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CodePen VS Hotjar

Compare CodePen VS Hotjar and see what are their differences

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Contents:
  1. » Base Details
  2. » Videos
  3. » Reviews
  4. » Alternatives

CodePen logo CodePen

A front end web development playground.

Hotjar logo Hotjar

The #1 Leader in Heatmaps, Recordings, Surveys & More. Sign up for a 15-day free trial and start learning from real user behavior today!
  • CodePen Landing page
    Landing page //
    2018-09-30
  • Hotjar Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-23

Hotjar's product experience insights make it easy to understand what users are really doing on your site.

  • Visualize behavior on your site with Heatmaps

  • Eliminate guesswork with user Recordings

  • Understand the reasons behind behavior with Surveys and Incoming Feedback

CodePen

Website
codepen.io
Pricing URL
-
$ Details
-
Release Date
-
Edit details

Hotjar

Website
hotjar.com
Pricing URL
Official Hotjar Pricing
$ Details
freemium €39.0 / Monthly (Starting at: 3,000 Recordings per month with unlimited Heatmaps)
Release Date
2014 June
Edit details

CodePen features and specs

  • Real-time Collaboration
    Developers can collaborate with others in real-time, making it easy to work on projects with teammates or seek help from the community.
  • Immediate Visual Feedback
    CodePen allows you to see the results of your code as you write it, which is highly beneficial for learning and debugging.
  • Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
    CodePen provides a comfortable and feature-rich online IDE environment with syntax highlighting, autocomplete, and more.
  • Community-Driven
    Users can share their work with the CodePen community, receive feedback, and explore a wide range of projects created by others.
  • Extensive Resources
    CodePen offers a wealth of examples and templates for various web development tasks, making it a useful resource for learning and inspiration.
  • Cross-Device Accessibility
    Being an online platform, CodePen can be accessed from any device with an internet connection, making it convenient for developers on the move.

Possible disadvantages of CodePen

  • Limited Offline Functionality
    Since CodePen is primarily an online tool, it requires an internet connection for most of its features to work, limiting its usefulness in offline environments.
  • Performance Constraints
    Complex or resource-intensive projects may not perform as well on CodePen as they would in a full-fledged local development environment.
  • Subscription Costs
    While many features are free, advanced functionalities and additional storage options require a paid subscription, which may not be ideal for all users.
  • Limited Backend Capabilities
    CodePen is primarily designed for front-end development, so it offers limited support for backend technologies, making it less suitable for full-stack or server-side development.
  • Dependency Management
    Managing dependencies and libraries can be cumbersome compared to local development environments which have better tools for this purpose, like npm.
  • Security Concerns
    Sharing projects with the public can expose your code and assets to unauthorized use, posing potential intellectual property and security risks.

Hotjar features and specs

  • Heatmaps
    Visually represent where users click, move, and scroll on your site. With this context, you'll learn how users really behave.
  • Recordings
    Live playbacks of users on your site.
  • Surveys
    Bring the voice-of-customer to your decision making.
  • Incoming Feedback
    A real-time suggestion box on your site, that lets users express frustration or delight about individual parts of your site.

CodePen videos

+ Add

What Is Codepen?

More videos:

  • Review - Learn to use CodePen from a co-founder of CodePen
  • Review - Using CodePen For Inspiration & Learning

Hotjar videos

+ Add

What is Hotjar?

More videos:

  • Review - Invision prize Hotjar's straightforward, shareable insights
  • Tutorial - Why you should be using Hotjar Analytics
  • Tutorial - Google Analytics vs. Hotjar - Which one should you use?

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to CodePen and Hotjar)

CodePen

Hotjar

Text Editors
100 100%
Text Editors
0% 0
Web Analytics
0 0%
Web Analytics
100% 100
Programming
100 100%
Programming
0% 0
Heatmaps
0 0%
Heatmaps
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using CodePen and Hotjar. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare CodePen and Hotjar

CodePen Reviews

Best Forums for Developers to Join in 2025
Codepen is a social network for developers to show off their work, ask and answer questions, and exchange ideas. It's like a Reddit for coding and design, with a large community of talented web developers.
Source: www.notchup.com
Top 10 Developer Communities You Should Explore
Codepen is a social development environment that allows developers to showcase their work and experiment with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in a collaborative space. Codepen’s focus on visual and interactive development makes it an excellent community for front-end developers and designers.
Source: www.qodo.ai
8 Best Replit Alternatives & Competitors in 2022 (Free & Paid) - Software Discover
Codepen is a social development environment for front-end designers and developers. Build and deploy a website, show off your work, build test cases to learn.
Source: www.softwarediscover.com
Best Online Code Editors For Web Developers
Probably the most popular online code editor. CodePen is fast, easy to use, and allows a web developer to write and share HTML/CSS/JS code online.
Source: techarge.in
Top 25 websites for coding challenge and competition [Updated for 2021]
CodePen is a cool online IDE that allows you to write code in your browser and see the result just as you build it. CodePen challenges is a place for leveling up your skills by building things. Each week, new challenges appear for you to tackle, and the best “Pens” get picked.
Source: towardsdatascience.com

Hotjar Reviews

  1. Kris Leviss
    · Founder at KrisLess ·
    Love it

    I've been using Hotjar for a few months, and it's been a perfect tool for understanding how users interact with my website. The heatmaps and session recordings are especially helpful for identifying problem areas, and the feedback polls give me direct insights from visitors. The platform is easy to navigate, but I’ve noticed the session recordings can be a bit glitchy at times, and the free version is quite limited. Despite these small issues, Hotjar has definitely helped me improve user experience and optimize my site’s performance.

    👍 Pros:    Intuitive user interface|Good session recordings|Useful feedback tools
    👎 Cons:    Free plan is limited|Occasional recording glitches|Data processing can be slow
  2. Prema Toppo
    · SEO Specialist at TechUp Labs ·
    Must have tool

    Hotjar has been our go-to for optimizing UI, reducing bounce rates, and refining CTAs. Its powerful insights have been instrumental in enhancing user experience. A staple tool for data-driven decisions!

  3. Guest
    Feeling disappointed

    I don't like the service. It is very slow and very expensive. Not recommended it to others.

    🏁 Competitors: WatchThemLive
10 Best Mixpanel Alternatives for Product Analytics in 2024
Hotjar is an all-in-one feedback and analytics software suite to optimize your website and make data-driven decisions. Hotjar Observe is the suite’s most popular Mixpanel alternative—pair it with Hotjar Ask, Hotjar Engage, and Hotjar Funnels for all the tools you need to succeed. 😎
Source: clickup.com
7 best Mixpanel alternatives to understand your users
💡 Pro tip: you don't need to choose between Hotjar and Mixpanel. With the Hotjar-Mixpanel integration, you not only identify what's happening on your website (e.g. users frequently add certain items to their cart), but you'll also understand why it's happening (e.g. Hotjar's heatmaps and recordings show users are attracted to a particular promotional banner).
Source: www.hotjar.com
The best Hotjar alternatives & competitors, compared
Sprig is a decent replacement for Hotjar, especially if you find Hotjar's survey tools lacking. It's support for mobile apps is another key differentiator.
Source: posthog.com
11 Hotjar alternatives and competitors in 2024
Hotjar features primarily focus on how users interact with your website rather than gaining in-depth insights that can explain why they interact that way. As a strictly-quantitative data tool, Hotjar only gives you half the answers. While you can run user surveys with Hotjar, the tool lacks many other research methods—such as card sorting, tree testing, user interviews, and...
Source: maze.co
12 Hotjar alternatives for website and mobile app analytics
Since Plerdy has a much broader scope, its pricing plans differ, depending on what you want to use. The plans for their behavior analytics tools aren’t as cost-effective as Hotjar’s. For example, the $39/month Hotjar plan captures 3,000 recordings, whereas Plerdy’s $47/month plan captures only 2,000, with a much shorter storage period.
Source: www.smartlook.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, CodePen seems to be a lot more popular than Hotjar. While we know about 503 links to CodePen, we've tracked only 13 mentions of Hotjar. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

CodePen mentions (503)

View more

Hotjar mentions (13)

  • The Best 100 Free UI/UX Resources for Every Designer & Developer
    Hotjar Hotjar.com Heatmaps, session recordings, and feedback polls (free basic plan). - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • A list of SaaS, PaaS and IaaS offerings that have free tiers of interest to devops and infradev
    Hotjar — Website Analytics and Reports . Free Plan allows 2000 pageviews/day. One hundred snapshots/day (max capacity: 300). Three snapshot heatmaps can be stored for 365 days. Unlimited Team Members. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • What do I do after ProductHunt?
    So you can use heatmapping software such as Crazy Egg and Hotjar to see how your end users use your website. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Lots of Traffic but no sales
    If you have installed a heat map like hotjar.com then I will tell you that I used that for a month and found 5 or so dead ends where users were not getting to the cart or clicking on things that where not informative enough to lead to the next action. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Anyone willing to provide feedback on my newly created website?
    Install hotjar.com - it's free. It's a heatmap that tracks how people navigate around your site. Why this matters? You can see where people drop off on your site (specifically, what content they see/don't see). Then, you can make informed decisions on what content is landing and what needs to change. Source: over 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing CodePen and Hotjar, you can also consider the following products

JSFiddle - Test your JavaScript, CSS, HTML or CoffeeScript online with JSFiddle code editor.

Google Analytics - Improve your website to increase conversions, improve the user experience, and make more money using Google Analytics. Measure, understand and quantify engagement on your site with customized and in-depth reports.

CodeSandbox - Online playground for React

Smartlook - Qualitative analytics for websites and mobile apps Start understanding the 'whys' of your users' behaviors with clear, visual insights. With session recordings and event tracking, you get the complete picture.

GitHub - Originally founded as a project to simplify sharing code, GitHub has grown into an application used by over a million people to store over two million code repositories, making GitHub the largest code host in the world.

FullStory - Meet FullStory, the app that captures all your customer experience data in one powerful platform.

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