Hotjar reviews: what 120+ real user reviews say about Hotjar

In the summer of 2019, we collected and looked at 128 in-depth Hotjar reviews from the same year from trusted third-party sources—97 from Capterra, 20 from G2, and 11 from Trust Radius—to see what our customers think of our service and how they use our tools on their websites.

Here are the highlights: we’re going to be 100% honest and share the 5 best and 3 least favorite things about Hotjar, plus the top reasons our customers and users think you should (and shouldn't) start using Hotjar on your website.

The 5 best things about Hotjar (based on reviews from 2019)

Let’s start with the good stuff. Across these customer reviews, we picked up on five main positive trends:

1. Hotjar is "super-easy to understand”, even for “non-techy users”

2. Hotjar lets you "see how users interact with your website"

3. Hotjar helps you "improve conversion rate"

4. Hotjar helps you "investigate how users experience problems or issues"

5. Hotjar is the "perfect complement to Google Analytics"

1. Hotjar is "super-easy to understand”, even for “non-techy users”

The most common concept that comes up again and again in reviews is how Hotjar is easy to use, set up, and understand.

In his detailed review on TrustRadius, Willy B. gives Hotjar 5 stars and calls it "easy to implement, even for non-techy users. A ready out of the box type of solution where implementation is done via GTM."

💡We added Google Tag Manager (GTM) support to Hotjar in 2019.

Alexander S, via Capterra, likes Hotjar's "fast and easy-to-use interface".

💡Here's an example of the Hotjar heatmap results interface in action. Play around with the options to see if you find it easy to use, too.

Sarah A, in her Capterra review, notes that "Hotjar makes it easy to understand your users," and credits our tutorials with making our tools "super easy to understand."

💡The Getting Started with Hotjar Guide Sarah refers to will give you an idea of how easy it is to install and start using tools such as heatmaps, recordings, and feedback surveys.

2. Hotjar lets you "see how users interact with your website"

It's great that users and customers find Hotjar easy to use, but what's better is how they're using it to see how their websites are really being used.

Kristen D, in her G2 review, explains that Hotjar lets you "see how users interact with your website", and that she uses it to "completely visualize" the user journey in a way she had never been able to before.

💡Hotjar's most visual tools are heatmaps (an aggregated visual map of where users click and scroll) and session recordings (a replay of individual user browsing sessions). For example, heatmaps help you see how far down the page users scroll (left) and where on the page they click (right):

Seeing how people use your website is not just for fun: as an anonymous reviewer notes, Hotjar's data can be used to "see where your efforts are, and are not paying off":

In their example, they used Hotjar to review how users viewed their offers, headlines, and prices, and improve bounce rates.

Speaking of improvement:

3. Hotjar helps you "improve conversion rate"

Brent R. on Capterra reports that Hotjar is “invaluable to the design process”: tools like heatmaps and recordings have led to informed design decisions, which in turn have “improved site metrics (time on site, page views, etc.) and increased conversion rates.”

💡To read more about how it’s done, check out this step-by-step case study on how to improve conversion rate on a landing page with the help of Hotjar tools.

If increasing conversion rates doesn’t sound like a glamorous enough job, in Laurie G.’s experience (documented on Capterra) using Hotjar will make you "Feel like James Bond, whilst improving your Conversion Rate."

4. Hotjar helps you "investigate how users experience problems or issues"

A big part of improving conversion rates is conducting analysis to find issues, bugs, and under-performing elements that need fixing or improving. Willy B. on TrustRadius reports that his marketing and technology teams share Hotjar insights with one another “when investigating how a user experiences a problem or issue on the website,” including front-end or UX and interaction issues:

Similarly, a Capterra reviewer points to the use of Hotjar to “make decisions regarding payment processes… and navigation in general” with an emphasis on e-commerce websites—where fixing even the smallest issue can have a large effect on conversion rates and business growth.

5. Hotjar is the "perfect complement to Google Analytics"

Hotjar is not a replacement for Google Analytics: it's designed to help you build on general analytics data points (like bounce rates and conversion rate) by showing you how users interact with your website.

Jason B (via Capterra) explains that Hotjar "acts as a perfect complement to Google Analytics," giving "a level of depth that Google Analytics can't provide."

💡This is exactly one of the use-cases we intended for Hotjar when we created it. Google Analytics will tell you which of your pages have the highest bounce rate, but it won’t give you the tools to understand why—whereas Hotjar's heat maps, session recordings, and surveys will help you collect that knowledge and make strategic changes.

Cory Runk, in his TrustRadius review, similarly explains that Hotjar "provides context to data like Google Analytics".

In her review (via Capterra), Jenn Z also mentions that Hotjar takes analytics insight to “a whole new level.” She uses Hotjar in combination with Google Analytics: "Using the data you gather in Google Analytics and cross-checking it with Hotjar helps to get a full picture of what's going on on your website."

And now for the not-so-good part:

3 least favorite things about Hotjar (based on reviews from 2019)

1. Potential impact on page speed

Out of the 128 reviews, we found 7 that specifically comment on the impact of Hotjar’s code on site speed. Here are Andrey from Capterra and an anonymous user from G2:

Now: every piece of JavaScript code you add to your site can affect your site in some way (including, for example, the script Google Analytics uses to track visitors). We want to be 100% honest: we cannot guarantee that a website will not be affected in any way—what we can guarantee, however, is that the Hotjar script has been designed to have a minimal effect on site performance.

💡This is a legitimate concern to have, and we take it very seriously—plus, we ourselves use Hotjar on our website, so it’s in our interest, too, to make sure the script works as smoothly as possible. If you are experiencing issues or are worried about it being the case, you can speak to our support team and read a thorough answer to the question: “Will Hotjar slow down my site?”.

2. Existing limitations

We’re the first ones to acknowledge that Hotjar is not perfect and some parts of it work better than others—and some of our customers have pointed this out, too. For example, a User on G2 wishes that “the reporting and sorting of data was a little more developed”:

On TrustRadius, Andrew R. notices that, when you have collected a lot of feedback, “results can be a bit cumbersome to parse through... It'd be nice to have additional ways to sort and filter feedback.”

And this G2 reviewer also found that “the form feature doesn’t work in a cart, which is probably one of the places we would like to see (it) work.”

There’s no way around it—these people are right.

There are indeed a few documented limitations within Hotjar forms, for example, and the data sorting and reporting options are not yet as efficient as we’d like them to be. But we are working on it: here is our publicly shared roadmap where we keep track of all upcoming changes to our product, and here is a dedicated page where our logged in users and customers can submit their improvement suggestions and requests, so our product team can prioritize them and plan ahead to keep improving Hotjar.

3. Pricing

Price comes up very often across these reviews, and if we’re honest it gets more positive than negative reviews.

Still, we promised we’d point out the negative reviews as well. So here is one, where a user suggests that pricing “could be a bit lower for the small startups:”

Here are two more from Capterra, where the reviewers found that “the price can be a bit steep for a startup or small business” and “the pricing model was too high for the amounts of traffic [their] website receives.”

We think these are very valid points: our customers should pay a fair price based on traffic to their sites—which is why we offer multiple options to help people get started on the right plan for them

• A free forever Hotjar option for low-traffic sites

• A free forever option for early-stage startups

• Discounts for non-profit organizations

• Tiered pricing starting at €29/month for business and agency sites, depending on traffic needs.

💡Our pricing page includes more details and a dedicated FAQ section to help our content and prospective customers identify the right price for them.

Hotjar is for you if you:

• Are using Google Analytics and want to dig further into what's driving trends

• Want to investigate how users experience problems or issues so you can improve their experience

• Want to increase conversion rates and revenue

• Need a tool that is powerful but simple and easy to use

Hotjar is NOT for you if you need:

• A replacement for Google Analytics

• A tool to run A/B tests

• An SEO tool

• A bug-tracking tool