Hotjar Alternatives for Shopify Stores: What to Compare Before You Switch

If you've typed "Hotjar" into your browser recently, you've probably landed somewhere else. Hotjar is now part of Contentsquare, and the Contentsquare page Hotjar redirects to says it's no longer possible to create a new Hotjar account (Contentsquare, 2026). Existing users can still log in. New ones sign up for Contentsquare.

So you may be here to leave, or because the product you were about to install changed its name.

Most "Hotjar alternatives" pages are written for software product teams tracking onboarding and feature adoption. This one is for Shopify store operators. The questions are different: can it see checkout, does it respect your consent banner, can you filter to sessions that added to cart and didn't buy. If you want the wider picture of how heatmaps and recordings fit into a store's research, start with the guide to heatmaps and session recordings on Shopify.

Disclosure: no affiliate links, no sponsorship. I co-founded Skuology and Upsellr, and neither makes a heatmap or recording tool.

Key Takeaways

• Hotjar now lives inside Contentsquare. Switching may mean staying on the same product under a new name.
• Judge every tool on seven Shopify criteria before comparing features: install, consent, checkout, ecommerce filters, billing, caps and retention.
• Checkout is the honest dividing line. Shopify's pixel sandbox can't build heatmaps there; checkout replay claims conflict, and the ones that name a plan say Plus.
• Retention decides whether you can prove a redesign worked. A 30-day window can delete your "before".
• Smartlook is off the list: it stopped selling new subscriptions in May 2026.

The seven criteria that matter on a Shopify store

Decide these seven before you open a pricing page. Each rules tools in or out faster than a feature list.

• Install path. Prefer an App Store app or app embed over hand-pasted theme code, and re-check the install after any theme change either way: Microsoft's own FAQ warns that a Shopify design change can remove the Clarity script (Microsoft, 2026).
• Consent. In markets configured to require consent, usually the EEA and UK, Shopify's pixels run only once visitors grant the required permissions (Shopify Help Center, 2026). Your recording tool has to read the same banner.
• Checkout visibility. Covered in its own section below, because it's where vendor claims diverge most.
• Ecommerce event filters. Can you pull every session that added to cart and abandoned? Without that filter you're watching random visits.
• Billing model and free tier. Sessions, pageviews or usage. And what happens when you run out.
• Caps and sampling. A daily cap or a sampled heatmap changes what you're looking at.
• Data retention. If recordings expire after a month, your pre-redesign baseline expires with them.

Checkout: the line most comparisons skip

On a standard Shopify plan, plan for recordings to stop at checkout until a vendor shows you otherwise on your own store. Shopify runs third-party tracking on checkout through sandboxed pixels. Its documentation lists "clicks and mouse movement to create heatmaps from DOM scraping" among the things pixels can't detect (Shopify Help Center, 2026). PostHog's Shopify guide puts it bluntly: the checkout flow "doesn't allow arbitrary JavaScript to be run" (PostHog, 2026).

What you can usually get on any plan is checkout events: checkout started, shipping submitted, payment submitted, ordered. That tells you where people drop. It doesn't show you why.

Checkout replay is where it gets murky. Lucky Orange says it is "the only behavioral analytics tool that supports session recordings and heatmaps on Shopify Plus's hosted checkout pages" (Lucky Orange, 2026). FullStory publishes a Checkout Capture app that enables replay in checkout for existing customers on Shopify Plus (Shopify App Store, 2026). Microsoft says Clarity tracks checkout and thank you pages through the Shopify Pixel (Microsoft Clarity, 2025). Contentsquare's official Shopify app lists "session replays on Shopify storefront and checkout pages" (Shopify App Store, 2026). These are vendor claims, and they can't all be "the only one".

Public documentation can't settle which is right, and neither can a comparison table. If checkout replay is the reason you're switching, ask the vendor to show you a real checkout recording on your plan before you sign anything. For the checkout problems that don't need a recording to diagnose, the Shopify checkout conversion guide covers them.

The alternatives, compared

Everything below was checked on each vendor's own site or App Store listing on 16 October 2026. No prices: they change faster than any table. Billing models change less often.

Microsoft Clarity

Free, with no paid tier to upgrade into (Microsoft, 2026). Microsoft says there's no sampling, though recordings cap at 100,000 sessions per project per day and each heatmap at 100,000 page views. Its Purchases feature only works on Shopify sites, and checkout abandonment only on Shopify Plus. The catch is the 30-day recording window. The head-to-head is in Microsoft Clarity vs Hotjar.

Contentsquare, where Hotjar went

If you liked Hotjar, this is the least disruptive move, because it's the same company. On contentsquare.com the free plan covers up to 200k monthly sessions with one month of data access (the Shopify app listing caps Free at 20k, so check which you are on), and Contentsquare lists a 100% analytics collection rate on every plan (Contentsquare, 2026). Paid plans move you to 13 months of data.

Lucky Orange

Built for Shopify, installed in one click, with funnels mapping add-to-cart and checkout flows by default (Lucky Orange, 2026). Plans are metered on monthly sessions. The App Store listing shows 30-day storage on the Free and Launch plans and 60 days from Build (Shopify App Store, 2026). The full review is in Lucky Orange for Shopify.

Mouseflow

Mouseflow installs by pasting its tracking code into your theme once (Mouseflow, 2026). The App Store listing under its name is a third-party installer by Stratmann Digital, not Mouseflow itself (Shopify App Store, 2026). Watch the cap: when you run out of sessions, "all tracking will stop until your next refill date" (Mouseflow, 2026).

Crazy Egg

Crazy Egg bills on tracked pageviews and limits heatmap reports and recordings per plan, with "no overages, ever" (Crazy Egg, 2026). It tracks add-to-cart conversions by default. Start Checkout and Complete Checkout need a custom pixel and Shopify Plus (Crazy Egg, 2026). Its App Store listing currently says the app isn't available (Shopify App Store, 2026), so check its install docs first.

FullStory

FullstoryFree includes 30,000 monthly sessions and 12 months of data retention, and paid tiers are quoted rather than listed (FullStory, 2026). Checkout replay comes through its separate app, which needs Plus and an existing FullStory account.

PostHog

Product analytics first, with replay inside it. The free tier includes 5,000 session replays a month (PostHog, 2026), and free recordings are kept for up to 30 days (PostHog, 2026). On Shopify, its heatmap "won't work on Shopify out of the box" because of Shopify's CSP headers; the documented fix is a Cloudflare worker (PostHog, 2026). Fine if you have a developer. Not if you don't.

Why Smartlook isn't on the list

Smartlook has joined Cisco and stopped selling new subscriptions on 31 May 2026. The platform is decommissioned on 30 September 2027 and remaining data deleted (Smartlook, 2026). Don't migrate onto a product with a shutdown date.

If you'd rather have someone read the recordings than pick the tool, that's the first week of a conversion rate optimization audit.

The tool matters less than the question you bring

Every tool above will show you a red blob over your add-to-cart button. None will tell you what to do about it. In my client work, the useful readings started with a specific question.

The before/after slider. On a skincare product page, a before/after slider was the single most-clicked element, and clickmaps showed people clicking through every slide. That settled an argument: it justified building the arrows carousel the designer didn't want.

The testimonials nobody read. A behavioural report reordered a whole page. Elements people interacted with moved up. Text testimonials weren't really being read, so proof moved earlier and got photos.

Two lessons came from losing.

Heatmaps show behaviour, not lifetime value. On a subscription-first store, clickmaps showed the collapsed one-time purchase option still drew heavy clicks, even with subscription preselected. I argued for showing it and lost. The client stayed subscription-first because of their retention work, which a heatmap can't see.

Heatmaps need traffic. For a B2B events client, I wanted heatmap data to settle an above-the-fold button question. The client deferred click-testing to a higher-traffic campaign. My working rule for A/B tests is a few hundred conversions per variation, on several thousand sessions. A thin heatmap deserves the same suspicion.

And one on tracking. A sea-moss brand's store was already in a sales downtrend with poor tracking. The redesign shipped and revenue kept sliding. Only later did the data show add-to-cart clicks had risen clearly, with too little clean traffic to measure the effect properly. Context and tracking come before judgment, whichever tool records the sessions.

What to look at first is in what a conversion rate optimization audit actually covers. The order to work in is the Shopify conversion rate optimization process.

How to choose in one afternoon

Work down this list and stop at the first line that fits.

• You want zero cost and fast setup. Clarity. Accept the 30-day window, and save the recordings you'll need later.
• You liked Hotjar and want the least change. Contentsquare's free plan.
• Checkout replay is the reason you're switching. Get a live demo from each vendor that claims it, recorded on a checkout on your own Shopify plan. Most vendors that name a plan say Plus.
• You need a long before-and-after window around a redesign. Compare retention first. It's the column most people ignore.
• You have a developer and want product analytics too. PostHog, knowing heatmaps need a workaround.

Then switch properly. Run both tools side by side for a couple of weeks and confirm the new one records the same pages and events. Export anything you'll need before cancelling.

No tool will find the problem for you. No heatmap replaces a hypothesis. What a good one gives you is evidence for the argument you're already having.

If you want that evidence turned into a ranked list of fixes, book a call and bring the recordings you've already got.

FAQ

Is Hotjar still available?

Hotjar is now part of Contentsquare. The Hotjar site redirects to Contentsquare, and Contentsquare states that new Hotjar accounts can no longer be created. Existing users can still log in. If you're starting fresh, the product you'd sign up for is Contentsquare, which has its own free plan.

What is the best free Hotjar alternative for a Shopify store?

Microsoft Clarity is the only tool here with no paid tier at all, and it installs through an official Shopify App Store app. The trade-off is retention: recordings are kept for 30 days. Contentsquare, FullStory, Lucky Orange, Mouseflow and PostHog also have free plans, with different session allowances and retention.

Can heatmap tools record the Shopify checkout?

On most stores, no. Shopify's pixel sandbox can't build heatmaps from page scraping, so recordings usually stop when shoppers enter checkout. Several vendors claim checkout replay, Lucky Orange and FullStory on Shopify Plus only, and their claims conflict. Ask the vendor to show you a real checkout recording on your plan before you buy on that basis.

Do I need cookie consent for session recordings?

In markets that require consent, usually the European Economic Area and the UK, yes. Shopify's pixels only run there once visitors grant the required permissions, and Microsoft says Clarity needs an explicit consent signal for visitors there. Without it, sessions fragment and full replays become unavailable. Check how each tool reads your consent banner.

How much traffic do I need before heatmaps are useful?

More than most stores expect. A heatmap of a few hundred sessions shows you where a handful of people clicked, not a pattern. My working rule is several thousand sessions and a few hundred conversions per variation before trusting an A/B test. I treat thin heatmaps as a prompt for questions, not a verdict.

Should I run two heatmap tools at once?

Only briefly, while switching. Running the old and new tool in parallel for a few weeks lets you check the new one is recording the same pages and events before you cancel. Long term, two scripts mean double the page weight and two consent configurations for the same data.