11 Best Free Heatmap Tools & Software For Your Business [2024]

“I don’t perform user research and I base my strategies on instincts” – said no smart marketer ever. 

Ask any marketer worth their salt, and they’ll emphasize the pivotal role of user behavioral insights in their work. And why wouldn’t they? User behavior is unique to each website and each brand. How visitors engage with your website may differ significantly from how they interact with your top competitors’ sites. Making sweeping generalizations from benchmarked reports is hardly possible.

Understanding what your users want, identifying and eliminating the friction they face, and enhancing their experience with YOUR product become possible when you analyze their actions on your website. That’s where heatmaps – an incredible usability testing method – shine bright! Heatmap solutions show captivating visual representations that provide magnificent insights into every movement of your users without overwhelming you. 

Experimenting with website heatmap tools is an excellent starting point for user research. It enables you to make data-driven decisions and optimize the performance of digital properties. To help you pick the best free heatmap tool, we’ve compiled a list of the top 8 heatmapping tools for you to get started. 

Download Free: Website Heatmap Guide

How To Choose A Heatmap Software?

Integrating a new tool into your marketing technology stack or business requires careful consideration. Here are some factors to keep in mind:

1. Budget 

Find a tool that fits your budget and offers cost-effective features. Take a free trial to explore how it can help you achieve your goals – whether it is finding friction in UX or identifying conversion leaks on your website. If satisfied, choose a paid plan over a free plan. When your business grows, you can opt for more enterprise plans offering more features.

2. Extensive features 

A combination of different heatmaps provides more comprehensive insights. Look for a tool that offers both scroll maps (to help you track scroll depth) and browsable heatmaps (to help you understand visitor interaction with the dynamic elements) as the most basic functionality. And ensure that the tool allows you to share and download the heatmaps, enabling quick sharing of insights with your team.

3. Segmentation capabilities 

Sometimes, you pick up unexpected insights by looking at visitor segments. Hence, you should find heat mapping tools that let you do more than perform a surface-level review of visitors. Use a tool that enables segment-specific drill-downs, such as by location, IP address, and time range. This capability allows you to grasp navigation patterns within each segment, allowing targeted improvements.4.

4. Integration with other tools 

Visitor insights shouldn’t just remain stagnant. They should inform your marketing and customer engagement strategies. Hence, integration with analytics tools allows you to understand why metrics fluctuate, while integration with experimentation tools enables testing of different versions of elements. To unlock these opportunities, go for a tool that can be integrated with other tools.

5. Ease of use 

An intuitive and easy-to-use interface will allow all team members across marketing, analytics, and other departments to interpret data without requiring extensive training. Since it will be convenient for everyone to learn and use, more people can adopt the software across the company, leading to better collaboration and decision-making based on actionable insights.

6. Privacy policies 

Heatmap tools collect visitor behavioral data to assess their interactions on your website, and it’s imperative to adhere to data protection regulations. Opt for a tool that maintains transparency regarding its privacy and security policies, ensuring that visitor data is tracked carefully, responsibly, and with consent.

1. VWO Insights [Featured Tool]

VWO Insights distinguishes itself by offering a comprehensive suite of user behavioral analysis tools, including powerful heatmaps. Even in its free starter plan, you can analyze unlimited heatmaps. Additionally, you can leverage click maps that track visitors’ clicks on specific elements on a web page. It is called one of the best website heatmap tools for a reason, right?

Have you noticed something insightful about visitor or user interaction here on your website? Add it as an observation with automatically attached heatmap screenshots. This feature makes future heatmap analysis for testing and further in-depth analysis super convenient. Plus, Insights supports seamless cross-device tracking, allowing you to view heatmaps from desktop, mobile, and tablet.

Other key features – Session Recordings, Surveys, Form Analytic, Funnels

Pros:

• Cross-device tracking 
• Heatmaps of interactable elements
• Observation feature with attached heatmap screenshots

Free plan –

For those looking to dip their toes into the world of behavioral analytics, VWO Insights’ free Starter plan is an ideal choice, accommodating up to 5,000 monthly tracked visitors. Of course, as and when your business scales and requirements grow, you can switch to any of VWO’s paid plans of Insights and capitalize on several other advanced features like A/B testing variation heatmaps, view heatmaps of intractable elements like pop-ups and modals, download for offline viewing, and so on. Check out more about pricing and plans now. 

Free trial – 

Sign up for a full 30-day free trial to explore our range of heatmap features, from basic to advanced. But that’s not all! You can also set up funnels to allow visitor data collection, track your visitors’ progress toward a goal, analyze web forms at a field level, and even conduct surveys to gather valuable user feedback. Our free trial covers insights (including heatmap software tools, of course) for mobile apps too! If you find yourself loving all these amazing features, you might just discover that upgrading to a paid plan is worth it!

Microfocus, an FTSE 250 software group, used VWO Insights’ heatmaps, scroll maps, and session recordings, for qualitative analysis of their home page and product pages. They made the below observations that later, upon A/B testing, led to a 12.37% increase in form sign-ups from their website:

• Not showing asterisk marks on mandatory fields on the sign-up form was probably a cause for low conversion rates.
• The CTA for the Free Trial page was below the fold, probably leading to low conversion rates.
• Their marketplace domain did not have product linkage to specific apps and hence was not sending traffic to Micro Focus product pages (revenue pages).

Still not sure if this is the right tool for you? Go ahead and evaluate VWO Heatmaps for free to see if it ticks off the boxes in your checklist using the free trial.

Watch how to fuel more experiments with heatmap data:

2. Microsoft Clarity

Microsoft Clarity has got you covered with an array of visitor behavioral tools, and the best part? It’s absolutely free forever! With clickmaps, you can easily identify the areas on your pages that generate the most engagement. Scrollmaps, on the other hand, give you insights into how far your visitors scroll on a web page. And if you want to know where the action is happening, area heatmaps reveal the total clicks in specific areas, helping you identify popular click zones on your website. This heat mapping software also supports cross-device viewing of heatmaps and makes sharing with your team quite simple. 

Other key features:

Session recordings tool, Insights, Clarity extension, and CoPilot. 

Pros:

• Free forever
• Different types of heatmaps
• Supports cross-device viewing

Cons:

• Analysis for interactive elements is not possible.
• Not possible to record observations with heatmap screenshots.

Free plan – 

Microsoft Clarity is an entirely free tool. 

Download Free: Website Heatmap Guide

3. Hotjar

Hotjar is one of the impressive website heatmap tools for diving deep into visitor behavioral research. This great tool supports analysis of scroll maps and clickmaps apart from enabling cross-device viewing of all maps. Heatmaps are easily shareable, but the absence of the feature of jotting down observations can limit your chance to share your insights and brainstorm within the team. In fact, the feature to note observations with automatic screenshots and view click areas do not exist even for paid plans in this heatmap tracking tool. 

Other key features:

Recordings, Feedback, Surveys, and Interviews.

Pros:

• Supports scroll maps and clickmaps for comprehensive visitor behavioral research.
• Enables cross-device viewing of all maps.
• Heatmaps are easily shareable.

Cons: 

• Browsable heatmaps are not available.
• No feature to show the number of clicks on website areas.

Free plan – 

With the free basic plan, you can benefit from up to 35 daily sessions.

Free trial – 

You can start 15-day trials for Plus and Business paid plans. To sign up for the trial of the Scale plan, you have to reach out to their sales team.

4. SmartLook

SmartLook is one of the must-have website heatmap tools making waves in the industry. It lets you analyze all three types of heatmaps – clickmaps, movement heatmaps, and scroll maps. While you can avail of cross-device viewing of heatmaps through the free version, the tool does not let you share and download them. SmartLook offers integrations with third-party testing solutions to support your online experiments. But the downside is that you are reliant on these integrations and unable to view heatmaps of the testing variations directly within this heatmap software tool. 

Other key features: 

Events, Session recording tool, funnels, and crash reports. 

Pros: 

• Detailed session replay features
• Intuitive user interface 

Cons: 

• Lack of comprehensive A/B testing and personalization
• Limited integration options

Free plan – 

SmartLook’s free plan is best for anyone who wants to explore it for personal use. To use it within a team, you’ll have to switch to either the Pro plan or Enterprise plan to use more advanced heatmap features. 

Free trial – 

All paid plans offer a 30-day trial period.

5. Mouseflow

Mouseflow is powered with an advanced heatmap feature set, including click, scroll, movement, geo, and attention. Rightly called one of the sought-after website heatmap tools, it goes the extra mile to show you friction scores to flag areas that visitors have trouble interacting with and can be improved. You can also share heatmaps and session recordings within your team. What Mouseflow does not offer is element list reports that show a unified view of clicks on each element of a particular web page, including links, headers, list items, etc. 

Other key features: 

Session replay tool, funnels, forms, and user feedback. 

Pros:

• Advanced heatmap features
• Friction scores highlight areas for improvement

Cons:

• Lack of element list reports to show a unified view of clicks on each element of a web page, including links, headers, list items, etc.

Free plan – 

Mouseflow’s free plan provides you with 500 recordings every month and unlimited pageviews. 

Free trial – 

You get a 14-day free trial for all paid plans.

6. Lucky Orange

With Lucky Orange, you gain access to dynamic heatmaps, allowing you to explore not just static areas of your website but also dynamic elements like modals and pop-ups. Plus, you can deep-dive into the performance of each web page with element analytics. Deep segmentation allows you to analyze and compare visitor behavior across traffic sources and marketing campaigns. However, this website heatmap tool lacks project management capabilities that enable users to jot down observations about heatmaps for further analysis. 

Other key features: 

Sessions Recordings, Surveys, Conversion funnels, Form Analytics, and Live Chat.

Pros:

• Element list shows activities on each website element.
• Download heatmaps for sharing with teams.

Cons:

• A/B test variation heatmaps are not available.
• No funnel filter available to see where drop-offs occur.

Free plan – 

Lucky Orange’s free plan supports 500 page views per month for unlimited team members. Plus, you can get access to all integrations within this plan. 

Free trial –

 A 7-day free trial is available for the free plan and all paid plans.

7. FullStory

FullStory lets you track mouse movements to analyze all three types of maps representative of visitor behavior – heatmaps, scrollmaps, and clickmaps. Through session replays, you can also step into visitors’ shoes and identify the problems they face on your website. You can also easily create a note at an important moment during a session replay and generate a link to the replay to share it with your team. Integrations with third-party testing tools allow you to use observations made on FullStory to run tests and improve conversion rates. 

Other key features:

Product analytics and Complete Data Capture (DX Data Engine)

Pros:

• Unlimited heatmap analysis
• Different types of heatmaps available for visitor research
• Visitor segment-level insights

Cons:

• Scheduling heatmaps for viewing later is not possible
• Heatmaps for A/B variations missing 

Free plan – 

When you sign up for a free trial, you’ll get a 14-day trial of FullStory’s Business edition with up to 5,000 sessions. During the trial, you can switch to a Free plan or contact us to explore the best plan for your business.

Free trial – 

The free trial is only available for the Business plan. There is no free trial for Enterprise and Advanced plans. 

8. Inspectlet

Inspectlet’s free plan lets you access its entire suite of heatmap software tools that cover eye-tracking heatmaps, click heatmaps, and scroll heatmaps. With this tool, you can capture videos of your website visitors in action, providing a comprehensive view of their interactions. 

Other key features:

A/B testing, Feedback tools like surveys, Form analytics tools, and Error Logging 

Pros: 

• Advanced heatmaps and simulated eye-tracking.
• In-depth session recordings offer granular insights into user behavior.

Cons:

• Missing form analytics and surveys needed for in-depth analysis.
• Not suitable for scaling optimization due to missing experimentation features.

Free plan – 

Inspectlet has a free plan offering 25,000 pageviews per month. 

Free trial – 

Not sure if they offer a free trial period.

9. Contentsquare

Contentsquare is an enterprise product that offers advanced heatmaps to track clicks, taps, hesitations, scrolls, and swipes. This helps you identify effective page elements for optimizing revenue and conversion rates. 

Users can analyze heatmaps within the platform or on-site with the help of a live zoning extension. Heatmaps can be easily exported, facilitating seamless sharing of insights with teams and stakeholders to keep them up-to-date with the latest findings. You can also gain additional insights through shortcuts to session replay and customer journey analysis. These features facilitate informed decision-making and enhance user experiences effectively.

Other key features:

Error Analysis, Frustration Scoring, Feedback Collection, Exit Intent Survey

Pros: 

• Leverages AI to generate actionable recommendations based on user behavior.
• Detailed zone-based heatmaps and comprehensive session replay capabilities.

Cons: 

• Limited experimentation capabilities for continuous improvement.
• Higher cost barrier for smaller businesses due to its enterprise nature.

Price – 

Contentsquare does not list prices publicly. You can request a demo or contact sales for details.

10. Quantum Metric 

Quantum Metric provides robust digital analytics tools to enhance understanding of visitor behavior. Visualize visitor engagement through interaction heatmaps, displaying clicks, scrolls, and page attention. Further, you can use session replays to understand customer motivations and track their paths with detailed journey analysis. 

Quantum Metric’s “Visible” feature enables real-time observation and analysis of user interactions directly from your browser, providing actionable insights to optimize digital experiences effectively.

Other key features: 

Monitoring and alerting on user behavior, Segment builder, Felix AI

Pros: 

• Valuable replay and heat mapping features for assessing visitor engagement.
• Intuitive and user-friendly interface.
• Customizable dashboards to meet specific needs.

Cons: 

• Limited capabilities in experimentation.
• Requires a learning curve for setup, and users may need additional training or support.

Price – 

Get a custom quote by requesting a demo.

11. Crazy Egg

Crazy Egg is a pioneer in webpage heatmap technology. It captures a snapshot-in-time of a webpage and generates five insightful reports: scrollmap, confetti, overlay, list, and class heatmap report. These reports vividly display your visitors’ click behavior, providing valuable insights into how they interact with your page elements and layout. This data informs your optimization decisions to enhance user experience and boost conversion rates. 

Other key features:

Recording, A/B Testing, Error Tracking, Surveys, Goals

Pros:

• Refined and intuitive heatmap reports.
• Easy to navigate for non-technical users.

Cons:

• Lacks advanced data analysis capabilities.
• Limited experimentation features, preventing scaling of research-backed optimization.

Free plan:

Crazy Egg does not offer a free plan. Choose from three plans: Plus a $99/month, Pro at $249/month, and Enterprise at $499/month.

Free trial: 

You get a 30-day free trial for all plans. 

Overview of heatmap tool pricing

Here’s a summary of the pricing for each tool discussed in the previous section.

Sr no.	Tool	Pricing
1	VWO Insights	The pricing covers a comprehensive insights tool, including heatmap.There’s no charge for up to 50,000 monthly tracked users; thereafter, fees apply based on your selected paid plan.
2	Microsoft Clarity	Available free of cost
3	Hotjar	Paid plan starts at $32/month. A free basic plan is also available.
4	Smartlook	Plans begin at $55 per month, with a free plan option available.
5	Mouseflow	Paid plan starts at $31/month.
6	Lucky Orange	Plans start from $19 per month. There is also a free plan available.
7	FullStory	Pricing details are not disclosed. However, a free plan is available.
8	Inspectlet	Plans begin at $39 per month, with a free plan option available.
9	Contentsquare	Pricing is not publicly available.
10	Quantum Metric	Pricing is not publicly available.
11	Crazy Egg	Paid plan starts at $99/month.

With the right tool, plunge into visitor insights that are worth their weight in gold

All impressive website heatmap tools, right? Selecting the best free website heatmap tool can be tough with so many amazing choices. Our recommendation? Give VWO Insights a try. It offers a feature-packed heatmap suite along with funnel analysis, survey, goals, and more. So, are you ready to kick-start your user research with this best free heatmap software? Sign up for a free trial and watch the results. Wishing you a treasure trove of user insights to propel your business to growth and success!

FAQs on heatmap tools