Hotjar Vs Google Analytics Vs Mouseflow

In this article we review and compare three of the most powerful web analytics tool on the market today – Hotjar vs Google Analytics vs Mouseflow. The objective is to help you gain a clear overview over the different features, functions, subscription options, pros and cons that each entails, so that you can make the right decision about which software to use in your business.

Software like Hotjar, Google Analytics and Mouseflow can all provide you with detailed analytics data that you can use to tweak and improve what you have to offer in the online sphere. But which one is the most intuitive and user friendly? Which one can furnish you with the most detailed and useful stats? Which one comes with the most advanced features? What do each of these softwares cost?

Keep reading.

How a web analytics tool like Hotjar, Google Analytics or Mouseflow can transform your online business

If you are not already using a website visitors analytics tool into track how visitors behave and interact with your websites and conversions funnels, you’re missing out.

Looking at visitor recordings and other data will help you understand user behavior better, so that you can achieve conversion optimization through better landing pages, conversion funnels and content.

Softwares like Hotjar, Google Analytics and Mouseflow have the potential to make significant differences to small businesses and large enterprises alike. After all, if you are able to understand how users behave and are able to give them more of what they want on a small scale, you’ll be able to hone and scale your web property in no time at all.

Hotjar

In order to help you make the best decision you possibly can as to which analytics software to pick for your business, we’ll be looking at out three contenders one by one. We’ll start with Hotjar.

Hotjar rightfully brands itself as a highly software, and promises to help website owners discover user needs and pain points.

Hotjar is very user friendly, even if you are a complete newbie when it comes to utilizing behavior analytics tools. The software’s primary function is collect data on how visitors interact across your websites, analyze this data and present it to you in the form of heatmaps that help you understand and analyze your visitors wants and needs.

Beyond heatmaps, Hotjar also furnishes you with session recordings (How many depend on which subscription plan you are on), as well as direct user feedback (Made possible by a real-time suggestion box on your site for users to express their frustrations and recommendations for improvement), and targeted surveys so users and potential customers can help you validate your ideas for new products or services.

Hotjar features and functions

Hotjar comes with a respectable number of features. Some are dependent on which subscription model you choose, but here is an overview over the features and functions that are included in all Hotjar plans:

  • Click/tap heatmaps
  • Scroll heatmaps
  • Movement heatmaps
  • Session recording
  • Overview of recordings
  • Friction events
  • Sharing option
  • Surveys
  • NPS
  • Visual feedback
  • API
  • Click rage detection
  • Incoming feedback widgets
  • Manual data capture

Hotjar payment and subscription options

Hotjar offers four different subscription options – Basic, Plus, Business and Scale.

It’s worth noting that all plans on Hotjar allow you to add unlimited team members and come with data storage for 365 days, as well as a 30-day money back guarantee in case you change your mind after signing up for one of the paid plans.

But first things first. It is completely free to join the Basic plan on Hotjar. The Basic plan is a good, simple way to get started and gives you access to 1000 page views/heatmap, manual data capture, 3 heatmaps generated per month, up to 300 user session recordings, and the ability to create 3 surveys and feedback widgets.

The next step up is the Plus plan, which is priced at $39/month. Hotjar recommend the Plus plan for small teams and startups who want to access more comprehensive analytics than what the Basic plan can provide. The Plus plan is a big leap up in terms of what you get access to, namely everything included in the Basic plan, plus up to 100 daily sessions, automatic data capture, unlimited heatmaps, up to 3,000 monthly recordings and unlimited surveys and feedback widgets.

The Business Plan, priced at $99/month, is a good option for growing companies and websites. It gives you everything included in the Plus plan, and much more. You get access to 2,500 daily sessions, 7 custom built-in integrations, the ability to analyze key user cohorts, rage clicks and u-turns, and removal of Hotjar branding (Very useful when you need to look professional)!

Finally, there is the Scale plan, priced at $389/month. While this is a significant step up in price, the analytics you get access to on the Scale plan are correspondingly impressive. On the Scale plan you get all of the same features and benefits as you do on the Business plan, plus over 4,000 daily sessions, tailored trailing with a Hotjar specialist, SAML single sign-on, enough data for even the largest websites, and full access to every Hotjar feature.

Hotjar pros

One of the primary pros of using Hotjar is immediately apparent when you join: The software is incredibly intuitive and easy to get to grips with, even if you are a beginner. Because Hotjar simplifies and lays everything out of you in an easily digestible way, Hotjar is a very pleasant tool to use.

Another Hotjar pro is that it how affordable it is. No matter your budget, you can sign up with Hotjar today and start learning more about how your website users behave.

And while being beginner friendly, Hotjar also offers plenty of room for larger websites and businesses to grow.

Hotjar cons

While Hotjar is an incredibly useful too, it does have its cons. Particularly when we compare it with more detaied analytics tools, like Mouseflow.

First of all, while Hotjar does provide precise Heatmaps, they could be more detailed. Hotjar heatmaps track scrolls, clicks and mouse movements, but they lack more granular tracking such as attention tracking and geography mapping.

Another con associated with Hotjar is that it is somewhat limited in range. For example, Hotjar doesn’t allow you to record session recordings, and it gives you no friction score that could help you identify and improve the weakest areas of your digital platforms.

Google Analytics

Our next contender for recommended user behavior tracking tool is Google Analytics.

Google Analytics is probably the best known web tracker software out there an has built up its solid reputation for over a decade. The question is, how competitive is Google Analytics today – and more specifically, how does it compare to Hotjar and Mouseflow?

Google Analytics promises to provide you with complete information about how visitors interact across your web domains and apps, so that you can learn how to better target your marketing, content and products.

With Google Analytics, you get access to insights and machine learning capabilities so that you can make the most of the collected data.

As an added bonus, Google Analytics syncs up to Google’s advertising and publishing offerings, as well as Google Tag Manager, so that you can immediately turn insights into results.

Google Analytics features and functions

Google Analytics offers a number of features and functions to help you track how your website visitors behave and interact with your websites. Here is an overview.

  • API
  • Cookies
  • Detailed tracking analytics (number of visitors to your pages, visitor progression, interaction and more)
  • Pageview, events and transaction hits tracking
  • User data and session data reporting
  • Dimensions and metrics

Google Analytics pricing and subscription options

Google Analytics offer just one subscription option – and it’s entirely free!

All that is required for you to be able to tap into the tracking capabilities of Google Analytics is a signup and a manual setup (as Google Analytics requires you to implement custom tracking cookies on each of the pages you wish to gather user behavior data from).

On one hand, the fact that Google Analytics is free ensures that newbies and startups on even the tightest of shoestring budges are able to make use of it – on the other hand, the fact that there are no more comprehensive tiers of Google Analytics you can upgrade to somewhat cap the scope and detail of tracking, which might not be sufficient if what you are running is a larger web-based enterprise.

Google Analytics pros

The firs and primary pro of using Google Analytics is that it is an entirely free to use tool.

What’s more, Google Analytics connects up with a number of other Google-run services, such as Google Adwords and publishing services. If you are running a business and are using Google Analytics, Google makes it easy for you to turn the data and insights you are gleaning from Google Analytics into tangible business improvements.

Google Analytics cons

While you shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth – and a free and powerful analytics too like Google Analytics is most certainly a gift horse, the software does have some drawbacks that are worth mentioning.

First of all, Google Analytics isn’t exactly very user friendly – at least not if you’re inexperienced with basic programming. Google Analytics requires you to manually implement tracking cookies across the websites and apps you wish to collect user data from.

Google Analytics is also somewhat limited in scope and doesn’t provide you with the same level of in-depth information that Hotjar and Mouseflow do, including session replays and heatmaps.

Mouseflow

Now that we’ve looked at both Hotjar and Google Analytics, it’s time to scrutinize our third and last contender, Mouseflow.

Mouseflow taps you into a wealth of detailed and precise information on how your page visitors interact with your site (including where in your sales funnels they leak out!). Mouseflow does this primarily via the session replay feature, which shows you users’ journey through your site in exact detail.

In short, Mouseflow gives you all of the tracking tools you need to dramatically improve customers’ experiences and skyrocket your sales figures.

Mouseflow features and functions

Of the three softwares we are looking at today, Mouseflow is by far the one with the most detailed tools and features. Here is an overview:

  • Downloadable heatmaps (including detailed recordings of clicks, scrolls, movement, attention and more)
  • Overview of recordings
  • Friction score
  • Friction events
  • Recording’s timeline with pages and times spent on each
  • Sharing option
  • Form analytics
  • Conversion funnels (including recordings of where users leak out)
  • Surveys
  • NPS
  • API
  • Phone support
  • Custom development
  • Click rage detection

Mouseflow payment and subscription options

Mouseflow offers five different subscription options, with the option of working out a custom plan if you are a large enterprise with traffic over 200,000 sessions per month. The five out-of-the-box subscriptions options are called Free, Starter, Growth, Business and Pro. Each plan gives you unlimited monthly page views – and each subscription is 25% off when you pay for an annual subscription.

The Free plan taps you into 500 monthly recordings, 1 website, 1 month of storage, 1 funnel report, 1 form analytics and 1 feedback survey.

The Starter Plan is priced at $29/month. It ups your limits to 5,000 recordings and 3 months of storage, 3 funnel reports, 3 form analytics and 3 feedback surveys.

The Growth plan, priced at $99/month, gives you 15,000 recordings, 3 websites and 6 months of storage, as well as 10 funnel reports, 10 form analytics and 10 feedback surveys.

The Business Plan costs $199/month and gives you 50,000 recordings, 10 websites, 12 months of storage, 20 funnel reports, 20 form analytics and 20 feedback surveys.

The Pro plan, priced at $399/month, instantly plugs you into 150,000 recordings, 20 websites, 12 months of storage, and 30 funnel reports, form analytics and feedback surveys.

Mouseflow pros

The sheer range of features offered by Mouseflow is impressive, as is the detailed data they provide you with. I think it is fair to say that Mouseflow gives you more detailed analytics than any of the other two tracking tools we have been looking at here today.

Mouseflow offers you extensive customer support.

Mouseflow cons

Cons? If Mouseflow has any, it is that the sheer amount of data that Mouseflow furnishes you with can seem overwhelming.

There are also minor customer experience annoyances to deal with, such as the infinite scroll capabilities that can make the magnitude of information seem overwhelming.

Google Analytc vs Hotjar vs Mouseflow Q & A

We’ve now looked at Hotjar, Google Analytics in some detail, but you may still have questions. If you do, you might find the answer here.

What is Hotjar vs Google Analytics vs Mouseflow?

Hotjar and Google Analytics are digital analytics tools that help online business owners and marketers track user behavior on digital platforms. This tracking and analysis is often detailed and includes session recordings (to track mouse movements, additional pageviews) and heatmaps (such as scroll maps and click maps).

The data that digital user behavior tracking tools like Google Analytics provides website owners with enables them to understand their customer better so that they can improve customer experience, and increase conversions.

What is Mouseflow?

Mouseflow is an incredily detailed online behavior tracking tool that is specifically aimed at helping online businesses increase conversion rates and maximize sales.

Mouseflow provides subscribers with in-depth analytics, including sales funnel visualization and customer pain point identification.

Is Mouseflow safe?

Mouseflow is a trusted software and is completely safe to use (As are Google Analytics and Hotjar, for that matter).

If you are ever in doubt as to the validity of an online tool that you are considering signing up for and giving your credit card details, always read plenty of reviews (like this one) first to verify whether the software is legit and trustworthy.

How does Mouseflow work?

Mouseflow enables users to track user action and behavior in incredible detail, with the aim of driving conversion rates, sales and signups through the roof!

Mouseflow accomplishes this by monitoring user clicks, mouse movements, interactions with on-site forms, conversion funnels and much more. Mouseflow records all of this in an anonymised session replay.

Hotjar, Google Analytics or Mouseflow – Which web analytics software should you choose?

While you cannot go wrong with any of the three analytics tools we have been looking at in this article, it is clear that Mouseflow offers you the most detailed and extensive data you could wish for.

What’s more, Mouseflow offers both plenty of possibility for the cash-strapped startup and the major digital enterprise.

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