You just paid a buttload for a great website design. With a good rollout and some SEO wizardry, your traffic is through the roof. There’s just one problem: it’s not turning into revenue.

Hotjar claims to offer the solution to this classic problem. It tracks user engagement with heatmaps so you can see exactly what visitors are doing when they use your site.

But is Hotjar the real deal? We decided to give it a spin. Here’s our Hotjar review.

What is Hotjar?

Hotjar was founded back in 2014 by entrepreneur and consultant David Darmanin. The way Darmanin tells it, the company started after a string of failures.

“In both cases we built a product for months before we took it to market and started ‘selling’ it at scale. We thought that a well planned and complete user experience together with a top notch design were critical requirements before launch.”

With Hotjar, they made the simplest functional version of the product, released it in beta, and fine-tuned it for nearly a year before the final launch in 2015.

The strategy paid off, as Hotjar is now used by millions of websites around the world, including Nintendo, Adobe, and Microsoft. They were bought out by Contentsquare in 2021.

What does Hotjar do?

Hotjar’s most prominent feature is its heatmaps. These offer a handy visual to showcase how people typically use your website. Other than that, they offer tools for direct customer feedback, while also helping you recruit the right people for interviews and testimonials.

Hotjar review: Pricing

How much does Hotjar cost? For the standard “Observe” feature, they have 3 pricing plans:

• Basic: $0/mo. Unlimited heatmaps, continuous data capture, captures up to 35 user sessions a day.
• Plus: $39/mo. Includes additional filtering and API tools for tracking, captures up to 100 user sessions a day.
• Business: $99/mo (starting price). Includes custom integrations, user attribute tracking, captures up to 500 sessions a day. Can capture more sessions at higher prices, up to 270k.

In addition, they offer more robust business tools with bespoke pricing. To find out more about these packages, pricing for Ask and Engage tools, and custom packages, check out their pricing page.

Observe, Ask, and Engage all have free Basic packages. For the purposes of this Hotjar review, we’ll be focused on those.

Hotjar review: How to sign up

Hotjar has a simple sign-up process. All it takes is a few simple steps:

1. Sign up with your email or Google account.
2. Input your company’s name, how many employees you have, and your role.
3. Select which feature you want to explore first.
4. Input your company’s website for Hotjar installation

Once you’ve done all that, you get walked through the steps for adding Hotjar to your website.

How do you add Hotjar to your website?

In order to use Hotjar’s heatmaps, you’ll have to add a tracking code to your website. You can paste the code directly or use Google Tag Manager or another tracking manager tool to set up.

Hotjar also offers integration with:

• WordPress
• Wix
• Squarespace
• Drupal
• Shopify
• WooCommerce

And many more.

Hotjar review: Features

Luckily for new users, Hotjar offers an in-depth demo of their offerings, so you can get a feel for the dashboard and see all the data it collects.

An important thing to remember, however, is that this demo includes unlimited coverage that you won’t actually have on the free plan—or even most paid plans.

The Hotjar web app

The web app is fairly busy, but once you get past the initial whiplash, there’s plenty of neat features to explore.

Front and center in the Overview tab, you’ll find suggestions for new ways to use your account, as well as relevant recordings captured in the past day. This tab also features other recent activity, including feedback, heatmaps, and activity from your team.

The web app has 9 total tabs:

• Overview
• Dashboard
• Highlights
• Trends
• Funnels
• Recordings
• Heatmaps
• Feedback
• Surveys
• Engage

We’ll explore the features offered in each of these tabs.

Dashboard

This classic dashboard offers an aggregated view of how people are using your site. It’s got standard metrics like bounce rate, average session duration, and top clicked links. But it also offers unique data that gives you a well-rounded view of your site’s success.

For instance, one chart keeps track of rage clicks—where a user clicked the same area over and over—and U-turns—where they clicked on a link and quickly went back to the previous page.

Data filters aren’t available for free users; custom trends are only available on bespoke Scale plans. But for everyone else, these extra in-depth charts do make a big difference.

Highlights

Users on any plan can create highlights. This technology lets you save snippets of specific customer experiences you want to keep. You can mark these for bugs, signs of frustration, UI/UX issues, and more, and access them at any time in this tab.

Recordings

Trends and funnels are only available for Scale customers, so we’ll skip straight to recordings. The Recordings dashboard lets you view recent and relevant recordings, or comb through the whole archive.

Business and Scale users can filter their recordings to see new users, returning users, rage clicks, and more. These recordings show you a user’s entire journey, including where their cursor goes, what they click on, and even what operating system they use.

Heatmaps

Hotjar’s flagship feature, heatmaps keep track of where people are clicking the most—and the least.

Surprisingly, this feature was a bit tricky to figure out for me. As intuitive as a heatmap is as a concept, the section is a little harder to navigate on the demo site. Creating a new heatmap from scratch is much simpler, but I’m a little surprised that this, of all sections, feels the most convoluted.

Feedback

That little red sidebar you’ll often see on the right-hand side of Hotjar’s page is a feedback widget. It’s a relatively unobtrusive tool for collecting user insights. On the other hand, many sites make the fatal mistake of cluttering their page with widgets and pop-ups.

Surveys

Free Hotjar users can create up to 3 surveys and 3 feedback widgets at a time. There are classic survey templates asking users to rate your service from 1-5, share how likely they are to recommend it, or explain their reason for leaving.

You can also create custom surveys, and add an unlimited number of questions to them. These surveys can either appear directly on your site or be accessed through a link.

Other features

For free users, Engage lets you set up interviews with up to 2 users each month, with built-in video calling software.

Scale users get access to Funnels and Trends, two additional tracking tools that let you keep track of users’ journeys as they use your site.

Hotjar review: final verdict

Hotjar offers some really useful insights for how people are using your website. It can be helpful for marketing teams and UX designers, and the insights you gain can lead to greater success down the road.

However, it’s not perfect. Consumers are concerned about their privacy, and Hotjar’s direct surveillance of users—including tracking their browser and OS—is a tough pill to swallow.

Hotjar pros and cons

Pros:

• Useful insights
• Solid free features
• Clever design
• Quick and effective

Cons:

• Expensive paid tiers
• Cluttered web app
• Privacy concerns

Final rating: 7.0/10 ♨️

Looking to get a boost on PR? Help OM out by signing up for Prowly with this link.

Starting a business is only half the battle. The secret to success is reputation.

There are many ways to build your reputation. The first step is providing a great experience for your customers. Still, to build a high profile, you inevitably need to get into the social media game.

Prowly promises to help with that. This SaaS tool by SEMrush lets you manage media contacts, shape your narrative, and create winning press releases.

Is Prowly the real deal? Let’s break it down.

Getting started with Prowly

As mentioned in my Demio review, the convenience of SaaS allows you to quickly use software through your browser. Signing up for Prowly is as simple as clicking the “Try it for free” button in the upper right corner of the site.

Prowly pricing

Prowly offers a 7-day free trial so users can try before they buy. Beyond that, they offer an Essential plan for smaller-scale users and a Professional plan for agencies.

The most basic form of the Essential plan starts at $119/mo, while the Professional plan starts at $189/mo. You can add features to your plan—including media monitoring and access to Prowly’s media contact database—for an additional cost.

What can Prowly do?

Remember that thing I said about customer experience? Prowly clearly got the memo, because as soon as you sign up, they invite you to schedule a meeting with them. This shows a real dedication to customer support that you don’t see every day. But since I’m only trying out the product for a review, I opted out.

Dashboard

Prowly’s dashboard maintains a simple, inviting design. This is especially helpful since the choices you’re presented with are a bit overwhelming. As someone with limited PR experience, the very idea of starting a press release feels daunting.

Still, front and center on your home page is a simple timeline you can use to wrap your head around Prowly. It breaks it down into four easy steps: creating press releases, finding media contacts, setting up a newsroom, and sending email pitches.

Let’s take a look at each of those features.

Making press releases with Prowly

Prowly has a wide array of options for crafting press releases. You can upload a .docx file, start from scratch, or choose from various templates like event announcements and new hires.

These templates are designed to get your mind jogging, rather than filling in the blanks Mad Libs-style. The text editor is fairly simple with limited font and formatting options. Still, you generally don’t want to get too wild with a press release.

Make sure not to hit “Publish” before it’s fully done, as you can’t go back and change it. 

Finding media contacts

Like with the press release tool, there are a few ways to get started with finding media contacts. You can import or manually add your existing contact list, but you can also peruse Prowly’s extensive database.

Media contacts range from entertainment to politics, business to beauty. They include some of the biggest names and publications in journalism. Just keep in mind, you’ll have to buy an upgraded plan to get access to the contact database.

If you just want to get started, importing existing contacts makes for much less hassle. At the bare minimum, you can put in a few emails and move on to the next step…

Creating a Prowly newsroom

A Prowly newsroom is a custom webpage designed to compile your brand’s content, press releases, and other news. While it’s less customizable than your own website, it allows your media contacts to easily find all of your content in one place.

This can be a useful tool for shaping your narrative. You can organize your PR output into tabs and categories, and customize the design to suit your brand. Still, I’d argue you could probably do better making a media tab on your own website.

Sending an email pitch

Finally, the main event. You’ve made your press release, your newsroom, and compiled all your contacts. Time to pitch!

You can choose to select certain recipients or email your whole contact list. Prowly gives you the tools you need to create an engaging email, with a dozen professional fonts and a bevy of text options.

Where the newsroom layout is fairly one-size-fits-all, you have much more customization options with your pitches. This makes sense since the email pitch is the thing that gets your media contacts hooked.

You can add images, tables, files, and links to your pitch, as well as additional press releases and a call-to-action button.

Like many CRMs, Prowly includes personalization tokens. These are variable text elements that can be tailored to specific recipients. For example, you can add a Greeting token that inputs different greetings for different recipients. Then, by applying values to people in your contact list, you can ensure they each get a greeting that’s specific to them.

After that, simply review your email and send it off! Prowly recommends you sort your emails into campaigns, which makes it easier to keep track of different releases and review their success.

Monitoring and reports

One of Prowly’s more impressive features is its media monitoring dashboard. Above and beyond keyword research, this tool includes widgets to track sentiment, reach, domain authority, and much more.

While easily sending out and keeping track of pitches is great, this tool makes Prowly worth your while. Every tool at your disposal from WordPress to Google Ads has some flavor of monitoring, but this is the rare dashboard that synthesizes every metric a PR agency needs. Just as important, the custom widgets also let you exclude the data you don’t need.

Prowly is teasing a forthcoming feature that lets you view stats on your campaigns through PR reports. As advertised, these reports go above and beyond, compiling data to show the complete picture of your PR work.

As it currently stands, the lack of specific stats on a campaign’s success is one area where Prowly could improve. For PR workers, the ability to compile deliverables makes a big difference, so I hope this feature gets rolled out sooner rather than later.

Is Prowly worth it?

For companies, agencies, and entrepreneurs working in PR, Prowly (wait a sec… PR owly!) promises an easier way. It highlights the ability to easily create, release, and track press releases online.

Prowly’s most impressive features are its media monitoring tools and contact database. I was somewhat less impressed with the press release tools themselves, but I acknowledge the utility of having a simple online dashboard to keep track of them.

Prowly is definitely a strong PR tool; the contacts and monitoring tools alone are enough to make it worthwhile. Still, it faces a common SaaS problem: how much ownership will you give up for convenience?

For that purpose, I like the fact that Prowly also lets you import releases, contact lists, and more. You can choose whether you want a convenient experience or a custom one, which is an attitude more SaaS programs should have.

Prowly is sort of the Canva of PR software. It’s shiny, accessible, and gets the job done, with a few impressive tools that put it over the top. But if you want something fully custom, you’ll still have to make it yourself.

Final rating: 7.9/10 ✅

Like what you see? Sign up for Prowly today.

Since the inception of DaVinci Resolve in 2004, word made its way around the internet that a new sheriff was in town. While yes, there is plenty of competition for editing software, few are free and even fewer are as remarkable as DaVinci Resolve. The software has undergone many iterations over the years, and in July 2022, the much-anticipated version 18 was released. In this DaVinci Resolve review, we’ll lay out the capabilities of this free video editing software and tell you how to get your hands on it.

DaVinci Resolve Review: Features

Did you know you could have the same video editing software used in post-production for famous movies, shows, commercials, and music videos? It’s true. DaVinci Resolve is one of a select few tools known for its use in Hollywood editing – Everything Everywhere All At Once, Black Widow, and Love and Monsters are just a few examples.

For basic video editing, DaVinci Resolve 18 has more than enough power behind it. The software allows you to add text, create smooth transitions, sync audio to your visuals, create intros/outros, and much more.

Some other features include: 

• automatic mask
• HDR grading
• super resolution
• automatic depth map
• subtitles
• YouTube chapters

Another new feature of DaVinci Resolve 18 is multi-user collaboration. You can have several people working on a video edit together with the help of BlackMagic Cloud. This removes the tedious hassle of translating projects, exporting files, and trying to keep track of changes.

When rendering videos, you won’t have to worry about watermarks. Users can edit any 8‑bit video formats up to 60 frames per second. Resolutions may be as high as ultra HD 3840 x 2160.

Here’s a full list of DaVinci Resolve 18’s new features.

Minimum Requirements for DaVinci Resolve

Perhaps the only catch to using this free video editing software is the system requirements. Needless to say, this is a huge download that uses a lot of RAM. Most sources recommend you have 16 GB (a Mac could squeeze by with 8) along with a 64-bit operating system and at least a quad-core CPU. You’ll know you don’t have the system requirements if the application lags, freezes, or playback continuously skips.

DaVinci Resolve Review: Basics

Assuming you’ve never used editing software in your life, how easy is it to get started? If you’re willing to learn by doing and look up a few quick tutorials, it’s very easy to get started on your first video. 

Once you’ve gone through the entire installation process, click the icon to open the software. Across the bottom of the screen, you’ll see viewing options. For beginners, the best place to start is in the “Edit” view.

In the top left section, you’ll see all the media clips you’re using in a given project – audio, video, and pictures. To add media, simply drag and drop computer files into the media section. In the center, you’ll see the playback screen where you can review your progress. The bottom half of the screen is where you’ll do the actual editing. You can drag and drop video and audio files from the media section into the editing section and get to work.

From here, you can play with the toolbar across the middle of the screen to make cuts and begin editing your media files. Right clicking a video clip also gives you a plethora of options like linking/unlinking audio and video together. In the top right section, you’ll see tools to zoom, crop, change the position of text and images, rotate, and more.

Again, there’s a lot to do in DaVinci Resolve and professional editors can go much deeper than this. But the Black Magic team does a great job of bridging the gap and making the basic tools accessible to beginners.

How to Get DaVinci Resolve for Free

You might think it’s too good to be true that such a sophisticated tool could be free. But alas, DaVinci Resolve is available for download right from the Black Magic Design website. Both Mac and Windows versions are up for grabs – Simply fill out the form and download whatever version you need. Linux users will be happy to know there’s a version for them too.

Once you get comfortable with the basics of video editing, there’s no shortage of DaVinci Resolve plugins to play with. You can up the quality of your motion graphics, mimic classic film stock, and remove video or audio noise. Watch your production value improve in myriad ways.

DaVinci Resolve Studio vs Free

If you think free DaVinci Resolve has a lot of features, you’ll be thoroughly impressed if you opt for the paid version. It includes:

• GPU accelerations
• 30+ Resolve FX
• DaVinci Neural Engine
• Supports 32k at up to 120 frames per second
• Play more formats (AVCHD, AVC-Intra, and popular 10-bit formats)

If you’re unsure whether or not to upgrade, there’s not much to lose. The paid version (DaVinci Resolve Studio) is only $295 for a lifetime license. With that said, the vast majority of video editing projects can be done in the free DaVinci Resolve, especially if you’re not skilled with editing software.

Hopefully this DaVinci Resolve review gave you a little more information so you can make an informed decision. And if you’re wildly overwhelmed by all the features, spend some time browsing these DaVinci Resolve tutorials. Happy editing!