Hotjar vs Plausible

These tools serve different analytics needs. Hotjar shows you how users behave on your pages with heatmaps and recordings. Plausible tells you where your traffic comes from with a clean, cookie-free dashboard.

Verdict

These are complementary, not competing tools. Plausible replaces Google Analytics for privacy-conscious traffic tracking. Hotjar adds behavioral insights on top. Most solo creators only need Plausible. Add Hotjar (or free Microsoft Clarity) only when you need to understand why users aren't converting.