The Best Session Replay Software in 2024

With so many options on the market, it can be hard to find the best session replay software in 2024. We've reviewed the top ten vendors and broken things down by pros, cons and pricing so you can make an informed decision.

But before we dive in, let's do a quick refresher on what session replay software is. For a more detailed look, you can check out our session replays product page or our blog post about what session replay software is.

What is session replay software? 

You can think of a session replay as watching a screen recording from your user while they are interacting with your product.

This screen recording will show you: 

• Your user's mouse movements
• The pages a user visited on your website or app 
• How far they scrolled down a particular page 
• How quickly they scrolled
• How they interacted with elements on a page 
• Where they clicked on a page 
• How fast they clicked off your app or webpage 
• If they showed signs of frustration, by rage clicking, for example

All of these individual interactions can add up to a larger picture about exactly how your users behave while in your product and ways you can improve it. 

The best user replay session softwares

The 10 best user session recording tools in 2024 are: 

• Fullview
• FullStory
• Hotjar
• Smartlook
• Dynatrace
• Datadog
• Lucky Orange
• SessionStack
• OpenReplay
• Session Rewind

Fullview - the best session replays for customer support

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Fullview’s end-to-end technical support platform was designed specifically to break down silos between customer support and product teams. With features like cobrowsing, session replays and console information, Fullview makes it easy to turn customer feedback and user experience data into actionable insights that customer support agents can use to provide better support and product teams can use to deploy proactive and targeted improvements to their product. 

Fullview is the only session replay vendor on this list that is based in Europe, which means that it is fully GDPR compliant and all user data is stored within the EU. 

Fullview seamlessly integrates with your existing support or tech stack for when you need to escalate level one support tickets into levels two and three. Some integrations it offers are with: 

• Intercom
• Zendesk
• Salesforce

and more! Visit the integrations page for more information about each one.

Pros of Fullview

• Fullview is specifically made for customer support and product teams
• Fullview also includes features like cobrowsing and console logs for better support and easier troubleshooting
• Fullview is one of the most inexpensive session replays solutions on the market, with a forever free plan and paid plans starting at $71
• Fullview is 100% GDPR compliant, with all data stored in the EU
• Fullview automatically blurs out sensitive data during session replays and gives you additional options to customize the data you want to censor
• Fullview's UI is intuitive and easy to use
• Fullview is quick to implement and lightweight, so it doesn't affect load speeds
• Fullview includes powerful filtering and segmentation options so you can find the exact session recording you're looking for
• Fullview has robust integrations with other customer support software
• You can view live user sessions (i.e. sessions that are currently taking place) on Fullview so you have the most up-to-date information
• Fullview's support team is always at the ready to help our users. We also believe in supporting you proactively and will alert you to any issues we notice immediately.

Cons of Fullview

• Fullview only works in web apps and does not work on websites
• Fullview is not suitable for marketing teams that want to do funnel analysis
• Fullview does not include a heatmap feature or customer feedback tools

Fullview's pricing

Fullview Session Replays Free

The free plan from Fullview gives your organization access to 1000 recorded session replays per month, with a 7 day detention and 1 integration.

Fullview Session Replays Pro | €71/month

The pro version starts at 10,000 session replays per month with a 30-day retention period and unlimited integrations. You can purchase more session replays as an add-on in-app. We also offer a 14-day free trial.

Fullview Replays Enterprise | Custom Pricing

We offer bespoke plans for enterprise clients tailored specifically to their needs, so get in touch.

FullStory

As a DXI (Digital Experience Intelligence) platform, FullStory is a complete package worth using if you're looking to transform how your e-commerce and retail business treats customers. With FullStory, you're getting an integrated package that you can use to ensure that members of various departments in your organization are provided with valuable insights about how to increase retail conversion rates.

Data collection with FullStory is pretty impressive as the app has the ability to auto-capture interactions retroactively, giving you a backdrop that shows why certain things tend to be the trend with users.

All events with FullStory are captured and indexed in a tag-free format. Within the snippet of code, your teams can quickly breeze through the information for the most minute details, including mouse movements, clicks, dynamic state changes, and more.

The recording playback tools with FullStory are also worth checking out as you can quickly skip through periods of inactivity during recordings.

Pros of FullStory

• FullStory's feature set is robust
• FullStory is relatively easy to implement
• FullStory has a user-friendly interface
• FullStory is great for enterprise companies who want a very comprehensive picture of their DX

Cons of FullStory

• FullStory is expensive and does not have transparent pricing information listed
• FullStory is not automatically GDPR-compliant
• FullStory captures a lot of data, which can be overwhelming to make sense of and analyze. This is especially true for companies in the startup to SMB range.

FullStory Pricing

Enterprise | Contact FullStory

This plan is designed for use by multiple departments within an organization, providing total clarity on its digital portfolio and customer behavior. This plan has a demo available, and the actual price varies, with most users reportedly paying around $800 per month. 

Business | Contact FullStory

This is a plan for teams looking for actionable data to learn about new trends, create customer journeys and provide a perfect user experience. There is a demo that can be used upon contacting FullStory. Alternatively, there's also a 14-day free trial available. 

Hotjar

Session replays, or "recordings" as Hotjar prefers to call them, allow you to view user activity on your website. One of the most valuable of these tools is the heatmap feature which visualizes user behavior and mouse clicks in a way that is similar to thermal imagery — areas of high activity or clicks are shown in red, and areas of low activity or clicks are shown in blue. By showcasing user activity through the heatmap feature, Hotjar has become very useful for UX designers who wish to prioritize areas of interest. By seeing what works in attracting users, Hotjar will ensure that your teams can do a fantastic job at improving landing pages on your website.

The recordings feature can be used to give you a complete picture of user activity and the ability to experience your website through the eyes (or mouse clicks) of your users.

Pros of Hotjar

• Hotjar includes features like heatmaps and feedback tools, which makes it extra suitable for marketing and UX teams
• Hotjar has a forever free plan and its paid plans are reasonable
• Hotjar has an easy-to-use UI

Cons of Hotjar

• Some users have reported issues with Hotjar's screenshots or data accuracy
• Some users have reported that the session recordings lag during viewing
• Hotjar's session recordings take time to process, so you cannot view ongoing user sessions

Hotjar Pricing

Hotjar is a Session Replay app with eight different pricing plans separated into two different categories. Ask and Observe. They recently introduced Engage as well.

Hotjar Observe

For session replays specifically, you'll want to choose one of the observe plans. It has four different tiers: free, plus, business and scale. The basic tier is free and includes 35 daily sessions with the ability to visualize user behavior through Heatmaps and recordings. Observe Plus includes everything in Observe basic plus API access and up to 3,000 session recordings monthly. It is priced at $32. Observe Business has everything in the Observe Plus package, along with some custom-built integrations, frustration and confusion signals from users, and an Identify API to track custom user attributes. Observe scale includes unlimited daily sessions along with the presence of a dedicated customer success manager. 

As you can tell, Hotjar's pricing is flexible, but with so many plans and tiers, it can be difficult to know exactly which one to choose.

Smartlook

Smartlook includes a funnel analysis feature, making it great for marketing and UX teams. It is also a pretty straightforward and relatively easy app to implement and use. Session recordings are presented in a simple interface that allows you to filter various components, including location, events, OS, and other things. These filters make it easier to streamline points of concern or priority while trying to improve the quality of your service.

Pros of Smartlook

• Users have praised Smartlook's segmentation capabilities
• Smartlook is great for marketing teams because of its funnel analysis capabilities
• Smartlook is affordable and has a free tier

Cons of Smartlook

• Some users have mentioned that data sometimes disappears
• Smartlook's heatmaps do not display the percentage of people who clicked somewhere, only the absolute number.

Smartlook Pricing

Free

The free plan for Smartlook provides users with 1,500 sessions monthly, allowing them to view 3 heatmaps, 2 events, and 1 funnel. 

Startup | $31/month

This plan includes 5,000 monthly sessions and the ability to view 10 heatmaps, 4 events, and 1 funnel.

Business | $93/month

With the business plan, users have access to 15,000 monthly sessions, along with 30 heatmaps, 12 events, and 4 funnels. You can upgrade these limits by contacting the Smartlook team.

Ultimate | Contact Smartlook

The Ultimate plan offers custom features for organizations according to their needs. The pricing model differs, so get in touch with their team to work out something custom.

Dynatrace

Dynatrace is an innovative application performance management software that can greatly benefit organizations of all sizes. With Dynatrace, you can easily monitor and optimize the performance of your applications, infrastructure, and user experiences. Utilizing cutting-edge AI and automation tools, Dynatrace provides real-time insights into the health and performance of cloud environments, no matter how complex they may be.

Dynatrace Pros

• Provides real-time visibility into application performance across complex environments
• Uses AI and automation to detect and diagnose issues quickly
• Offers end-to-end monitoring, from application code to user experience
• Provides detailed insights into user behavior and preferences

Dynatrace Cons

• Expensive, especially for small businesses or startups
• It can be complex and time-consuming to set up and configure
• Requires specialized expertise to use effectively

Dynatrace Pricing

Pricing for Dynatrace starts at $0.08 per hour for an 8GiB host.

Datadog

Datadog is a cloud-based monitoring and analytics platform that provides real-time insights into IT infrastructure, applications, and logs. It allows organizations to monitor their entire tech stack, including servers, databases, networks, and cloud services, in one place. Additionally, Datadog makes it easy to organize and search session replays. With Datadog, users can easily filter replays based on specific user interactions or page views to quickly identify performance issues or areas for improvement.

Pros

• Provides real-time monitoring and analytics for cloud-based applications and infrastructure
• Offers a wide range of integrations with popular tools and services
• It has a user-friendly dashboard that displays metrics and data in an easy-to-understand format
• Allows for customizable alerting and notification settings

Cons

• It can be costly for small businesses or startups
• Some users have reported issues with slow query times and inaccurate data
• It may require some technical expertise to set up and configure properly
• Limited mobile app functionality compared to the web interface
• It can be overwhelming for users who are new to data monitoring and analysis

Plans

Datadog offers a free account which includes 1-day metric retention and up to 5 hosts. Paid plans start at $15 per host per month and include 600+ integrations, out-of-the-box dashboards, and 15-month metric retention.

Lucky Orange

Lucky Orange is a dynamic heatmap tool that allows you to watch heatmaps in real-time. It enables you to see what users are doing on your website, so you can better understand their behavior and make improvements accordingly. With Lucky Orange, you can also track mouse movements, clicks, scroll activity, form submissions and more. This makes it easy to identify areas of improvement and optimize the user experience of your website.

SessionStack

SessionStack is a co-browsing tool that enables you to collaborate with users in real-time. It allows you to provide support quickly by seeing exactly what the user is experiencing on their screen. Additionally, it provides detailed analytics about user sessions so that you can gain insights into how they are interacting with your website or application. This helps ensure a successful experience for all users.

OpenReplay

OpenReplay is a self-hosted session replay suite that enables organizations to capture detailed information about user interactions with their websites or applications. It records every action taken by the user and stores it securely for later review or analysis. OpenReplay also provides powerful visualizations of data which makes it easier for teams to identify areas of improvement or potential issues quickly and effectively.

Session Rewind

Session Rewind is an advanced session replay tool that enables teams to analyze nuanced and detailed interactions with high-quality replays. It captures every action taken by the user while they are using your website or application, allowing teams to gain valuable insights into how they interact with it in order to optimize the overall experience for them. Additionally, Session Rewind provides powerful analytics tools which enable teams to measure performance metrics such as page load times or conversion rates easily and accurately.

Wrapping things up

Session replays can be immensely valuable for companies of all sizes and in all industries. They offer a way to gain deeper insights into user behavior and can help teams across the board improve their products, support, and customer experience. When choosing a session replay tool, look for ease of implementation, value for your money, minimal infrastructure impact, user privacy, and robust integrations. Fullview is one such session replay tool built specifically so that customer support and product teams can demystify user and product issues for exceptional customer experiences.