7 Fullstory alternatives for teams that need more than session replays

Credit where credit’s due: Fullstory brought session replay into the spotlight. However, as a leading Fullstory competitor, we think it’s time to stop watching—and start acting. 

To truly optimize your digital experience, you need the sort of deep behavioral insights and proactive recommendations that Fullstory simply doesn’t offer. You need

• Advanced analytics features that quantify issues in terms of real business impact (think revenue, not clicks)

• AI-driven, actionable insights to prioritize fixes instantly

• Scalable, privacy-first solutions that meet global compliance effortlessly

Below, we cover exactly why Fullstory may not be enough—and introduce 7 better alternatives for data-driven teams that need more than just session replay.

Key takeaways

• Fullstory is good at session replay, but replay alone won’t grow your revenue. It doesn’t tell you why users drop or how much money you’re losing

• Contentsquare turns behavior into business growth across your entire org. We autocapture everything, quantify friction in dollars, and show you exactly what to fix first

• Heap and Hotjar are solid picks too, offering retroactive analytics (Heap) and user-friendly UX insights (Hotjar)

• Fullstory struggles at enterprise scale with complex setup, manual privacy configurations, limited governance. Alternatively, Contentsquare is built for enterprise needs, with unlimited seats on all plans, built-in compliance, cookieless tracking, and autocapture

• Bottom line: if session replay isn’t enough (and it shouldn’t be), Contentsquare gives you the actual full story 😉—what happened, what it’s costing you, and exactly what your team should do next

Limitations of Fullstory: why you’re looking for an alternative

Fullstory is a solid tool for session replay and individual user-level behavior. But as your needs grow, so do the limitations. 

When it comes to scaling insights, making smart, impactful decisions, or meeting the demands of enterprise teams, Fullstory just doesn’t cut it. 

Here’s where teams run into roadblocks.

1. Surface-level behavioral insights

Fullstory is primarily focused on session replay. It shows you what users did (rage clicks, drop-offs, and scroll paths) but it doesn’t explain why they did it. 

There’s no journey mapping to understand how users move across pages or steps—and no way to connect behavior across multiple sessions. It also doesn’t help link user frustration directly to revenue loss.

Critically, Fullstory lacks Voice of Customer tools like surveys to capture user feedback in context, leaving teams to guess at root causes and manually piece together insights from disconnected tools. 

2. AI that summarizes—but doesn’t prioritize

Fullstory’s AI approach has its merits. Its AI-powered session summaries and automatic trend detection provide quick overviews and highlight potential issues. But it stops short of prioritizing those issues based on their business impact. 

For example, it can flag trends or anomalies, like conversion rate issues, but it doesn’t offer clear recommendations on which problems to fix first or quantify how each issue is impacting revenue. 

Instead, teams are left with a list of flagged issues and must manually assess what’s truly affecting the bottom line.

3. Gaps in scalability, governance, and compliance

Fullstory offers robust privacy measures for smaller teams, including first-party cookies, detailed masking and exclusion tools, and the option for European data residency. 

However, larger enterprises or highly regulated organizations might encounter limitations around scalability and advanced data governance. 

Fullstory’s privacy controls depend largely on manual configuration, including tagging custom events and setting up detailed exclusion rules (which can become challenging to manage across extensive, fast-changing digital environments).

Additionally, Fullstory’s European data residency is optional, not default. This means organizations may need to actively request and configure this option. While Fullstory complies with GDPR standards regardless of where data is stored, many enterprise teams prefer default European hosting and out-of-the-box compliance configurations, without additional steps or complexity.

So if Fullstory isn’t giving you what you need, what else is out there?

7 best Fullstory alternatives (and what they do better)

If you’ve outgrown Fullstory or need a more scalable analytics tool, you’ve probably encountered dozens of Fullstory competitors (Mixpanel, Smartlook, LogRocket, Mouseflow, Pendo, Google Analytics, to name a few). 

Spend five minutes checking each option, and you’ve already lost hours (and opened 14 tabs you’ll never close 😅).

Instead, we've handpicked 7 alternatives that best address Fullstory’s core weaknesses and align closely with the goals of its typical users. Here’s how they compare:

1. Contentsquare

What it is

Contentsquare (hello! 👋) is an all-in-one Experience Intelligence platform that transforms insights into digital behavior into optimizations that drive business growth.

Who it’s best for

Teams across the org—from product, UX, and marketing to e-commerce, analytics, and customer success—that need to move fast, fix what matters, and prove their impact.

Use Contentsquare’s Zone-Based Heatmaps to go beyond clicks and connect page elements to results

What it does

• Combines capabilities in heatmap analysis, session replay, mobile and web analytics, product insights, error detection, journey analysis, and voice of customer in one powerful platform

• Autocaptures every user interaction (including clicks, scrolls, taps, and hesitations) across web and app, with no tagging required

• Uses AI to surface friction, prioritize fixes, and quantify the revenue impact of every issue and behavior

• Works across teams, regions, and channels (including product, UX, marketing, and customer support) with a user-friendly interface and unlimited seats to match enterprise scale

Why it’s better than Fullstory

Yes, we’re Contentsquare: so we’re biased. But we know our platform inside and out, and our customers regularly tell us that we’re better than Fullstory for them, and why. 

Fullstory helps you watch what happened. Contentsquare helps you understand why it happened—and what to do about it.

With Contentsquare, you get structured behavioral insights across the entire customer journey that go far beyond individual session replays. You can see friction across journeys, quantify exactly how much it’s costing you, and prioritize fixes based on real revenue impact. 

No guesswork. No disconnected tools.

You also get built-in Voice of Customer tools, AI-powered alerts that surface high-impact issues, and enterprise-grade privacy controls. That means you can move faster, stay compliant, and align every team around what actually drives growth.

And unlike Fullstory, we have a free forever plan, enterprise pricing built for scale, and unlimited seats on all plans. So whether you're a startup or a global brand, you can start fast—and grow without limits.

2. Heap

What it is

Heap, part of the Contentsquare group, is a product analytics platform that captures every user interaction automatically—so teams can understand what’s happening and why, without tagging every event.

Who it’s best for

Saas, product, growth, and data teams that want fast, retroactive answers—without waiting on manual instrumentation or engineering cycles.

What it does

• Autocaptures all user actions (including clicks, taps, swipes, and form fills) across web and app, with retroactive access to everything

• Surfaces hidden friction and opportunity using Heap Illuminate, a built-in data science layer

• Combines charts and funnels with session replays, so teams can quickly go from insight to action

• Syncs with your existing stack, with integrations for Salesforce, Shopify, Segment, and your data warehouse via Heap Connect

Why it’s better than Fullstory

Where Fullstory gives you a view into individual sessions, Heap gives you the full behavioral picture, combining aggregate analytics with retroactive visibility into the journeys of individual users. 

Product managers use it to measure feature adoption and uncover drop-offs. Growth teams run funnel analysis, optimize conversion paths, and test ideas faster. Data teams get trustworthy, retroactive data with zero-tagging overhead.

And because Heap is part of the Contentsquare platform, you can now layer that behavioral insight with Journey Analysis, Heatmaps, and revenue impact quantification—giving you more visibility, more context, and a smarter way to prioritize what matters.

“We had Fullstory prior to using Heap. It was a huge mess when it came to finding the data points you wanted. It often led to time wasted watching with little to no action following.”

Lisa Palombo

Product Manager at Curaytor

3. Hotjar

What it is

Hotjar, part of the Contentsquare group, is a behavior analytics tool that helps teams understand how users experience their website through heatmaps, session replays, and feedback.

Who it’s best for

UX, marketing, and research teams at small to midsize businesses that want fast, self-serve insights without a steep learning curve.

What it does

• Captures user interactions with click maps, scroll maps, rage click detection, and engagement zone heatmaps

• Offers session recordings that show exactly how users navigate and where they get stuck

• Includes built-in feedback tools like surveys, NPS®, and on-site widgets to collect real-time user input

• Easy to set up, simple to use, and built for teams that need to move quickly

Why it’s better than Fullstory Hotjar focuses on making experience insight accessible. UX designers use it to uncover friction. Marketers use it to validate messaging. Researchers use it to gather feedback directly from users and identify patterns across user journeys.

And because Hotjar is part of the Contentsquare platform, teams can start with Hotjar and scale into Contentsquare as their needs evolve—bringing advanced journey analysis, AI-powered insights, and revenue quantification into the mix when they're ready.

4. Quantum Metric

What it is

Quantum Metric is a digital experience analytics tool often used by technical teams to monitor friction and troubleshoot issues.

Who it’s best for

Engineering and digital teams focused on error resolution, performance monitoring, and debugging.

What it does

• Offers session replay, error tracking, and some journey analysis

• Uses AI-generated summaries (Felix AI) to reduce time spent on replays

Why it’s not enough

While Quantum Metric positions itself as an all-in-one platform, it lacks key capabilities that Contentsquare delivers—like revenue impact quantification, advanced heatmaps, voice of customer, and tools built for non-technical teams.

5. Amplitude

What it is

Amplitude is a product analytics platform built for teams that want to track funnels, retention, and feature adoption.

Who it’s best for

Data and product teams with the resources to manually tag and maintain complex event tracking.

What it does

• Offers robust behavioral analytics and cohort analysis

• Includes native A/B testing and CDP features

Why it’s not enough

Amplitude is powerful—but it’s built for analysts, not everyone else on the team. It lacks visual tools like heatmaps, session replays, and journey mapping. And without the revenue impact data that a platform like Contentsquare provides, it’s harder to prioritize what actually moves the needle.

6. Glassbox

What it is

Glassbox is a digital experience platform known for session replay and mobile app analytics.

Who it’s best for

Technical teams focused on error detection and mobile performance.

What it does

• Provides session replays, basic heatmaps, and friction detection

• Tracks mobile applications and offers some AI-powered insights

Why it’s not enough

Glassbox covers part of the picture—but it lacks advanced journey mapping, visual analysis, voice of customer tools, and revenue impact data.

7. Microsoft Clarity

What it is

Microsoft Clarity is a free behavior analytics tool offering basic heatmaps and session replays.

Who it’s best for

Small teams or early-stage startups looking for no-cost insight into user behavior.

What it does

• Provides heatmaps, session recordings, and rage click detection

• Offers AI summaries and Chat with Sense-powered chat for data exploration

Why it’s not enough

Clarity is free, but it comes with trade-offs. There's no journey analysis, no revenue attribution, no voice of customer, and very limited support. It also lacks privacy flexibility and gives Microsoft partial ownership of your data (always read the small print!).

Don’t forget, Contentsquare has a free forever plan, too—but with stronger privacy, better insights, and a path to scale when you need it.

Why Contentsquare is the #1 Fullstory alternative

Relying on Fullstory as your behavioral analytics platform will leave critical gaps in your data by focusing too much on what happened. Contentsquare shows you the real full story: what happened, why it happened, and how much it’s worth fixing.

Here’s why brands like Toyota, Inter Milan, and Harrods choose Contentsquare over Fullstory:

• Smarter insights from day one: Contentsquare autocaptures every interaction across web and mobile apps—no tagging needed—and automatically surfaces friction using AI with tools like Frustration Score and smart alerts. Chat with Sense gives you instant, natural-language answers to key business questions, like “What’s driving bounce rates on our product pages?”

Contentsquare uses AI to help you focus on the most impactful issues first

• Visual tools for every team: whether you’re in product, UX, marketing, ecommerce, or analytics, you’ll find actionable answers through Journey Analysis, Zone-based Heatmaps, and Session Replay

Visualize user paths with Contentsquare’s signature sunburst Journey Analysis

• Revenue-backed prioritization: with Impact Quantification, you can measure the business impact of any issue—so you can focus on what’s actually affecting conversions, revenue, or retention, not just vanity metrics

Impact Quantification lets you click to quantify any issue or behavior across the Contentsquare platform

• Smarter A/B test analysis: go beyond win/loss metrics. Contentsquare integrates with leading testing platforms like Optimizely, VWO, and Adobe Target to show exactly why a variant won—using side-by-side zone-based heatmaps, frustration scores, and impact data tied to conversions, user engagement, and revenue

Compare test variants with side-by-side heatmaps and journeys in Contentsquare

• Built-in Voice of Customer tools: Fullstory stops at behavior. Contentsquare’s Voice of Customer connects the dots between feedback and behavior. Use it to collect real-time feedback, automatically tag sentiment and map it to friction, drop-offs, and conversions. Spot experience issues faster and solve the ones that hurt revenue and satisfaction most

Use Contentsquare Voice of Customer to collect feedback and automatically tag sentiment

• Error and performance monitoring with business context: identify, quantify, and prioritize bugs, slowdowns, and broken flows with Error Analysis and Speed Analysis—then watch the impact unfold in real time, right down to the revenue level. Contentsquare gives customer experience and product teams a shared view of what’s broken and why

Use Contentsquare to quickly find bugs and slow pages

• Enterprise-ready from day one: built for scale, with cookieless tracking, CNIL exemption, advanced governance, unlimited seats, and 100+ integrations

• Start for free: unlike Fullstory, which only offers premium plans, Contentsquare has a free plan for startups or low traffic website so you can scale as you grow

In short: Contentsquare delivers the insights, speed, and business impact Fullstory was never built for.

Contentsquare vs. Fullstory at a glance: what teams can actually do

Here’s how Fullstory vs Contentsquare compares on the features that matter most—so you can see which platform actually helps your team go from insight to impact.

We think it’s clear that Contentsquare stands out in the use cases that matter most to cross-functional teams. 

Where Fullstory focuses heavily on session replay, Contentsquare goes further—empowering product teams with no-tagging Product Analytics, enabling marketers to optimize A/B tests with visual and revenue-backed insights, and giving UX designers real-time feedback and friction detection through built-in Voice of Customer capabilities and frustration scoring. 

Remember: optimizing experiences is not just about seeing what happened—it's about knowing what to fix, why it matters, and how to move faster across your entire team.

Final take: Fullstory helps you watch—Contentsquare helps you win

Fullstory is a solid session replay tool, but it wasn’t built to drive cross-team action at scale. 

Contentsquare gives every team—not just analysts—the tools they need to turn insight into outcomes. That’s why brands like Samsung, Visa, and Bose choose us.

To summarize, here’s what Contentsquare delivers that Fullstory (and other alternatives) don’t:

• Stop guessing what to fix: Contentsquare connects user behavior to business impact. We show you what’s hurting your revenue and tell you exactly what to do about it using AI-driven insights and impact quantification

• Speed to action: Fullstory gives you data. Contentsquare gives you answers. With AI-powered alerts and journey analysis, you can prioritize high-impact issues in real-time, so your team can move fast

• Collaboration without limits: from product to marketing to customer support, Contentsquare gives everyone the insights they need—no more siloed data or waiting for analysts. Unlimited seats mean everyone can work together, faster

• Built for enterprise growth: unlike Fullstory, Contentsquare scales effortlessly with your business. Whether you’re a startup or a global brand, we’ve got cookieless tracking, enterprise-level compliance, and the scalability and customization to meet your needs

And you don’t have to take our word for it: according to Forrester, businesses using Contentsquare see a 602% ROI and recover over $3.2 million in revenue by fixing friction in the digital journey.

FAQs about Fullstory alternatives

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