Choosing the right session replay software can really make a difference when it comes to understanding and improving user experience on your website. Two widely debated options on the market are Microsoft Clarity and Hotjar. Both offer similar functionalities, but which of these two is the best session replay option for your business?
In this article, we'll compare and contrast the features, pricing, and overall performance of Microsoft Clarity and Hotjar to help you make an informed decision. We’ll also give you an alternative to consider.
What is Microsoft Clarity?
Microsoft Clarity is a free analytics tool that provides insights into user interactions on your website. It offers features like session replays and heatmaps, allowing you to understand user behavior better. Clarity also enables you to pinpoint areas where users could get frustrated by detecting frustration signals like rage clicks, dead clicks, and quickbacks.
What is Hotjar?
Hotjar is a comprehensive tool for understanding user behavior on websites. It provides heatmaps of clicks and actions, user session recordings, and facilitates user interviews. It's a remote-based startup headquartered in Malta, offering insights into why users leave your site, helping to optimize user experience and increase conversions.
Microsoft Clarity vs. Hotjar: features comparison
In the following section, we'll compare the differences between Microsoft Clarity and Hotjar. While both offer session replays and heatmaps, they have some important differences.
Microsoft Clarity features
- Insights dashboard: Microsoft Clarity provides a comprehensive behavioral analysis of user interactions with your website.
- Intuitive dashboard: Clarity's dashboard displays engagement and webpage insights through various statistics and visual tools.
- Heatmaps: Allows businesses to identify trends in user clicks, scrolls, and attention with heatmaps.
- Integrations: Microsoft Clarity integrates with Zapier and Google Analytics, enabling businesses to track and analyze data on multiple platforms.
Hotjar features
- User Feedback: Hotjar allows for in-the-moment user feedback through tools like surveys and feedback polls. This can help you gather direct input from your users about their experience.
- User Interviews Feature: A new feature in Hotjar is the ability to conduct user interviews. This can provide deeper insights into user behavior and preferences.
- Conversion Funnels: Hotjar can help you track conversion funnels, highlighting where users drop off in the conversion process.
- Integrations: Hotjar can be integrated with other platforms through its API, allowing you to combine Hotjar's insights with other data for a comprehensive understanding of your users.
Microsoft Clarity vs. Hotjar: use case comparison
In this section, we'll cover use cases for both Microsoft Clarity vs. Hotjar. Microsoft Clarity is ideal for web designers and marketers seeking to enhance interactions and marketing plans, while Hotjar suits marketing teams, product managers, and researchers aiming to improve conversions and uncover unique insights.
Microsoft Clarity use cases
Microsoft Clarity is a valuable behavioral analytics tool perfect for web designers, UX researchers, digital marketers, SEO experts, e-commerce entities, online retailers, publishers, SMEs, and developers. It enables users to understand website interactions, refine marketing plans, boost product page visits, comprehend user behavior, and enhance analytics tools. Being free, it's particularly useful for SMEs seeking impactful insights without extra costs.
Hotjar use cases
Hotjar is a tool beneficial for various professionals. Marketing teams can use it to enhance conversions and CX teams to foster customer-centricity. It's also useful for product managers to develop loved products, UX designers to craft compelling designs, and researchers to uncover overlooked insights.
Microsoft Clarity vs Hotjar: user reviews comparison
In this section, we’ll cover user reviews for both Microsoft Clarity and Hotjar. Both tools have a high overall satisfaction rating, with Microsoft Clarity achieving 4.5/5 and Hotjar scoring 4.3/5 on G2 Crowd.
Microsoft Clarity user reviews and rating
Microsoft Clarity has a 4.5 out of 5-star rating on G2, with 32 reviews. Here are some positive reviews to highlight what users love about Clarity:
- "Tons of good data for businesses to use"
- "User-friendly and intuitive tool"
- "Unlimited tracking and recording"
However, some users have noted the following negatives:
- "Only retains data for 30 days"
- "Lacks custom tracking URLs"
Hotjar user reviews and rating
Hotjar has a rating of 4.3 out of 5-star rating on G2, with 298 reviews. Users like the following things about the tool:
- "The heatmaps are fantastic"
- "Conversion funnel tools are great for tracking user behavior."
However, some users have noted the following negatives:
- "Hotjar has limited options compared to other marketing and analytics tools."
- "The price is higher than other similar options."
- "Messy dashboard experience"
Microsoft Clarity vs Hotjar: pricing comparison
In this section, we’ll cover pricing for both Microsoft Clarity and Hotjar. While Hotjar offers free and paid plans, Microsoft Clarity is completely free.
Microsoft Clarity pricing
Microsoft Clarity is free for all users. There are no hidden costs, and you can access all its features without any limitations.
Hotjar pricing
Hotjar offers a forever free pricing tier, which includes limited heatmaps and session replays. Paid plans start at $32 up to large-scale custom plans.
Alternative to Microsoft Clarity & Hotjar: Fullview
When looking for an alternative to Microsoft Clarity and Hotjar, Fullview offers a comprehensive set of features that cater to different business needs. Here are a few of the standout features of Fullview:
- Fullview offers comprehensive session replays that record all user sessions and automatically detect console warnings, errors, and signs of user frustration.
- Fullview's unique cobrowsing feature allows support agents to initiate a call with users within their app and take control of the user's screen for effective troubleshooting.
- Based on customer identity, Fullview provides valuable insights for customer support teams by revealing which specific customer is having trouble using their platform. This makes it a particularly useful session analytics tool for web apps, where you often need to be able to associate user session replay recordings and users. In contrast to that, Hotjar and Clarity are better for website analytics because they anonymize user data.
- Fullview offers powerful filtering and segmentation capabilities, enabling quick access to key session insights and custom views based on specific filters like user behavior.
- Fullview is 100% GDPR compliant, with data stored on EU servers, ensuring top-notch data security.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the choice between Microsoft Clarity and Hotjar ultimately depends on your specific business needs and preferences. Both tools offer robust features for understanding user behavior, with Microsoft Clarity standing out for its free pricing model and emphasis on behavioral analysis. Hotjar, on the other hand, provides additional features like user feedback tools and conversion funnel tracking, catering to a diverse range of professionals.
For those seeking an alternative, Fullview emerges as a compelling option with its unique set of features. From comprehensive session replays to the innovative cobrowsing feature and robust customer identity focus,
Fullview provides a versatile solution tailored to the needs of customer support teams. Its GDPR compliance and secure data storage practices further enhance its appeal, ensuring top-notch data security.
In the ever-evolving landscape of session replay software, each platform brings its own strengths, and a careful consideration of features and user reviews can guide businesses in making an informed decision.
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Sources last checked on: November 14th, 2023
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