Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Hotjar VS Elevar

Compare Hotjar VS Elevar and see what are their differences

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!

Elevar logo Elevar

Deploy a data layer, connect to 40+ marketing channels, ensure all of your conversions are tracked, and enable server side tagging for Shopify.
  • 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

Not present

Hotjar

Website
hotjar.com
$ Details
freemium โ‚ฌ39.0 / Monthly (Starting at: 3,000 Recordings per month with unlimited Heatmaps)
Release Date
2014 June
Startup details
Country
Malta

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.

Elevar features and specs

  • Enhanced Server-Side Tracking
    Elevar specializes in server-side tracking for Shopify stores, enabling more accurate data collection by bypassing browser-based limitations like ad blockers and iOS privacy restrictions, leading to better attribution and marketing insights.
  • Easy Shopify Integration
    Elevar is purpose-built for Shopify and Shopify Plus, offering a streamlined setup process with pre-built integrations for major marketing platforms like Google Analytics 4, Facebook/Meta, TikTok, Pinterest, and more without heavy developer involvement.
  • Improved Data Accuracy
    By implementing a data layer and server-side tagging, Elevar significantly improves the accuracy of conversion tracking and marketing analytics, helping merchants make better-informed decisions about ad spend and marketing strategy.
  • Pre-Built Data Layer
    Elevar provides a robust, pre-built data layer for Shopify stores that standardizes ecommerce event tracking across the customer journey, from product views to purchases, saving significant development time and reducing implementation errors.
  • Consent Management Support
    Elevar includes built-in consent management and compliance features that help Shopify merchants adhere to privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA, ensuring tracking is handled in a privacy-compliant manner.

Possible disadvantages of Elevar

  • Cost Can Add Up
    Elevar operates on a subscription pricing model that can become expensive, especially for smaller Shopify merchants or those with high order volumes. The ongoing monthly cost may be difficult to justify for stores with limited marketing budgets.
  • Shopify-Only Focus
    Elevar is exclusively designed for Shopify and Shopify Plus stores, making it unsuitable for merchants using other ecommerce platforms like WooCommerce, Magento, or BigCommerce who need similar tracking solutions.
  • Learning Curve
    While easier than fully custom implementations, Elevar still has a learning curve, especially for merchants unfamiliar with concepts like data layers, server-side tracking, GTM containers, and marketing pixel configurations.
  • Dependency on Third-Party Platform
    Relying on Elevar introduces a dependency on a third-party tool for critical tracking infrastructure. If Elevar experiences downtime, bugs, or changes its pricing or features, it can directly impact a store's marketing data and attribution.
  • Limited Customization for Complex Setups
    While Elevar handles standard ecommerce tracking well, merchants with highly customized Shopify stores or complex tracking requirements may find the platform's templated approach limiting and may still need developer support for edge cases.

Analysis of Hotjar

Overall verdict

  • Overall, Hotjar is considered a good tool for businesses looking to gain deeper insights into user behavior and enhance their websites based on real user data. It offers a combination of qualitative and quantitative analytics which adds a significant advantage for understanding key user interaction points.

Why this product is good

  • Hotjar is a popular analytics tool that provides heatmaps, session recordings, and surveys to help businesses understand user behavior on their websites. It is praised for its ease of use, intuitive interface, and comprehensive features that offer valuable insights into how users interact with a site. Additionally, it enables businesses to collect direct feedback from users, helping to identify areas for improvement and optimize user experience.

Recommended for

    Hotjar is recommended for small to medium-sized businesses, eCommerce sites, and startups looking to improve their website's user experience. It is also suitable for UX/UI designers and product managers who want detailed analytics without the complexity of larger enterprise-level tools. However, larger organizations may want to consider more robust analytics platforms that can handle and analyze larger volumes of data.

Analysis of Elevar

Overall verdict

  • Elevar is a strong, purpose-built solution for ecommerce brands that need accurate server-side tracking and conversion data, particularly those on Shopify. Its focus on data integrity, first-party tracking, and marketing attribution makes it a reliable choice for businesses that depend on precise analytics to optimize ad spend.

Why this product is good

  • Specializes in server-side tracking and Google Tag Manager setups tailored for ecommerce, improving data accuracy amid cookie restrictions and iOS privacy changes
  • Deep integration with Shopify and popular marketing platforms like Google Ads, Meta, TikTok, and Klaviyo
  • Helps recover lost conversion data and improve attribution, which can directly enhance ad performance and ROAS
  • Offers conversion data integrity monitoring and alerts to catch tracking issues quickly
  • Well-regarded in the DTC and Shopify community with solid documentation and support

Recommended for

  • Shopify and ecommerce brands running paid advertising campaigns
  • DTC businesses needing accurate first-party and server-side conversion tracking
  • Marketing teams and agencies focused on improving attribution and ROAS
  • Merchants affected by cookie deprecation and iOS privacy changes who need reliable data
  • Growing online stores that want to scale ad spend with confidence in their analytics

Hotjar videos

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?

Elevar videos

No Elevar videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

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Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Hotjar and Elevar)
Web Analytics
100 100%
0% 0
Marketing Analytics
0 0%
100% 100
Heatmaps
100 100%
0% 0
eCommerce
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

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

Hotjar Reviews

  1. Kris Leviss
    ยท Founder at KrisLess ยท
    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 Iโ€™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 siteโ€™s performance.

    ๐Ÿ‘ Pros:    Intuitive user interface|Good session recordings|Useful feedback tools
    ๐Ÿ‘Ž Cons:    Free plan is limited|Occasional recording glitches|Data processing can be slow
  2. Prema Toppo
    ยท SEO Specialist at TechUp Labs ยท
    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. Feeling disappointed

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

    ๐Ÿ Competitors: WatchThemLive

7 Best Product Discovery Tools for High-Growth B2B SaaS Teams (2026)
Hotjar is a behavioral analytics tool that provides heatmaps and session recordings. In the discovery process, it acts as the "eyes," showing where users get stuck, click out of frustration, or ignore a new feature entirely, providing the "why" behind the data.
Source: www.laneapp.co
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 suiteโ€™s most popular Mixpanel alternativeโ€”pair it with Hotjar Ask, Hotjar Engage, and Hotjar Funnels for all the tools you need to succeed. ๐Ÿ˜Ž
Source: clickup.com
7 best Mixpanel alternatives to understand your users
๐Ÿ’ก 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 methodsโ€”such as card sorting, tree testing, user interviews, and...
Source: maze.co

Elevar Reviews

We have no reviews of Elevar yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Hotjar seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 13 times since March 2021. 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.

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 / over 1 year ago
  • A list of SaaS, PaaS and IaaS offerings that have free tiers of interest to devops and infradev
    Hotjar โ€” 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 2 years 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 2 years 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: over 3 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 3 years ago
View more

Elevar mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Elevar yet. Tracking of Elevar recommendations started around May 2026.

What are some alternatives?

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

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.

Triple Whale - Triple Whale helps ecommerce brands make better decisions with better data.

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.

Analyzify - Google tag manager and analytics app for your Shopify store

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

Stape.io - The easiest way to server-side tracking. Everything from server Google Tag Manager and Meta`s CAPIG hosting to custom solutions.