How we make this list: we compare pricing pages, product documentation and public user reviews. Ratings come from G2, Capterra or Trustpilot, with the date we checked them.
Key takeaways
- Contentsquare is the most complete experience platform, with zone-based heatmaps, journey analysis, replay and a free plan to start.
- Quantum Metric leads on quantifying friction in money, with Felix AI summarising sessions for enterprise teams.
- Glassbox is the regulated-industry pick, with HIPAA and PCI posture and flat annual contracts.
- LogRocket, Smartlook, Amplitude and Mixpanel all offer free tiers, the sensible way to prove the category before an enterprise purchase.
Quick comparison
| Tool | Best for | Starting price | Free plan |
|---|
 Contentsquare | Complete experience intelligence | Free | Yes |
 Quantum Metric | Revenue-quantified friction at enterprise scale | See website | No |
 Fullstory | Behavioural data and replay for product teams | Free | Yes |
 Glassbox | Regulated industries, compliance capture | See website | No |
 LogRocket | Replay plus error tracking for developers | See website | Yes |
 Smartlook | Small and mid-size teams starting DXA | See website | Yes |
 Amplitude | Deep product analytics with replay added | Free | Yes |
 Mixpanel | Product analytics value with replay and flags | Free | Yes |
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Starting priceFree
Free planYes
Contentsquare is the category's centre of gravity. Its zone-based approach, measuring every element on the page rather than overlaying a vague heat blob, changed what experience analytics could claim, and its acquisitions (Hotjar for the mid-market, Heap for autocapture product analytics) mean one contract can serve a whole company's ladder of needs.
The caution is proportion. A ten-person startup needs a free plan and replay, not an experience intelligence programme with a six-figure renewal. Contentsquare sells both ends; make sure the contract you are offered matches the end you are at, with session volumes and retention written down before the first spike month arrives.
What we like- The broadest platform here: zone-based heatmaps, customer journey analysis, session replay, frustration scoring and error analysis in one system, now includes Hotjar at the accessible end and Heap's autocapture in its product analytics, giving one vendor a ladder from free to enterprise, free plan available, with Growth, Pro and Enterprise tiers above it, AI recommendations and impact scoring aimed at prioritising fixes by revenue
Watch out for- Enterprise tiers are custom-priced and reviews consistently call it expensive, breadth means implementation and training effort
- Small teams use a fraction of it, data retention and session volumes drive renewals upward, the platform's depth can overwhelm teams that only needed replay
Starting priceSee website
Free planNo
Quantum Metric's discipline is commercial. Where other platforms show you a rage click, Quantum Metric attaches the estimated revenue the rage click pattern costs across the affected population, which is the language a CFO funds fixes in. For airlines, banks and large retailers, that quantification is the reason it wins enterprise evaluations.
Buy it if your digital revenue justifies enterprise tooling and your teams will actually work the quantified queue. The platform produces a prioritised list of expensive problems every week; an organisation without the engineering capacity to fix them is buying a very accurate description of its own backlog.
What we like- Built around a single idea: every experience issue priced in lost revenue, so prioritisation arguments end quickly, Felix AI provides agentic session summarisation and automated friction detection, strong in travel, retail, financial services and other high-volume transactional sectors, real-time alerting when a friction pattern spikes, with SOC 2, GDPR and CCPA compliance posture
Watch out for- Enterprise-only pricing, fully custom, with no free tier or self-serve route, per-session economics require negotiated caps, as its own procurement guidance acknowledges, overpowered for content sites and small commerce, implementation is a project, not an afternoon
#3Fullstory
Best for: Behavioural data and replay for product teams4.5/5 on
G2 (1,052 reviews, checked Oct 2026)
Visit fullstory.com
Starting priceFree
Free planYes
Fullstory's founding insight was that teams cannot analyse what they forgot to tag. Its autocapture records the behaviour first and lets you define events later, which makes it the fastest route from installation to insight in this category, and its replay search remains the one rival users cite with envy.
Governance is the price of autocapture. Everything is captured, so masking sensitive fields, respecting consent and setting retention are configuration duties, not defaults to assume. Product teams that handle that setup get the best debugging and UX research tool here; enterprises in regulated sectors should compare Glassbox's compliance posture before committing.
What we like- Tagless autocapture records interactions without engineering instrumentation sprints, so history exists from day one, free plan with a generous session allowance (30,000 sessions a month per current vendor comparisons), beloved replay and behavioural search: find every session matching a behaviour in seconds, frustration signals such as rage clicks and dead clicks surfaced automatically
Watch out for- Paid tiers are custom-priced and climb with session volume, mobile coverage is an add-on in its packaging, product analytics depth trails Amplitude and Mixpanel for event-based analysis, autocapture raises data governance questions your privacy team must configure, masking is on you
Starting priceSee website
Free planNo
Glassbox is where regulated enterprises land. A bank does not only need to know a customer struggled; it needs a defensible record of exactly what the customer was shown, for complaints, disputes and regulators. Glassbox built its capture, retention and compliance story for that world, and its flat contract model suits the predictable budgeting public companies require.
Outside regulated sectors its advantages narrow: Contentsquare matches its analytics breadth with a friendlier on-ramp, and the self-serve tier below is cheaper for ordinary commerce. Inside them, the compliance evidence trail is the product, and Glassbox is the shortlist default.
What we like- Built for financial services, insurance, healthcare and telecom: compliance-grade capture with SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA and PCI positioning, flat annual contract pricing rather than per-session, removing the spike-bill problem for high-volume sites, tagless capture across web and mobile apps, with AI struggle detection, highest G2 rating in this peer set (4.9 from 809 reviews in current G2 comparison data)
Watch out for- No free tier and no self-serve route
- Enterprise sales process only, less brand recognition outside regulated verticals, pricing, while flat, is enterprise-level, capture-everything architecture needs the same governance care as Fullstory's
#5LogRocket
Best for: Replay plus error tracking for developers4.6/5 on
G2 (2,403 reviews, checked Oct 2026)
Visit logrocket.com
Starting priceSee website
Free planYes
LogRocket answers the engineer's version of the DXA question: a user reports a broken flow, and instead of a ticket saying "it didn't work", the team watches the exact session with the failed network call highlighted. That fusion of replay and technical telemetry is why product and support organisations adopt it and keep it.
Choose it when the primary job is finding and fixing product defects and understanding feature usage, with experience analytics as a bonus. Choose Contentsquare or Quantum Metric when the primary job is optimising journeys and revenue across a large digital estate, and let LogRocket serve the teams who fix what those platforms surface.
What we like- Session replay fused with the developer evidence: console logs, network requests and errors in the same timeline, product analytics and issue management built around the replay, so support and engineering work one queue, AI-assisted session review helps teams find the sessions that matter in volume, very large review base (4.6 from over 2,300 G2 reviews) reflecting deep adoption in product engineering teams
Watch out for- Its centre of gravity is debugging and product, not marketing experience analytics
- Zone heatmaps trail Contentsquare, pricing scales with sessions, enterprise tiers are quoted, free tier is a starting allowance, not a long-term plan for a busy product, less suited to non-technical CX teams as the primary buyer
#6Smartlook
Best for: Small and mid-size teams starting DXA4.6/5 on
G2 (874 reviews, checked Oct 2026)
Visit smartlook.com
Starting priceSee website
Free planYes
Smartlook is where most small and mid-size teams should begin with DXA. It covers the core loop, watch sessions, see the friction, fix it, measure the funnel again, without an implementation project or an enterprise contract, and its mobile support matters to app businesses the web-first tools serve poorly.
Its ceiling is honest: no revenue-quantified prioritisation engine, no compliance-grade evidence capture. A team that starts on Smartlook and later migrates up this list will have lost nothing; the questions it teaches you to ask are the ones the enterprise platforms answer at greater depth.
What we like- The accessible on-ramp: recordings, heatmaps, funnels and event analytics a small team can run without an analyst, strong mobile app analytics for its price band, free tier to start, with paid plans priced for small businesses rather than enterprises, well reviewed in its segment (4.6 from 874 G2 reviews), now part of the Cisco family, giving it a stable home
Watch out for- Analytical depth and AI prioritisation trail the enterprise platforms, session volumes and retention at lower tiers limit forensic work, enterprise governance and compliance features are lighter than Glassbox, as a first tool it can be outgrown, though export and pricing soften that risk
#7Amplitude
Best for: Deep product analytics with replay added4.5/5 on
G2 (2,997 reviews, checked Oct 2026)
Visit amplitude.com
Starting priceFree
Free planYes
Amplitude belongs on this list because the boundary has dissolved: product analytics now includes replay, and experience questions increasingly need event-level answers. For a product organisation, Amplitude's cohort and experimentation depth answers "did the fix work, for whom" better than any replay tool, and its replay closes the "why" gap.
Buy it as your analytics core, not as a replay purchase. If the problem statement is a leaking checkout on a commerce site, Contentsquare fits better. If it is activation, retention and feature adoption in a software product, Amplitude is the strongest tool here and the replay is a welcome extra.
What we like- The deepest product analytics here: event-based analysis, cohorts, governance and experimentation in one platform, session replay and heatmaps added, so product questions and experience evidence connect, free plan to start, Plus from $49 a month, with Growth and Enterprise custom, the default analytics stack for data-mature product organisations
Watch out for- It is a product analytics platform first
- Experience analytics is the extension, not the founding craft, enterprise pricing is substantial (reported medians around $64,000 a year in market comparisons), event taxonomy discipline is required: undisciplined instrumentation produces elegant nonsense, marketing and CX teams find it less visual than Contentsquare
#8Mixpanel
Best for: Product analytics value with replay and flags4.5/5 on
G2 (1,375 reviews, checked Oct 2026)
Visit mixpanel.com
Starting priceFree
Free planYes
Mixpanel is Amplitude's closest substitute at a friendlier price, and its late-2025 additions of replay, heatmaps and feature flags turned it into a legitimate single-tool answer for growth-stage product teams: measure the funnel, watch the sessions, ship the variant, in one place.
The recency of those additions is the fair caution. Session replay that arrived last year does not have Fullstory's decade of refinement behind it. For teams whose core need is product analytics with experience context, that trade is sound. For teams whose core need is the replay itself, start higher up the list.
What we like- Product analytics priced below Amplitude, with a free plan and event-based analysis teams can self-serve, added session replay, heatmaps and feature flags in late 2025, closing the experience gap with its rival, reported median spend around $38,000 a year in market comparisons, under Amplitude's, strong for growth-stage companies standardising on one analytics tool
Watch out for- Replay and heatmaps are recent additions
- Depth trails Fullstory and Contentsquare, enterprise governance features trail Amplitude, like Amplitude, it needs instrumentation discipline to stay truthful, not a compliance capture tool for regulated evidence
How we chose
Platforms were included if digital experience analytics, session replay, behavioural capture and experience insight, is a core offer today, spanning enterprise DXA and the product analytics platforms that now include it. Pricing reflects each vendor's current model: Contentsquare, Fullstory, Amplitude and Mixpanel publish free plans; Quantum Metric and Glassbox are enterprise quoted; LogRocket and Smartlook run free tiers into priced plans. G2 ratings cited are from current comparison data (Glassbox 4.9, Contentsquare and Quantum Metric 4.6, Fullstory 4.5, Smartlook 4.6, LogRocket 4.6) and are quoted as review scores, not endorsements.
The three traps in DXA buying
Sampling. A tool recording 10 percent of sessions will miss the exact checkout error that hits 2 percent of users. Ask every vendor what full capture costs at your real traffic, including your peak month, and get the answer in the contract.
Retention. Replay is worthless for a dispute or a quarterly review if sessions vanish after 14 days. Regulated buyers need retention measured in years; marketing buyers in months. Price the retention you need, not the default.
Privacy configuration. Every platform here can mask sensitive data; none can want to. Assign an owner for masking rules, consent mode and access control at implementation, and audit the first month's recordings for leaked personal data before scaling capture.
Frequently asked questions
What is digital experience analytics?
It is the analysis of how users actually experience a website or app: session replays, heatmaps, click and scroll behaviour, frustration signals such as rage clicks, and journey analysis across pages. Where standard analytics counts events, DXA shows the experience behind them, and modern platforms attach business impact to the friction they find.
How much do these platforms cost?
The self-serve tier starts free: Contentsquare, Fullstory, Amplitude and Mixpanel all publish free plans, and Amplitude's Plus starts at $49 a month. Enterprise platforms are quoted per deployment, driven by session volume, retention and modules, and market comparisons report medians in the tens of thousands per year for product analytics at scale. Glassbox's flat annual contract is the exception to per-session pricing.
What is the difference between DXA and product analytics?
Product analytics (Amplitude, Mixpanel) counts structured events to measure funnels, cohorts and retention. DXA (Contentsquare, Quantum Metric, Glassbox, Fullstory) captures the experience itself: what the user saw and did, replayed. The categories are merging, product tools add replay, DXA adds event analysis, but the founding question still separates them: "how many and who" versus "what happened and why".
Is session replay legal under GDPR and CCPA?
It can be, with configuration: consent where required, masking of personal and payment data, retention limits and access controls. Every enterprise platform here supports those controls and carries SOC 2 and privacy framework positioning; Glassbox adds HIPAA and PCI for regulated capture. Legality is a property of your deployment, not the tool, which is why privacy review belongs in the implementation plan.
Which platform should a small business start with?
Smartlook or LogRocket for replay-led needs, Mixpanel if product analytics matters equally. All start free or cheap, install in a day and teach the discipline. Graduate to Contentsquare or Fullstory when session volumes, multiple properties or stakeholder count outgrow the starter tier, and to Glassbox or Quantum Metric when regulation or revenue scale demands it.
Sources we checked (0)
Is your product missing or out of date?
We review this list regularly. Vendors can request a listing, send updated pricing or ask about featured placement.
Shihab Mia · Founder, Rankite
Shihab has 5+ years in B2B and SaaS SEO. He writes Rankite's software buying guides from pricing pages, documentation and public user reviews. More about Shihab.