Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Hotjar VS FastComments

Compare Hotjar VS FastComments and see what are their differences

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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!

FastComments logo FastComments

A very fast, feature-full, and privacy-focused comment service for handling discussions on the internet. At 4.6 kB with no dependencies, it's the fastest comment service around.
  • 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

  • FastComments Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-08

Hotjar

Website
hotjar.com
$ Details
freemium €39 / 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.

FastComments features and specs

  • Real-time Commenting
    FastComments offers real-time commenting features, allowing users to engage in dynamic conversations without needing to refresh the page.
  • Spam Filtering
    The platform includes robust spam filtering capabilities to maintain the quality and relevance of discussions.
  • Customizability
    FastComments provides various customization options, enabling website owners to tailor the commenting system's appearance and functionalities to match their site's design and requirements.
  • User Engagement
    Features like notifications, upvotes, and social integrations enhance user engagement by fostering interactive and community-driven discussions.
  • Embedding Options
    It allows for easy embedding of the commenting system on any site, providing flexibility and ease of use.
  • Moderation Tools
    The platform includes comprehensive moderation tools that empower admins to manage comments efficiently and maintain community standards.

Possible disadvantages of FastComments

  • Cost
    While it offers free plans, some advanced features and higher usage limits are behind a paywall, which might not be economical for all users.
  • Learning Curve
    The wide array of customization and features could present a steep learning curve for new users not familiar with comment management systems.
  • Dependency on External Service
    Relying on a third-party service may introduce risk, as changes or outages in FastComments can impact the commenting system on your site.
  • Data Privacy Concerns
    Users and site owners may have concerns regarding data privacy and how user comments and data are handled by a third-party service.
  • Limited Offline Support
    Since it is primarily an online service, there may be limitations in accessing or managing comments when offline.

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.

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?

FastComments videos

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

Add video

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Hotjar and FastComments)
Web Analytics
100 100%
0% 0
Commenting Service
0 0%
100% 100
Heatmaps
100 100%
0% 0
Project Management
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 FastComments

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. Feeling disappointed

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

    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 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

FastComments Reviews

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

Based on our record, Hotjar should be more popular than FastComments. 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 — 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: almost 3 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

FastComments mentions (7)

  • Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)
    I'm working on Watch.ly - a remote human-in-the-loop networking and FS sandbox for AI agents like openclaw: https://watch.ly/ Also this week launching https://dirtforever.net/ which is an open alternative to RaceNet Clubs for Dirt Rally 2, since EA is shutting that down. I'm also expanding the SDK and plugin space for https://fastcomments.com and am planning on adding AI agents because everyone expects that now :)... - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • Ask HN: What are you working on (August 2024)?
    Hello! This year I've been working on building an integrated registration and live timing platform [0] for my local organizers in CA, but it is spreading. Very fun/rewarding project. I hope to launch my own cellular-based timing hardware this year which will integrate into the timing platform (right now I've reverse engineered and now support 5 different chronometers, I never knew cross platform serial port comms... - Source: Hacker News / about 2 years ago
  • Commenting system for Hugo
    Another one I can recommend enthusiastically but forgot to mention before, is a paid service called FastComments (https://fastcomments.com/). Great, non-heavy code with a super-helpful developer. Source: over 4 years ago
  • Made this NPM package that saves you the trouble of making a tedious comments section!
    With a quick search, I found https://fastcomments.com/, which does provide comments storage. What does your library provide that this service doesn't? Source: over 4 years ago
  • How do you collect feedback for your blog posts? (for technical blogs, documentation, how-to's, etc.)
    I just started using https://fastcomments.com/. I am still in the free trial but it seems pretty good so far. Source: over 5 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Hotjar and FastComments, 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.

DISQUS - Disqus is a global comment system that improves discussion on websites and connects conversations across the web.

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.

Commento - A fast, bloat-free comments system to foster discussion on your website

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

giscus - A comments system powered by GitHub Discussions. Let visitors leave comments and reactions on your website via GitHub!