FullStory now!

9. Clicky by Yoast

Clicky by Yoast is a real-time web analytics tool that offers heatmap functionality to monitor and analyze traffic.

It serves as a good alternative to Hotjar for those who prefer not to use Google Analytics but still want more detailed metrics than typical user behavior tools provide.

For WordPress users, the free Clicky by Yoast plugin simplifies installation by automatically adding a Clicky tracking code to your site.

Clicky is similar to a lite version of Google Analytics, providing essential metrics and heatmap visualizations to help you understand your website’s performance without overwhelming you with data.

Key Features of Clicky by Yoast:

Segment Clicks: Analyze clicks based on targeted criteria.
Visitor and Action Logs: View detailed logs showing visitors, page views, and JavaScript events.
Privacy-Friendly: Focuses on GDPR compliance to ensure user privacy.

Overall, Clicky by Yoast is an excellent option for those looking for basic analytics and heatmap visualizations. It’s particularly beneficial for users who already leverage Yoast SEO.

Get started with Clicky by Yoast now!

10. Mouseflow

The last tool on our list is Mouseflow.

This versatile and affordable tool for tracking user behavior on your website makes it a great alternative to Hotjar for small and medium-sized businesses.

Key Features of Mouseflow:

Heatmaps and Screen Recordings: Visualize user interactions and capture sessions.
Friction Scoring: With advanced friction scoring, identify pain points in the user journey.
JS Error Tracking: Automatically detect and log JavaScript errors.
Custom Funnels: Set and track custom funnels for deeper insights.
Visitor Segmentation: Categorize visitors and save segments for later review.
Form Analytics: Analyze form interactions to improve completion rates.
Behavior Comparison: Compare user behavior from different traffic sources.
Integrations: Works with platforms like Shopify, HubSpot, and more.
Customer Feedback Tools: Gather direct feedback from users.

Mouseflow offers similar features to Hotjar but stands out with its enhanced event tracking, friction scoring, and form analytics capabilities, making it an excellent option for small businesses.

Get started with Mouseflow now!

What Is the Best Hotjar Alternative?

If you’re using a compatible WordPress eCommerce plugin, we recommend UserFeedback in collaboration with MonsterInsights as the overall best Hotjar alternative.

You’ll gain access to advanced tracking features, unlimited feedback widgets, and the seamless integration of Google Analytics within your WordPress dashboard.

For those who prefer visualizing the user journey, Crazy Egg or other similar tools on our list will serve you well. If you’re looking for a simple and free alternative to Hotjar, Clarity is an excellent choice.

Ultimately, the best Hotjar alternative depends on the most valuable features to you and your business needs.

That’s all for this article! We hope you enjoyed learning about the best Hotjar alternatives.

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