Smartlook vs Hotjar: Which Is the Better Tool for Your Website?

Web analytics tools, specifically user behavior analytics, are a must for understanding how visitors interact with your website—beyond just basic metrics like page traffic or churn rate. These tools help you gain valuable insights to improve user experience, but they each have their quirks.

Hotjar provides website heatmap tools, session recordings, and surveys, but its pricing can be steep for websites with high traffic, and its analytics features may feel somewhat restricted. In contrast, Smartlook delivers comprehensive session recordings and heatmaps, although analyzing the vast amount of data can be time-consuming.

FullSession stands out as the best alternative, offering a comprehensive suite of tools that includes real-time session recordings and replays, interactive heatmaps, feedback forms, funnel optimization, and error analysis. This all-encompassing approach allows you to capture, visualize, analyze and optimize the entire user journey without compromising website performance.

In this article, we’ll compare Hotjar vs Smartlook, then introduce FullSession as the all-in-one solution that might just be the better fit for your needs. Stick around to find out which user behavior analytics tool is best for your team.

Key Takeaways

1. Hotjar is a go-to solution for visualizing how users interact with your site through heatmaps and session recordings, making it great for fine-tuning your website. However, it doesn’t dive deep into advanced analytics and can get pricey for bigger sites. Check out these Hotjar alternatives.
2. Smartlook is suitable for digging into detailed session recordings and tracking customer journeys, especially for e-commerce and SaaS platforms. Still, it’s not as strong in advanced analytics, and going through all that data can take some time.
3. FullSession combines the strengths of both Hotjar and Smartlook while introducing unique features. It excels in real-time analysis of user interactions with dynamic content without compromising website performance. It captures all user interactions in real time, provides visual reports, and allows you to analyze key user behavior metrics in one place to boost your website optimization. It helps identify frustration signals that lead to funnel drop-offs and decreased conversion rates. Book a demo today to see FullSession in action.
4. Smartlook offers a free plan with limited sessions, while Hotjar and FullSession start at $39 per month. FullSession grants access to all key features and allows tracking of up to 5,000 monthly sessions, compared to Hotjar’s limit of 100 daily sessions. FullSession also offers a 20% discount on annual plans, providing more value for businesses with higher traffic. Visit the Pricing page for more details.

Before we get into details of the Hotjar vs. Smartlook comparison, let's discuss why FullSession might be the right behavior analytics tool for you.

Why FullSession Is a Better Option

While Smartlook and Hotjar seem like great options for tracking user behavior, could there be a better alternative?

Let us highlight advanced FullSession features and explain why this platform may be a better alternative for capturing user interactions and gathering visual insights that help you optimize your website.

What can you do with FullSession?

FullSession isn’t just another analytics tool—it’s designed to give you a deeper, more complete understanding of your users. Here’s how FullSession makes a difference:

• Session recordings: Watch real-time user sessions to see exactly how visitors interact with your site, which can help quickly identify and fix any issues.
• Interactive heatmaps: Get a visual breakdown of where your users are clicking, scrolling, and hovering so you can see what’s working and what’s not.
• Customer feedback: Collect feedback directly from your users with customizable forms, giving you valuable insights straight from the source.
• Insights: FullSession automatically generates actionable insights, so you can make data-driven decisions without getting bogged down in details.
• Conversion funnel analysis: Track your users’ journey through your site to see where they’re dropping off and help you fine-tune your funnel for better conversions.
• Error tracking: Monitor any errors users encounter so you can address them before they impact more visitors.

Now, why choose FullSession over Hotjar or Smartlook? While Hotjar can slow down your site and Smartlook’s session data can be time-consuming to review, FullSession offers a more streamlined and efficient experience. It provides deeper insights, better performance, and a more comprehensive set of tools to help you optimize your website effectively.

Ready to see FullSession in action? Book a demo today and experience the difference for yourself!

What is Hotjar?

Image source: G2

Hotjar is a conversion optimization tool that tracks your web visitors’ behavior and provides you with insights to help you increase your website's performance rate.

With Hotjar, product managers, UX designers, and researchers can discover user pain points, analyze user behavior, understand user actions, and improve customer experience (CX).

What is Smartlook?

Image source: G2

Smartlook is analytics software for websites and mobile apps that lets businesses track customer behavior. 

With Smartlook, product managers, developers, UX designers, and marketers can make informed decisions about optimizing product performance.

Hotjar vs Smartlook: How They Compare and Contrast

Below, you can compare Hotjar and Smartlook to spot where their features overlap and what unique features each solution provides. This insight can make a big difference in analyzing your website visitors’ actions. We’ll also highlight more information about FullSession to see how it compares to these products.

Both Hotjar and Smartlook provide session recordings and heatmaps and have an easy set-up process. You’ll learn more about their differences, use cases, deployment, features, user ratings, language, and integrations as you read further. 

Let’s start with the basics.

Hotjar vs Smartlook: Basic Differences

You can use Smartlook to track user interaction on websites and mobile apps, while Hotjar doesn’t track user behavior on mobile apps and doesn’t provide mobile analytics. 

UX designers, product managers, customer support teams, and digital marketers use Hotjar in their everyday work. Smartlook targets small businesses, agencies, and digital marketers.

One of the most significant differences between Hotjar and Smartlook lies in the filter options for session recordings and heatmaps. For example, with Hotjar, you can filter session recordings by user feedback, while Smartlook doesn’t provide this feature. However, Smartlook lets you filter session recordings by events.

In another context, Smartlook includes funnel analysis to help you understand the user navigation, and you can use this feature as a filter for session recordings. In contrast, Hotjar has Hotjar funnels, which allow you to visualize funnel steps in each user session.

What about FullSession? 

FullSession is perfect for businesses of all sizes, especially eCommerce sites, because it gives you clear, actionable insights into how customers interact with your site.

With real-time session recordings, you can see exactly where shoppers get stuck or drop off, helping you fine-tune the user experience. The interactive heatmaps show you which products and pages grab the most attention so you can optimize for more conversions. 

Plus, conversion funnel analysis helps you spot and fix any hurdles in the buying process, making it easier for customers to complete their purchases.

It also provides data on web and mobile user sessions. Book a demo today to see it in action.

Hotjar vs Smartlook: User Ratings

Both Hotjar and Smartlook have shown promising results. We’ll highlight user ratings based on two popular review sites: TrustRadius and G2. 

• TrustRadius: Hotjar's average user rating is 8.3 out of 10 based on 339 user reviews. Smartlook's average user rating is 8.3 out of 10 based on 301 user reviews.
• G2: Both tools also have good ratings on this review platform. Hotjar has a 4.3 out of 5 user rating based on 304 user reviews, while Smartlook has a 4.6 out of 5 user rating based on 870 user reviews. 

Hotjar vs Smartlook: Use Cases

Since Hotjar and Smartlook have similar features, there’s also some overlap in their use cases.

Some relevant use cases of Hotjar

Image source: G2

• Hotjar helps you collect instant visual feedback via a feedback widget to better understand your user behavior. With this feature, you can learn and act on your users' thoughts while using your website.
• The session recordings feature lets you watch what your users do while on your site. For example, you can spot specific user activity by using filters like user feedback, rage clicks, friction events, and more.
• The survey feature lets you collect user feedback after users have visited your site. Here’s a typical scenario: if you’re in e-commerce, you can watch a session recording and spot where a user abandons your shopping cart.
• Heatmaps let you uncover what distracts your users and test web copy and page elements to determine what works best for them.

Some relevant use cases of Smartlook

• With the heatmap feature, you can pinpoint what web visitors are doing on your site. Rather than watching all user actions simultaneously, you can use filters to sort new and returning users. You can also use heatmaps to get segmented data.
• The funnel feature allows you to create a sequence of events before a visitor becomes a customer. This feature helps you understand visitor navigation and spot friction points leading to website abandonment.
• Automatic session recordings let you monitor user behavior. This feature allows you to spot and fix specific user issues with your product.
• You can create custom events to track data points outside typical events.

Some relevant use cases of FullSession

• FullSession lets you make an accurate CX analysis without impacting your site performance. In contrast, the Hotjar script can slow down your page load speed, affecting your SEO performance. 
• With the FullSession behavioral analytics tools, you can understand every user action and friction point so you can improve the customer journey.
• FullSession lets you use advanced filtering options to identify specific events, such as cart abandonment, rage clicks, and failed payments, inside a session recording. With this feature, you can pinpoint and fix issues faster before they affect the customer experience any further. 
• With FullSession, you don’t need to guess why customers perform a specific action on your website. You can collect real-time user feedback and ask customers about their overall experience on your site. Plus, each feedback is connected to a session recording, giving you more context about what the user said, whether negative or positive.
• FullSession provides a central analytics and feedback platform where cross-functional teams can collaborate effectively to improve CX.
• FullSession delivers insights into how customers interact with significant elements on your web pages, such as call-to-action buttons, images, and hamburger menus, to improve conversion rates. 
• FullSession provides a clear visual of user behavior with click maps, scroll maps, and mouse movement maps.

If you want to get a closer look at how these features work, schedule a demo today.

Hotjar vs Smartlook: Deployment

The deployment between Hotjar and Smartlook is quite different. With Smartlook, there are a few ways to install the software. 

For instance, you can add the code snippet by copying and pasting it into your website's source code. You can also implement Smartlook on your website via Google Tag Manager. You have to create a custom HTML tag with the tracking code.

Hotjar offers several installation options. For instance, you can install the Hotjar JavaScript snippet by manually adding the code to your website.

After installing, tracking user actions represents a crucial difference between these solutions. For example, with Hotjar, you need to describe specific events by creating custom JavaScript code and using events API to track user-specific actions. 

It can be challenging if you don’t have enough technical knowledge. In contrast, once you install the code snippet, Smartlook automatically tracks user interactions. 

FullSession deployment

Deploying FullSession is quick and easy. First, go to Settings > Data Capture and Privacy > FullSession Setup to get the data capture snippet. 

Paste it into the <HEAD> section of your website or app—via your CMS or directly in the code. The snippet works silently in the background, capturing all user interactions without requiring any manual setup.

To protect sensitive data, you can use the "Excluded Elements" feature to block specific information by identifying CSS selectors, ensuring privacy. Manage these settings under Settings > Data Capture and Privacy > Privacy. 

Finally, invite your team members to collaborate while you wait for sessions to populate.

Start a free trial to see how it works.

Hotjar vs Smartlook: Features

As we mentioned earlier, Hotjar and Smartlook share similar features, but there are cases where these features differ.

The main features of Hotjar:

• Session recordings let you watch and track user activities on your site. You can spot where users rage click, make a U-turn, get stuck, and abandon a page.
• Heatmaps provide insights into how users behave on individual site pages. This feature lets you spot the most critical elements on a web page and track where users click, scroll, and point their mouse.
• Feedback widget, which you can use to ask customers about their overall experience while on your site.
• Surveys help you ask customers about their experience after stopping interaction with your site. Hotjar also provides form analytics to let you see where users get stuck.

The main features of Smartlook:

• Session recordings tools allow you to watch user events and behaviors. Both Hotjar and Smartlook have basic dev tools for session recordings.
• Heatmaps provide insights into how users interact with specific web elements based on historical data.
• Events let you see all the actions users perform on your mobile app or website.
• Funnels help you understand user behavior throughout the customer journey. You can spot when users take the path you don’t want them to take and fix glitches to increase the conversion rate.

The main features of FullSession:

• Real-time session recordings let you track user interactions on your website as they happen so you can monitor and respond to issues instantly.
• Session replays offer recordings of individual user sessions to see exactly how visitors navigate your site, helping you identify pain points and optimize the user experience.
• Interactive heatmaps allow you to see where users click, scroll, and move on your website, highlighting your pages' most and least engaging areas.
• Customer feedback forms let you collect direct feedback from users while they’re on your site, providing valuable insights into their experiences and expectations.
• Conversion funnel analysis allows you to track user progress through your site’s conversion funnels, identify where users drop off, and optimize for higher conversion rates.
• Error tracking lets you monitor and analyze errors such as error clicks, network errors, console errors, error logs, and uncaught exceptions.

Hotjar vs Smartlook: Languages

The language is where Hotjar and Smartlook contrast greatly. The Smartlook interface is only available in English.

While the Hotjar interface is also available in English, the software’s user-facing features, such as surveys and feedback, are available in multiple languages, including Arabic, Dutch, French, Chinese, Italian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, and more!

FullSession is available in English, French, and Arabic.

Hotjar vs Smartlook: Integrations

Both Hotjar and Smartlook offer extensive integrations. They share similar integration options with A/B testing and conversion rate optimization tools. 

Both software integrates well with tools used by digital marketing experts like Segment, Google Optimize, and Zapier. Another similarity in their integration is that both tools are compatible with WordPress, Shopify, and Joomla. 

There are some integration options you can find in Hotjar and not Smartlook. For example, Hotjar integrates with popular project management tools like Basecamp, Asana, ClickUp, Notion, and Trello. In contrast, Smartlook doesn’t.

Thanks to open APIs, native integrations, and modern webhooks, FullSession lets you integrate your entire stack. You can use it with major platforms like Wix, Shopify, BigCommerce and WordPress.

Start a free trial now.

Hotjar vs Smartlook: Support

No tool is perfect, and issues can arise. For this reason, customers need efficient and reliable support. Hotjar and Smartlook customer support differ slightly.

Hotjar includes email support, ticket submissions, and training in all pricing plans. However, the absence of live chat disadvantages Hotjar since most customers prefer to communicate via live support.

In contrast, Smartlook provides email support, ticket submission, training, and live support. Only the Startup and Business plans include access to live support, so you need to upgrade your account.

Meanwhile, FullSession offers a help center where you can find guides on how to set up and use the platform. You can also contact FullSession support via email and live chat.

Hotjar vs Smartlook: Pricing

Both Hotjar and Smartlook offer pricing plans suitable for startups, SMBs, and enterprises.

Hotjar has three paid plans:

• Observe Plan: Heatmaps and recordings range from $39/month for up to 100 daily sessions to $213/month for tracking 500 to 270k daily sessions
• Ask Plan: Surveys and feedback features range from $48/month for 250 monthly responses to $128/month for unlimited responses
• Engage Plan: The cost of user interviews ranges from $39.2/month for three monthly interviews to $440/month for 12 interviews

If you want only the basic features, you can try their free version. However, you only get up to 35 sessions per day.

The pricing plan for Smartlook includes four plans – Free, Pro, and Enterprise. Here are more details on each plan:

• Free plan for personal use includes 3,000 monthly sessions
• Pro starts at $55/month with 5,000 monthly sessions
• Enterprise offers a customized plan you can tailor to your needs

As you can see, Hotjar and Smartlook pricing plans also differ. For example, all Smartlook pricing plans include a 30-day free trial, while Hotjar offers a 15-day free trial for new accounts and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

As for FullSession, you can choose from one of three premium plans:

1. The Starter plan costs $39/month or $32/year and allows you to monitor up to 5,000 monthly sessions
2. The Business plan costs $75/month or $60/year and helps you to track and analyze up to 100,000 monthly sessions
3. The Enterprise plan has custom pricing and offers customizable sessions plus full access to all features

Take note of a 20% discount when you sign up for an annual plan. For more information, you check out the Pricing page.

Hotjar vs Smartlook vs FullSession: A Summary 

So far, we have highlighted key features of FullSession and where it overlaps with Hotjar and Smartlook. If you need more details on how Hotjar tracks user activity, check out this article on our unbiased Hotjar feedback.

To keep things simple and easy to grasp, here’s a detailed table that summarizes FullSession features compared to Hotjar and Smartlook.

	FullSession	Smartlook	Hotjar
Session recordings	✔	✔	✔
Engagement score	✔	✘	✘
Session replay	✔	✔	✔
Advanced user filtering	✔	✔	✔
Recording timeline with pages and average time on each page	✔	✔	✘
Real-time session recording	✔	✔	✔
Sharing option	✔	✔	✔
Heatmaps	✔	✔	✔
Click/tap heatmaps	✔	✔	✔
Scroll heatmaps	✔	✔	✔
Live heatmaps	✔	✘	✘
Feedback collection	✔	✘	✔
NPS	✔	✘	✔
Visual feedback	✔	✔	✔
Customer surveys	✔	✘	✔
API	✔	✔	✔
Live support	✔	✔	✘
Click rage detection	✔	✔	✔
Insights	✔	✘	✘
Free trial	✔	✔	✔
Analysis of dynamic elements	✔	✘	✘

If you want to learn more about how FullSession compares to other session recording software like Crazyegg, Mouseflow, and FullStory, check out our CrazyEgg vs Mouseflow vs FullStory, Mouseflow vs VWO, and Hotjar vs Mixpanel comparisons.

Hotjar vs Smartlook: Final Words

So far, we’ve compared Hotjar and Smartlook based on their features, integration, deployment, pricing, support, use cases, and language. While each software shares similar features like visitor recordings, and heatmaps, there are other cases where their features contrast.

For example, Smartlook relies on features like funnels, events, and retention tables to understand the why behind customer behavior. In contrast, Hotjar relies on customer feedback forms and surveys to ask customers about their experience. 

Both software lacks certain features, such as tracking user behavior in real time. In this case, FullSession is a better alternative. It also provides interactive heatmaps that let you track user interaction with dynamic web elements like hamburger menus, hidden items, and pop-ups. 

FullSession Insights helps you gain a bird’s eye view of user behavior and pain points that may lead to funnel dropout and impact conversion rates. 

With FullSession, you can:

• Monitor dynamic elements in real time for accurate user insights
• Speed up heatmap processing without affecting site performance
• Ensure user privacy by not recording sensitive data
• Handle large data sets efficiently to uncover key insights quickly
• Restrict user behavior tracking on your site to prevent data misuse
• Foster cross-team collaboration and align efforts on a single platform
• Combine quantitative and qualitative data to better understand user behavior
• Analyze user behavior on both mobile and web apps
• Use automatic event tracking across multiple platforms
• Optimize your user interface and user experience based on data-driven insights

FullSession Pricing Plans

The FullSession platform offers a 14-day free trial and three paid plans: Starter, Business, and Enterprise. A yearly subscription can save you up to 20%!

Here are more details on each plan.

4. The Starter plan costs $39/month or $32/year and allows you to monitor up to 5,000 monthly sessions
5. The Business plan costs $75/month or $60/year and helps you to track and analyze up to 100,000 monthly sessions
6. The Enterprise plan has custom pricing and offers customizable sessions plus full access to all features

If you need more information, you can get a demo.

FAQs About Smartlook vs Hotjar

What are the key differences between Smartlook and Hotjar?

Smartlook offers more detailed user recordings and event tracking, while Hotjar is known for its user-friendly interface and features like surveys. For a comprehensive tool with advanced error tracking, consider FullSession.

Which tool is better for small businesses, Smartlook or Hotjar?

Hotjar is easier to set up and use, and it is ideal for beginners. Smartlook offers deeper insights with detailed recordings. FullSession provides a balance of ease of use and detailed analytics. It all boils down to your budget, web analytics needs, and personal preference.

Which tool provides better integration options, Smartlook or Hotjar?

Hotjar offers seamless integration with many popular tools, such as WordPress and HubSpot. Smartlook also integrates well with various platforms, especially for detailed session analysis. FullSession enhances these capabilities with robust integration options, making it easy to unify your analytics across different tools.

How do Smartlook and Hotjar handle user privacy, and are there better alternatives?

Both prioritize user privacy and comply with GDPR. FullSession offers enhanced privacy features, excluding sensitive data and providing real-time alerts for improved user trust.

How do Smartlook and Hotjar handle data visualization?

Hotjar excels with intuitive heatmaps and visual feedback tools. Smartlook provides detailed session replays and event-based analytics. FullSession combines the strengths of both with advanced data visualization and real-time insights to offer a more comprehensive view of user behavior.

Is there a free web analytics tool I can use?

Both Smartlook and Hotjar offer a free version but with limited features. You can also opt for Google Analytics if you want to try some basic website analytics tools, especially if you run Google ads. However, FullSession offers better value than these three tools at only $39 a month (or $32 if you sign up for the annual plan!)