Looking for a Hotjar alternative?
Hotjar records what your visitors did. You watch someone scroll past your add-to-cart button, and you still have to guess why. It also needs weeks of traffic before the recordings say anything, which is no help at all if the problem is that nobody is buying yet. We read your site the way a visitor does and tell you what to fix first, in minutes, with no traffic to wait for.
Hotjar and you x you i, side by side
| Feature | you x you i | Hotjar |
|---|---|---|
| Conversions More people buying | ||
| Tells you why people are not buying | Funnels only | |
| Checks your headline says what you sell | ||
| Checks your buttons and calls to action | ||
| Checks your pricing is laid out clearly | ||
| Records real visitor sessions | ||
| Heatmaps of real clicks | ||
| Findability Found in Google and AI search | ||
| Checks the Google basics | ||
| Checks AI can read and quote your pages | ||
| Technical health Speed, mobile, accessibility | ||
| Checks how fast your pages load | ||
| Checks it works on phones | ||
| Checks people with disabilities can use it | ||
| Trust and brand Trustworthy and on-brand | ||
| Checks your site looks trustworthy | ||
| Predicts where visitors look first | ||
| Clarity A message that lands | ||
| Checks how hard the page is to take in | ||
| Always on Runs on every audit | ||
| Results in minutes, no traffic needed | Needs traffic first | |
| Tells you what to fix, in order | ||
| One audit, no subscription | ||
| Pricing | $5 per audit, no subscription | Free tier, then from $49/mo |
When to choose Hotjar
Choose Hotjar when you already have steady traffic and a specific question about behaviour: people are reaching checkout and abandoning it, and you want to watch it happen. Recordings and click maps are the right tool for that, and we do not do them. If you are running a test and need to see how real visitors move through a page, Hotjar will show you and we will not.
When to choose you x you i
Choose us when the question is why, not where. You get a read of your whole site: what is stopping people buying, whether your headline says what you sell, what is slow, what breaks on a phone, and what Google cannot see. It costs $5 for the audit, once, with no subscription running in the background whether you open it or not.
What we check that Hotjar does not
Every one of these is a row in the table above, ticked in our column and blank in theirs.
- Checks your headline says what you sell
- Checks your buttons and calls to action
- Checks your pricing is laid out clearly
- Checks the Google basics
- Checks AI can read and quote your pages
- Connects to Google Search Console
- Shows which searches moved after your audit
- Links your fixes to your Google traffic
- Shows what AI answers cost you in clicks
- Compares your clicks with last year
- Tracks your score against your Google traffic
- Checks how fast your pages load
- Checks it works on phones
- Checks people with disabilities can use it
- Checks your site looks trustworthy
- Checks your brand is consistent
- Predicts where visitors look first
- Checks your writing reads clearly
- Flags copy that sounds AI-written
- Checks how hard the page is to take in
- Tells you what to fix, in order
- Scores measured against what real people said, not an opinion
- One audit, no subscription
Hotjar vs you x you i: common questions
Is this a replacement for Hotjar?
No, and we would not pretend otherwise. Hotjar watches real visitors; we read the site itself. If you want session recordings and click maps, keep Hotjar. If you want to know what to change and why, that is our job. Plenty of sites end up doing both.
Do I need traffic before this is useful?
No. That is the main practical difference. Hotjar has nothing to show you until enough people have been through your site. We audit the pages themselves, so a site that launched yesterday gets the same report as one with ten thousand visitors a month.
How much does it cost?
A single page audit is $5, paid once. There is no subscription and no card kept on file. Hotjar starts free and moves to a monthly plan as your traffic grows, which is a bill that runs every month whether you log in or not.
How long does an audit take?
Minutes, not weeks. You paste your URL, we run the checks, and you get a ranked list of what to fix first.
What do you check that Hotjar does not?
Speed, mobile, accessibility, whether your pricing is laid out clearly, whether your site looks trustworthy, whether your brand holds together, how hard the page is to take in, and what Google and AI search can read. Hotjar checks none of these.