Hotjar
Analytics · Freemium
Overview
A website behavior tool. It records real visits, builds heatmaps of where people click and scroll, and runs short surveys on the page. The point is to see how people actually use a page, not just the totals a traffic report shows. Hotjar was founded in Malta in 2014. Contentsquare, a larger experience analytics company based in Paris, bought Hotjar in 2021 and merged the two products in 2025. Hotjar's tools now sit inside the Contentsquare platform, and new customers sign up there rather than for a standalone Hotjar plan.
What people use it for
Product and marketing teams use Hotjar to work out why a page is not converting. They watch session recordings to see where visitors hesitate, misclick, or leave. Heatmaps show which parts of a long page get attention and which get ignored, which helps decide what to move up or cut. On-page surveys ask a single short question at the moment it matters, for example why someone did not finish a signup. Feedback widgets let people rate a page or flag something broken. Teams use funnels to see which step in a flow loses the most people. Designers use recordings to settle layout debates with evidence instead of opinion. Research and support teams read survey answers to catch confusing wording and missing information that plain analytics would never surface.
Key capabilities
Heatmaps show clicks, taps, mouse movement, and scroll depth on any page, and can be filtered by device. Session recordings replay individual visits, with data in form fields hidden by default. Surveys ship with more than 40 templates and an AI generator, and can be triggered by behavior such as an exit attempt. Feedback widgets collect quick reactions tied to a spot on the page. Funnels track drop-off across a set of defined steps. Hotjar AI can draft surveys and summarize what recordings and responses are showing, so you do not have to watch every session by hand. The free plan captures up to 200,000 sessions a month and includes heatmaps, recordings, surveys, funnels, and more than 10 integrations, including Slack, HubSpot, and Google Analytics. Since the merger the wider Contentsquare platform adds error and speed analysis, zone-based heatmaps, and an AI layer called Sense that flags friction on its own. Session data is kept for 365 days on every plan, and the setup is built to meet GDPR and CCPA rules.
Limitations
Once traffic passes the plan's session allowance, Hotjar samples rather than capturing everything, so during a busy launch you may see only a slice of what happened. On the free plan recordings are sampled heavily. Pricing has grown more complicated since the Contentsquare acquisition: heatmaps and recordings, surveys, and product analytics are now three separately priced product lines, and the entry price rises steeply with session volume. Standalone Hotjar plans are no longer sold to new customers, so signups go through Contentsquare. Data retention is capped at 365 days regardless of tier. There is no native mobile app for reviewing data. Hotjar shows behavior on individual pages well but does not replace a full analytics tool that tracks events across a product.
Insight
Hotjar is best treated as a way to answer why, after an analytics tool has told you what. The recordings and heatmaps pay off when pointed at one specific problem, for example a checkout step that loses people, rather than watched at random, which eats hours and rarely helps. The on-page survey is the underrated part: one sharp question asked at the exit moment often explains a drop-off faster than a week of guessing. The main thing to watch is sampling. If your site gets real traffic, the plan allowance fills up and you stop seeing every session, which matters most during the launches you actually care about. The Contentsquare merger has also made pricing harder to read, with separate products for recordings, surveys, and analytics. Set up the free plan first and confirm it captures enough before paying.
Pricing
Freemium
Website
Last checked 2026-08-30