The best Hotjar alternative in 2026

Hotjar and Zoho PageSense are both tools designed to help teams understand visitor behaviour and improve conversion rates. Confused about which is the right one for you? This page provides a detailed side-by-side comparison with everything you need to make the right decision.

Does Hotjar have all that you need? 

Hotjar was a useful starting point for teams that needed heatmaps and session recordings. But in July 2025, Hotjar was fully merged into Contentsquare, a private equity-backed enterprise analytics platform. You can no longer sign up for Hotjar. New users are redirected to Contentsquare, and existing customers are being migrated through 2026.

What used to be one Hotjar subscription is now three separate Contentsquare product lines — Experience Analytics, Voice of Customer, and Product Analytics — each billed independently. A/B testing is not included in any of them. Personalization is not included. Form analytics is not included. And if you want heatmaps, session replays plus surveys together, the combined cost starts at $118/month before you add a single testing tool.

For teams that need to observe visitor behaviour, run experiments, personalize experiences, and measure results — Hotjar's new structure requires building a multi-tool, multi-vendor stack to achieve what Zoho PageSense does in one platform.

Here's what Zoho PageSense gives you 

Zoho PageSense is a complete CRO platform — from web tracking and user behaviour analysis to personalisation and on-site feedback — available across three plans with no hidden modules and no separate billing for testing or surveys.

Forever Free Plan — Live visitor tracking, website analytics, heatmaps, session recordings, form analytics, funnel analysis, and conversion tracking (up to 5 goals) for up to 5,000 monthly visitors. No credit card. No time limit.

Professional Plan — from $20/month — Everything in the Forever Free plan, without visitor limits, plus on-site surveys, website pop-ups, web push notifications, and mobile push notifications.

Enterprise Plan — from $49/month — Everything in Professional, plus unlimited A/B testing, unlimited session recordings, unlimited funnel and form analytics, personalization, and both web and mobile push notifications — all in one subscription.

Across all plans:

• Unsampled data — every visitor recorded within your plan, no 5% sampling on any tier

• Conversion tracking — pageviews, engagement, revenue tracking, and custom events

• Live tracking and AI insights for web analytics — available on all plans; AI insights for session recordings coming soon

• Frustration monitoring — rage clicks, dead clicks, JS errors, quick backs — coming soon

• Native integrations — Zoho CRM, Zoho Marketing Plus, Zoho SalesIQ, and Zoho One

• Built by Zoho — privately held, no advertising revenue in 25 years, your data is yours

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What Contentsquare (Hotjar) is now 

Contentsquare has reorganised Hotjar's features into three product lines, each sold separately:

• Experience Analytics — session replay, heatmaps, journey analysis, error monitoring

• Voice of Customer — surveys, feedback widgets, NPS, user interviews

• Product Analytics (via Heap) — cross-session journey analytics, retention, funnels

For each product line, you choose from Free, Growth, Pro, or Enterprise plans.

The problem: what used to be "Hotjar" is now potentially three separate subscriptions. A team that previously paid for one Hotjar plan to get heatmaps plus surveys now faces separate billing for Experience Analytics and Voice of Customer. If you want both — which most CRO teams do — the combined Growth plan cost starts at $148/month.

Pricing: what Contentsquare actually costs 

What does it actually cost to get heatmaps, session recordings, journey/path analysis, and surveys — without limits?

Hotjar / Contentsquare charges $168/month for behaviour analytics alone — before a single experiment is run.

Real cost when you add A/B testing 

The moment a team wants to test a fix — not just observe the problem — Contentsquare requires a separate tool. Here is the full picture:

Zoho PageSense at $49/month includes everything in the table above. Hotjar + VWO charges $482/month for less.

Three more pricing traps you should know about 

1. Session limits on session recordings — even on the free plan. The free plan states 200,000 monthly sessions but only 5% of sessions are actually recorded — capped at 10,000 replays. You are not getting full session coverage on the free tier.

2. AI summaries and data retention require Growth. AI-powered session summaries (Sense AI) and session data retention beyond 2 months are Growth plan features and above — pricing not listed for Pro and Enterprise, requiring a sales conversation. Teams that need AI insights or longer data history cannot stay on the free plan.

3. The invoice payment penalty. The advertised $49/month Growth rate applies to annual billing paid by credit card or PayPal in-app only. Organisations using invoice-based purchasing pay the full $828/year with no discount — a $240/year difference that procurement teams will run into without expecting it.

Why Zoho PageSense can charge less: infrastructure ownership 

Contentsquare runs its entire platform on Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure — renting cloud compute, storage, and data processing capacity from two of the world's largest cloud providers. Those infrastructure costs are built into every Contentsquare subscription tier.

Zoho owns and operates its own servers and storage infrastructure across 16 data centres in the US, EU, India, Australia, Japan, Canada, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Zoho controls its own hardware stack rather than paying a third party to run it. That is a direct input into pricing — infrastructure ownership is a significant part of why Zoho can offer comparable software at roughly half the price of larger competitors.

When you pay for Zoho PageSense, your money is not subsidising an AWS bill. That saving passes through to you.

Feature comparison: Zoho PageSense vs Hotjar / Contentsquare  

Where Contentsquare leads 

AI-powered insights. Contentsquare's Sense AI — available on Growth and above — automatically surfaces insights and answers plain-language questions about user behaviour. Zoho PageSense already has AI insights for web analytics live, with AI-powered insights for session recordings [coming soon]. If a fully deployed AI layer across every feature is a hard requirement today, Contentsquare has broader coverage — but PageSense is closing that gap fast.

Error and frustration monitoring. Contentsquare detects JavaScript errors, rage clicks, dead clicks, and performance issues connected to session replays. Zoho PageSense is bringing the same capability — frustration signals including rage clicks, dead clicks, JS errors, click errors, and quick backs are [coming soon]. For teams that need this in their stack immediately, Contentsquare has it today.

Journey analysis depth. Contentsquare's Journey Analysis tool visualises the paths visitors actually take through a site, including unexpected routes. For complex multi-product sites and apps, this depth goes beyond what PageSense's funnel analysis covers.

User interview recruitment. Contentsquare lets you recruit real visitors for live video interviews directly from your website. Zoho PageSense has no equivalent.

Where Zoho PageSense clearly leads 

Built-in A/B testing. Contentsquare is an observation platform. It tells you what is happening. It does not help you test what to do about it. Every team using Contentsquare for CRO needs a separate A/B testing tool — adding $199–$3,000+/month to their stack. Zoho PageSense combines behavioural analytics, A/B testing, split URL testing, server-side testing, and personalization in a single platform at SMB-friendly pricing.

Personalization. Zoho PageSense lets you serve different content to different visitor segments based on device, location, traffic source, behaviour, or custom dimensions — without writing code. Contentsquare has no personalization capability.

Form analytics. Zoho PageSense shows exactly which fields cause visitors to abandon your forms, how long they spend on each field, and where they drop off. Contentsquare has no dedicated form analytics feature.

Pricing simplicity and predictability. Zoho PageSense has one subscription with all CRO features included. Contentsquare's three-product model, session-based charging, AI features locked behind paid tiers, data retention caps, and invoice payment penalties make budget planning very difficult.

The privacy-first CRO

Zoho has operated for 30+ years without advertising revenue. That is a business model choice embedded in Zoho's founding principles. Contentsquare is backed by Softbank, Canaan, and Eurazeo, and has grown through acquisitions.

For Zoho PageSense's target market — growth-stage SaaS teams, digital marketing agencies, GDPR-conscious European businesses, growing SMBs — this matters in two ways:

Your CRO tool sits on top of your most sensitive web data: the full journey of every visitor from first touch to conversion. Knowing that data will never be monetised through advertising is a trust signal, not just a marketing claim.

It is also a genuine differentiator. Hotjar is now owned by Contentsquare (VC-backed). VWO is PE-backed. Crazy Egg, Mouseflow, FullStory — all commercial enterprises with standard investor return requirements. Zoho is privately held, profitable, and has made its privacy stance a public commitment for 30+ years.

Which tool is right for you? 

Zoho PageSense is the right choice if: 

• You want to observe user behaviour AND run experiments in the same platform

• You are a Zoho CRM, Zoho SalesIQ, or Zoho One customer — PageSense integrates natively and may be included in your existing plan

• Your budget is fixed and you cannot afford separate tools for heatmaps, A/B testing, and personalization

• You need to run A/B tests today, not after buying a second tool

• Data privacy matters to your organisation, your clients, or your compliance team

• You are an agency running CRO for clients and need a cost-effective full-stack tool

• You are a growing SMB — Zoho PageSense gives you the complete CRO stack at a price point designed for businesses that are building, not yet at enterprise scale

Hotjar / Contentsquare is the right choice if: 

• You primarily need behavioural observation and user feedback, with no immediate plans to run experiments

• You need AI-powered insights across session recordings today — Zoho PageSense has AI for web analytics live, with session recording AI [coming soon]

• You need frustration and error monitoring (rage clicks, JS errors, dead clicks) today — Zoho PageSense has this [coming soon]

• You want to recruit visitors for live user interviews directly from your site

• You are already part of a Contentsquare enterprise contract that includes Hotjar features

Setting up Zoho PageSense after Hotjar 

Moving from Hotjar to Zoho PageSense is straightforward. Our team will help you replicate your entire setup — heatmaps, goals, funnels, and tracking configuration — at zero cost. Just send an email at presales@zohopagesense.com, a specialist contacts you within 24 business hours, and walks you through getting everything configured in Zoho PageSense before your Hotjar subscription ends.

The script swap is one line of code in your site's <head>. Most teams are collecting new data in Zoho PageSense the same day they decide to switch.

The bottom line 

What you are evaluating now is not Hotjar — it is Contentsquare, an enterprise analytics platform where heatmaps and surveys already require separate subscriptions totalling $168/month, A/B testing is absent entirely, and AI features are locked behind paid tiers with undisclosed pricing.

Zoho PageSense is the complete alternative. One tool. One subscription. All the CRO features you need — from heatmaps to experiments to personalization — built by a company that has spent 30+ years building software for businesses without compromising on data privacy.

For growth-focused teams who want to observe, test, and optimize from a single platform without the overhead of an enterprise analytics contract, Zoho PageSense is the more sensible choice in 2026.