Hotjar is still a good fit for small and mid-sized teams that want heatmaps, session recordings and on-site surveys in one place, but it is no longer a separate product: since July 2025 it has been part of Contentsquare, and new users sign up there.
Our verdict: if you only need heatmaps and recordings, free Microsoft Clarity covers most of it.
Pay for Hotjar (now Contentsquare's Growth plan) when you also want surveys tied to recordings, longer data access and journey analysis.
We have not used Hotjar ourselves. This review draws on Contentsquare's and Hotjar's own docs, pricing pages and help center, plus real tests from our database that show what this kind of research leads to.
What Hotjar includes: heatmaps, recordings, surveys and interviews
Hotjar's core tools were heatmaps, session recordings and surveys.
Per Contentsquare's help center, those same tools "can be found in Contentsquare" after the merger.
The Hotjar landing page also lists newer additions such as attention maps, error monitoring, performance monitoring and AI summaries.
- Heatmaps: click, move and scroll maps that show where visitors focus and how far they get down a page.
- Session recordings (now "session replay"): playback of individual visits, useful for spotting rage clicks, broken elements and confusing forms.
- Surveys and feedback widgets: on-site questions that tell you why visitors hesitate. These sit in Contentsquare's Voice of Customer product.
- Interviews and user tests (Engage): Hotjar's help center says User Tests and Interviews are no longer available for purchase by new customers. Existing paying customers keep them.
In a CRO program, these tools sit at the research stage.
You watch behavior and ask visitors questions, form a hypothesis, then prove it with an A/B test.
Our guide to customer research for CRO covers that workflow.
The tests in our database show how this works in practice.
Dave Diederen changed the above-the-fold USPs to the points heatmaps showed buyers engaging with and got +7.28% revenue per visitor.
In another test, Dave added a countdown timer where heatmaps showed shoppers were focused and measured +20.65% revenue per visitor.
Peter Christensen rearranged homepage sections based on scroll maps for +12.64% conversion rate.
Survey data feeds tests just as well. Kasper Dolk added benefit bullets to the hero that answer survey objections, a test credited with +$763,679.14 profit per year.
KlientBoost reported +77% conversion rate from heatmap-led landing pages plus new PPC, though that result bundles several changes, so it is not a clean A/B test of the heatmap insight alone.
@oliverkenyon
@DaveDiederen@DaveDiederen@DaveDiederen
@kasper_dolk
@peterac_Note what Hotjar does not do: it does not run A/B tests.
It tells you what to test. You still need a testing tool to find out whether the change works.
Hotjar pricing and the free plan
Hotjar's old pricing page now redirects to Contentsquare's pricing page.
As of November 2026, the plans for Experience Analytics (heatmaps, replays, funnels) are:
- Free: $0, up to 200k monthly sessions, 1 month of data access, 1 project, replays, heatmaps, funnels, error and performance monitoring, and basic surveys.
- Growth: from $39 per month on yearly billing, 7k to 240k+ monthly sessions on self-serve tiers (higher volumes via sales), 13 months of data access, 3 projects, zone-based heatmaps, journey analysis and AI summaries.
- Pro and Enterprise: custom pricing through sales, from 1m sessions up to unlimited.
The 200k figure needs a closer read. The same pricing table says the Free plan captures replays for 5% of sessions, to a maximum of 10k, and Growth captures 15% (minimum 20k).
Full replay capture is listed only on Pro and Enterprise.
Analytics such as heatmaps are collected at 100% on every plan.
Surveys are priced separately under Voice of Customer.
As of November 2026, the free tier allows 100 responses a month and 3 surveys or widgets, and Growth starts from $79 per month, per Contentsquare's pricing page.
Prices cover your whole account within one region, not each site.
Contentsquare's own Hotjar page contrasts the new 200k monthly session limit with Hotjar's old free limit of 35 sessions a day.
That makes the free tier far more generous than it used to be for analytics, even with the replay sampling.
Contentsquare ownership: what changed
Contentsquare announced its acquisition of Hotjar on September 1, 2021. For several years the two ran separately.
According to Contentsquare's help center, Hotjar (Hotjar Ltd. Malta) merged into the Contentsquare Group as of 1 July 2025.
The practical effects for buyers:
- It is no longer possible to create a new Hotjar account. New users sign up on Contentsquare.
- Plans now follow Contentsquare's Free, Growth, Pro and Enterprise structure.
- Existing Hotjar customers can keep using the product. Billing and legal questions are covered in a dedicated Hotjar help article linked from the merger page.
The upside is a larger feature set at the same entry price.
The downside is that the simple, SMB-focused product people chose Hotjar for is now one part of an enterprise analytics suite.
Teams that want to stay small and simple may find more plans, add-ons and sales calls than they need. Our Contentsquare review covers the full platform.
Hotjar on Shopify
Hotjar's help center describes a manual Shopify install: copy the tracking code, open your theme's theme.liquid file and paste it just before the closing head tag.
Third-party apps that inject the code exist in the Shopify App Store, but they are not made by Hotjar.
Two limits matter for ecommerce stores. The same article says the code tracks your storefront only, because Shopify's built-in checkout does not support third-party scripts like Hotjar's.
It also says Hotjar collects no data in Shopify sandbox environments.
So you can study product pages, collection pages and the cart, but not checkout itself.
That is still where most testable ideas come from.
Dave Diederen, for example, turned a collection banner where heatmaps showed attention into a clickable countdown timer, credited with +$161K revenue.
Remember to recheck the install after a theme change, since switching to a new theme leaves behind code that lived in the old one's theme.liquid.
When Microsoft Clarity is enough
Microsoft Clarity is free with no traffic limits, and its FAQ says you are never asked to upgrade.
It offers heatmaps, session recordings and AI summaries, and it has a Shopify app.
The Clarity FAQ also lists its limits: it records up to 100,000 sessions per project per day, each heatmap covers up to 100,000 page views, and recordings are kept for 30 days (favorites and a random sample for up to 9 months).
We found no survey feature in Clarity's docs.
Clarity is enough when:
- You mainly want heatmaps and recordings to find friction on a few key pages.
- You run a small team with no budget for research tools.
- You already collect "why" data elsewhere, such as post-purchase surveys.
Hotjar (Contentsquare) is the better pick when you want surveys linked to replays, 13 months of data access on Growth, journey analysis, or one vendor for analytics and feedback.
Our Hotjar vs Microsoft Clarity comparison goes deeper.
Hotjar alternatives
Who Hotjar is not for: teams that only need free heatmaps (use Clarity), teams that need moderated interviews or user tests from a new account (Engage is closed to new buyers), and anyone who expects the tool to run A/B tests.
| Tool | Main features | Pricing model | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hotjar (Contentsquare) | Heatmaps, session replay, funnels, surveys | Free tier; Growth from $39/mo yearly; Pro and Enterprise by quote | Teams wanting behavior and feedback data in one tool |
| Microsoft Clarity | Heatmaps, recordings, AI summaries | Free | Budget-conscious sites that need heatmaps and replays |
| Lucky Orange | Heatmaps, session recordings | Paid plans, see vendor site | Small stores wanting a focused behavior tool |
| Heatmap.com | Revenue-based heatmaps | Paid plans, see vendor site | Shopify stores that want clicks tied to revenue |
We have not verified Lucky Orange or Heatmap.com prices for this page, so check their sites or our Lucky Orange review and Heatmap.com review.
For more options, see our Hotjar alternatives, the best heatmap tools and our website survey tools roundup.
We may earn a commission if you sign up for Lucky Orange or Heatmap.com through links on this page. It does not change what we recommend.
If you have the data but not the time to turn it into tests, a practitioner can help.
Dave Diederen, credited with several of the heatmap-led tests above, builds and tests Shopify stores.