Monitoring your website engagement is crucial if you are running an online business. This is because the more you understand your customers’ online experience, the easier it becomes for you to figure out how to optimize your website to boost conversions.
Nowadays, learning more about user behavior is just a breeze with tools like Mouseflow and Hotjar. When you use these tools to analyze user behavior on your website, you can easily tailor your webpages to keep the interest of your customers. Ultimately, this results in increased conversion rates and reduced bounced connections.
Since Mouseflow and Hotjar have almost similar offerings and functionalities, you may find it hard to pick the platform that can give you more specific insights into your demographic’s engagement with your website. Here, we take a look at the different features of these two platforms so you can decide which offers better value for your money.
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Mouseflow vs Hotjar Comparison Chart
| Model | Mouseflow | Hotjar |
 |  | |
| Price | Check Price at Mouseflow | Check Price at Hotjar |
| Session Recording | Non-stop, Unlimited | In snapshots |
| Heatmaps | Automatically for all tracked pages | Manually for each page |
| Conversion Funnels | Not sampled (All) | Sampled (Some) |
| Form Analytics | Activation not required | Analysis starts after configuration |
| Data Limitation | Limited heatmaps, funnels, recordings, and forms unless subscribed to Enterprise Plan | Unlimited heatmaps, funnels, recordings, and forms for all paying customers |
| Data Retention Policy | 1 month | 365 days |
| Free Trial Available | Yes | Yes |
| Platforms Supported | Web-based, Windows Phone app | Web-based, iPhone app, Android app |
| Unique Features | Video tutorials, API and ad hoc reporting, customizable reporting and analytics | Customer surveys, organized consumer feedback |
Integrations
Both Mouseflow and Hotjar offer integration with various web platforms.
When it comes to integrations, both Mouseflow and Hotjar offer integration with various web platforms. Compared to Hotjar, however, Mouseflow offers more integration options. Mouseflow can integrate with a broad range of third-party applications, including customer management software, marketing software, website software, and other data and analytics reporting tools.
Getting Mouseflow’s Pro plan or any higher plan also gives you access to the company’s API, allowing for customized web development. When you avail of the Growth plan, you get to access phone support for troubleshooting and many other issues. Hotjar does not have such offers. While it can help if you are struggling with some of the limitations in Mouseflow’s plans, the multiple third-party integrations that this platform offers are not quite as many as the ones you get with Mouseflow.
Session Recording and Replay
One major difference between Mouseflow and Hotjar is that Hotjar samples your recordings while Mouseflow does not.
Session recording and replay lets you see exactly how users are interacting with your web pages. As the name suggests, this feature records user behavior and lets you replay the recordings afterward.
Unlike Mouselfow, Hotjar records in batches and requires you to keep choosing the amount of information you want to record, then reset the recording once you have reached the limit. With Mouseflow, however, you don’t need to take extra actions once you start recording. You don’t even have to worry about remembering to turn your recordings on!
When it comes to their dashboards and session recording players, Hotjar does an amazing job of organizing information for you out of the box. This software lets you favorite specific recordings, review entry and exit pages, and other data such as session duration and the number of pages viewed. Hotjar also lets you filter your recordings by tags, by results from feedback campaigns, and by user attributes. It also includes a detailed list of all the actions you have taken on the page with their timestamp, as well as a sidebar where you can insert comments and add notes about the recording.
Mouseflow’s recording dashboard, on the other hand, offers an overview of your recordings, including the referrer URL, the duration of the recording, the number of pages in the recording, tags, and many more. If your recording has more than one page recorded and you click on the number of pages visited, you immediately get a breakdown of all the pages and the tag details of each page.
Heatmaps
Another common feature of Mouseflow and Hotjar is the heatmap. You will definitely need this tool if you are in the CRO, UX/UI, or marketing fields because these heatmaps show you where your users usually click and how far they scroll down your pages.
The key difference between Hotjar’s and Mouseflow’s heatmaps is that with Mouseflow, you have access to the platform’s powerful filtering capabilities to analyze the data based on your needs. For instance, if you want to know why your landing page is not converting, you can simply select the page from the menu to review all the essential data. It doesn’t require extra setup from time to time, unlike with Hotjar where applying filters means having to set up a new heatmap each time.
Meanwhile, the strength of Hotjar’s heatmap tool lies in its overlay of clicks, movement, and scroll, which comes with the option of reviewing behavior by the device. If you want to use a heatmap using this platform, just set up the pages you’d like to analyze, choose the sample size you wish to collect, then turn on the heatmap for data gathering.
Hotjar’s heatmaps feature also lets you see what buttons and pages on your website are getting the most attention. It also tracks and reports movement and scrolling behavior on your site so you may know where your site visitors are becoming less interested in. This feature is so helpful because it offers you a lot more insight into how you can improve your content or design. Hotjar also lets you download and share the heatmaps it generates so you can measure your site’s performance over time.
Conversion Funnels
Building conversion funnels is vital in understanding website performance.
Both Mouseflow and Hotjar let visitors build funnels and review sessions, although there are a few differences. With Mouseflow, the filtering options are so comprehensive that you can apply them across your funnel for a more extensive analysis. Since Mouseflow covers all and not just randomly select your visits, it’s safe to say that the results it yields are more reliable.
With Mouseflow, you can also edit your funnels whenever you want without losing any data. With Hotjar, however, you lose traffic older than 90 days when you edit your funnels.
Form Analytics
This feature lets you have a funnel-like analysis of all the forms on your website.
Mouseflow and Hotjar both have a form analytics feature, but Mouseflow’s is easier to set up.
Have you ever wondered why despite having a form on your website for lead generation, something’s still keeping your leads from converting? If yes, then you may have a problem with your form analytics. This feature lets you have a funnel-like analysis of all the forms on your website. While both Mouseflow and Hotjar have this feature, Mouseflow lets you set up your form analytics more easily.
With Mouseflow, you don’t need to set up and activate form analytics to start your analysis. As soon as you start recording on your website, you can already set up form analytics and review the results. You can’t do this with Hotjar, because the platform requires you to select the size of the sample and activate it first before you can even start to gather data.
It is important to note, however, that Hotjar has its unique way of keeping tabs on your forms. With its Form Analysis feature, you can easily see complete breakdowns of each form or entry box so you can see how much time your site visitors spend on each and where they normally drop off.
Data Limitation and Data Retention Policy
Hotjar is the clear winner when it comes to data limitation.
Hotjar lets you access all heatmaps, recordings, forms, funnels, and feedback even if you subscribe to its cheapest plan.
While Mouseflow seems to be ahead of the game when it comes to session recording, heatmaps, conversion funnels, and form analytics, Hotjar is the clear winner when it comes to data limitation. With Hotjar, you get unlimited heatmaps, recordings, forms, funnels, and feedback as long as you are a paying customer. This platform lets you access all these even if you subscribe to its cheapest Plus Plan, which costs only $29 a month. When you use Mouseflow, however, you get only a limited number of funnels, forms, and feedback, unless you pay more than $399 a month for the Enterprise plan.
If your goal is to gain insights on user behavior over a long period of time, you will never go wrong with Hotjar. This software offers a standard 365-day data retention policy on all its plans so it is very ideal for teams that want data retention for the long term. Ongoing processes such as optimization and growth are necessary to enhance overall user experience, but they do not happen overnight. With Hotjar, you have the option of acting on your discoveries immediately and studying and learning from trends in user behavior so you can decide which changes to make on your website.
Now, if you are only interested in observing user behavior and monitoring the actions of your visitors over a relatively shorter period of time, Mouseflow is nothing short of an impressive tool. Mouseflow’s data retention begins at one month and doesn’t extend unless you upgrade your plan. Its 12-month data retention starts at the Enterprise level, which costs around $400.
Pricing
One of the biggest differences between Mouseflow and Hotjar lies in the pricing.
Mouseflow uses a credit system for starters, while Hotjar doesn’t.
Mouseflow makes use of a credit system for starters. If you are on the Starter Plan, you will still pay every month for the service. Every month, however, you are allotted only a certain number of credits, depending on your plan. With Mouseflow, each credit tracks one user session so you will have to manage your credits as a resource when using the platform. Depending on your needs, you have the option of purchasing more credits or distributing them by setting a recording rate.
With Hotjar, however, credits don’t exist. Here, the software samples the number of sessions you have paid for automatically. As the number of site visits you want to track increases, Hotjar’s pricing increases accordingly. Fortunately, the platform offers a free plan for starters. If you are a starter, you can use this plan as long as you like, although with limited features.
Hotjar has three plans—the Basic Plan, the $29-Plus Plan, and the $89 to $989-Business Plan. Unlike Hotjar which only has three plans, Mouseflow offers five plans. It also has a Free Plan, a $29-Starter Plan, $99-Growth Plan, the $399-Pro Plan, and the most expensive plan of all, the Enterprise Plan.
Verdict
The question of which one offers better value for your money comes down to how you are going to use what you discover from using these tools. Use Mouseflow if you want a more passive approach to your customer engagement analysis. Otherwise, use Hotjar. Hotjar is also ideal for small businesses, while Mouseflow is ideal for mid-sized to large businesses.
Both Mouseflow and Hotjar are great options for tracking your customer analytics and answering questions you may have about user behavior. However, the question of which one offers better value for your money comes down to how you are going to use what you discover from using these tools. If your goal is to observe user behavior and monitor your visitors’ actions over a short period of time, Mouseflow can be helpful. Hotjar can help you with that too, but this tool is designed to give you insights for the long term so you can better understand user behavior, plan what changes to make on your website, and figure out how to improve the overall experience of your site visitors in the long run.
Another major difference is that one lets you take a more active approach than the other. If you want to take an active approach to your customer engagement analysis, go for Hotjar. This tool lets you create and distribute surveys to your customers, and then analyze their responses so you can have a better idea of your company’s performance. Mouseflow, on the other hand, lets you take a more passive approach in the sense that it gathers data based on consumer interaction with your website than have customers engage proactively through surveys. Based on the data it gathers, it creates visual data representations and comes up with tailored reports so you can have a better idea of what interests your demographic.
You may also have to consider the size of your business when choosing your web analysis tool. Hotjar is a great option if you are running a small business, while Mouseflow is the better pick if you are running a mid-sized to large business. If your business is large enough to afford Mouseflow’s Enterprise Plan, you can have access to an API for website customization and phone support–things that you don’t get with Hotjar. If you want unlimited data for just a fraction of the price, however, Hotjar is the right choice.