The Contentsquare Free plan: unlimited users, real insights, zero time pressure

Most analytics platforms put you in an impossible position. Pay hundreds of dollars upfront for features you might not need, or get a free trial that only lasts 14 days, just when you're starting to see real insights.

Contentsquare's Free plan works differently. Rather than offering limited access that expires, we provide ongoing tools that solve actual problems. Small teams, startups, and growing businesses gain the insights they need to understand their users and address real issues without time pressure or artificial constraints.

In this guide, we’ll walk through what’s included in the Contentsquare Free plan, plus highlight an alternative for Product Analytics, and show how real teams apply it to fix issues, reduce friction, and make smarter, more confident decisions.

Key insights

• Small teams get complete user insights without choosing between tools. Contentsquare’s Free plan combines experience analytics, the voice of customer, and journey tracking, eliminating the need to switch between multiple tools or choose between understanding what users do versus why they do it.

• The 20,000 session limit covers 80% of SMB's complete traffic. This means most teams can capture their entire user base rather than working with samples, make more confident decisions, and eliminate the guesswork that comes from incomplete data.

• Teams that start with focused questions get faster wins. Instead of analyzing everything at once, successful teams use the Free plan to solve 1-2 specific problems first, demonstrating value before expanding their efforts across the entire user experience (UX).

• Heap by Contentsquare’s Product Analytics Free plan targets product-specific needs. This Free plan is available to help product teams optimize user journeys and use insights to build better products

What you get with the Contentsquare Free plan

Most free tools give you just enough to get frustrated. You can see that something's wrong, but you can't figure out what or why. 

Contentsquare’s Free plan gives you instant access to 3 powerful capabilities that help you understand user behavior, spot friction, and improve your user experience.

Whether you're launching your first landing page or validating product features, you get everything needed to spot problems early and build experiences that work.

1. Experience Analytics: understand journeys and optimize conversions

With up to 20,000 monthly sessions and 5,000 session replay captures, the Free plan gives you enough Experience Analytics data to understand real patterns without drowning in information.

Here’s what’s included:

• Heatmaps: clear, visual data showing where users click, scroll, and focus attention 

• Session Replay: watch real user sessions with mouse movements, clicks, and scroll behavior

• Smart Capture platform: Contentsquare automatically tracks clicks and user interactions without requiring manual tagging

• Basic funnels: uncover drop-offs and see how users move through journeys

• Experience monitoring: spot JavaScript errors and performance issues, so you can fix what's broken before it impacts the user experience 

• Standard filters and dashboards: filter by new vs. returning users, pages viewed, user country, or device and more, and create custom dashboards to track your projects and goals

• Core integrations: connect with Google Analytics, Mixpanel, Jira, and more to enrich your existing workflows 

💡 Pro tip: unlimited heatmaps let you test theories without hitting usage limits. 

Each heatmap brings clarity or prompts new questions. Either way, Contentsquare users are free to keep exploring without hitting usage caps that plague other freemium tools.

Create separate heatmaps for mobile vs desktop, different traffic sources, or various landing pages, then iterate until patterns become clear.

Use unlimited heatmaps to uncover exactly how different users engage with your content

2. Voice of Customer (VoC): understand why users behave the way they do

Behavioral data tells you what happened, but it doesn't tell you why. Voice of Customer bridges that gap by letting you ask users directly about their experience. 

With 100 survey responses per month and 5 user interviews or tests, you can gather enough feedback to understand real user motivations. You get access to

• AI-powered surveys: describe your goals and let Contentsquare’s AI, Sense, generate targeted questions and summarize key themes from your results

• User interviews: schedule 1-on-1 conversations with users to dive deeper into their experiences with your site or product

• User testing capabilities: run unmoderated tests to see how users interact with wireframes, prototypes, or concept designs 

• Core integrations: integrate with Slack, HubSpot, Teams, and more so VoC insights reach everyone who needs them

💡 Pro tip: layer your insights for complete context instead of relying on single data points.

Heatmaps reveal patterns, session recordings explain the why behind those patterns, and surveys confirm what users actually intended.

Each tool tells part of the story, but together they provide actionable insights.

When someone gives you feedback through a survey, you can immediately watch their session to understand what they experienced

3. Experience Monitoring: catch performance issues before users do

When users run into broken scripts or slow pages, they often leave before you even know there’s a problem. Contentsquare’s Experience Monitoring helps you spot these issues directly in your analytics so you can act fast.

Here’s what’s included on Free:

• JavaScript errors in dashboards and session replays: collect JavaScript errors to uncover broken client-side functionality that disrupts user interactions and revenue

• real user monitoring: track site performance data based on actual user experience 

• Speed Analysis and Real User Monitoring (RUM) and Core Web Vitals: test website speed before launching releases and get tips for how to improve Core Web Vitals

• Synthetic speed reports: test how fast your site loads under different conditions

• Basic filtering: monitor JavaScript error metrics in dashboards and filter sessions by those errors.

💡 Pro tip: the Free plan gives you a starter set of Experience Monitoring tools—enough to catch and understand common errors and slowdowns. 

With advanced plans, you can expand monitoring to include full error analysis, track error trends over months instead of weeks, set up AI-powered alerts, and uncover less frequent but high-impact issues like API failures that silently block users from completing purchases.

What you get with the Product Analytics Free plan

An alternative Free plan option is Heap by Contentsquare’s Product Analytics offering, designed specifically for product teams and managers.  This Free plan helps you understand complex user journeys and track how effectively your product drives activation, engagement, and conversion. 

Here’s what’s included in the Product Analytics Free plan: 

• 10,000 monthly sessions: analyze user behavior across multiple visits and touchpoints

• Do more in minutes (no tagging sprints): get trusted insights without upfront instrumentation so teams can move from ‘what happened?’ to ‘what do we change next?’ on the same day

• Analytics and reporting: track specific metrics that show how your product performs, including retention rate, repeat engagement, feature adoption uplift, and time to value

• Cross-session journey tracking: connect a user’s sessions across web, mobile, and app—even when they switch from anonymous to logged-in—to understand their path to conversion

• Core growth analyses: identify what drives acquisition, engagement, and retention, and pinpoint where growth opportunities lie across the product experience

• Funnels: locate drop-offs in sign-up, onboarding, or checkout

• Retention metrics: see who comes back, and why

• Track user journeys and product usage over time: discover common paths, detours, trends, and impact by segment

• Smart Capture for event tracking: automatically capture user interactions or tag your way with complete flexibility, then define events retroactively to answer questions about past behavior

• Goal tracking: monitor conversions for checkouts, form submissions, feature adoption, or plan upgrades. Track retention rate, repeat engagement, adoption uplift, and time-to-value.

• Dashboards and filters: share live views and segment by device, channel, cohort, or release to see what’s working

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💡 Pro tip: don’t just track sign-ups—track what users do next.

Use your sessions to spot key activation steps, like completing onboarding or using a core feature.

Set up charts and dashboards to measure these actions, then use your 6 months of data history to see which behaviors lead to long-term retention. Add user attributes like traffic source to find your highest-converting segments.

The Product Analytics Free plan lets you connect user behavior to business outcomes, so you can prove which features drive real value

How teams use Contentsquare's Free plan to build, test, and optimize digital experiences

The Free plan gives you enough to solve problems and make improvements that matter to your users and business. Here’s how different teams put that into action. 

Digital marketers: optimize campaigns and landing pages

Marketing teams rely on the Free plan to make smarter, data-backed decisions before scaling their efforts.

With a full-stack of experience analytics and VoC tools, digital marketers can

• Understand traffic quality: use heatmaps to compare how users from different traffic sources engage with landing pages, and adjust your targeting or messaging accordingly

• Optimize key user journeys: use funnels to analyze key user journeys and launch surveys on pages with high drop-offs to understand—and fix—the issue

• Improve conversion rates: watch session replays to see exactly where users encounter friction in your conversion funnel, then use on-site surveys to ask departing users what stopped them from completing their purchase

• Test campaign messaging: deploy surveys on key landing pages to gather feedback on headlines, value propositions, and calls-to-action (CTAs) before investing in larger campaigns

For example, beauty retailer Avon used heatmaps to discover that 40% of users missed a key product carousel below the fold. Moving it up boosted exposure by 44% and revenue by 35%, without extra ad spend.

Ecommerce managers: reduce cart abandonment and improve conversions

Ecommerce teams often start with one goal: reduce bounce, boost cart adds. With Contentsquare’s Free plan, they can track which journeys are converting, and why. 

This helps them improve every step of the shopping experience, from discovery to checkout, using built-in tools that reveal both behavior and intent. 

Ecommerce managers use Contentsquare to

• Diagnose checkout issues: session replays show exactly where users drop off during checkout, while exit-intent surveys reveal why, uncovering issues like confusing payment forms or trust concerns

• Optimize product pages: heatmaps highlight which product details users focus on, so you know where to shift content for better engagement

• Improve search and navigation: by tracking how users explore your site, you can spot friction in product discovery and category logic

Product managers: make data-driven feature decisions

For product teams, validating early features is essential. The Free plan supports this with behavioral insights and feedback tools to make confident decisions about what to build, improve, or prioritize. Instead of relying on instinct or internal opinions, they can base their roadmap on how users actually engage with their product. 

Product managers can

• Prioritize feature improvements: use click maps to see which features get the most engagement and session replays to identify usability issues that create frustration

• Validate new releases: survey customers about new features and schedule interviews with power users to understand how features fit into their broader workflows

• Understand user journeys: track how users discover and adopt features over multiple sessions, identifying opportunities to improve onboarding and feature discoverability

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💡 Pro tip: schedule weekly sessions to review new data and identify trends in user activity. These consistent review and analysis cycles help you spot issues early and measure the impact of changes you make.

UX designers: validate design choices with real behavior

UX design teams often start by using the Free plan to go beyond aesthetics. With Contentsquare, they can validate ideas early, spot usability issues, and keep a pulse on user feedback as the site or product evolves. 

This helps designers

• Test design concepts: use concept testing surveys to gather feedback on design prototypes before development begins and prevent costly redesigns later

• Identify usability issues: session replays reveal exactly where users struggle with your interface, while heatmaps show whether important elements get the attention they deserve

• Gather continuous feedback: embed feedback buttons that let users report issues or suggest improvements while they're actively using your product to prioritize which design changes will have the most impact on user satisfaction

For instance, retailer Brooklinen's team used session replays to reveal mobile users struggling with their Bundle Builder. A clearer summary view generated through A/B testing fixed the issue and significantly increased conversions.

Getting started with Contentsquare Free: your step-by-step setup guide

Setting up your Free plan takes about 15 minutes, but the way you configure it determines how quickly you start getting valuable insights.

This guide walks you through setup so your team can begin using key features like heatmaps, surveys, and dashboards—no tech team required.

Sign up and customize your experience

Head to contentsquare.com and click Start for free to sign up, no credit card or commitment required.

During signup, you’ll be guided toward the right product experience—either Contentsquare’s Free plan (selecting ‘Small teams’ or Heap by Contentsquare’s Product Analytics offering (selecting either ‘Product managers’ or ‘Mobile-first teams’)—based on your needs. 

The signup process is designed to customize your experience based on your team's specific needs and goals

Once your account is active, add your website domain and install the tracking code via a simple script or through integrations like Google Tag Manager.

💡Pro tip: make the most of your 15-day Contentsquare Growth trial—it's packed with advanced features to help you go deeper, faster.

All new users on our Experience Analytics product start with full access to Growth capabilities, including:

• Advanced Funnels and Impact Quantification to spot and size drop-offs

• Contentsquare’s AI, Sense to get deep analysis fast through features such as Chat with Sense and Session Replay Summaries.

• Advanced filters, such as frustration signals, clicked elements, or user traits

• Unlimited surveys and up to 10 user interviews or tests

• Custom branding on surveys with your logo and colors

After 15 days, you’ll automatically switch back to the Free plan, no action needed. Once you’ve signed up to either the Contentsquare Experience Analytics or Product Analytics Free plans, it’s time to activate the features. 

Contentsquare Free plan Step 1: activate Experience Analytics

Start by setting up the tools that capture and visualize real user behavior. 

The following capabilities give you instant insights that help you prioritize fixes, test changes, and track their business impact, all from one place.

Set up your first dashboard 

Dashboards are your control panel for tracking the metrics that matter most. They let you

• Group key insights in one place

• Filter by segment, device, or behavior

• Monitor key performance metrics like sessions, bounce rate, top pages and lots more.

To get started, head to the Dashboards section and click New dashboard.

Choose from several template options or start from scratch and build your own custom view

For example, you can set up a dashboard to track key metrics for a specific page (or your entire site), to track page issues that cause user frustration, or to monitor Core Web Vitals or the performance of specific segments.  

💡 Pro tip: use filters to compare behaviors across devices, traffic types, or visitor cohorts, so you’re not just tracking data, but learning from it.

Use filters like new vs returning users, or device type, to uncover deeper insights and prioritize fixes

Find drop-offs with Funnels

Funnels visualize how users move through your site (checkout flows, onboarding, etc.) and where they abandon the journey.

With the Free plan’s basic funnels, you can uncover hidden drop-off points and understand how users progress through your site. This helps you optimize conversions without extra setup.

Set up a funnel by adding key steps, such as “homepage → product page → checkout”, and filter by segment or device. 

💡 Pro tip: funnels pair beautifully with session replays and impact quantification, giving you the context to not only measure performance, but improve it.

See what caused the drop-off—one click takes you to the full session replay for instant context

Contentsquare Free plan step 2: set up Voice of Customer

​​Behavioral data shows what users do, but feedback tells you why. 

Whether you’re fixing friction, validating ideas, or uncovering hidden needs, the Voice of Customer toolkit helps you build with confidence.

Launch your first survey

Head to the Surveys section and click + New survey. You can

• Pick a template: choose from Net Promoter® Score (NPS®), exit intent, product feedback, and more ready-to-go and easy-to-customize survey templates

• Use AI: select Generate from goal, describe your objective in plain language (for example, “Why are users dropping off at checkout?”), and let AI build your questions, logic, and targeting

Customize your survey appearance, target specific pages or users, and publish it in minutes

In just a few clicks, you’ll have a complete survey, tailored to your objective, ready to activate, and viewable across all devices and pages.

💡 Pro tip: add custom branding and logic filters during your Growth trial for extra polish and precision.

Run interviews and user tests

For deeper insights, go to the Interviews tab and click + New interview. You can

• Invite users to book a call manually or via Calendly

• Choose the type of session: prototype testing, feature feedback, or more

• Add screeners and incentives to recruit the right participants

Connect your calendar, choose your availability, then let Contentsquare invite users and schedule calls for you

For asynchronous testing, use the Tests tab and create a task—like “Try completing this flow” or “Tell us what’s confusing on this page.” 

Test participants record their screen and voice, giving you context-rich insights without scheduling calls

Both interviews and tests feed directly into your workspace, so you can analyze recordings, tag insights, and share learnings with your team.

💡 Pro tip: focus on 1 or 2 specific and urgent questions, instead of trying to analyze every aspect of your user experience, at the same time. This helps you gain experience with the Contentsquare platform while solving real problems.

 How to activate the Product Analytics Free plan

Product Analytics is where product and UX teams can get surgical: spotting trends, testing improvements, and scaling what works. Here’s a step-by-step process for activating your Product Analytics Free plan.

Define your key events

Start by identifying the user actions that matter most to your business:

• Sign-ups and account creation

• Feature usage and engagement

• Onboarding milestone completion

• Plan upgrades and conversions

• Trial-to-paid transitions

💡 Pro tip: Smart Capture automatically tracks these interactions, and you can define them retroactively—so even if you forgot to set up events beforehand, you can still analyze past behavior.

 Quickly learn how features are performing and iterate with confidence, not guesswork

Set up user identification

Connect behavior across sessions and devices by implementing user identification. 

This allows you to track how individual users move from anonymous browsing through account creation and beyond, giving you a complete picture of their journey to conversion.

💡 Pro tip: combine these queries with filters like subscription plan type, device, or referral source to uncover deeper engagement patterns.

Create your first charts and dashboards

Turn your event data into visual insights using chart types that highlight everything from usage over time to retention cohorts. 

Product Analytics charts help you understand how your features, flows, and changes influence behavior over time

Then, create a dashboard tailored to your product goals, such as an

• Onboarding dashboard, to track sign-up, tutorial completion, and feature usage

• Feature adoption dashboard, to see which features are gaining traction

• Conversion dashboard, to monitor trial-to-paid or free-to-premium upgrades

💡 Pro tip: set your dashboards to auto-refresh weekly and invite your whole team. The Free plan supports unlimited users, so product, design, marketing, and customer success can all contribute insights.

When to consider upgrading your Free plan

The Free plan provides substantial functionality, but growing teams eventually need deeper insights, longer data retention, and more analysis tools.

Consider upgrading when your needs outgrow the plan. Use these Free features comparison charts to see what’s included, and what you unlock with Growth plans.

Contentsquare Free plan

Product Analytics Free plan

Your next steps: from setup to success

Small teams shouldn't have to pick between understanding their users and staying within budget. The benefits of Contentsquare Free ensure you don't have to make that choice.

Start with comprehensive capabilities, learn what works for your team, and know that you're not alone in this process. The platform includes built-in guidance, and the unlimited user capability means your entire team can collaborate on understanding and improving customer experiences.

Experience the full platform power from day one, then continue with robust free capabilities that grow with your needs.

FAQs about Contentsquare’s Free plan and the Product Analytics Free plan