Quick answer: Choose Crazy Egg if you mainly want clear, well presented click heatmaps and scroll maps for a set of key pages, with very little setup. Choose Hotjar if you want heatmaps plus visitor recordings, funnels, form analysis, polls and surveys in one tool, and you are happy to spend a bit more time reading the data. Many small sites start with Hotjar because it covers more ground and has a free basic plan. Teams that only need heatmaps often find Crazy Egg simpler.
Heatmap tools show you what visitors actually do on a page: where they click, how far they scroll and what they ignore. Analytics tells you a page has a problem. A heatmap often shows you what the problem is. Hotjar and Crazy Egg are the two names that come up most often for small and medium sites, and they take quite different approaches.
The short version
| Crazy Egg | Hotjar | |
|---|---|---|
| Main focus | Heatmap reports | All in one behaviour and feedback tool |
| Click heatmaps | Yes | Yes |
| Scroll maps | Yes | Yes |
| Confetti view (clicks by source) | Yes | No direct equivalent |
| Visitor recordings | No | Yes |
| Conversion funnels | No | Yes |
| Form analysis | No | Yes |
| On site polls and surveys | No | Yes |
| Free plan | Free trial only | Free basic plan |
| Pricing model | By number of pages tracked and visits | By pageviews per day |
Feature sets change, so check both sites before you buy, but the general split has held for a while: Crazy Egg goes deep on heatmaps, Hotjar goes broad.
Crazy Egg in more detail
Crazy Egg has been around for years and is one of the best known names in heatmaps. You add one script to your site, then create “snapshots” for the pages you want to study. Each snapshot collects data until it reaches the visit limit you set.
What Crazy Egg does well
- Clear reports. The heatmaps are easy to read and easy to show to a client or a manager.
- Confetti view. Every click is shown as a dot, coloured by traffic source, search term, browser or other segments. This is very useful for questions such as “do visitors from email click differently to visitors from Google?”
- Scroll map. Shows how far down the page people get, with a clear drop off.
- Overlay and list views. Show click numbers for each element, which is handy for menus and link heavy pages.
- Simple setup. Little to configure beyond choosing pages.
Where Crazy Egg falls short
- No visitor recordings, so you cannot watch a session to understand why someone did something.
- No surveys or polls, so you will need another tool to ask visitors questions.
- Snapshots are page based. Studying a large number of pages, or pages with dynamic URLs, takes more planning.
Hotjar in more detail
Hotjar launched in 2014 and has grown quickly by bundling several research tools into one script. It is aimed at people who want to understand both what visitors do and why.
What Hotjar does well
- Heatmaps for clicks, mouse movement and scrolling, split by desktop, tablet and phone.
- Visitor recordings. Watch real sessions: mouse movement, clicks, scrolling and page changes. Watching ten recordings of people abandoning a form often explains more than any report.
- Funnels. See where visitors drop out of a sequence of pages, such as product, cart and checkout.
- Form analysis. See which fields take longest, which get left blank and where people give up.
- Polls and surveys. Ask visitors a question on the page, such as “Is anything stopping you from booking today?”, or send a longer survey.
- Recruiting testers. Invite visitors to take part in user interviews.
Where Hotjar falls short
- More data to work through. With recordings, polls and heatmaps all running, it is easy to collect lots of data and act on none of it.
- Sampling. Plans are limited by pageviews per day, so on busy sites Hotjar records a sample rather than every visit.
- Heatmap presentation is good but less detailed for segment analysis than Crazy Egg’s confetti view.
Setup and performance
Both tools need a single JavaScript snippet in your site’s header. On WordPress you can add it through a plugin or your theme, or through Google Tag Manager if you use it. Both load asynchronously, so they should not hold up the page, but every third party script adds some weight. Remove the code when you stop using a tool. If page speed is a concern, add the code only to the pages you are studying.
Privacy
Both tools record behaviour on your site, so mention them in your privacy policy. Hotjar lets you suppress keystrokes in recordings and exclude sensitive fields and pages. Never record payment fields, and check settings carefully on pages where people type personal details.
Pricing models
We will not quote prices, because both companies change them, but the models differ:
- Crazy Egg charges by how many pages you can track at once and how many visits per month the snapshots collect. There is a free trial, then a paid plan.
- Hotjar charges by how many pageviews per day it collects data from. There is a free basic plan with limits, which is enough to try it properly on a small site.
For a small business site with a handful of important pages, both can be inexpensive. For a large shop with many templates, compare the limits carefully against your traffic.
Which tool fits which situation
Choose Crazy Egg if
- You want quick, clear heatmaps on a set of key pages.
- You report to clients or managers who want simple visuals.
- Segmenting clicks by traffic source matters to you.
- You already use a separate tool for surveys or recordings.
Choose Hotjar if
- You want one tool for heatmaps, recordings, funnels and feedback.
- You are trying to fix a form or checkout and need to see exactly where people struggle.
- You want to ask visitors questions directly.
- You want to start on a free plan.
Use both if
Some teams use Crazy Egg for heatmap reporting and Hotjar for recordings and polls. That is usually overkill for a small site. Pick one, use it well, then decide whether you are missing anything.
How to get value from either tool
A heatmap tool is only useful if it leads to changes. A simple routine:
- Pick the pages that matter, such as your main landing pages, service pages, product pages and checkout.
- Collect enough data. A few dozen visits rarely tell you much. Wait until you have a few hundred on each page.
- Write down what you see. Clicks on things that are not links, important buttons below where most people stop scrolling, form fields people skip.
- Turn findings into ideas, then test the important ones. Our guide to A/B testing explains how to test changes properly rather than guessing.
- Repeat after changes to see if behaviour shifted.
Heatmaps fit naturally into a wider review of your site. Our CRO audit guide shows where they sit alongside analytics and user feedback, and our beginner’s guide to conversion rate optimization covers the overall process.
FAQ
Do heatmap tools slow down my site?
Both load their scripts asynchronously, so the effect is usually small. Still, remove them from pages and sites where you are not actively studying behaviour.
Can I use heatmaps on a WordPress site?
Yes. Add the tracking code through your theme header, a plugin or Tag Manager. Both tools work with any CMS.
Are heatmaps accurate on mobile?
Both tools separate desktop, tablet and phone data. Look at each separately, because responsive layouts put elements in different places on each device.
Is Google Analytics In Page Analytics enough?
It shows click percentages on links, which is a useful start, but it is less visual and does not show scroll depth or clicks on non link elements.
Want help turning heatmaps into results?
We run behaviour research on business sites, then turn what we find into changes that lift enquiries and sales. See how we help sites turn visitors into customers.
