Hotjar vs Fullstory: An Honest Comparison ( + A Better Alternative)
If you’re looking for a solution to dig deeper into user behavior, the chances are you’ve come across top industry names like Hotjar and Fullstory several times during your research.
While both tools offer session recordings and heatmaps as their core value proposition, they also have key differences in their function.
In this article, we’ll make a complete feature-by-feature comparison of Hotjar vs Fullstory, uncover what specific use case each is suited for, and even introduce you to a better alternative that offers more value for money.
Hotjar vs Fullstory – An overview
Hotjar is a website analytics platform that has probably the most robust heatmap features in the market. In addition to this behavioral data, Hotjar allows you to collect direct user feedback via website widgets, in-app surveys, and interviews. This tool is best suited for UI/UX designers and marketing teams.
Fullstory is a customer journey analytics platform that supports both web and mobile apps. Fullstory is also known for its conversion funnels that help visualize the sequence of events leading to a goal (such as a purchase or sign-up) and reveal where users drop off during critical steps. It’s a popular choice among marketers and product managers involved in enterprise-level projects.
Hotjar vs Fullstory: Feature-by-feature comparison
Now let’s get specific about each feature and use case so it’s clear to you how we came to the conclusion in the section above.
Heatmaps
Heatmaps are an excellent tool for understanding how users interact on specific pages and identifying areas of friction. With Hotjar, you get five types of heatmaps:
- Move maps – Show how a user’s cursor moves on a page.
- Click maps – Show areas of a page that attract clicks and the ones that don’t.
- Scroll maps – Show how deep users scroll and the areas they ignore.
- Engagement zones heatmaps – Show areas and elements of a page that generate maximum user interactions.
- Rage click maps – Show areas where users click repeatedly out of frustration.
You can filter the heatmap data by country, landing page, referral URL, and other parameters to identify user behavior patterns among various segments.
Another unique feature is the Retaker tool, which allows you to capture multiple screenshots of a session. If you think a heatmap is missing certain details, you can recreate it with other screenshots from the same session. It’s particularly useful for pages with dynamic content like drop-down menus and pop-ups.
With Fullstory, you get two types of heatmaps–click maps and scroll maps. You also get three heatmap overlays that let you filter the data and show specific user actions. These include:
- Dead clicks
- Error clicks
- Rage clicks
Unlike Hotjar, Fullstory’s heatmaps don’t come with a retake option, making them less suitable for pages with dynamic elements. Also, if you want to view the data for specific user segments, you get limited filtering options, such as device type and page views.
Session recordings
Both platforms allow multi-tab session recordings, meaning you can capture a user’s journey across different pages and browser tabs.
Hotjar automatically categorizes session recordings by relevance, user frustration, and engagement levels, making it easier to identify sessions needing immediate attention.
You can even set custom filters and save your favorite filter combinations, so you don’t have to apply them manually every time. Similarly, you can star important recordings for future reference.
Fullstory’s Session Replays offering is similar to Hotjar’s. The key difference is that Fullstory also records active user sessions, giving you more real-time insights. You don’t get co-browsing capabilities, though.
You can filter recordings by a plethora of user events and attributes, but you don’t have the option to save filter combinations.
Additionally, both platforms maintain error logs for each session recording. Fullstory offers two views of error reports–console view and network view. Hotjar’s error logs are restricted to the console view and are available only in the Scale plan.
Collaboration and sharing
Hotjar’s Highlights feature lets users extract key snippets from heatmaps and recordings and tag relevant coworkers. You can even label the behavior and create a collection of highlights with common behaviors.
It’s worth mentioning here that all Hotjar plans include unlimited seats, making it a scalable solution for growing teams.
Besides a shared workspace, Fullstory doesn’t come with other built-in collaboration features like annotation and tagging. Also, Fullstory’s pricing is based on the number of seats, meaning the costs can add up as your team grows.
User feedback tools
Hotjar comes with various voice-of-customer (VoC) tools that help you add context to user behavior data from heatmaps and session recordings.
For starters, the Feedback widget tools let you add a form to any page on your website. Users can rate their experience, add comments, and even add a screenshot to explain the issues they encountered.
Then there’s the Surveys tool, which lets you create in-app and email surveys from 40+ pre-built templates or use AI to generate a custom one. These surveys can be triggered based on user actions, allowing you to collect more relevant feedback.
And finally, you can take your qualitative data collection to another level with Hotjar Engage. This tool allows you to host, record, and transcribe interviews with users and even share them with stakeholders.
Fullstory lacks built-in VoC capabilities. You can connect the platform to third-party feedback tools like Qualtrics and Survicate, but it’ll exacerbate complexity and cost.
Deciding Between Hotjar vs Fullstory? Try Userpilot for Next Level User Feedback Tools
Integrations
Hotjar and Fullstory have similar offerings in terms of third-party integrations. Both platforms support native integrations with many commonly used tools, including HubSpot, Jira, Segment, and Slack.
Additionally, you can connect them to other third-party tools via Zapier. Both platforms also support APIs, meaning you can transfer data across applications with ease.
One area where Fullstory shines is its compatibility with data management platforms like Gravity, Hightouch, and Snowflake. That makes it easy to export user behavior data to other tools and perform more sophisticated analyses. Hotjar doesn’t support these integrations.
Customer support
Hotjar hosts an AI-assisted chatbot on its website that answers basic customer queries regarding the services and products. If you have more complex questions, you can visit their help center and browse through their detailed guides. If these self-service options are still not sufficient, you can also contact customer support via email.
Fullstory’s primary customer support channel is email and is available 5 days a week during business hours. Phone and video support are available as well, but only as one-time requests.
Fullstory also has an established community where you can connect with other users, get peer support or simply exchange your experiences.
Ease of use
Hotjar is often praised by users for its intuitive and simple UI. The interface is neatly labeled, so navigating different features and making sense of the metrics is easy, even for non-technical users.
Fullstory’s UI, although intuitive, can appear complex due to the variety of features and data available on the dashboard. The in-depth reports are valuable for advanced users but can overwhelm beginners.
Pricing
Hotjar offers a forever-free plan called Basic, which gives users access to all three products–Observe, Ask, and Engage. You get unlimited heatmaps, session recordings, and highlights and can track up to 35 daily sessions.
If you’re looking for additional features, you can choose from one of the three paid plans:
- Plus – Includes page view filters, events API, and more and lets you track up to 100 daily sessions. Pricing starts at $32 per month (billed annually).
- Business – Includes behavior and experiment filters, frustration and engagement scores, and all custom-built integrations. Pricing starts at $80 per month (billed annually) for 500 daily sessions.
- Scale – Includes funnels, trends, error reporting, webhooks, and priority support. Pricing starts at $171 per month (billed annually) for 500 daily sessions.
Hotjar’s pricing is fairly transparent, and you can upgrade plans at your will without contacting the sales team. Plus, you can mix and match products from different pricing tiers to customize a plan according to your needs.
With Fullstory, you can choose from four paid plans:
- Business – Includes Fullcapture, session insights, and basic product analytics.
- Advanced – Includes everything in Business and premium product analytics.
- Enterprise – Includes everything in Advanced, plus improved security and access controls.
- Data Direct – A newly launched plan that syncs AI-ready behavioral data to your warehouse.
Mobile analytics is available as an add-on on all plans.
Pricing details aren’t available on the website. You’ll have to contact the sales team for a demo and quote.
Fullstory offers a 14-day free trial of the Business plan for up to 5000 sessions. Unlike Hotjar, you don’t have the option to design custom plans or upgrade to a higher tier on your own.
Userpilot – The better alternative to both Hotjar and Fullstory
Both Hotjar and Fullstory give you access to insightful data, but that’s where their features end. Userpilot, on the other hand, on top of data also gives you the necessary tools to take action and improve the user experience.
Here’s a detailed breakdown of Userpilot features:
- Advanced filters allow you to find relevant sessions by user actions, pages visited, or company/user attributes.
- Inactivity skipping: Jump to key moments of user interaction, saving time by avoiding unnecessary idle periods.
- Activity log panel: Access a comprehensive record of all user actions during the session and seamlessly navigate to specific events.
- Session playlists allow you to organize your recordings for easy access and analysis.
- Collaboration features like adding notes, flagging bugs, and tagging teammates for improved teamwork efficiency.
- Privacy protection features that obscure sensitive information, ensuring strict adherence to privacy regulations such as HIPAA, GDPR, and SOC 2.
- Autocapture: Userpilot, by default, records data from a variety of events, such as clicks, form fills, and text input changes, eliminating the need to manually code each event you want to track.
- User profiles dashboard for granular analysis. You can see each user’s sessions, events, and responses to in-app surveys.
- Analytics reports. Userpilot offers several product usage analytics reports including funnels, paths, and cohort tables. These can help you find drop-off points in the user journey and trends among different user groups (e.g. churned users), further enabling you to optimize your product.
- In-app engagement features: Create flows to guide users through your app using different UI patterns. For example, if you see on a session recording that the user doesn’t click on a core feature when they are supposed to, you can trigger a tooltip to draw their attention to it and encourage engagement.
Userpilot pricing
Userpilot pricing is based on monthly active users, not events, which makes it easier to predict your expenses.
The lowest Start plan starts at $249/month, but to get access to the session recording feature, you need the Growth plan, which costs $799/month. The feature is also included in the Enterprise plan, which comes with custom pricing.
Conclusion
Hotjar and Fullstory shine in different areas. Fullstory takes the lead when it comes to customer journey analytics. On the other hand, Hotjar offers superior heatmap capabilities and VoC tools that help contextualize user behavior data.
And then we have Userpilot, an all-in-one product growth platform that has all the analytics and feedback features offered by Hotjar and Fullstory plus in-app engagement features for acting on the collected data.
If you are interested in learning more about how Userpilot can help you analyze product usage and create targeted in-app experiences to enhance the user experience, book a demo and our team will show you!
Deciding Between Hotjar vs Fullstory? Try Userpilot and Take Your In-App Experiences to the Next Level
