In this post, we’ll compare the 13 best session replay tools based on features, use cases, and pricing.
Session replay tools show developers exactly what a user or client was doing on a website or app when they encountered a bug.
Say someone⏤internal QA, or a client⏤submits a bug report. It’s not urgent, so it gets triaged.
A few days later, if a dev asks, “How did you get there?”, most people won’t remember. This makes it that much harder to fix bugs.
Session replay helps with:
- Identifying UX issues (e.g., where do users get confused or frustrated/encounter issues?)
- Troubleshooting bugs (e.g., when reports are received, devs can see what happened and why, and can replicate it more effectively)
What is session replay?
Session replay, also known as session recording or session playback, is a technology that captures the interactions of a user on a website or app.
This functionality helps web developers and marketing teams analyze—and understand—real user behavior by recording:
- Mouse movements;
- Clicks and rage clicks;
- Scrolls;
- Form inputs;
- and more!
There are many uses for session replay, including web analytics, conversion rate optimization, bug fixing, and more!
What can you do with session replay?
Whatever your use case, you can gather tons of valuable insights with session replay.
For developers, session replay is an incredible time-saver during debugging.
Instead of trying to reproduce a bug with the information a client or user provides, you can see what happened in the last few seconds/minutes before a bug report was submitted.
Session replay makes it easier to replicate and fix bugs. It’s that simple!
13 Best Session Replay Tools and Software
Here’s a list of the 13 best session replay tools in 2023 for web dev teams, customer support, marketers, and more.
1. Marker.io
Collect user feedback straight into your PM tool—and replay the reporter’s session.
Marker.io is a powerful, user-friendly bug reporting and session replay software for agency owners and web project managers.
With Marker.io, you can:
- Benefit from our session replay tool to see what a user was doing before they sent a report. Session replay is an invaluable time-saving tool for dev teams—and the reason why Marker.io is a go-to solution.
- Collect data-rich bug reports, including automatic environment and console logs capture.
- Collect visual feedback, complete with screenshots and annotations. Hide sensitive information as needed.
- Ensure every bug report is automatically synced with your PM tool of choice (e.g., Jira, GitHub, Trello, Asana, and others).
Let's have a look at a few Marker.io features.
Session replay
Session replay comes as standard with Marker.io.
Even with a data-rich bug report—it’s not always easy to reproduce a bug.
It’s quicker and easier if you can see exactly what happened when a user or client encountered a bug.
Well—this is why Marker.io includes a session recording tool as standard.
Bug reports go straight into your PM tool. From there, click the “Watch replay” link.
You can then watch the last 30 seconds (or more) before any report was sent in.
Here’s Marker.io's session replay in action:
We can clearly see this customer journey on the website:
- Clicked on "About Us".
- Scrolled down & up.
- Tried several times to click on "Contact Us".
- Gave up and reported a bug with the Marker.io widget.
Make sure the Marker.io widget is embedded on the website(s) or app(s) you are working on, and enable session replay in your widget settings. It’s as simple as that!
Data-rich bug reports
Bugs and errors are inevitable and happen across every website, eCommerce, app, and SaaS product.
However, with non tech-savvy clients and website visitors, bug reports often look like this: “Oh no, something’s broken; here’s what happened; please fix it.”
Engineers trying to solve a problem need more detailed information, such as:
- What URL the reporter was on;
- Environment (browser, device, OS, etc.) and console logs;
- Metadata;
- Session replay/recording, and anything else that’s useful.
Thankfully, with Marker.io, all of that data is automatically included, collected—and sent off to your PM tool with the rest of the report.
One-click bug reports with visual annotations
Marker.io operates as a small feedback button on any website you upload it to. It’s like a small plugin.
This makes it really easy for users, clients, and your internal team to send feedback and bug reports.
All anyone needs to do is:
- When they’ve found a bug, they only need to click the button.
- Fill out the feedback form and input details.
- Click on “Report Feedback”—done!
Everything reported through the Marker.io widget will go straight into your PM tool of choice (Jira, Trello, Linear…).
It's this easy:
Automatic 2-way sync with PM tools
Unlike most other session replay software, Marker.io is the only one to offer 2-way sync with PM tools.
The normal feedback collection process is time-consuming and headache-inducing:
A product manager or agency owner sends a client a link to a new website or app via a staging site and asks them to have a look around.
Clients give feedback, usually via email (or sometimes Zoom or phone calls).
It often takes days or weeks to get the feedback you need.
Once it comes through, you spend a couple of (tedious) hours transferring every email, Slack message, and transcribed notes into your PM tool.
Then, the tasks are assigned to the relevant team members.
With Marker.io’s automatic 2-way PM sync, all that is a thing of the past.
Feedback and session replay recordings go straight into your PM tool.
Secondly—because our sync works both ways, every time an issue is marked as “Done” in your PM tool, that task is marked as “Resolved” in Marker.io.
Automatic notifications can be sent via e-mail to the client so they know the tasks have been actioned.
It’s that simple!
Here’s Marker.io's 2-way sync in action:
Save hours on bug tracking, client and user feedback with our session replay tool, and so much more—try Marker.io for free today.
Pricing: starts at $39/mo.
2. FullStory
Feature-rich platform for session replay, error tracking, and analytics.
FullStory is an enterprise SaaS solution for Digital Experience Intelligence (DXI). With FullStory, you can automatically record every single user action and session. This includes:
- Recording every user interaction, including customer information, traffic source, cart value, signups, and numerous others.
- Segment and sub-segment user data based on geographical data, email, and loads more.
- Integrates with Jira and other PM tools, as well as Slack, and naturally, it records user sessions too.
Pricing: Not public, potential clients need to have a demo and 2-week trial, although we’ve found that subscriptions are in the $1000/mo range.
3. LogRocket
Session replay, product analytics, and error-tracking software solution.
LogRocket is a software suite that helps dev teams with their web analytics. This includes:
- Session replay and a range of other usability testing features;
- Integrations with GitHub, Slack, and other PM tools;
- A network graph, showing you the relationship between different user actions, and loads more!
Pricing: $99/mo for web-based session recordings or $199/mo for mobile applications.
4. FullSession
All-in-one session replay, user feedback, and analytics tool.
FullSession is a SaaS suite with a range of tools that help businesses optimize their digital experiences for customers. With this, you can:
- Watch and analyze customer interactions with session replay, heatmaps, mouse clicks, etc.;
- Combine quantitative and qualitative insights from clients, customers, and users;
- Track user analytics through every stage of your digital experience funnels.
Pricing: From $39/mo (5,000 user sessions)
5. Hotjar
Collect session replays, heatmaps, surveys, and actionable customer feedback.
Hotjar is a popular feedback tool for many businesses and dev agencies. With this, you can:
- Record user sessions to see how people interact with every element of your website, software, or app.
- Get instant visual feedback with heatmaps.
- It also comes with conversion funnel analysis like fullSession.
Pricing: From $66/mo.
6. CrazyEgg
Advanced heatmaps, A/B testing, and analytics.
CrazyEgg is a website optimization and session recording software with all of the usual features, such as:
- Heatmaps and session recordings;
- A/B testing website features;
- Analytics, and surveys.
It’s more of a marketing/customer experience tool, as it’s useful for seeing how far people scroll on web pages and how they use a website overall. However, it’s also handy for dev teams.
Pricing: From $29/mo.
7. Datadog
Real-time monitoring of web apps/websites.
Datadog is an enterprise tool for monitoring user behavior and customer analytics. With this, you can:
- Monitor web visitors and how they use your app;
- Automatically collect logs across your digital estate;
- Measure and track any security issues at scale.
Naturally, this analytics platform includes session replay.
Pricing: Somewhat complicated as there are 19 features, each with its own price point and different prices for self-hosting or cloud-based solutions.
8. Glassbox
Advanced customer research with security & compliance features.
Glassbox is a digital customer and user experience toolkit that includes:
- Integrations with Adobe, Salesforce, and numerous other products;
- Compliance feature to ensure that data is collected in line with industry regulations (with a focus on supporting clients in the financial sector);
- Customer journey solutions, showing the path users take through a website (including session replay).
Pricing: Not public, you’d need to request it.
9. Inspectlet
Simple playback tool so you can see what users do on your website.
Inspectlet is a tool that comes with:
- Session recording features to track every movement, scroll, and click;
- Integrations with popular platforms, like Shopify and WordPress;
- Recommendationso on how to optimize your website and digital user experience.
Pricing: From a free plan (up to 2,500 user sessions); or from $39/mo for up to 10,000 sessions.
10. Lucky Orange
All-in-one digital experience conversion optimization tool.
Lucky Orange is designed to improve website conversion rates. It comes with:
- Dynamic heatmaps;
- Session recordings and analytics;
- Surveys, etc.
Pricing: From $18/mo.
11. Mouseflow
Heatmaps, funnel analysis, and a feedback button.
With Mouseflow, you can:
- Record user sessions with session replay;
- View user interactions with heatmaps;
- Collect feedback with forms, and loads more.
Pricing: From $39/mo.
12. OpenReplay
Session replay tool you can self-host, with a debugger to understand what code is causing performance issues.
OpenReplay is an open-source session replay tool that comes with:
- Dev tool integrations and collaborative features;
- Performance monitoring, like FullStory, to analyze based on specific criteria;
- Product analytics.
Pricing: From free (up to 1,000 user sessions); or from $3.95/mo for over 1,000 sessions.
13. Sentry
Performance monitoring and optimization.
Sentry is designed to:
- Replay issues and record user sessions;
- Record console and environment logs;
- Track website performance metrics, and lots more!
It keeps track of all issues on your website and will alert you when something goes wrong.
Pricing: From $26/mo.
So there you have it: 13 of the best session replay tools on the market.
We hope this post helped you decide on a tool that’s right for you.
Let us know if we missed something!
