| Functionality | 6 <p>Hotjar dominates in visual analytics with industry-leading heatmaps and session recordings. While purposely narrower than full-spectrum analytics platforms, its specialized tools for click/tap tracking, scroll depth, mouse movement, and rage clicks provide unmatched visual behavior insights. It's best used alongside a more quantitative, events centric tool.</p> | 8 <p>Amplitude offers comprehensive product analytics with particular strengths in behavioral cohort analysis, predictive analytics, and cross-platform journey mapping. Its Behavioral Graph technology differentiates it from competitors, though it lacks some specialized features like heatmaps found in more all-in-one solutions.</p> |
| Ease of Use | 8 <p>Hotjar excels in user experience with an exceptionally intuitive interface that makes complex behavioral data accessible through visual representations. The tool requires virtually no training even for non-technical users, with self-explanatory visualizations and intelligent filtering options that simplify analysis.</p> | 7 <p>Amplitude excels at making complex analytics accessible to non-technical users through intuitive interfaces and guided analysis capabilities. The platform effectively balances depth for data scientists with accessibility for business users, though the learning curve is steeper than with more focused competitors.</p> |
| Look and feel | 8 <p>Hotjar's interface is clean, visually appealing and purpose-built for clarity. The design prioritizes visual understanding with intuitive heat overlays and user recordings that require minimal interpretation. Navigation is straightforward and focused, with remarkably fast load times (<1s) for heatmaps and smooth playback for session recordings.</p> | 5 <p>Amplitude's interface is polished, professional and highly scalable. The enterprise-oriented design emphasizes accessibility for diverse team members. Visualizations are sophisticated yet intuitive, with reasonable load times (4-5s) for complex dashboards—slightly slower than some competitors.</p> |
| Customisability | 3 <p>While less customizable than comprehensive analytics platforms, its focused approach means most needed adjustments are readily available without overwhelming complexity.</p> | 6 <p>Amplitude offers extensive customization options for metrics, reports, and dashboards. Its enterprise focus brings robust governance features for custom taxonomies and data definitions. That being said, it lacks the self-hosting flexibility of open-source alternatives.</p> |
| Ease of Setup | 8 <p>Hotjar offers remarkably simple implementation requiring only a single JavaScript snippet installation. The platform begins delivering valuable insights immediately after installation with no additional configuration required. Given the lack of functionality depth, there's little additional configuration needed.</p> | 4 <p>Amplitude requires thoughtful implementation with strategic event planning and taxonomies. Though it offers automatic event capture, its clear that the tool is best used through manual instrumentation. While the initial setup demands more investment than some alternatives, this approach can yield better long-term analytics outcomes.</p> |
| Customer Support | 5 <p>Hotjar's documentation is middle-of-the-road. We would have preferred a more developer centric layout instead of providing articles in a help centre format which can be harder to navigate. Beyond this, email support replies take 24-48 hours in our testing.</p> | 6 <p>Amplitude's documentation is comprehensive and tailored to different user personas (albeit slightly hard to navigate), though community resources aren't as vibrant as those found in open-source ecosystems.</p> |
| Integratability | 6 <p>Hotjar offers a number of native integrations with popular ticketing tools such as Jira/Linear, automation platforms like Zapier and analytics tools like Google Analytics/Mixpanel. It's integration range is somewhat limited when compared to larger, all-in-one product analytics tools though.</p> | 8 <p>Amplitude offers one of the widest arrays of integrations covering everything from data warehouses, to CRMs, to CDPs and even customer support tools. Their Amplitude Connect hub simplifies integration management, and their well-documented API enables programmatic interaction with the platform.</p> |
| Ease of Migration | 6 <p>Hotjar provides straightforward exports for heatmaps, recordings, and feedback data. Users can download recordings, export heatmap data as CSV files, and access feedback responses through the dashboard or API. While not as extensive as enterprise analytics platforms, the export capabilities align well with the qualitative nature of the data collected.</p> | 8 <p>Amplitude provides robust data export capabilities including scheduled exports, direct data warehouse connections, and reverse ETL options. Its comprehensive API allows for programmatic data interaction too.</p> |
