Hotjar Alternatives for Small Stores: Heatmaps Plus On-Site Messaging

What changed with Hotjar

As of October 12, 2026, both hotjar.com and its pricing page redirect to Contentsquare. Contentsquare’s Hotjar page says “Hotjar is now part of Contentsquare” and that “the two platforms have merged into a single, more powerful experience intelligence platform.” It also says it is no longer possible to create a new account on Hotjar: new users are directed to Contentsquare’s Free plan, while existing Hotjar users can still log in. If you are reading a comparison that quotes old Hotjar plan names and prices, it is out of date.

So “Hotjar alternatives” now really means two questions. First, should you simply follow Hotjar to Contentsquare? Second, if your needs are small (one store, a modest traffic level, and a wish to act on what you see rather than only watch it), is there a better fit? The rest of this guide is meant to help you answer both.

What you actually need from a Hotjar alternative

Hotjar became popular because it bundled three things small teams wanted: heatmaps, session recordings and on-site surveys. Before comparing tools, decide which of those you really use, and what you want to do with the findings. A short checklist helps.

1. Heatmaps. Do you need click and scroll maps for your key pages? Nearly every tool in this list has them, so this rarely decides the choice on its own. If heatmaps are new to you, our guide to reading website heatmaps explains what each map can and can’t tell you.
2. Session recordings. Do you watch individual visits to see where people get stuck? If yes, recordings are a must, and that rules out marketingLABO, which doesn’t record sessions.
3. Surveys and feedback. Do you ask visitors questions on the page (“What stopped you from buying today?”)? Only some tools include this.
4. Acting on what you find. Once you see that visitors stall on the shipping section, what happens next? Some tools stop at insight; others let you show a message, a banner or a form to the visitors who match a pattern.
5. How you are billed. Most analytics tools charge by monthly sessions. A store with seasonal spikes should check what happens when it goes over the limit.
6. Privacy and consent. Recording tools capture detailed behavior. If you sell to the EU or UK, plan how the tag will load under your consent setup before you install anything.

Quick comparison (as of October 12, 2026)

This table lists only what each official page states. A dash means the page we read doesn’t list that feature for the product, not necessarily that the feature is missing.

Contentsquare: the direct successor

If you liked Hotjar and want the closest continuation, Contentsquare is the obvious first stop, and its Free plan is generous. The pricing page lists the Free plan with 200k monthly sessions, one project, “Replays, Heatmaps + Funnels,” error and performance monitoring, and basic surveys (100 survey and feedback responses a month). The Hotjar page compares that with the old Hotjar Free plan’s 35 sessions a day, and says new users start with a 15-day trial of the Growth plan with no credit card required.

The Growth plan is listed from $49 a month for 7k monthly sessions and goes up in steps with traffic. Growth adds 13 months of data access, three projects, zone-based heatmaps, journey analysis, impact quantification and AI summaries. The FAQ says Growth plans don’t require an annual contract, that paying annually in-app by card or PayPal adds a 20% discount, and that customers in Europe are billed in euros. Pro and Enterprise are quoted by the sales team. Surveys and feedback have their own plans, from a Free tier with 100 monthly responses to a Growth tier listed from $99 a month for 500 responses.

Where Contentsquare is stronger than marketingLABO: session replay, surveys, journey analysis, error monitoring and AI summaries. Where it may be more than a small store needs: it is built as an “experience intelligence platform” for teams that analyze a lot, and the paid tiers are aimed at larger traffic and teams. It is an analytics product; the pricing page we read doesn’t list pop-ups or email.

Microsoft Clarity: free recordings and heatmaps

Microsoft Clarity’s home page describes it as “Free forever” with “No limits on traffic.” It offers session recordings (“Watch user sessions to uncover where people get stuck and why”), heatmaps showing where users click, scroll and drop off, and AI features: AI summaries, AI chat with your data, an AI visibility report, and “Brand agents,” an AI shopping assistant. The page also says Clarity is “GDPR & CCPA ready.”

For a small store that mainly wants to watch recordings, Clarity is hard to beat on price: it costs nothing. Its limits for our purposes are similar to Contentsquare’s: it shows you what happened, and apart from the Brand agents assistant, the page we read doesn’t list pop-ups, forms or email, so you need another tool to respond on the page or by email. You can run Clarity for recordings next to a separate tool for pop-ups and email. That is a reasonable setup as long as you keep the number of tags under control and cover both in your privacy notice and consent setup.

Lucky Orange: analytics plus surveys, chat and announcements

Lucky Orange takes a different approach: “all features available on all plan levels,” with plans that differ by monthly sessions. As of October 12, 2026 its pricing page lists Build at $32 a month paid annually for 3,500 monthly sessions, Grow at $72 for 10,000, Expand at $199 starting with 50,000 and Scale at $839 starting with 300,000, plus a custom Enterprise plan. The comparison table shows Build at $39 a month, which appears to be the month-to-month price. There is no free plan; there is a 7-day free trial with full access.

Every plan includes dynamic heatmaps, session recordings, unlimited surveys and announcements, live chat, a live visitor view, conversion funnels and page and form analytics. Base data storage starts at 60 days, with upgrades to 90, 180 or 365 days, and additional websites cost $5 per site. The page is inconsistent about Discovery AI: the trial says it is included, while the comparison table lists it as an add-on.

Lucky Orange is the closest to an all-in-one in this list: recordings plus a way to talk to visitors. If live chat matters to you, it is the only tool here that offers it. The trade-off is the session-based price with no free tier.

marketingLABO: heatmaps and visitor history, then act on them

marketingLABO is built for a different job. It records what visitors do and then lets you respond to them on the site with pop-up banners, and by email with newsletters and automated journeys. It is meant for small online stores that want a single tag and a single dashboard for “see it, then do something about it.”

On the analytics side you get per-page heatmaps (time on page, scroll depth and clicks), a timeline of what each visitor did (see how to read a single visitor’s journey), reports by traffic source, page and conversion, and micro-conversions such as pages viewed, a specific URL, time on page and return visits. On the action side you can show pop-up banners to visitors who match conditions: page URL, first or Nth visit, days since the last visit, pages viewed or not viewed, and traffic source (organic, referral, direct or a URL parameter). Banners can appear immediately, after a number of seconds on the page, or at a scroll depth, as a modal, a floating box or a bar, on all devices or only mobile or desktop. There are 55 English e-commerce templates, and each campaign reports impressions and clicks.

Beyond banners, every plan includes a form builder with a drop-off report for each field and A/B testing for forms. Light adds email newsletters and one landing page; Standard adds automated email journeys that branch on opens, clicks and return visits. The Free plan has no time limit and doesn’t need a credit card. Light is $29 a month or $290 a year, and Standard is $59 a month or $590 a year, before tax. See plans and pricing for the full table.

What marketingLABO doesn’t do

Because this is our product, here is the list we would want to read before signing up for anything:

1. No session recordings. You get heatmaps and a per-visitor timeline of pages and actions, not video-style replays of mouse movement and taps. If you rely on watching recordings, keep Clarity, Contentsquare or Lucky Orange for that.
2. No surveys, feedback widgets or live chat. You can collect information with forms, but there is no on-page survey or chat.
3. No A/B testing or frequency cap for pop-up banners. A/B testing exists for forms only, and banner rules don’t include a “show at most N times” setting.
4. No store integration. There is no Shopify or WooCommerce app; the tag doesn’t read cart contents, cart value or orders. “Cart reminder” targeting is based on pages viewed and not viewed, such as “viewed /cart but not the order-complete page.”
5. No consent management. If you need a cookie banner, use a separate consent tool.
6. Page-load based tag. The tag goes in the <head> of every page and works on sites that load a new page for each URL. We don’t provide install guides for single-page-app or headless storefronts.

Which one fits your store?

There is no single best Hotjar alternative; there is a best fit for what you do with the data. These scenarios cover most small stores.

To compare cost fairly, start from your own numbers. Look up last month’s sessions or visits in the analytics you already have, add a margin for your busiest season, and check which tier each tool would put you in. Session-priced tools (Contentsquare Growth and Lucky Orange) get more expensive as traffic grows. marketingLABO’s plan table differs by the number of sites and of published forms, banners and landing pages, and doesn’t list session tiers. Clarity states no traffic limit at all.

A common pattern for small stores is to start with whatever is free, look at the data for a few weeks, and only then pay for the part that is actually holding you back. If the heatmaps keep showing the same problem and you have no way to respond on the page, that is a sign you need a messaging tool more than a deeper analytics tool.

From insight to action: a worked example

Here is how the “see it, then act on it” loop looks in practice. The steps are general, and we note which parts marketingLABO covers.

1. Spot the pattern. The scroll map on your best-selling product page shows that few mobile visitors reach the shipping and returns section. The visitor timelines show people moving between the product page and the cart several times without ordering.
2. Form a hypothesis. Shoppers may not know the shipping cost or the free-shipping threshold until checkout.
3. Fix the page first. Add a one-line shipping note near the price. Page changes help every visitor and don’t depend on any tool.
4. Add a targeted message. Show a bar with the free-shipping threshold on product pages after visitors scroll halfway down. Our guide to free shipping banners covers wording and placement.
5. Follow up with returning visitors. For visitors who viewed the cart but not the order-complete page and later came back, show a reminder. See showing different messages to first-time and returning visitors.
6. Measure. Compare banner impressions and clicks with orders over the same period, and keep the heatmap running so you can see whether the shipping section gets more attention after the change. Because banners have no A/B testing in marketingLABO, judge changes over comparable periods and be cautious with small numbers.

Switching checklist

Whichever tool you choose, moving from Hotjar (or adding a second tool) goes more smoothly with a short plan.

1. Write down what you used. List the heatmaps, recordings filters, surveys and funnels you actually looked at in the last three months. Anything you didn’t open is probably not worth paying for.
2. Save what you want to keep. Screenshot key heatmaps and note survey findings before you change anything. Don’t assume history can be moved between vendors.
3. Install the new tag in the head of every page. Platform guides help here: Shopify, WooCommerce, Wix, Squarespace, BigCommerce, Webflow and plain HTML sites.
4. Recreate your goals. Set up conversions (for example, the order-complete page) and any micro-conversions you care about, such as viewing the cart.
5. Update your privacy notice and consent setup. Name the new tool, describe what it collects, and check that it loads according to your consent rules.
6. Remove the old tag. Once the new tool collects data, take out tags you no longer use. Extra scripts slow pages down and keep collecting data you don’t need.
7. Wait before judging. Give the new tool a couple of weeks of normal traffic before comparing numbers. Different tools count sessions and visitors differently, so don’t expect identical totals.

A note on privacy and recordings

Session recordings and detailed behavior data are personal data in many jurisdictions. If you have visitors from the EU or UK, you will usually need consent before setting non-essential cookies or similar technologies, and you should mask form fields and anything sensitive in recordings. Each vendor documents its own masking and consent options; check them during setup. marketingLABO doesn’t include a consent management tool, so you would load its tag through your existing consent solution. For the email side of consent, see our guide to GDPR and email marketing consent. This is general information, not legal advice.

Frequently asked questions

Can I still sign up for Hotjar?

According to Contentsquare’s Hotjar page as of October 12, 2026, no. It says it is no longer possible to create a new account on Hotjar and directs new users to Contentsquare’s Free plan. Existing Hotjar users can still log in.

Is there a completely free Hotjar alternative?

Yes. Microsoft Clarity describes itself as free forever with no traffic limits, and Contentsquare has a Free plan with 200k monthly sessions. marketingLABO’s Free plan includes heatmaps and visitor history for one site with no time limit, plus one form and one pop-up banner, but no recordings.

Does marketingLABO have session recordings?

No. It has per-page heatmaps and a per-visitor timeline of pages and actions. If recordings are essential, use a recording tool alongside it or instead of it.

Can I run two analytics tools at once?

Yes, many stores do. Keep an eye on page speed, make sure both are covered by your privacy notice and consent setup, and don’t expect their session counts to match exactly.

Which tool lets me respond to what I see?

In this list, Lucky Orange offers announcements and live chat, and marketingLABO offers pop-up banners targeted by behavior plus email newsletters and journeys. The Contentsquare and Clarity pages we read focus on analysis, though Clarity also promotes an AI shopping assistant called Brand agents.

If heatmaps and visitor history plus targeted banners sound like the right fit, you can start on the Free plan with one tag and no credit card.

Sources

1. Contentsquare, “Hotjar is now part of Contentsquare” (accessed October 12, 2026): https://contentsquare.com/hotjar/
2. Contentsquare, Pricing (hotjar.com/pricing redirects here; accessed October 12, 2026): https://contentsquare.com/pricing/
3. Microsoft Clarity, home page (accessed October 12, 2026): https://clarity.microsoft.com/
4. Lucky Orange, Pricing (accessed October 12, 2026): https://www.luckyorange.com/pricing