# Hotjar Reviews 2026. Verified Reviews, Pros & Cons | Capterra

> Is Hotjar the right Heatmap solution for you? Explore 541 verified user reviews from people in industries like yours to make a confident choice.

Source: https://www.capterra.com/p/163516/Hotjar/reviews

---

Hotjar

4.6 (541)

[View alternatives](https://www.capterra.com/p/163516/Hotjar/alternatives/)

Provider data verified by our Software Research team, and reviews moderated by our Reviews Verification team. [Learn more](https://www.capterra.com/our-story/)

* * *

Last updated June 3rd, 2026

# Reviews of Hotjar

Ease of use

4.6

Customer Service

4.5

## Pros and Cons in Reviews

Comprehensive user behavior analytics

96% positive reviews out of 71

Most reviewers describe user insights as invaluable for identifying user pain points and improving website experience.

Rodrigo T

Director of Cyber Security, 10,001+ employees.

"Its seamless integration with other marketing tools provides deep insights into user behavior, allowing you to identify large-scale patterns and continually improve user experience."

Session recording usability concerns

36% negative reviews out of 56

Some reviewers describe session recordings as hard to filter, occasionally incomplete, and sometimes difficult to analyze efficiently.

Detailed interaction tracking

94% positive reviews out of 33

Most users report user interaction tracking reveals exactly how visitors engage with site elements and content.

Technical limitations and glitches

66% negative reviews out of 35

Some users report bugs and issues such as playback errors, CSS problems, and integration difficulties disrupt analysis.

Theresa F

CRO Program Manager, 1,001 - 5,000 employees.

"I sometimes question the accuracy of the reports. And if the page has a popup, modal, overlay, etc, that can be problematic."

Conversion rate improvement tools

94% positive reviews out of 32

Most reviewers indicate conversion optimization features help identify obstacles and drive measurable increases in conversions.

Md. N

IT officer, 501 - 1,000 employees.

"For individuals looking to increase revenue and maximize their conversion rate, this product is perfect."

## Showing most helpful reviews

Showing 1-25 of 541 Reviews

Sort by:

Most Helpful

Rating

Company Size

Reviewer's Role

Length of Use

Frequency of Use

Sarah F.  
Marketing Technologist  
Education Management  
Used the software for: 2+ years

### "Hotjar worked great for us until the pricing model changed"

May 15, 2026

4.0

Hotjar was easy to set up on our domains and to get running right away. Key features were heatmaps and clickmaps. We also utilized the recording feature which helped us uncover at least one bug in the checkout process. They assign a user frustration score to the recordings, allowing you to sort the most negative experience first and see the user's recording to investigate issues. We were disappointed when their pricing model changed to require more investment to cover the same number of domains.

Pros

We used hotjar for several years for our web performance tracking, on-page quick NPS surveys, and to measure user engagement on pages. It's a lighweight web experience tools that complies easy to understand scroll maps and click maps. The feedback tab function was handy and helpful for users to provide immediate feedback and actually helped us discover bugs and issues in our ecommerce site.

Cons

The cost is way too high to scale up for an enterprise company. We were grandfathered in to a lower price point that eventually expired, so we moved away to a more scalable solution (VWO insights). Otherwise we probably would have stuck with Hotjar as it fulfilled all of our needs.

Alternatives considered

[Contentsquare](https://www.capterra.com/p/161591/ContentSquare/)[Crazy Egg](https://www.capterra.com/p/163520/Crazy-Egg/)[Fullstory](https://www.capterra.com/p/153721/FullStory/)[Mouseflow](https://www.capterra.com/p/163517/Mouseflow/)[VWO Insights](https://www.capterra.com/p/181518/VWO/)

Reason for choosing Hotjar

Hotjar had the best features for cost, but when their pricing model changed, it was too much of an investment so we switched to VWO which scaled better for our enterprise company.

Review Source

NF

Niccolo F.  
Cofounder, CTO  
Automotive  
Used the software for: 2+ years

### "Our go-to tool for heatmaps, and User behaviour recording, but it is very expensive to get all the features"

May 2, 2025

4.0

We use Hotjar mainly for user experience analysis. Heatmaps and user recordings is our go to tool. We've used it on all projects, different websites etc. recordings are good, but we sometimes get overwhelmend by "useless" recordings, where users just idle on a page. Always sort by relevance. Also, free version is very limited, and first paid tier is already very expensive.

Pros

Hotjar is a great tool for insights on user behaviour. It makes you understand where's the biggest blockers in your UX, where the customers are going, what they're reading, where they're clicking etc. You can easily understand if some parts of your website are useless, or if they're good and grab attention. It also gives you insights on how much time users stay on each page, so that you know what's driving them around and for how long.

Cons

There's no real big cons in the product itself. However, we use the free version and it does the job in a fantastic way, but it's very limited: -The basic price above free is quite expensive. -You cannot see trends and data for free. just heatmaps and recordings -You're very limited to 35 recording/day on free plan Also, in the recording sections, you can easily get overwhelmed by not-relevant recordings, where users just idle.

Alternatives considered

[Mixpanel](https://www.capterra.com/p/158740/Mixpanel/)

Reason for choosing Hotjar

We use mixpanel for our apps, but hotjar is much easier and quicker to implement on normal websites

Review Source

AG

Annie G.  
Marketing Manager  
Alternative Medicine  
Used the software for: 6-12 months

### "Useful Heatmapping Tool"

June 4, 2025

3.0

Overall, hotjar was a useful tool in gathering information and analysis of website performance, and perhaps there are more features I don't know about.

Pros

It gave fairly accurate heat mapping and information regarding user behavior on our website. It was also easy to use.

Cons

Limits on how many pages it would scan, would love more comprehensive data and analytics, as well as reporting.

Review Source

RC

Radek C.  
board member  
Entertainment  
Used the software for: 1-2 years

### "Powerful Behavior Analytics Tool for Websites"

May 20, 2026

4.0

Overall, Hotjar provides excellent Security and powerful Monitoring features. It is great for Data Analysis and understanding Conversion Funnels, despite some initial Learning Curve.

Pros

Hotjar offers strong Data Analysis and Monitoring tools like heatmaps and recordings. Survey Creation is easy, and it gives great insight into Conversion Funnels and user behavior.

Cons

Hotjar has a Learning Curve for beginners and can feel complex at first. Pricing is not ideal for small teams, affecting Value for Money at higher usage levels.

Switched from

[Google Optimize](https://www.capterra.com/p/246659/Google-Optimize/)

Its no longer supported, it was best app for such things but it was disabled.

Review Source

Theresa F.  
CRO Program Manager  
Marketing and Advertising  
Used the software for: 2+ years

### "Good tool to include in your CRO toolbox"

February 28, 2025

4.0

I've used hotjar for many years, along with a few of their competitors. I like that this is one more data point for creating hypotheses for A/B tests. However, I don't make changes to the website based on the Hotjar findings alone since I don't totally trust the maps. I use judgment and combine these findings with data from other other tools as well as best practices and theory.

Pros

Hotjar helps to identify patterns in user behavior to uncover problems with UX and conversions. I use scrollmaps and heatmaps the most, and compare them by device since Hotjar will show the different maps on desktop, tablet, and mobile. Other features that I don't use as much but my clients and colleagues do are session recordings and polls. I rarely use session recordings as I find them time consuming, even after narrowing my choices with filters. And I use the polls sparingly when I have a specific question I need to dig into. A lot of clients don't want the intrusion to distract their site's users on a regular basis though.

Cons

I sometimes question the accuracy of the reports. And if the page has a popup, modal, overlay, etc, that can be problematic. Mega menus also appear to be a blindspot.

Switched from

[Crazy Egg](https://www.capterra.com/p/163520/Crazy-Egg/)[Microsoft Clarity](https://www.capterra.com/p/236349/Microsoft-Clarity/)[Lucky Orange](https://www.capterra.com/p/150695/Lucky-Orange/)

My employer has an agency account. But I sometimes have clients who have Microsoft Clarity, so I still use that too.

Review Source

BJ

Bartosz J.  
Head of Technology  
Marketing and Advertising  
Used the software for: 1-2 years

### "High quality assistant to make data-driven decisions"

December 18, 2024

4.0

Very wide known tool in an advertising & marketing market. Used as a one source of truth in our company as well. We use it almost every day to check traffic quality and make data-driven changes

Pros

\- easy to set up surveys to rate & get feedback from users - weekly stats in email notifications - very helpful insights to A/B test websites! (the most important to me, when launching mvp version of a web based application was: top pages and recordings from them; top console errors; av. session duration; top exit pages (to see when users drop off)

Cons

pricing. Clarity from Microsoft has most of the high priority features & it's for free (but doesn't have this awesome surveys!)

Alternatives considered

[Microsoft Clarity](https://www.capterra.com/p/236349/Microsoft-Clarity/)

Reason for choosing Hotjar

We use both, HotJar and Clarity used in different areas (surveys in HotJar, and traffic analisys in Clarity)

Review Source

MI

Mihail I.  
Senior Product Manager  
Financial Services  
Used the software for: 2+ years

### "Hotjar offers a great toolset but it takes sometime to understand thep pricing"

October 25, 2024

4.0

My experience with Hotjar was extremely positive before Contentsquare acquired it. However, after the acquisition, the pricing tiers became super annoying and unclear. It is even not the pricing itself but the way you pay for a tier and some features require a higher tier but it was unclear.

Pros

Hotjar has some neat features that can help any site owner better understand their customers.

Cons

After the product was acquired the price was instantly increased while the pricing tiers became extremely hard to follow which added additional friction and made me move to other tools and services.

Alternatives considered

[Smartlook](https://www.capterra.com/p/164713/Smartlook/)[VWO Testing](https://www.capterra.com/p/147639/Visual-Website-Optimizer/)

Reason for choosing Hotjar

Before the Content Square acquisition, the pricing was competitive and there was a generous free tier as well.

Review Source

Dandu M.  
Analyst  
Marketing and Advertising  
Used the software for: 1-2 years

### "Hotjar is very helpful and easy to use tool."

February 15, 2026

4.0

I am a CRO analyst and I liked this tool very much since it allows us to analyze user behavior with each and filter any specific category of users with each and accuracy.

Pros

User behaviour analysis and security while showing PII, And also I like the features to filter based on any event and skip inactivity , speed, etc., feature, and save to a collection any specific scenario .

Cons

I would like to have an automated data analysis bot which if we teach something to look it will look that behaviour and give us a report.

Review Source

Response from ContentSquare

March 3, 2026

Hey Dandu! Thank you so much for your thoughtful review. We’re so glad to hear that Hotjar is helping you analyse user behaviour effectively and that you find it easy to use and secure. We also really appreciate your suggestion about an automated data analysis bot. Feedback like this is incredibly valuable and helps inform how we continue to improve the product. Thanks again for taking the time to share your experience!

Duncan C.  
Digital Solutions Lead  
Marketing and Advertising  
Used the software for: 2+ years

### "Hotjar, a power monitoring tool "

July 20, 2025

4.0

Overall, Hotjar is a great and reliable measurement tool that allows me to monitor and analyse how a user interacts with my website.

Pros

I like the heat mapping tool on Hotjar, which allows you to see where there is the most interest on your page, as well as how a user navigates your webpage

Cons

Implementing and setting up Hotjar can be a bit tricky. The cost of Hotjar is also a little price,y and there is a learning curve to truly make use of all the tools available

Review Source

SC

Sean C.  
Marketer  
Marketing and Advertising  
Used the software for: 6-12 months

### "Qualitative and quantitive website data in one dashboard"

November 22, 2025

4.0

Pros

It was the first heat map tool I used, and I never switched. It has a lot of data and analytics options

Cons

The freemium runs out pretty quickly, and I don't know how accurate the data is (it's hard to verify qualitative data)

Review Source

BG

Bharat G.  
VP, Enginnering  
Information Services  
Used the software for: 1-2 years

### "Hotjar for UI/UX monitoring"

December 23, 2024

4.0

Decent experience, customer support is also helpful.

Pros

Ease of implementation and its alerts features.

Cons

Screen recording is not perfect, many of our dom interactions were not recorded leading to us identify them as bugs. Took us some time to get used to it.

Review Source

JW

Joe W.  
Marketing Lead  
Hospitality  
Used the software for: 1-2 years

### "Every digital marketer needs this tool"

November 23, 2024

5.0

Pros

The insights you can gather from website visitors and the heatmap is super helpful

Cons

The UI isn't the greatest and takes a while to understand what to do

Review Source

IS

Ishwinder S.  
Fire brigade  
Non-Profit Organization Management  
Used the software for: I used a free trial

### "Hot jar application is best application "

November 1, 2024

5.0

About hotjar experience well and good for real

Pros

About hot jar application look videos and create

Cons

In the hot jar application we can see feedback of videos

Review Source

MC

Maria C.  
Owner  
Apparel & Fashion  
Used the software for: Less than 6 months

### "Hotjar review"

October 10, 2024

4.0

Overall would recommend for the average user that likes to fill out surveys for minor rewards or gift cards, but it could take some time to earn some money

Pros

This is an easy to use app that most people could easily figure out and use without a problem.

Cons

I don't know if this happens for everybody but I get phased out of a lot of surveys for some reason.

Review Source

QV

Quynh V.  
Senior Marketing Specialist  
E-Learning  
Used the software for: 1-2 years

### "A heatmapping software that does the job"

July 27, 2022

4.0

It was overall good, but unfortunately not the best. Which is why we have made the switch.

Pros

That it was priced quite cheaply to others. I think we received a discount too so I felt the relationship there was amazing.

Cons

The heatmapping wasn't entirely accurate. It couldn't go beyond certain limits. Our website uses advanced code to be created but the heatmapping couldn't pick it up and forced us to do it manually.

Alternatives considered

[Crazy Egg](https://www.capterra.com/p/163520/Crazy-Egg/)[Lucky Orange](https://www.capterra.com/p/150695/Lucky-Orange/)

Reason for choosing Hotjar

At the time, it was due to price.

Review Source

Laura Rocio F.  
marketing  
Marketing and Advertising  
Used the software for: 1-2 years

### "It is very good, here we can see how our prospects interact, and study them"

May 31, 2022

5.0

I use it to analyze the clients, with the heat map that favors me a lot and is easy to use, and the behavior within the page, I can record the data, and it gives me the necessary information of each client

Pros

I like it, it is quite complete in tools used for heat maps, conversion, among others, we can identify the problem and thus solve it, through characteristics, visitors and funnels

Cons

I do not like that they have put a limit on the height for pages that are captured, and that the forms have not worked

Review Source

AT

Atour T.  
Analyst  
Research  
Used the software for: 1-2 years

### "Best for website visitor behavior analysis"

November 2, 2022

5.0

It is outstanding for survey and forms purposes. Screen recording can be done easily using it.

Pros

Customer behavior analysis is very crucial for any website. As a analyst, I need to analysis data and I found this software is very useful in this regard. Heatmapping is an excellent element of this software. It is very easy to set up . Efficient customer support available.

Cons

A/B testing feature may be added.Event tracking record may be introduced.Price Little bit seems higher than others platform.

Alternatives considered

[FigPii](https://www.capterra.com/p/199975/FigPii/)

Switched from

[Crazy Egg](https://www.capterra.com/p/163520/Crazy-Egg/)

Hotjar Heatmap and recording seems excellent

Review Source

SA

Soham A.  
Marketing And Operations Head  
Health, Wellness and Fitness  
Used the software for: 6-12 months

### "I wish I knew about this earlier!"

March 11, 2022

5.0

Hotjar has been critical to our micro analytics. We have been able to go through customer journeys at the most specific way possible. By being able to view the screen recordings (and its plethora of features within that!) along with heatmaps, we were able to test our website rapidly.

Pros

Hotjar provides you with the analytics that google analytics or backend website analytics will never be able to provide you with. I loved how intuitive and simple the platform was, and how we were able to get the plan up and running, and analyzing in real time! Another key feature is integration. We were skeptical at first as we thought it might slow down the website with extra code, but by integrating it with google tag manager we were able to get it up and running fast. The pricing is very reasonable and we mainly benefited from the advanced features in the screen recording session!

Cons

Sometimes the recordings failed to capture the specific nuances of the website. Essentially the website showed up differently on the recording page section.

Reason for choosing Hotjar

The integration option and the way the front page branding made everything easy to understand and follow!

Review Source

AJ

Ahmed J.  
Data analyst  
Pharmaceuticals  
Used the software for: 2+ years

### "This tool is simply extraordinary for providing excellent UX to visitors of website"

June 27, 2022

5.0

Pros

Very easy to use and adopt the tool. Has many features that enable companies to provide better UX within a product page or website. The heatmaps feature and screen recording are a great way of understanding the pain points of the customers. This product is not really expensive which is another best thing. Collecting surveys from the users is another best thing to look at what people think of the website, which helps us tackle any issues that they have faced.

Cons

Setting up forms is not very straightforward although it does provide great value. The support team is not the best.

Review Source

LF

Liam F.  
Technical SEO  
Marketing and Advertising  
Used the software for: 2+ years

### "I was a longtime Hotjar using before switching to Microsoft Clarity"

August 11, 2023

4.0

Pros

Hotjar was the first of its kind for me, opened up new doors and enabled me to gather data I couldn't previously get. I used it religiously on every single website I setup for clients and even personal websites, it was the best tool I found.

Cons

Microsoft Clarity came along, offering the same features, for free. I wanted to stay with Hotjar as they'd always worked to improve their tool and the team were brilliant if I ever needed anything or had any questions but ultimately there wasn't much to differentiate Hotjar and Clarity so I decided the cost wasn't worth it for me.

Alternatives considered

[Microsoft Clarity](https://www.capterra.com/p/236349/Microsoft-Clarity/)

Review Source

Aris G.  
Web Developer  
Consumer Services  
Used the software for: 6-12 months

### "Best Analytics Software"

January 12, 2021

5.0

We use hotjar as a "testing" tool. We test our users and make the necessary changes to increase our sales. We monitor our user's actions, we learn and understand what people don't like, don't understand, what confuses them, what makes them leave, what they like and prefer and we adjust the interface, the products, the banners, the layout. It's cool!

Pros

We love the funnel feature where I can setup funnels to track the conversions and drop-offs. Our whole business is based on sales funnels and Hotjar makes it very very easy to track users through our pages. The fact that we can later watch in a video our users activity is priceless. Device splitting is very useful because we can monitor all user's movement and make the proper changes.

Cons

I've got nothing to comment here. Their free plan is very good and we know that many of our customers don't upgrade to paid plans because of that. The only thing I want to suggest users with shared hosting, if they have high traffic website, it may slow down the page load and it would be nice to upgrade to bigger server.

Review Source

Joseph B.  
Founder  
Entertainment  
Used the software for: 2+ years

### "I recommend."

November 14, 2019

5.0

Great for the most part. I've recommended it to many people. Easy to use, offers great info. It does make it hard to filter your own traffic from the data - my only qualm.

Pros

Great analytics tool. It records the sessions of people who visit your site - great information if you're looking to improve e-commerce conversions or design behavior.

Cons

I don't have much to suggest. It was easy to install the script onto my site. I do wish they'd make it easy to filter out my own device though - you have to manually filter out your own devices, which clouds the data.

Review Source

Response from ContentSquare

November 20, 2019

Hey Joseph, Wow, what a review! Thanks so much for taking the time, and it's great to hear you're finding Hotjar useful to improve conversions. Following up your issue with filtering out your devices - I'd love to follow up with you on this to hear your feedback in more detail. What would your suggestion be to make this easier? All the best, Alex from the Hotjar marketing team.

VR

Verified Reviewer  
Digital Marketing Specialist  
Airlines/Aviation  
Used the software for: 2+ years

### "If you need help understanding your users, this is the app! "

February 20, 2020

5.0

I LOVE IT! Helped us find how users are looking at our website and what they find important. Super useful too.

Pros

Detailed heat maps and scroll maps that allow us to know what is working and what users are focusing on on our website. I also love the ability to view recordings and segment them by UTM. Makes it easier for us to see what's working and not working per marketing channel as well as how to fix inherent UX issues.

Cons

I wish they made heat maps that segment by marketing channel like Crazy Egg. We have both and it's kinda a lot of money for both. I also dislike how it's hard to get iframes to be seen in recordings and remove HTML elements that we don't want to see in maps such as cookie banners.

Review Source

Response from ContentSquare

February 21, 2020

Hi there anon! Thank you so much for your kind words and your lovely review. So happy to see you are loving HJ generally and that it is helping you to fix issues for UX. This is great news! Heatmaps = segment by marketing channel. This would be great (i.e. If you could segment by referral/UTM URL you mean?). Likewise on your idea regarding removing HTML elements, very valid. I will put your ideas to the product team. Thanks again for your kind words and please do feel free to follow up with any issues or worries you might have via support@hotjar.com. Kind regards Bee @ Hotjar

Valentin B.  
Physicist engineer  
E-Learning  
Used the software for: 2+ years

### "Hotjar a good heatmap "

July 28, 2020

5.0

I have made some heatmaps for my website show-my-homework. I used these heatmaps to improve the website for the readers.

Pros

Years ago I had a website (show-my-homework) that was taken from me with force. I am Romanian and in Romania no matter what you work, the authorities will force you to surrender your wealth and work to those that use the muscles and not the brain. I worked to this website for 5 years and 2 years I had on this website hotjar. Hotjar was saying to me who comes to my website, who reads my website, who wanted to learn, who clicks etc. Hotjar is very good and I love Hotjar for this.

Cons

To make a heatmap with hotjar you have to wait for 1 day. This is not good, but after 1 day you will have a very good heat map. I do not love hotjar because you have to pay good money if you use it for 2 weeks :)

Review Source

Response from ContentSquare

August 18, 2020

Hi Valentin, Thanks for taking the time to review Hotjar. I'm sorry to hear about the problem with your website, but glad that you had a good experience using Hotjar to understand your users. I'd like to send you a small thank-you from us for your review. You can reach me at mike.cullen@hotjar.com and I'll share the details. Cheers, Mike

Carlos M.  
Desarrollador web  
Design  
Used the software for: 6-12 months

### "The eyes you should have on your website"

April 25, 2019

5.0

As a web designer this tool allowed me to track activity of the first users and detect things like: resposive problems, image problems, where the users are lost, where the users dont click and why, where the use leaves my website and why and what the user experience was overall. My experience with this tool has been almost fantastic, I would recomend it to every webmaster.

Pros

Hotjar is a very useful app, integrated with websites will allow you to track the heatmaps and every action the user made, divided by device and showing every data you can need and even more. It also has the hability to record every action of the user or track a funnel performance, I recommend this tool specially to optimize websites, because it will allow you to know where exactly the user is lost.

Cons

What I dont like if this software is that I would like to advice users that they are going to be recorded somehow but it doesnt have that option. I would also make a simpler design for admin the websites, right now it can be a little messy for new users.

Review Source

Similar Products

Featured

## Send me user reviews about this product

### Fill out the form and we'll send a list of the top-rated software based on real user reviews directly to your inbox.