Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Smartlook VS Exceptionless

Compare Smartlook VS Exceptionless and see what are their differences

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Smartlook logo 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.

Exceptionless logo Exceptionless

Don't let your users walk away in frustration.
  • Smartlook Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-22

Smartlook is a qualitative analytics solution for web and mobile helping over 250,000 businesses of all sizes and industries answer the โ€œwhysโ€ behind usersโ€™ actions โ€” why do users churn, or why arenโ€™t they using a feature, or why are they skipping onboarding? Now you can eliminate the guesswork.

With a unique feature set, Smartlook gives you a way to finally understand user behavior at the micro level. Always-on visitor recordings show you what every last visitor does on your website or app, and heatmaps give you mass data about where most people click and scroll. Automatic event tracking lets you know how (and how often) your visitors do specific things, while conversion funnels take those events and show you how much success you're having with conversions.

Started in 2016, Smartlook has grown into a complete solution for qualitative analytics, making guesswork a thing of the past. Stop wondering why, and start getting answers today.

  • Exceptionless Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-11-01

Smartlook features and specs

  • Comprehensive Analytics
    Smartlook provides detailed insights through session recordings, heatmaps, and event tracking, which helps businesses understand user behavior deeply.
  • User-Friendly Interface
    The platform is easy to navigate, making it accessible for users who may not be experienced with analytics tools.
  • Real-Time Data
    Smartlook offers real-time data monitoring, which allows businesses to promptly identify and address issues as they occur.
  • Cross-Platform Support
    The tool supports web, iOS, and Android platforms, enabling businesses to track user behavior across different devices seamlessly.
  • Advanced Filtering
    Users can apply advanced filters to their data, which helps in segmenting users and understanding specific behaviors more accurately.
  • Integrations
    Smartlook integrates with various third-party tools like Google Analytics, Slack, and others, providing a more versatile analytical environment.
  • Session Recordings
    Smartlook provides detailed session recordings for mobile apps, allowing teams to watch real user interactions, see exactly how users navigate through the app, and identify usability issues or friction points in the user experience.
  • Heatmaps for Mobile
    The platform offers touch heatmaps specifically designed for mobile apps, helping teams visualize where users tap, scroll, and interact most frequently, enabling data-driven UI/UX design decisions.
  • Event-Based Analytics
    Smartlook allows you to track custom events and user actions without requiring extensive coding, making it easier to monitor funnels, conversions, and key user behaviors within the mobile app.
  • Crash and Anomaly Detection
    The tool helps identify crashes and anomalies by linking session recordings to error events, enabling developers to see exactly what the user was doing before a crash occurred, which significantly speeds up debugging and issue resolution.

Possible disadvantages of Smartlook

  • Data Privacy Concerns
    Recording user sessions could potentially raise privacy issues if not managed correctly, requiring strict adherence to data protection regulations.
  • Learning Curve
    Even with a user-friendly interface, new users might still encounter a learning curve when trying to utilize all features effectively.
  • Cost
    While offering a free tier, the costs can add up for premium features or advanced usage, which might be a constraint for smaller businesses.
  • Performance Impact
    The presence of session recording scripts can sometimes slow down website performance, affecting the user experience negatively.
  • Limited Free Plan
    The free plan comes with limitations in terms of data retention and the number of sessions that can be recorded, which might not be sufficient for larger businesses or detailed analysis.
  • Privacy and Compliance Concerns
    Capturing session recordings on mobile apps raises significant privacy concerns. Teams must carefully configure data masking and ensure compliance with GDPR, CCPA, and app store privacy policies, which adds complexity to implementation.
  • Data Sampling at Scale
    For apps with high traffic volumes, Smartlook may sample data rather than capturing every session, which means some user interactions could be missed and analytics may not represent the full picture of user behavior.
  • Learning Curve for Advanced Features
    While basic session playback is straightforward, setting up advanced features like custom event tracking, funnel analysis, and proper data filtering requires technical knowledge and time investment, which can slow down initial adoption.

Exceptionless features and specs

  • Real-time Error Tracking
    Exceptionless provides real-time error tracking, enabling developers to quickly identify and address issues as they occur, ensuring timely resolutions.
  • Customizable Notifications
    It offers customizable notifications, allowing teams to set up alerts depending on the severity or frequency of errors, and ensure that relevant stakeholders are informed immediately.
  • Detailed Error Reports
    Exceptionless generates detailed error reports that include pertinent information like stack traces, occurrence contexts, and user data, which helps in diagnosing and fixing bugs efficiently.
  • Open-source Option
    Being available as an open-source solution allows teams to self-host and customize the platform according to their specific needs, providing greater flexibility and control.
  • Seamless Integrations
    Exceptionless integrates well with various development tools and services, including GitHub, Slack, and Azure DevOps, facilitating streamlined workflows.

Possible disadvantages of Exceptionless

  • Initial Setup Complexity
    Some users may find the initial setup and configuration of Exceptionless to be complex, especially if they choose to self-host the solution.
  • Potential Performance Overhead
    When monitoring a large number of events or tracking numerous applications, there might be a performance overhead that could affect application performance slightly.
  • Limited Free Tier
    The free tier of Exceptionless may have limitations in terms of features and data retention, which could be restrictive for some users requiring more comprehensive monitoring solutions.
  • Smaller Community
    Compared to more established competitors, Exceptionless may have a smaller user community and less community-driven support resources.
  • Advanced Features Costs
    Some advanced features might be gated behind paid plans, which could incur additional costs for teams needing those specific functionalities or higher usage limits.

Analysis of Smartlook

Overall verdict

  • Smartlook is generally well-regarded for its comprehensive analytics capabilities, ease of integration, and intuitive user interface. It offers valuable data and insights that can help businesses enhance their digital platforms. While some users have noted occasional issues with data accuracy or performance, the overall feedback is positive, making it a suitable tool for many organizations.

Why this product is good

  • Smartlook is a digital analytics tool designed for websites and mobile apps to help businesses understand user behavior through features like session recordings, heatmaps, event tracking, and conversion funnels. These functionalities provide insights into user interactions and can help identify areas for optimization, improve user experience, and increase conversion rates.

Recommended for

  • E-commerce businesses looking to understand customer behavior
  • Product managers aiming to optimize user experience
  • Marketers who need to analyze conversion rates and funnels
  • UX/UI designers focused on improving website or app interfaces
  • Businesses seeking to identify and troubleshoot technical issues quickly

Smartlook videos

Smartlook - Get an insider look

More videos:

  • Review - Join the TurboTax SmartLook Team
  • Review - With TurboTax SmartLook, You're Never Alone

Exceptionless videos

Exceptionless JavaScript Client Demo - Track Errors in Minutes

More videos:

  • Review - Self Hosting Exceptionless
  • Review - Exceptionless Weekly Update - 4-10-17

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Smartlook and Exceptionless)
Web Analytics
100 100%
0% 0
Exception Monitoring
0 0%
100% 100
Analytics
100 100%
0% 0
Error Tracking
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 Smartlook and Exceptionless

Smartlook Reviews

10 Best Mixpanel Alternatives for Product Analytics in 2024
Smartlook is an advanced analytics tool that provides real-time insights into user behaviors and experiences. Understand how users engage with your products, and identify areas for improvement in your customer experience.
Source: clickup.com
11 Hotjar alternatives and competitors in 2024
Another key consideration is that Smartlook provides most of its features on the Pro plan, whereas Hotjar limits features by plan. For example, trend analysis is only available in the Scale planโ€”which starts at $171 per month. When using Smartlook, this functionality is available in all plans.
Source: maze.co
12 Hotjar alternatives for website and mobile app analytics
is the product manager at Smartlook. Martin is enthusiastic about delivering the best possible customer experience. Prior to joining Smartlook as a product manager, he used to work as a consultant for Oracle NetSuite. Martin has a deep professional interest in biometric signing and work digitalization. He is also an NFL enthusiast and likes to enjoy good food (ideally while...
10 Best Hotjar Alternatives & Competitors in 2023
The second Hotjar alternative on our list is Smartlook. As a marketing analytics tool, Smartlook seems to provide its users with session recordings of visitors and allows them to create heatmaps and add events to funnels.
Top 10 CRO Tools to Boost Conversions for Free in 2023
Smartlook is one of the conversion optimization tools that claim to increase traffic rate, and, eventually, your web conversions. It offers key features like event tracking, session replays, heatmaps, and funnels.
Source: aigrow.me

Exceptionless Reviews

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

Based on our record, Exceptionless should be more popular than Smartlook. It has been mentiond 4 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.

Smartlook mentions (2)

Exceptionless mentions (4)

  • What are the best logging and monitoring tools for .NET apps
    Exceptionless: Free, easy to use and contribute to. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • How To Monitor Events in Your Svelte App
    With Svelte taking a different approach to JavaScript web frameworks, we should explore how (if at all) handling events and monitoring those events works in Svelte. Open-source โค๏ธ open-source, so we'll use the open-source event monitoring tool, Exceptionless alongside our Svelte app. - Source: dev.to / almost 5 years ago
  • Free for dev - list of software (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, etc.)
    Exceptionless โ€” Real-time error, feature, log reporting and more. Free for 3k events per month/1 user. Open source and easy to self-host for unlimited use. - Source: dev.to / about 5 years ago
  • How to Build a Custom Go Client For a REST API
    Exceptionless is powered by a REST API. When you interact with the dashboard UI, when you use the .NET client, and when you use the JavaScript client, you are interacting with the REST API. It is well-documented, and it can be used without any client libraries. This paradigm makes it simple for developers to create their own wrappers around the API. In fact, we recently started work on building an official Go... - Source: dev.to / over 5 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Smartlook and Exceptionless, you can also consider the following products

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!

Sentry.io - From error tracking to performance monitoring, developers can see what actually matters, solve quicker, and learn continuously about their applications - from the frontend to the backend.

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.

Bugsee - See video, network & logs leading up to bugs or crashes

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

BugSnag - Not all bugs are worth fixing. Prioritize and fix software bugs that matter while improving software stability with every release.