This guide will help you to understand Microsoft Clarity and its top 4 competitors (riyo.ai, Hotjar, Lucky Orange, and Mouseflow) in-depth. After this, you will definitely need less time researching and choosing tools and more time focusing on what really matters: delighting your users and growing your business.

To compare Microsoft Clarity with its competitors, you need to know about Clarity first, right? Let’s take a bird-eye view of Clarity.

Microsoft Clarity

Founded: 2020

Typical Users: Marketing and content teams

Typical Customers: Small business

Microsoft Clarity is an entirely free session replay tool and also offers heat maps. It also tracks user interactions like rage clicks and dead clicks, providing valuable insights into problematic areas. Additionally, Clarity integrates seamlessly with Google Analytics 4, allowing you to view your GA data within the Clarity platform for a more comprehensive analysis.

Key Features of Hotjar

1️⃣ Session replay: Watch user sessions with built-in event timelines

2️⃣ Heatmaps: See where users click and how they navigate your website

3️⃣ Scrollmaps: See how far users scroll

4️⃣ Frustration signals: Detect rage and dead clicks

Now, let’s dive into the best four clarity AI alternatives.

1. riyo.ai

Founded: 2020

Typical Users: SEO, CRO, marketing teams, UX designers, custom success teams, product designers, etc.

Typical Customers: E-commerce, SaaS, Fintech, Healthtech

What is riyo.ai?

riyo.ai (That’s us, Hii!👋) is a user behavior analytics tool designed to help e-commerce, SaaS, Fintech, and Healthtech companies understand how their users interact with their websites. riyo.ai provides detailed insights into user behavior using heatmaps and session recordings to track a complete conversion funnel and help businesses pinpoint areas where users are experiencing friction or disengagement. The user-centric approach allows companies to make informed decisions on optimizing their website for better user experience and higher conversion rates.

Traditional analytics tools like Google Analytics solely focus on traffic numbers and demographic details, while riyo.ai provides real-time user behavior analytics. It helps businesses identify user patterns, such as where they lose interest, where they ignore primary CTA, where they spend time the most, etc. riyo.ai is easy to use and a must-have tool for companies aiming to fine-tune their user experience and improve conversions.

Key Features of riyo.ai

1️⃣ Session Recording and Replay: Watch complete user sessions, know where they are struggling, and optimize your website by sharing those sessions with your team easily.

2️⃣ Heatmaps: Know the hotspot of your webpage, find the area skipped by users, and optimize your website accordingly.

3️⃣ Geographic Heatmap: Know the country, states, and cities where most of your users came from and plan a marketing strategy targeting those cities.

4️⃣ Dashboard: riyo.ai provides accessible dashboards with a summary of the user behavior analytics, including visitors’ trends, top pages, top locations, screen resolutions overview, top traffic overview, device overview, browsers overview, operating system overview, and form data overview.

5️⃣ Activity Summary: Get a complete session summary including entry page, exit page, rage clicks, dead clicks, link click, button click, element click, window resize, etc., that will help you optimize your website.

6️⃣ Visitors’ Profile: Access complete visitors’ profiles in a single click, including the date and time of their activity, how many pages they scrolled, their location, and referral URL to understand them closely.

7️⃣ Real-time Users: Get real-time data of your users, including Active and Idle users.

8️⃣ Live Chat: riyo.ai provides a live chat feature so that users can easily get answers to their queries at a time.

9️⃣ Forms: You can track the forms users fill out and find them using an advanced filter.

🔟 Triggers: Users can set up automated actions based on specific CTAs

Why Do Companies Use riyo.ai?

According to users' reviews, they prefer riyo.ai because

1️⃣ In-depth Session Recording: riyo.ai provides an in-depth session recording summary, including entry page link, exit page link, referrer, location, date & time, complete device information, rage clicks, dead clicks, link click, button click, element click, and window resize. Moreover, these sessions are easy to share with team members to remove user painpoints.  

2️⃣ Advance Heatmap: Provides advanced heatmap feature. With it, you can track desktop, tablet, and mobile users’ clicks.

3️⃣ Easy to use: riyo.ai is easy to use and set up so that non-technical users like marketers, SEOs, CROs, etc., use it easily and get user insights.

4️⃣ Easy to integrate with other tools: You can integrate riyo.ai with other 3rd party tools, like GA4, Shopify, WooCommerce, etc, by just copying the code.

5️⃣ Suitable for all: riyo.ai is suitable for giant businesses, mid-sized companies, and small companies.

riyo.ai vs. Clarity

According to reviews, riyo.ai is a one-fit-for-all tool for e-commerce, SaaS, Fintech, and Healthtech companies to know how users navigate their websites. riyo.ai provides a 14-day free trial, so start by getting a free riyo.ai account now!

2. Hotjar

Founded: 2014

Typical Users: Product designers, researchers, and marketers

Typical Customers: E-commerce and content-driven site

What is Hotjar?

Hotjar mostly focuses on user behavior rather than analytics, which means using heatmaps, replays, feedback, and interviews to understand the qualitative aspects of your website and app. The primary users of Hotjar are designers and marketers, but it’s not that valuable for software engineers.

According to the statistics, as of February 2024, Hotjar was used by 72,048 of the top 1 million websites, while there were only 45,820 users of Clarity. That’s why we can say Hotjar is another of the best Microsoft Clarity alternatives.

Key Features of Hotjar

1️⃣ Heatmaps: Highlights the parts of the website page that get more attention and are almost skipped by most users.

2️⃣ Session Recordings: Replay actual user sessions and see the complete journey of users.

3️⃣ Feedback: Know what users think and find their likes and dislikes.

4️⃣ Surveys: Know what your user's preference is using questionnaires.

5️⃣ Interviews: Talk to your users to share ideas, test designs, get their live feedback, and optimize the website accordingly.

Why Do Companies Use Hotjar?

According to users’ reviews, they prefer Hotjar because

1️⃣ Insights on user behavior: This shows what users are doing, where they are focusing the most, and which area they skip completely. It also shows how they are spending time on your website, whether they get what they want, whether the content is worth it, etc.

2️⃣ Easy to use: Hotjar is easy to set up, which is why non-technical users like designers, marketers, product managers, etc., will easily access the tool. The visuals are easy to understand and make the data clear.

3️⃣ Heatmaps and Scrollmaps: Users can track each click and see how far they scroll down a page. This provides actionable insights that will help users optimize websites’ UX and designs.

Hotjar vs. Clarity

According to reviews, Hotjar is a more mature version of Clarity, as it offers a few more useful enhancements than Clarity. For example, it supports both Android and iOS mobile apps. You can track up to 35 daily sessions for free with Hotjar. However, Hotjar isn’t that useful for small-sized and mid-sized businesses, but riyo.ai focuses on both small and mid-sized businesses.

Hotjar is one of the most adaptable options for non-technical users. However, it only offers marginal upgrades on what Clarity offers for free of cost.

3. Lucky Orange

Founded: 2010

Typical Users: Marketers and consultants

Typical Customers: E-commerce businesses and agencies

What is Lucky Orange?

Lucky Orange is one of the most well-known alternatives to Hotjar and Clarity. It is easy to use and mostly designed for e-commerce websites using session replays and heatmaps. It also offers a range of other handy features, including built-in form analytics, live chat, surveys, announcements widgets, etc., that help e-commerce store owners analyze their audience easily.

According to statistics, Lucky Orange is used on 4000+ of the top 1 million websites, while there were only 45000+ users of Clarity. Mostly, e-commerce stores or freelance CRO consultants prefer Lucky Orange over Clarity.

Key Features of Lucky Orange

1️⃣ Session Reply: Know how users actually navigate your website, find the painpoints, and optimize your website accordingly.

2️⃣ Heatmaps: Know where users actually click the most and which element they completely overlooked.

3️⃣ Conversion Funnels: Provides basic funnel analysis for tracking user conversions.

4️⃣ Dashboards: Provides simple and easy-to-understand dashboards for non-technical users.

5️⃣ Visitor profiles: See everything a user has done.

Why Do Companies Use Lucky Orange?

According to users’ reviews, they prefer Lucky Orange because

1️⃣ Easy to use: Lucky Orange has a simple UI compared to Hotjar and Clarity or any other behavior analytics tools, which makes it easy for non-technical users to analyze the data and identify issues with their website.

2️⃣ Improves Conversion: Users mostly use Lucky Orange to optimize landing pages and e-commerce checkout flows, making conversion easy.

3️⃣ It doesn’t impact page speed: According to users, Lucky Orange has negligible impact on website performance, which they value highly.

Lucky Orange vs. Clarity

Lucky Orange is simple and more focused than Clarity. It does many of the same things but is designed specifically for optimizing conversion on e-commerce websites. It offers enough analytics features to make it useful for mid-sized businesses but isn’t comprehensive enough for more complicated SaaS apps. However, riyo.ai can sufficiently cover the SaaS industry completely.

Lucky Orange is good for mid-sized e-commerce business owners who want actionable insights without much effort. It is easy to use and offers some useful benefits Clarity doesn’t, such as basic conversion funnels and event tracking.

4. Mouseflow

Founded: 2009

Typical Users: Marketing and UX teams

Typical Customers: SMBs and enterprises in retail

What is Mouseflow?

Mouseflow is a behavioral analytics tool that offers session replies, heatmaps, and basic funnel analysis features. It is designed mainly to help marketing and e-commerce websites by understanding their users. It also integrates with many other A/B testing tools.

According to statistics, 5000+ of the top 1 million websites use Mouseflow (Feb 2024). This means Hotjar and Clarity gain more popularity than Lucky Orange, as Hotjar has 72000+ users and Clarity has 45000+ users as of Feb 2024.

Key Features of Mouseflow

1️⃣ Session Reply: Watch the user session and work on users’ painpoints

2️⃣ Friction Scores: Identify sessions where users experience frustration

3️⃣ Heatmaps: Know where users click the most and put important CTAs/elements there

4️⃣ User Feedback: Get users’ feedback and allow them to rate your services.

5️⃣ Form Analytics: Reduce abandonment rates and increase signups

Why Do Companies Use Mouseflow?

According to users’ reviews, they prefer Mouseflow because

1️⃣ Understand user behavior: Session replays and heatmaps help users to see what actions users take, which areas of the webpage receive the most attention, and how they can improve the user experience to increase conversion rates.

2️⃣ Save time on user interviews: Using session replays and surveys together enables users to gather information more quickly compared to running user interviews.

3️⃣ Wanted something easy to use: Mouseflow offers basic analytical tools and auto-captures frontend events, which makes it easy for anyone to set up and get insights on how they navigate your website.

Mouseflow vs. Clarity

Mouseflow provides a few features that Clarity lacks, including funnel analysis and user feedback tools, but its replay and heatmap capabilities are fairly similar. Same as Hotjar, Mouseflow isn’t that useful for small-sized and mid-sized businesses, but riyo.ai focuses on both small and mid-sized companies.

Mouseflow is one of the good options for session reply and funnel analysis in one tool, but it has session replay features that are very similar to Clarity’s and don’t support mobile apps at all.

FAQs

(1) What are the top Microsoft Clarity alternatives in 2024?

In 2024, some of the top alternatives to Microsoft Clarity include riyo.ai, Hotjar, Crazy Egg, Mouseflow, and Lucky Orange. These tools offer advanced features like session replays, heatmaps, conversion tracking, and more, providing deeper insights into user behavior.

(2) What’s your first thought about Microsoft Clarity vs. hotjar?

When comparing Microsoft Clarity vs. Hotjar, Hotjar stands out with its more advanced features, including surveys, feedback polls, and in-depth behavioral insights. While Clarity is a free option with basic tools like session replays and heatmaps, Hotjar provides a more comprehensive set of features for optimizing user experience.

(3) What are the best Clarity alternatives for session replays and heatmaps?

Some of the best Clarity alternatives for session replays and heatmaps include tools like riyo.ai, Crazy Egg, Mouseflow, and Lucky Orange. These tools offer more detailed analytics, custom segmentation, and additional features like A/B testing and funnel analysis.

(4) Why should I consider Microsoft Clarity alternatives for user behavior analytics?

You might consider Microsoft Clarity alternatives if you need more advanced features, such as detailed funnel analysis, detailed and easy-to-understand dashboard, or integrations with other platforms. Tools like riyo.ai, Hotjar, and Crazy Egg provide a wider range of functionalities that can help you gain deeper insights into user behavior and improve website performance.