Kissmetrics vs Hotjar

Install with AI takes about 5 minutes, and ready-made schema examples for SaaS and stores show which events and properties to track.

Free is $0 with no card: 100k events a month, 3 seats, Funnels and Activity reports, chat in plain English, dashboards, metrics, Live view, API access and up to 3 active integrations. Growth starts at $99 a month for 500k events (20% off annually) and adds the Performance report with attribution, Populations, Visitors from AI assistants, Revenue, Path, People search, A/B tests, Product usage and CSV export. The price per event drops as volume grows, and above 5M events a month we price to your volume. Growth has unlimited seats and integrations.

Most analytics tools track sessions: anonymous visits that expire after 30 minutes. Kissmetrics tracks people. When a visitor identifies, their earlier anonymous visits join their record, across devices. So you can see the journey from first anonymous visit through signup, activation, purchase and repeat behavior, all tied to one person.

Yes, on the Growth plan. The Performance report ties revenue back to the campaign that first brought each person in (first click) and the one they came through last before buying (last click), on the same person, whether that was a paid ad, organic search, an email or a referral. An Any touch view shows every campaign a buyer came through. It is first- and last-click attribution, not a multi-touch model.

Install with AI takes about 5 minutes, and Live view shows events as they arrive, so you can check tracking the same day. You do not need a data team or months of configuration to start.

Kissmetrics is built around the individual person. While Hotjar has a different primary focus, Kissmetrics gives you a view of each customer's lifecycle, from first touch to revenue and beyond. You can answer questions like "Which customers are most valuable?", "What actions come before a purchase?" and "Where exactly are we losing people in the funnel?"

For many teams, yes. Kissmetrics combines person-level tracking, funnels, revenue reporting, A/B test results and Populations in one place (revenue, A/B tests and Populations are on Growth). Teams that used separate tools for product analytics and revenue tracking can bring them together, with one record per person. It does not record sessions or run in-app guides.

Yes, they're highly complementary. Kissmetrics tells you what's happening quantitatively, while Hotjar shows you why through visual analysis and user feedback.

Not for heatmaps and session recordings. Kissmetrics does not record sessions, so teams keep Hotjar (or Microsoft Clarity, which is free) for that and use Kissmetrics for the numbers.

Hotjar is primarily session-based. While it can identify returning users, it doesn't offer the deep person-level tracking and identity resolution that Kissmetrics provides.

Use both: Hotjar to identify friction points visually, and Kissmetrics to measure the revenue impact of your optimization efforts.

Hotjar focuses on qualitative behavior: heatmaps, recordings and surveys. For funnels and revenue per person you need an analytics tool next to it, such as Kissmetrics.