Hotjar vs PostHog

Hotjar suits marketing, product and UX teams who want qualitative evidence fast. The script goes on through Google Tag Manager, and sharing to Slack and Jira turns a recording into proof for a developer. It is page-level, so it does not follow people after they leave and does not replace event analytics. The free plan captures a limited number of sessions, which busy sites hit quickly. Decide whether you sample traffic or record only during research periods. Set up consent so recording starts only after agreement, and mask sensitive fields. Ad blockers also stop some sessions, so the sample is never complete.

PostHog suits B2B product and engineering teams that want to ask what people do inside the product. Where do new accounts drop off in onboarding? Which feature keeps customers? Did last week's release move activation? You answer those from one platform, then ship a fix behind a flag. Someone must own the SDK install and the event plan, and non-technical marketing teams who only want sessions by source will find it heavier than they need. Start with analytics and replay and add modules later. Set billing limits, because usage drives the cost. A free hosted MCP server lets a coding agent query the data.