Session Replay Software Shortlist
Here’s the list of the best tools that I’ll cover in this article.
Creating an excellent website experience is essential if your business sells products online — even more so if your business is a digital product or service. Poor user experiences or frustrating customer journeys can harm your conversion rate and revenue. Session replay software is an invaluable tool that can help you identify issues that are causing challenges to your site or web app. With these valuable insights, you can create a better digital experience that leads to improved customer satisfaction and retention.
I’ve researched some of the top session replay software available, and outlined my findings below. Hopefully my overviews will lead you to the best software for your needs!
What is Session Replay Software?
Session replay software is a tool that records user sessions on your website or web app, that you can then replay. It’s used by design and development teams to gather insights into user interactions on their digital product. Marketing teams and customer support teams may also use it to track how people interact with your company’s marketing collateral, help desk, or knowledge base. The software can track and store user actions like mouse movements, clicks, scrolls, and keyboard strokes. The data is then stored and can be replayed as a video or a series of screenshots.
Overviews Of The 10 Best Session Replay Software Solution
Here’s a brief description of each session replay platform to showcase each tool’s best use case, some noteworthy features, and screenshots to give a snapshot of the user interface.
Dynatrace
Analyze every visitor’s interaction with an exclusive AI engine
Dynatrace’s platform provides real-time insight into your application stack to help you optimize your visitor’s experiences. The platform supports software companies and helps visualize application data so users can determine where the issues are, what challenges can arise, and what to fix. You can get a broad view of your application’s environment with various data points, such as logs, metrics, and traces.
Dynatrace provides businesses with custom artificial intelligence (AI) to give you precise answers. It analyzes everything by looking through your IT environment’s dependencies and relationships. This information can support your development team to fix difficulties immediately and support integration with various CI/CD tools.
Dynatrace’s open API allows you to implement the platform’s data into your current software ecosystem. You can use the API in third-party systems, such as Salesforce, GitLab, Slack, and Microsoft Teams.
Dynatrace costs from $11/month and provides a 15-day free trial.
Glassbox
Create effective digital journeys across web and mobile applications
Glassbox’s platform can help teams within your organization, from product management and IT to compliance and marketing. These teams can use the information from their Glassbox dashboard to understand their user’s challenges on their web and mobile apps, visualize the user’s journey and enhance each step. Glassbox can help you prioritize your customer’s experience and improve your digital products from one collaborative platform.
Glassbox provides AI-driven visualization and analytics tools. The tool ranks your session recordings with a “struggle score,” which highlights errors and bugs on your web and mobile apps. This score can help your organization’s product managers, DevOps, marketing, and support teams engage with the tool and collect insights from the data. These teams then use the data to make the necessary fixes and changes to enhance your customer’s digital journeys.
Glassbox provides native integrations to help you connect customer data systems through their platform. These integrations include Salesforce, Slack, and Google Analytics. Glassdoor also provides an open API.
Glassbox offers customized pricing upon request.
FullStory
Make every visitor interaction on your site searchable
FullStory is a digital experience intelligence (DXI) platform that combines full session detail, rich product analytics, and collaboration tools. The features of this software deliver real-time insights that can help you identify opportunities on your website. You can also discover issues that are affecting your revenue and understand how many users it affects. With this information, you can make smarter digital decisions according to the user experience data FullStory provides.
The design of the platform indexes every interaction your visitors have on your site. FullStory makes this information searchable. This can help you and your team identify any website bugs and also provide customer support to a single user. To do this, the platform records JavaScript details to help provide your development team with information regarding any errors.
FullStory integrates with various third-party software, such as Salesforce, Bugsnag, BigCommerce, and Zendesk.
FullStory offers customized pricing upon request. The platform also offers a 14-day free trial.
Lucky Orange
Watch dynamic heatmaps in real-time
Businesses of all types can use Lucky Orange to understand what to do to increase website conversions. The real-time dashboard analytics lets you see how many visitors are coming to your site at any moment and know how they arrived. Your teams in charge of customer experience can see where visitors abandon various processes, such as creating new accounts or trying to check out during a purchase. They can use this information to identify pain points to improve.
Lucky Orange’s dynamic heatmaps allow you to see everything your website visitors are doing and why they’re not converting. This helps you see where people are scrolling and clicking on your site and see where visitors are engaging the most. The scroll heatmap in Lucky Orange lets you see if visitors are scrolling far enough on your web page to see your calls to action (CTA) or if they’re leaving the site before you get the chance to convert them.
Lucky Orange integrates with the tools you’re already using, such as BigCommerce, HubSpot, Google Analytics, and HubSpot.
Lucky Orange costs from $18/month when billed monthly or $14/month when billed annually. They also offer a 7-day free trial and a free subscription level.
Datadog
Organize session replays based on detected issues
Datadog provides security, monitoring, and analytics platform for IT operations teams, developers, business users, and security engineers. It also helps businesses reduce time to issue resolutions, secure applications’ infrastructure, and understand user behavior. Organizations across a wide variety of industries and sizes use the platform to enable cloud migration and digital transformation.
Datadog’s platform helps users organize session replays according to specific issues the error tracking feature detects. Thanks to the simple interface, your teams can share these replays among team members. This allows teams to troubleshoot and debug workflows by understanding what’s happening during users’ actions in the context of these errors. Datadog allows businesses to uncover the impact these errors can have on your application’s UX.
Datadog integrates with more than 500 applications, including Bitbucket, Salesforce Desk, Gitlab, Jira, and Slack.
Datadog costs from $15/user/month and offers a 14-day free trial.
Fullview
Guide users through essential processes with a multiplayer cursor
Fullview allows businesses to solve user challenges and develop better experiences faster by recording sessions. Your product and support teams can jump to errors and important events, watch only the relevant parts of a recording, and eliminate manual bug reports. You can instantly replay what the user did before submitting a support request to your teams.
Fullview allows you to see which customers are on your app and start a co-browsing session with them. During this time, you can guide them through your app in multiplayer mode. This allows you to highlight and click elements on their screen, creating an incredible experience.
Fullview integrates with Intercom but is working to implement other connections, such as Zendesk, Slack, and Jira.
Fullview costs from $40/month and offers a 14-day free trial.
Session Rewind
Analyze nuanced and detailed interactions with high-quality replays
Session Rewind helps eCommerce stores, SaaS platforms, and consumer websites see what happens when a user visits. It provides you with heatmaps and analytics to enhance your processes and conversion rates. The platform can help you and your teams make the best product decisions.
Session Rewind’s replays are much higher resolution than most session replay software. This, along with the platform’s simple timeline, helps you understand when a visitor is active and changes pages. The simple search and filter capabilities enable you to find replay sessions according to clicks, page views, and checkouts, and you can also create custom interactions.
Session Rewind costs from $14/month and offers a free subscription.
LogRocket
Combine session replay with product analytics and performance monitoring
LogRocket helps you track UX difficulties and see where to make any necessary changes to improve your site’s performance. The platform lets you see your visitors’ entire browsing journey and get the insights you need to track bugs, locate performance issues, and diagnose usability challenges. You can see all the vital details of your users’ sessions, such as keystrokes and mouse movements. The software also excludes sensitive data to protect your visitors’ privacy.
LogRocket reproduces every visitor session with perfect replay, allowing you to see JavaScript errors, network logs, and DOM state. Product analytics features use custom metrics to show interactions, features, and page changes. LogRocket’s performance monitoring monitors your page load times, memory usage, and browser crashes to measure the impact on your business. Combining these features can help you, and your teams make vital product decisions.
LogRocket integrates with multiple third-party software to provide you with a comprehensive view of your users’ experience, such as Optimizely, Intercom, Google Analytics, and Splunk.
LogRocket costs from $99/month for web applications and $199/month for mobile applications. Both versions offer a free subscription level and a 14-day trial for paid levels.
SessionStack
Co-browse with users in real-time to ensure a successful experience
SessionStack provides engineering, product management, and customer success teams with helpful UX insights and tools. The platform helps minimize your time and effort to understand your customer’s digital experience and the difficulties they might experience. You can track down issues that occur with specific users, devices, environments, and product releases. SessionStack can also send you a notification regarding errors before your users have a chance to experience them.
SessionStack allows your support team to co-browse and collaborate with your users in real-time to ensure they have a successful experience. Your teams can do this without the user saying a word. The platform is lightweight, which means it doesn’t affect your app’s look and feel to users while still capturing all interactions. You can implement SessionStack with a single snippet in your app to give your team complete control of recordings.
SessionStack integrates with the systems you might be using through an open API. You can use the platform in third-party applications like Sentry, Zendesk, Stackpile, and Intercom.
SessionStack costs from $99/month when using the platform in the cloud. SessionStack offers customized pricing upon request if you’re implementing the software on-premises. They do offer a free trial.
OpenReplay
Self-hosted session replay suite
Developers who need an open-source solution to monitor their application’s performance and manage data can use OpenReplay. The platform helps businesses understand every issue in their applications as if it’s happening in their browsers. You can use this software to monitor your application, see what’s working and what isn’t, and assist your visitors.
You can self-host OpenReplay’s session replay suite and keep customer data in your business’s infrastructure. This means you and your teams have full control over everything the platform captures. This also saves you time from having to go through lengthy security and compliance checks. OpenReplay offers cloud hosting solutions to help you get started fast if you aren’t a fan of self-hosting.
OpenReplay integrates with a handful of software, including CloudWatch, GitHub, Slack, Jira, and Segment.
OpenReplay offers customized pricing for their self-hosted option for enterprise-level businesses, and they also provide a free option for startups. The cloud-hosted option costs from $3.95/month and offers a 14-day free trial.
The 10 Best Session Replay Software Solution Comparison Chart
Here is a table where you can compare all the tools we just covered in the overviews.
| Tool | Free Option | Price | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dynatrace Analyze every visitor’s interaction with an exclusive AI engine | 15 days free trial | From $11/month | Visit Website |
| 2 | Glassbox Create effective digital journeys across web and mobile applications | Free demo available | Pricing upon request | Visit Website |
| 3 | FullStory Make every visitor interaction on your site searchable | 14-day free trial + free plan available | From $199/month | Visit Website |
| 4 | Lucky Orange Watch dynamic heatmaps in real-time | 7-day free trial + free plan available | From $18/month | Visit Website |
| 5 | Datadog Organize session replays based on detected issues | 14-day free trial | From $15/user/month (billed annually) | Visit Website |
| 6 | Fullview Guide users through essential processes with a multiplayer cursor | 14 days free trial | From $40/month | Visit Website |
| 7 | Session Rewind Analyze nuanced and detailed interactions with high-quality replays | Offers a free subscription | From $14/month | Visit Website |
| 8 | LogRocket Combine session replay with product analytics and performance monitoring | 14-day free trial | $99/month | Visit Website |
| 9 | SessionStack Co-browse with users in real-time to ensure a successful experience | Offer a free trial | Pricing upon request | Visit Website |
| 10 | OpenReplay Self-hosted session replay suite | 14 days free trial | From $3.95/month | Visit Website |
Other Options
Here are a few more that didn’t make the top list.
- Contentsquare - Turn digital behaviors into intelligent recommendations to improve customer experience.
- Smartlook - Find the answer to the “whys” behind visitors’ behaviors.
- Mouseflow - Use six different heatmap types to discover what’s getting their attention on your website.
- Hotjar - Provides tools to help understand how ecommerce visitors are experiencing your site.
- Quantum Metric - Automatically quantifies the impact of every visitors’ interaction.
- Plerdy - Analyze various vital statistics to gain the maximum conversion level for your business.
- Auryc - Get expert customer experience analysis to gain in-depth insights about why customers are buying or aren’t.
- UserZoom - Empower your research, design, marketing, and product teams to create the experiences customers want.
- Crazy Egg - Use A/B testing to analyze different page variants and determine which converts more users.
Selection Criteria For The Best Session Replay Software
What do I look for when I select the best session replay software? Here’s a summary of my evaluation criteria:
Core Functionality
There are a few basic functions I expect all session replay software to possess, including:
- Session recording: The software must document user sessions on your site or app. Sometimes it’s in a video recording format or a series of screenshots.
- Session playback: A session replay tool shoud allow you to watch user sessions back to monitor user behavior and see how they navigate your web page.
- User activity recording: Whether it’s tracking clicks in a heatmap or tracking conversion rates on various CTAs, there should be some specific user behavior tracking.
Key Features
Beyond the core functionality outlined above, here are some more specific features I looked for in session recording software:
- Various platform recording: Many tools allow you to record sessions on your website, web store, web app, or mobile app.
- Speed and performance: Some tools can replay recordings in near real-time, and can record sessions without slowing down your site speed.
- Testing tools: Whether it’s A/B testing or testing different conversion funnels, some software helps facilitate running tests on your site.
- Privacy: Most software outlines how it protects sensitive information and user data, and many are compliant with GDPR and other security standards.
- Analytics dashboard: A visual dashboard to track various product metrics like conversion rates, page views, signups, website visitors, and more.
Usability
Tracking your customer experience through session recordings shouldn’t be overly complicated. I looked for software that has a friendly user interface and a minimal learning curve. Especially because people from various teams and departments may use the platform, it’s important that it’s accessible to everyone.
Integrations
Of course, it’s important to find a software that will connect with your other SaaS tools. I looked for options that integrated with web analytics platforms like Google Analytics to help you dig deeper into your user journeys. I also looked for integrations with common workplace tools like Slack, and APIs to build custom integrations. These are listed in my overviews.
Pricing
The cost of session recording tools can vary pretty widely, from $3 per month up to $100+ per month. That said, many providers also offer free plans or free trials, to help you get a sense of what they offer. Cost is occasionally also determined by the number of users you’ll need, so consider how many team members will be accessing the platform.
Frequently Asked Questions About Session Recording Tools
Here are answers to a few common questions about session replay tools and user behavior tracking more generally.
What are the benefits of session replay software?
Here are 3 key benefits of using session replay software:
- Conversion rate optimization: You’ll be able to understand what’s stopping people from converting, and run tests to improve conversion rates.
- Improved customer experience: Insights collected can inform your product, marketing, sales, and customer service strategies, leading to an overall improved customer experience.
- Easier reporting: Most platforms have built-in analytics and reporting tools, speeding up the time-consuming task of running reports manually.
What industries use session recording software?
Recording user sessions is helpful for companies in various industries, and there are several use cases for this type of technology. For example, a SaaS company may use the tool to understand how real users navigate their web or mobile applications. But ecommerce companies may equally leverage the software to better understand customer behavior, and potential blockers at checkout.
Virtually any business with a website can benefit in some way from monitoring visitor interactions. It can help with debugging buttons or navigation menus that aren’t working, but it can also help you prioritize what additional pages, information, or user forms to add to your site. It’s a way of taking more data-driven decisions based on real user feedback, rather than relying on your gut.
Is session replay software secure?
Security features vary from one platform to another, but generally speaking these software have safeguards in place to protect sensitive data. This goes both for end-user data and your company’s website and product data. Like most types of product analytics tools, these platforms have high standards and will often boast their GDPR and SOC compliance, among other notable certifications.
What Do You Think About This List?
Using session replay can be the factor that determines whether your organization will be successful. As you might have noticed, there are lots of platforms for you to choose from and start implementing session replays. It’s important to choose the session replay software that best suits your requirements. You can do this by evaluating each tool against your selection criteria or the ones I gave you in this article.
Related tool lists:
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