15 free heatmap software solutions to track user activity [2023]

Collecting valuable data from your own website shouldn't cost you an arm and a leg. You've got enough expenses to worry about as it is. That's why we put together this list of the top heatmap software programs that offer free plans and trials.

Our top picks: 15 free heatmap software solutions

Here's your complete roundup of the best free heatmap software tools. This list includes companies that offer free trials as well as free ongoing plans. In each software feature, you'll find a brief overview, pricing, pros and cons, and what type of businesses they're best suited for.

1. Heatmap.com
2. Hotjar
3. Lucky Orange
4. Mouseflow
5. Crazy Egg
6. Inspectlet
7. Ptengine
8. Zoho PageSense
9. Plerdy
10. Freshmarketer
11. Matomo
12. VWO
13. Smartlook
14. FullStory
15. UXCam

1. Heatmap.com

Heatmap.com provides real-time and recorded data through heatmaps and screen recordings that lets you see what parts of your landing pages users are engaging wth most and help you make data-backed decisions to improve the UX and conversion rates of your site. They offer a free trial for their heatmap and screen recording services where you can experience their proprietary revenue-based click maps to truly understand the bottom line of each user action.

• Price: Free trial
• Good for: Small, medium, and enterprise-level businesses could benefit from their paid plan

Pros:

• Data drill-down features like revenue, conversion rate, and more that are exclusive to heatmaps.com (no other heatmap software below offers this type of data)
• Doesn't slow down your website (*cough cough* like the ones below)
• Premium access starts at only $47 per month
• You only need to upgrade as your store grows in web traffic

Cons:

• 7 day trial is free but then you have to pay

2. Hotjar

Hotjar is an analytics tool that provides insights into user behavior through features like heatmaps and recordings. They offer a basic package that gives you minimal insights into user behavior.

• Price: Free plan
• Good for: Small, medium, and enterprise-level businesses in the marketing, advertising, and computer software space (small businesses could benefit from the free plan while medium and enterprise businesses should consider the paid version)

Pros:

• Unlimited heatmaps
• 365-day storage

Cons:

• Limited to 35 daily session
• Can't filter or segment data
• Zero custom integrations

3. Lucky Orange

Lucky Orange is a web analytics platform that offers heatmaps, visitor recordings, and more. They offer a basic heatmap plan for free.

• Price: Free plan
• Good for: Small to medium-sized eCommerce businesses (small businesses could benefit from the free plan while medium-sized should consider the paid version)

Pros:

• Unlimited team members
• Access to all integrations

Cons:

• Limited to 500 pageviews per month
• Only 30-day storage for heatmaps and recordings

4. Mouseflow

Mouseflow offers a free version of its services with heatmaps, visitor recordings, and form analysis. They offer a basic heatmap plan for free.

• Price: Free plan
• Good for: Small to medium-sized SaaS businesses (small businesses could benefit from the free plan while medium-sized should consider the paid plan)

Pros:

• Ongoing free version

Cons:

• Limited to 500 recordings per month
• Only applicable to 1 website
• Only 1 month of storage

5. Crazy Egg

Crazy Egg is a web analytics tool that offers insights into user behavior through heatmaps and more. They offer a free trial for their heatmap services.

• Price: Free trial
• Good for: Small, medium, and enterprise businesses in the eCommerce, enterprise, and eLearning space could benefit from their paid plan

Pros:

• 30-day trial for any package

Cons:

• No ongoing free package
• Packages are billed annually

6. Inspectlet

Inspectlet is a web analytics tool that lets you record and analyze user behavior on your site through heatmaps. They offer a basic heatmap plan for free.

• Price: Free plan
• Good for: Small, medium, and enterprise eCommerce and SaaS businesses (small businesses could benefit from the free plan while medium-sized and enterprise should consider the paid version)

Pros:

• 25K pageviews per month
• Email support available

Cons:

• Limited to 1 week of storage

7. Ptengine

Ptengine is a web analytics and heatmap tool that provides real-time insights into user behavior. They offer a basic heatmap plan for free.

• Price: Free plan
• Good for: Small to medium businesses like start-ups, SaaS, and those in the medical industry (small businesses could benefit from the free plan while medium-sized should consider the paid plan)

Pros:

• 3K pageviews per month
• 1-month storage

Cons:

• Only 1 heatmap
• Limited to 100 events per month
• No support

8. Zoho PageSense

Zoho PageSense is a CRO software that helps you optimize your website's UX through features such as heatmaps. They offer a free trial for their heatmap services.

• Price: Free trial
• Good for: Small to medium-sized businesses like marketing agencies, corporate training, and online education could benefit from their paid plan

Pros:

• 5000 monthly visitors
• 3 projects

Cons:

• No freemium package
• Limited to a 15-day trial

9. Plerdy

Plerdy is a site optimization tool that lets you analyze user behavior through their heatmaps. They offer a basic heatmap plan for free.

• Price: Free plan
• Good for: Small to medium-sized businesses such as non-profits, online education, and startups (small businesses could benefit from the free plan while medium-sized should consider the paid version)

Pros:

• Free plan
• 100 pageviews per day

Cons:

• Only 1 month of storage
• Their plans & pricing page is saturated and confusing

10. Freshmarketer

Freshmarketer is a marketing automation platform that offers heatmap services and offers a short, 21-day trial for their heatmaps.

• Price: Free trial
• Good for: Small, medium, and enterprise businesses and eCommerce sites could benefit from their paid plan

Pros:

• No credit card needed for trial

Cons:

• No free plan
• Trial is for all other services, not just heatmaps
• Difficult to find heatmap package details on their site

11. Matomo

Matomo is an open-source web analytics platform where you can track and analyze visitor behavior. They offer a basic version of their program.

• Price: Free plan
• Good for: Small to medium-sized businesses in tourism, hospitality, and SaaS (small businesses could benefit from the free plan while medium-sized should consider the paid version)

Pros:

• Choose where your data is stored
• Unlimited sites, segments, goals, and team members

Cons:

• The free package comes with a cost; a complicated setup requiring strong technical knowledge
• Their free package is only available if it's hosted on your server

12. VWO

VWO offers heatmaps as part of its conversion platform. They offer a free trial for their heatmap services.

• Price: Free trial
• Good for: Small to medium-sized eCommerce, Saas, eLearning, and enterprise businesses could benefit from their paid plan

Pros:

• Heatmap comparison feature

Cons:

• No freemium plan
• Only 1 month of data storage
• Paid plans start at an alarming $300+ per month

13. Smartlook

Smartlook is an analytics platform that offers recordings, heatmaps, event tracking, and conversion funnels. They offer a free trial for their heatmap services.

• Price: Free trial
• Good for: Small to medium-sized SaaS, gaming, and finance businesses could benefit from their paid plan

Pros:

• 30-day free trial

Cons:

• No freemium plan
• Minimal storage
• Limited to 10 heatmaps

14. FullStory

FullStory is an analytics platform that lets businesses track and analyze customer behavior through heatmaps. They offer a free trial for their heatmap services.

• Price: Free trial
• Good for: Enterprise businesses in eCommerce and retail, travel and hospitality, SaaS, finance and insurance, and telecom and media could benefit from their paid plan

Pros:

• Session replay
• Conversion analysis

Cons:

• No free plan
• Short 14-day trial
• No pricing details on their plans and pricing page (and we all know that no listed price usually means it's expensive…)

15. UXCam

UXCam is a self-service mobile app analytics platform. They offer a free trial which includes their heatmap services.

• Price: Free trial
• Good for: Small to medium-sized businesses in the SaaS, eCommerce, and financial space could benefit from their paid plan

Pros:

• No credit card required for trial
• Full access to all features during trial

Cons:

• Self-service
• Only for app analysis
• Short 14-day trial
• Minimal session retention and storage

How do I make a free heatmap?

With some elbow grease, you can make a free heat map in a few ways.

• By using Excel
• In Looker Studio using Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager to set it up
• By using a third-party heatmap software

How do I make a free heatmap?

If you have some Google Tag Manager skills and a willingness to roll up your sleeves, you can make a free click-based heatmap using Google Analytics and Looker Studio for free as follows:

Create custom tags in GTM

Create a custom tag in Google Tag Manager for each of the specific clicks you'd like to track on a page. Each unique click should have a unique tag and be descriptive of where it is on the page.

For example: nav_item_1, nav_item_2, cta_above_the_fold, et cetera.

If you like, you can also create a separate set of tags for the mobile version of your site as well, like this: mobile_nav_item_1, mobile_cta_above_the_fold, et cetera.

Map screenshots onto Looker Studio

Create a new dashboard in Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio) and use their image feature to import desktop and mobile screenshots of the page you're analyzing. You can use GoFullPage to capture your entire page.

Overlay click reports onto the dashboard

Use Looker's Scorecard chart feature to overlay individual metric counts for each click onto each key click. The logic you need is to use “total events” filtered by “event name”:

And there you have it - a free, at-a-glance click-based heatmap:

If you're a Looker Studio expert, you can take it further by adding comparison periods and or transforming the raw numbers into percentages of total clicks.

It's a solution, but it's not perfect. It doesn't change along with your site, so you need to keep it updated, and it doesn't visualize mouse patterns. And unlike heatmap.com, it can't attribute revenue to clicks. But it does achieve the first goal of a heatmap, which is to visually display how the page is being engaged with.

Free trials can only get you so far, though

Like most things in life, you get what you pay for. When you use a free version of any heatmap software, you limit your business and stunt its growth. Free versions are in place to give you the bare minimum of any platform and will constantly be hounding you to upgrade.

Our best advice: use a trial for a few different heatmap programs to find the one that works best for you. Once you've found the one that offers you the best data (data that will actually help you improve UX, boost conversion rate, and increase revenue), go with that one.

Look for heatmaps that integrate seamlessly with your CMS (e.g. Shopify or WordPress), and look for a heatmap company that specializes in heatmaps. Going with a company that offers other types of support can muddy the water and dilute the product.

Trust us, the cost of an elite heatmap software program that provides you with useful data is worth every penny. If you're tight on budget, perform a software audit to find existing programs that aren't yielding results for your business. Cut those and make room for a heatmap software that'll blow your mind.

💡Start a free trial with heatmap.com and get full access to our exclusive features that guarantee record-breaking conversions, leads, and revenue for your website.