| Functionality | 3 <p>Plausible is a lightweight web analytics tool. It covers all the essentials for this time of product including real time page view and visitor data, referral source tracking and basic traffic segmentation. However, you'll not find any powerful product analytics functionality like heatmaps or session recordings.</p> | 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> |
| Ease of Use | 8 <p>Given its limited feature set and beautiful design, Plausible is particularly easy to use. It would take an average SMB employee less than 20 minutes to master its use.</p> | 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> |
| Look and feel | 8 <p>Plausible is a very well design analytics tool. Its aesthetic is clean and modern. Additionally, when tested we found page load time to be snappy and responsive (<1s).</p> | 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> |
| Customisability | 3 <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Beyond custom events, Plausible offers limited scope for customization. We would like to have seen more options to tweak the dashboard itself and change how data is visualized.</span></p> | 3 <p>While less customizable than comprehensive analytics platforms, its focused approach means most needed adjustments are readily available without overwhelming complexity.</p> |
| Ease of Setup | 7 <p>Like most web analytics products, Plausible was also very simple to implement - requiring only a simple script. Additionally, it offers a self-serve free trial. Given the lack of complex functionality, there's little to set up in terms of additional customization either.</p> | 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> |
| Customer Support | 7 <p>Plausibles developer documentation is well laid out, easy to digest and detailed. It also offers very strong search functionality too.</p> | 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> |
| Integratability | 3 <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Plausible offers a fairly robust API through which you can interact with data programatically. However, it offers little to no integrations beyond this.</span></p> | 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> |
| Ease of Migration | 6 <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Plausible offers self-serve export functionality for key datapoints via its web app. Additionally, its API is robust and allows business to access datapoints programatically.</span></p> | 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> |
