# Hotjar Reviews 2026. Verified Reviews, Pros & Cons | Capterra > Is Hotjar the right Heatmap solution for you? Explore 539 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 (539) [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 March 13th, 2026 # Reviews of Hotjar Ease of use 4.6 Customer Service 4.5 ## Pros and Cons in Reviews Dandu M AnalystMarketing and Advertising, 51 - 200 employeesUsed the software for: 1-2 years. “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.“ February 15, 2026 SC Sean C MarketerMarketing and Advertising, 2 - 10 employeesUsed the software for: 6-12 months. “The freemium runs out pretty quickly, and I don't know how accurate the data is (it's hard to verify qualitative data)“ November 22, 2025 Rodrigo T Director of Cyber SecurityInformation Technology and Services, 10,001+ employeesUsed the software for: 1-2 years. “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.“ October 22, 2024 ZG Zohreh G Senior Product ResearcherHospitality, 201 - 500 employeesUsed the software for: More than 2 years. “I find integrating with google analytics to interpret users' behaviour a bit confusing. and also I don't see a specific merit in using Hotjar's survey tool instead of other products built specifically for surveys.“ October 21, 2024 Rodrigo T Director of Cyber SecurityInformation Technology and Services, 10,001+ employeesUsed the software for: 1-2 years. “Using Hotjar with my team and across the company has enabled us to make data-driven decisions, leading to optimized resource allocation and increased profitability.“ October 22, 2024 MI Mihail I Senior Product ManagerFinancial Services, 1,001 - 5,000 employeesUsed the software for: More than 2 years. “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.“ October 25, 2024 AG Annie G Marketing ManagerAlternative Medicine, 51 - 200 employeesUsed the software for: 6-12 months. “It gave fairly accurate heat mapping and information regarding user behavior on our website.“ June 4, 2025 Theresa F CRO Program ManagerMarketing and Advertising, 1,001 - 5,000 employeesUsed the software for: More than 2 years. “I sometimes question the accuracy of the reports. And if the page has a popup, modal, overlay, etc, that can be problematic.“ February 28, 2025 ## Showing most helpful reviews Showing 1-25 of 539 Reviews Sort by: Most Helpful Rating Company Size Reviewer's Role Length of Use Frequency of Use 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 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 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! 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 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 MA Michael A. Founder Marketing and Advertising Used the software for: Less than 6 months ### "Hotjar is great for website heat maps" July 27, 2025 5.0 The ability to know where your users spend time on was a real eye opener, and Hotjar made it not only possible but easy for us to do when we used it on a Shopify website. Pros Hotjar was the first website heat map tool we've used, and it revealed a great deal about user behaviour without needing a great deal of set up. It was easy to learn and use. Cons At the time we trialled it, a few years ago now, there was a noticeable impact on our page load speed. Review Source Rodrigo T. Director of Cyber Security Information Technology and Services Used the software for: 1-2 years ### "Power Tool for User Experience Optimization" October 22, 2024 5.0 Using Hotjar with my team and across the company has enabled us to make data-driven decisions, leading to optimized resource allocation and increased profitability. Pros Hotjar can handle massive datasets and traffic, enabling granular user segmentation. 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. Cons I've been very satisfied with this tool and haven't experienced any negative aspects. 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 KM Kevin M. IT Telecommunications Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Solid solution for conversion optimization" September 29, 2024 5.0 We used Hotjar to track website user sessions, looking for hangups that might prevent customers from converting on partner websites. Pros We used as an additional tool to analyze customer UX by seeing live sessions. Cons A little heavy from a performance standpoint. Review Source SR Steve R. Marketing Manager Apparel & Fashion Used the software for: 1-2 years ### "Great for keeping an eye on UX" July 12, 2024 5.0 Implemented by our Shopify developers, we use hot jar to improve UX by viewing recordings and monitoring post checkout surveys that come through to a slack channel. Pros The post checkout survey is our main use for Hotjar. It was especially helpful during our transition from Adobe Commerce to Shopify. I also love that sessions our recorded so we can check any anomalies that pop up. Cons No bad comments really, it provides some good insights at a decent price. Review Source AM Adulhakeem M. Marketing Supervisor Hospital & Health Care Used the software for: 1-2 years ### "Satisfaction " June 13, 2024 5.0 Really self explanatory and easy to access Pros the level of genuine feedbacks i get, on how to improve my product is really impressive and also the integration. Cons IT is quite pricy but as time goes on you will enjoy it because of the results it brings . Review Source AM Atul M. Author Arts and Crafts Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Most Recommended Product" January 1, 2023 5.0 Pros User experience insights: Hotjar provides a range of tools for understanding user behavior and experience on your website, including heatmaps, session recordings, and polls.Easy to use: Hotjar has a user-friendly interface that makes it easy to set up and use, even for users who are new to web analytics.Customization: Hotjar allows you to customize your tracking and feedback tools to suit your specific needs and goals.Integration: Hotjar can be easily integrated with a range of other tools and platforms, including Google Analytics.Affordability: Hotjar offers a range of pricing plans to suit different budgets and needs, including a free plan for small websites. Cons Data privacy: Some users may be concerned about the data that Hotjar collects and how it is used.Limited functionality: Hotjar has a range of features, but it may not have all the advanced functionality that some users require.Limited support: While Hotjar offers online resources and a knowledge base for users, it may not provide as much personal support as some users would like.Dependence on cookies: Hotjar relies on cookies to track website visitors, which means it may not accurately track users who have disabled cookies in their web browsers.Resource-intensive: Hotjar's tracking and feedback tools can be resource-intensive, which may impact the performance of your website. 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 IB Ian B. Director of Marketing Marketing and Advertising Used the software for: 1-2 years ### "There's really now substitute for sticky UX problems." December 11, 2019 5.0 When you absolutely, positively need to know exactly what your users are doing, there really is no substitute for Hotjar. Is it a bit invasive? Sure! But literally watching users' every move has been where the market was headed for a long time. We have saved easily tens of thousands of dollars in developer/PM/design time by watching our users, and we've rolled those savings back into product improvements directly driven by data from Hotjar. Does that cross an ethical line? Maybe... but if you gotta have it, then you gotta have it \*shrug emoji\*. Pros Clearly the best software for watching your every user's every move. They could probably have stopped there. However, the tagging, filtering and playback functionality is an incredible upgrade to the tool. User journey videos are raw unstructured data, incredibly valuable but somewhat hard to leverage at scale within an institutional decision-making paradigm. The simple tools to add context and structured data by tagging and annotating recordings makes the core functionality much more valuable. Cons Everything about Hotjar is exactly how you would hope it would be. If you are considering it now, you should probably have already gotten out your wallet and bought it. You know what it does. It does it extremely well. The only thing I don't love about it is it feels kind of unethical. But hey, I get paid to do my job... and what is money if not a tool to get people to take actions they might not otherwise have taken (for example, recording the every move of every visitor to a website). Review Source Response from ContentSquare December 17, 2019 Hi Ian, Thanks for your review! We're pleased to hear that you are finding great value in Hotjar. From its very first day, Hotjar was designed with privacy of the end user in mind. If you want to find out more on Hotjar's approach to privacy please read this blogpost. https://www.hotjar.com/blog/our-approach-to-privacy-2019-and-beyond/ b/r Denis VR Verified Reviewer Online Performance Manager Marketing and Advertising Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Started from the bottom, now we here" October 10, 2018 4.0 I've been a beta user and I've now been using Hotjar for over 2 years (even have the tshirt to prove it). While other tools such as Zoho PageSense, MouseFlow and Inspectlet do a similar job, Hotjar makes it dead-simple. Heatmaps and visitor recordings are a godsend, next to regular anayltics. And every single feature is free? That's beyond crazy! Pros \- Heatmaps and visitors recordings work like a charm and provide a great deal of information. - If Google Analytics tells you what and how many, Hotjar tells you why: polls make it easy to gather user feedback. - Using all of its features, you can get a better grasp into why people don't fill in a certain form or don't buy a product. Cons \- Some features are blocked behind a paywall. - Organization of sites and companies can get confusing at times. - Not all descriptions make it clear what a specific feature does. Review Source 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.