Sumidata vs Hotjar
Hotjar is the UX-research standard — surveys, heatmaps, and replays aimed at designers and marketers. Sumidata is aimed at developers and product teams who need replays paired with the browser errors and events that explain them.
01TL;DR
Different audiences, partial feature overlap.
Pick Hotjar if your main need is surveys, feedback widgets, and visual heatmaps for design decisions. Pick Sumidata if your main need is watching what broke — replay + console errors + product events in one timeline — plus an AI Analyst for ad-hoc questions over the data.
02Feature comparison
Feature-by-feature, including the parts where Hotjar wins.
| Feature | Sumidata | Hotjar |
|---|---|---|
| Primary audience | Developers and product teams who need replay + errors + AI analytics in one timeline. | UX, marketing, and research teams who need feedback widgets and visual heatmaps. |
| Session replay | rrweb-based. Every session. Console logs and product events overlaid on the same timeline. | Mature replay product with its own privacy controls and filters. |
| Console & error capture | Full capture of console.log / warn / error / info / debug, uncaught exceptions, unhandled promise rejections — synced to the replay. | Not a core Hotjar feature. |
| Heatmaps | Not currently usable. Scheduled for a clean rebuild — see "What we don't do (yet)" below. | Core Hotjar product. Click / scroll / move heatmaps with solid filtering. |
| Surveys & feedback widgets | Not available. | Core Hotjar product with a no-code builder. |
| AI queries | AI Analyst: ask in plain English, it writes ClickHouse SQL, returns a chart. SQL is inspectable. | "Hotjar AI" for survey summaries and suggestions. |
| Install | One <script> tag with data-project-id. Async loader ~2 KB gzipped. | Single tracking snippet. |
| Privacy masking | Three levels on the script tag: inputs · inputsAndSensitive (default) · inputsAndAllTexts. | Input masking + manual text suppression rules. |
03The developer-lens difference
Why the console-log overlay changes how support and engineering debug.
When a support ticket comes in — "couldn't check out on mobile" — Hotjar lets you watch what the user did. Sumidata does the same, plus you see the TypeError that fired at 00:47 during the click on "Place order", the console.warn five seconds earlier about a missing product SKU, and the product events the SDK tagged along the way. One viewer, one timeline, no jumping between tools.
console.* output, uncaught errors, and unhandled rejections automatically once the SDK is installed. See the SDK capture options and the error catalogue.04Where each tool fits
Where each tool genuinely wins.
- Engineering or support opens replays to investigate broken behaviour.
- You want console errors and product events on the replay timeline.
- You want to ask free-form questions ("users who rage-clicked on pricing last week") in English.
- Multi-project / multi-tenant setup is a requirement.
- Conversion attribution (first-touch, last-touch, multi-touch) matters.
- You run a structured UX research programme (surveys, interviews, feedback).
- Heatmaps are the primary artefact your design team works from.
- Non-technical stakeholders own the tool and want a gentle UI.
- You've already standardised on Hotjar integrations (HubSpot, Slack, Intercom).
05What Sumidata doesn't do (yet)
Said out loud so you can decide with a full picture.
- Heatmaps — the existing implementation is retired; a clean rebuild is scheduled.
- Surveys / feedback widgets — not on the roadmap.
- Mobile SDKs — web only.
- NPS / CSAT tooling — out of scope for us.
Replay + console + AI in one timeline
Free plan — 50,000 sessions/month, unlimited AI queries, full capture on all plans.