Start with Microsoft Clarity, which is free and unsampled, and pay only for a question it can't answer.
Hotjar, meanwhile, is no longer sold under its own name: it has become Contentsquare's entry-level plan, and existing accounts are moved over by default.
The benchmark
In late January 2026, during a weekly check-in, the e-commerce manager of a brand the authors work with tried to open a free Hotjar account and stopped short:
"No, wait, I don't want Contentsquare, I want Hotjar."
They knew no more than that and worked it out on the spot: "The two must be linked." Hotjar did merge into Contentsquare on July 1, 2025, and its pricing page now points to the group's.
The plans differ in the share of sessions you'll be able to replay. Clarity records all of them, up to 100,000 per day per project. Contentsquare's free plan measures 200,000 per month and records only 5%, capped at 10,000.
The Growth plan keeps everything up to 20,000 monthly sessions, then 15% with a floor of 20,000. Take a hypothetical example: a store with 100,000 monthly sessions pays $409 and gets 20,000 recordings, or one visit in five.
Here are the public prices as of early October 2026, in dollars (Contentsquare bills European accounts in euros):
| Your need | Tool | Entry price | Billed by |
|---|---|---|---|
| Recordings and heatmaps | Microsoft Clarity | Free | Nothing |
| Zone-based heatmaps, journey analysis | Contentsquare Growth (formerly Hotjar) | From $49 per month (7,000 sessions) to $739 (200,000) | Sessions |
| On-site surveys | Contentsquare Voice of Customer | Free up to 100 responses per month, then from $99 | Responses |
| Recordings and funnels, Danish vendor | Mouseflow | $25 per month (5,000 sessions) | Sessions |
| Cohorts, repurchase, journeys | PostHog, Amplitude | Free up to 1 million events per month (PostHog) or 2 million (Amplitude) | Events |
| Full platform | Contentsquare Pro and Enterprise | Custom quote, Vendr median: $20,000 per year | Quote |
Between free and a custom quote, a paid subscription costs a few hundred euros a month. The full platform is a different budget, and in our view it's only justified if someone's job is to run it.
The rule
Write the question before choosing the tool. "Why do people drop off on the cart page?" calls for recordings and heatmaps, so Clarity. "Which cohort comes back to buy after sixty days?" calls for a product analytics tool, billed per event.
Then keep a single recording tool active, tied to consent. In a technical audit in September 2026, we found a store running two such tools, loaded three times in all, once without consent, and nobody had decided that.
The steps
- The question. One sentence is enough, written before any sales demo.
- The volume. Pull your monthly sessions, peak periods included. With Contentsquare, once the quota is reached, collection stops until the next billing cycle.
- The meter. Translate each pricing grid into your traffic, in sessions, events or responses, and ask what share of visits will be recorded.
- The vendor's role. Microsoft declares itself the data controller for Clarity, whereas Contentsquare's contract makes it a processor. Have your legal counsel review this point.
- Consent. Since October 31, 2025, Clarity requires a consent signal for visits from the EEA, the United Kingdom and Switzerland. Without
analytics_storagegranted, it continues without cookies: every page view becomes a session and your funnels show a total drop-off. On Shopify, it reads the native cookie banner.
The trap
The trap is the name on the account.
Since August 26, 2026, Contentsquare has been notifying Hotjar accounts in waves that they'll be moved. The notice starts a 30-day window, during which only the person designated as "Account Owner" can refuse.
With no response, the subscription moves to the Growth plan, Hotjar stays accessible for 90 days before the data is deleted, and a new price may apply at renewal.
And that person may be your contractor.
The sentence to present
First check the name shown as "Account Owner" on Hotjar's "Team" page, then the share of sessions recorded and the renewal date.
If it's your contractor, ask them to transfer your site to an account in your name. Copy the following, then rewrite it with your answers for your leadership team:
"We're keeping Clarity to observe, for free. We pay €X per month for one question only: [yours]. The account is in our name, it records one session in N, and it renews on [date]."
