In-depth: PostHog vs Hotjar

May 17, 2023

Want to understand the difference between Hotjar and PostHog? Here's the short answer:

1. Hotjar is a user research tool that offers session replays, heatmaps, and tools for collecting feedback and scheduling customer interviews. It's built for marketers and user experience (UX) researchers.

2. PostHog is an all-in-one platform for building successful products. It includes product analytics, session replays, feature flags, in-app prompts, and more. It's built for engineers and product teams.

Now it's time for the long answer...

In this guide, we'll cover:

• Hotjar and PostHog feature comparison
• Session replays
• Heatmaps
• Product analytics
• In-app messages and user research
• Apps and integrations
• Pricing

How is PostHog different?

1. PostHog is an all-in one platform

Hotjar focuses mainly on session replays, heatmaps, and user research. That means you need to adopt additional tools for things like product analytics, feature management, and A/B testing. PostHog integrates all these features into one platform (in addition to session replays and heatmaps).

2. PostHog is built for engineers

PostHog integrates powerful features that aren’t available in Hotjar and which are designed for technical users, such as feature flags with JSON payloads, which enable you to trigger in-app messages, or other notifications.

We built PostHog to support technically-savvy product managers and engineers – especially engineers with a product focus in their role. Anyone can use PostHog (just ask our marketing team), but our primary goal is to give engineers the tools they need to ship impactful features at speed.

3. PostHog is open source

Because we build for engineers first, we're also open source. You can check out PostHog’s source code, build integrations or other services on top of the product, and even give feedback or interact with the team via GitHub. Transparency, including transparent pricing, is one of our core values.

Core features

• Session replays: Session replays in PostHog recreate exactly what real users see and how they use your product. They also enable you to debug problems using built-in console logs, performance monitoring and the DOM explorer.

• Feature flags: PostHog includes multivariate feature flags that support JSON payloads. Teams can use feature flags to offer different features or UI choices to users, to trigger in-app messages, and more.

• A/B testing: In PostHog, you can use the experimentation suite to create multivariate tests within your product, such as showing some users a different page layout to others. Over time, you can build an understanding of which page performs better, correlate results with other events, and deploy a final version.

Session replays

Session replays are an essential tool for understanding how people use your product, especially for early-stage companies searching for product-market fit.

Ready to learn more? Find out how Contra used PostHog's session replays to increase registrations by 30%.

Both Hotjar and PostHog offer session replays:

• Recording retention: Hotjar keeps all replays for 365 days. PostHog retains all replays for up to three months, but retains replays saved to a playlist forever. PostHog also enables you to download replays as a .json file for safe keeping.

Heatmaps

Heatmaps visualize user activity in your app. They use colors or numbers to show which parts of the page people are interacting with the most. Both Hotjar and PostHog offer heatmaps, although PostHog's offering is more limited:

Product analytics

Although product analytics is not a core focus for Hotjar, they do offer basic features, such as event tracking, funnels, and trend insights. However, these are only available on Hotjar's Observe Scale plan, and their offering is more limited than PostHog's:

In-app messages and user research

Hotjar includes feedback widgets, surveys, and an integrated user research tool for gathering feedback from users. PostHog also offers user surveys, including the ability to customize the appearance of prompts to match your product.

PostHog also offers additional ways to communicate with your users, such as a notification bar and interactive pop-ups through the use of feature flag payloads, and site apps. Also, since PostHog provides product analytics, you can easily define your target users who should see your widgets.

The main difference is, because Hotjar is designed for less technical users, it offers an interface that is simpler, but less powerful. You can easily create surveys and feedback widgets in Hotjar, but not other types of prompt such as a Calendly integration. In PostHog, it's possible to create such surveys easily.

Below, we've listed the different methods for communicating with and collecting user feedback in Hotjar and PostHog.

Apps and integrations

Both Hotjar and PostHog have a wide selection of apps and integrations. Both also include integrations with tools such as Zapier, which enable you to move data to even more platforms.

One unique advantage of PostHog is that, because it is open source, it’s easy to create your own apps and integrations. This is useful if you’re, for example, using niche software in your stack that hasn’t been widely adopted, or if you require a direct integration between PostHog and your product.

Below, we've listed a few of the most popular integrations used across PostHog and HotJar. PostHog offers more than 50 apps, so for a full list of PostHog's integrations, please check the app library.

Want more? Visit the PostHog the app directory for a full list of supported integrations.

Privacy, compliance, and security

Regulatory compliance can be a critical need for many teams, especially if they operate in financial or healthcare industries. Regulations such as HIPPA and GDPR can require teams to store data in certain locations, or to protect data in certain ways.

Frequently asked questions

• Who is Hotjar useful for?
• Who is PostHog useful for?
• How much does Hotjar cost?
  • Hotjar Observe features and pricing
  • Hotjar Ask features and pricing
  • Hotjar Engage features and pricing
• How much does PostHog cost?
• Do Hotjar and PostHog offer free trials?

Got another question? You can ask the PostHog team anything you want!

Who is Hotjar useful for?

Hotjar is designed primarily for marketers and UX specialists. Its key features are the ability to record session replays and heatmaps. It also provides widgets for collecting feedback and tools for scheduling customer interviews. These provide insights into how customers are using your product.

Who is PostHog useful for?

PostHog is built primarily with engineers, product managers and other technical users in mind. It also offers the ability to record session replays, heatmaps, and create feedback widgets, but also offers a number of other tools that are useful for these types of teams, such as product analytics and feature flags.

This difference is ultimately reflected in many of the features both platforms offer, and how they are designed. PostHog's focus on breadth and supporting engineers in creating better products, for example, is reflected in its core features.

How much does Hotjar cost?

Hotjar has a complex pricing structure: There are three different plans: Observe, Ask, and Engage. Each plan consists of four tiers: Basic, Plus, Business and Scale. Each plan offers discounts for annual subscriptions.

Not all features are available on every tier and plan. Below is a breakdown of which features are available on each plan, as well as their cost:

Hotjar Observe features and pricing

This plan includes the session replays and heatmaps features, but not the feedback widgets, surveys, or user research features.

Hotjar Ask features and pricing

This plan focuses on feedback widgets and surveys features. It also includes features from the Hotjar Observe Basic plan. It does not include user research features.

Hotjar Engage features and pricing

This plan focuses on user research features. It also includes features from the Hotjar Observe Basic plan and the Hotjar Ask Basic plan.

How much does PostHog cost?

PostHog has simple and transparent pricing based on the usage – every features is available on the Paid plan. It’s free to get started and completely free for the first 5,000 sessions and 1 million events captured every month.

After this free monthly allowance you'll pay from $0.04/replay and $0.00031/event, with charges decreasing the more you use. Volume, non-profit and startup discounts are available upon request, and we recommend trying our pricing calculator to estimate your pricing.

Do Hotjar and PostHog offer free trials?

Hotjar offers a free tier, called Hotjar Basic. This version is limited in scope, supporting only 35 daily replays and limited feature access.

With PostHog, it’s free to get started, and all users get their first 1 million events and 5,000 sessions for free, every month. There are no other restrictions and billing limits can be used to keep usage beneath this allowance, enabling you to use PostHog for free indefinitely.

Ready to find out more?