Looking for a Hotjar alternative? Get answers instead of recordings to watch
Who this is for: marketers and founders who use, or are looking at, Hotjar, Microsoft Clarity, FullStory, Crazy Egg, Mouseflow or Lucky Orange, and never quite find the time to watch the recordings.
What you'll learn: what heatmap and session recording tools do, where the work lands, and how Bread & Butter reads the same behaviour for you and tells you what to change, with nothing to watch and nothing to set up.
Heatmap and session recording tools show you what happened on your website: where people clicked, how far they scrolled, where they got stuck. What they don't do is tell you what it means. Someone still has to watch the recordings, compare the heatmaps, and work out which of it matters.
Bread & Butter starts from the same behaviour and skips that step.
In short: Tools like Hotjar record sessions and draw heatmaps, and leave the analysis to you. Bread & Butter reads the same signals on every visit (the pages, the order, the time spent, how far people scroll and where their attention goes) and turns them into answers: which visitors are serious, which campaigns, sources and keywords bring them, and which ones don't. Every source and campaign is ranked Scale, Watch or Investigate, so the things to change rise to the top on their own. There are no recordings to review, no tags or events to configure and no dashboards to build: install the script and it works. And every plan includes unlimited traffic, so you're never charged by sessions or left with a sample.
What heatmap and recording tools do
Hotjar, now part of Contentsquare, and tools like Microsoft Clarity, FullStory, Crazy Egg, Mouseflow and Lucky Orange do broadly the same things:
- Heatmaps show where visitors click, move and scroll on a page, aggregated across many visits.
- Session recordings replay individual visits, so you can watch someone use your site.
- Surveys and feedback widgets ask visitors what they think.
- Funnels show where people drop out of a sequence of pages.
They're good at showing you how people use a page. They're built for designers and conversion specialists who have time to look.
Where the work lands
Someone has to watch. A recording is a video. A busy site produces thousands of them. Most teams watch a handful, spot something, and never get back to the rest.
The findings are anecdotes. Ten recordings of people struggling with a form is a useful clue, not a measurement. It's hard to know whether they were your buyers or just passing through.
They don't connect to results. A heatmap doesn't know which of those visitors became customers, which campaign sent them, or whether that campaign is worth what you pay for it.
Most are priced by traffic. Hotjar's plans are priced by the number of sessions a month, and when you pass your allowance, new data stops being collected until the next cycle. On busier sites, recordings are sampled. The more successful your marketing, the more you pay to watch it.
What Bread & Butter does instead
It reads the behaviour for you
Bread & Butter records every visit: the pages, the order they were read in, how long people stayed, how far they scrolled, where their attention went on the page, and how often they came back. Instead of handing you that as recordings, it scores every visitor 1 to 10 on how serious they are, against everyone else on your site. See What is Focused Score and how does it evaluate my traffic?
You don't watch anyone. The serious visitors, and everyone who has become an engaged lead, are on your Focused Tab.
It tells you what to change
The Attribution Report ranks every source, campaign and keyword by the quality of the visitors it sends, not the number of clicks. Each one is marked Scale, Watch or Investigate against the rest of your account, so the campaign to put more into and the one to look at are at the top of the list, without anyone building a report. Connect Google Ads and you also see what each serious visitor costs. See How do I use the Attribution report to optimize my marketing budget?
Your dashboard also surfaces the highlights automatically: your most effective campaign, your biggest referrer, the search term that converts most and the event that matters most.
It tells you how healthy your traffic is
Your Focused Ratio is the share of your traffic that behaves like a serious visitor, compared against the Focused Index across the Bread & Butter network. One number tells you whether this month's traffic is better or worse than last month's, with bots and instant bounces already left out. See What is the Focused Index, and what is a healthy Focused Ratio?
It shows you the pages that matter, through the people who read them
For every lead, you see the pages they spent time on, in order, across every visit, and the same summary travels to your CRM with them. You learn which pages your best leads read before they got in touch, rather than which spot on a page got clicked most. See Does Bread & Butter show the full journey before a lead converts?
It connects behaviour to customers
When a visitor becomes an engaged lead, their whole journey arrives with them. When you mark a deal Won/Closed, Bread & Butter learns what your buyers looked like on the way in, and both the scoring and the campaign rankings get sharper. A heatmap can tell you where people clicked. This tells you which clicks led to revenue.
Nothing to set up
Install the script with the WordPress plugin or a short snippet, and that's the setup. There are no events to tag, no funnels to define, no heatmap pages to choose and no dashboards to build. Scoring starts on the first visit. After about fifteen days your Focused Ratio has enough history to compare against the benchmark. See How to Install Bread & Butter on Your Website
Not priced by traffic
Every Bread & Butter plan includes unlimited traffic and visitors. You aren't charged by sessions, there's no monthly allowance to run out of, and every visit is recorded, not a sample. A good month for your marketing doesn't mean a bigger bill. See How do credits work?
Heatmap tool or Bread & Butter?
|
|
Heatmap and recording tools | Bread & Butter |
|---|---|---|
| What you get | Recordings, heatmaps, surveys | Scores, rankings and answers |
| Who does the analysis | You, by watching and comparing | Bread & Butter, automatically |
| What to change | You work it out | Sources and campaigns ranked Scale, Watch or Investigate |
| Connected to customers | No | Yes, every closed deal sharpens it |
| Setup | Choose pages, tag events, build funnels | Install the Wordpress Plugin or script |
| How it's priced | Usually by sessions, with limits | Unlimited traffic on every plan |
Common questions
Does Bread & Butter record sessions as video?
No. It records each visit's journey (pages, order, time, scroll depth and attention) and turns it into a score and rankings, rather than a video for you to watch.
Can I use it alongside Hotjar or Clarity?
Yes. Some teams keep a recording tool for close design work on a single page and use Bread & Butter to decide where to focus and which campaigns to fund.
Will I need a developer?
No. On WordPress, install the plugin. On any other site, paste one snippet. There's nothing to configure after that.
How soon will I see results?
Visitors are scored from the first visit. Your Focused Ratio settles after about fifteen days, and campaign rankings sharpen as you mark deals Won/Closed.
Related
- What is Focused Score and how does it evaluate my traffic?
- How do I use the Attribution report to optimize my marketing budget?
- What is the Focused Index, and what is a healthy Focused Ratio?
- What is my real conversion rate, and why is it higher than my analytics says?
- How to Install Bread & Butter on Your Website
Sources
- Humblytics, Hotjar Pricing 2026: Every Tier, Verified From the Source (Contentsquare merger, monthly session pricing, data collection stopping at the limit, replay sampling)