5 Smartlook alternatives for smarter experience analytics

Smartlook (now part of Cisco) does the basics well: session replays, heatmaps, and funnels to visualize website behavior. But its event-based tracking and lack of AI means you’ll spend way more time on setup and combing through data than shipping changes that move KPIs. 

In this guide, we take you through 5 strong Smartlook alternatives and competitors, explain what they’re best at, and show you exactly why Contentsquare is the smartest choice (pun intended) for turning digital behavior into measurable growth.

Key takeaways

• Smartlook's limitations cost you time and money: event-based tracking means you only see what you tagged in advance, there's no AI to surface what matters, and revenue insights only work in manually configured funnels

• The smartest alternatives automate what Smartlook makes manual: platforms like Contentsquare, Fullstory, and Glassbox offer autocapture, AI-powered analysis, and comprehensive revenue tracking across your entire digital experience

• Contentsquare is the only platform that delivers complete experience intelligence in one platform, including the best automatic data capture on the market, AI that does the analysis for you, and Impact Quantification that calculates revenue impact everywhere so you can spend less time debating what to fix and more time shipping changes that drive measurable growth

Limitations of Smartlook: why you're looking for an alternative

Smartlook tracks behavior. That’s good, but if you can't connect that behavior to revenue, prioritize fixes by impact, or get insights fast enough to act, you're just collecting data, not driving growth. Here are the 3 main reasons teams outgrow Smartlook:

1. Event-based tracking and pricing

Smartlook requires you to manually configure every event you want to track (like a visited URL, clicked button, or typed text). 

If you didn't tag it upfront, that data doesn't exist. You can't analyze behaviors retroactively or explore new hypotheses with historical data. Plus, since pricing is tied to event volume, you're incentivized to track even less, leaving critical gaps in your data. 

The alternative: 

Contentsquare’s Smart Capture gives you the best automatic data capture on the market. 

You’ll get complete coverage in a few clicks so you can analyze any behavior retroactively. It works on all plans and there are no event limits, even on our free tier.

Capture all your experience data automatically with Contentsquare Smart Capture

2. No AI to surface what matters

Smartlook provides the basic tools to explore customer behavior, but all the analysis is manual. You have to build funnels to track dropoffs, watch individual session replays to spot issues, and scan through data hunting for patterns. 

With no intelligence layer to flag what's important, you spend hours searching for insights instead of acting on them. That would have been fine 10 years ago. Now? Not so much.

The alternative: Contentsquare's AI, Sense, does the heavy lifting for you. It surfaces issues automatically, summarizes sessions, prioritizes by revenue impact, sends real-time alerts, answers plain-language questions, and turns behavior data into next best steps in seconds.

Stop optimizing like it’s 1999: let Sense do the hard work for you

3. Limited revenue insights

Smartlook offers limited revenue tracking—it only works in funnels where you've manually configured custom events. 

Everything else is a black box. You can't see what errors, dropoffs, or user struggles are actually costing you across the experience, so prioritization becomes guesswork instead of data-backed decision-making.

The alternative: Contentsquare’s Impact Quantification calculates the revenue and conversion impact of any behavior, error, segment, or journey. It’s a crystal clear way to compare opportunities and model outcomes so you know exactly what to fix or test next for maximum ROI.

Prioritize by impact, not guesswork with Contentsquare

5 top Smartlook competitors and what they do best

The analytics market is crowded but your goal is simple: choose a platform that grows with your team and delivers real results, not just data. Here are 5 Smartlook alternatives, who they’re for, what they’re good at, and where you might hit limitations:

1. Contentsquare

What it is Contentsquare is an all-in-one experience intelligence platform that transforms digital behavior and feedback into measurable business growth.

Who it’s best for

Digital teams across the org that need to move fast, prove impact, and prioritize by revenue, not guesswork.

What it does

• Combines Heatmaps, Session Replay, Mobile Analytics, Product Analytics, Experience Monitoring, Journey Analysis, and Voice of Customer in one powerful platform

• Autocaptures every event across websites and mobile apps, no manual tagging needed

• Comprehensive Error Analysis, Speed Analysis, and Frustration Scoring to find and rank both technical and non-technical errors

• 1-click Impact Quantification to calculate conversion and revenue impact for any segment, page, element, error, or behavior and model improvement scenarios

• AI that does the analysis for you by proactively finds opportunities, flags anomalies, summarizing replays and errors, and recommends next steps

Why Contentsquare is better than Smartlook You're probably not surprised that we rank ourselves above Smartlook and every other competitor! But we’re just echoing what our customers (including Klaviyo, Royal Caribbean, and Pirelli) keep telling us. 

Smartlook is a bit like what Contentsquare used to be like when it first launched: basic experience analytics tools like heatmaps, funnels, and replays to help you troubleshoot dropoffs and improve conversion rates. 

But what was groundbreaking 10+ years ago is no longer enough to give you a competitive edge. 

Contentsquare isn't just another analytics tool. We've invested +$1.4 billion building an AI-powered experience intelligence platform that shows you what users do, why it matters, and what to work on next.

Contentsquare Sense Analyst does the deep analysis for you, just tell it what you need

Smartlook makes you hunt through data and guess what’s important. Contentsquare does the analysis for you, quantifies the business impact of every issue automatically, and delivers insights every team can use to drive measurable growth. 

It's the difference between merely collecting data and actually using that data to win.

2. Mouseflow

What it is 

Mouseflow is a lightweight digital experience analytics tool with session replays, heatmaps, form and journey analytics, funnels, and surveys.

Who it's best for 

Small teams or those new to UX analytics who want simple, visual insights into user behavior and feedback.

What it does

• Visualize behavior with session replay, heatmaps, and journey analytics to spot friction and dropoffs

• Track conversions with funnels and basic revenue insights

• Prioritize issues with friction scoring

• Collect feedback to pair qualitative and activity data

Why it's not enough 

Like Smartlook, Mouseflow is an entry-level platform. It does have the additional benefit of built-in surveys, but it mostly shows you what happened (clicks, scrolls, form fills). If you pick Mouseflow as your Smartlook alternative, you still won't be able to prioritize everything by revenue impact, save time with automated analysis and alerts, or even track any mobile app activity.

3. 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

• Unlimited heatmaps, session recordings, and mobile app analytics

• AI session summaries and Copilot-powered chat for data exploration

• Google Analytics integration

Why it's not enough 

Everyone loves a freebie, but Clarity’s lack of dollar cost comes with too many trade-offs: no customer journey analysis, no revenue attribution, no feedback tools, and very limited support. 

It also lacks privacy features and Microsoft uses all your data to improve machine learning models.

💡Pro tip: Contentsquare has a free forever plan, too, with stronger privacy, broader insights, and a better path to scale.

4. Fullstory

What it is 

Fullstory is a customer and employee experience platform with web and mobile analytics.

Who it's best for 

Technical teams that want to troubleshoot conversion blockers while combining customer and employee experience optimization. 

What it does

• Autocapture customer journey analytics with session replays

• Unique digital employee experience tools with workflow optimization

• StoryAI to automate some analysis and find quick wins

Why it's not enough 

Fullstory addresses Smartlook’s main limitations with autocaptured events, some revenue quantification, and time-saving AI features. 

But it’s still very focused on technical troubleshooting (like finding friction and fixing errors) instead of optimizing customer experience from every angle.

5. Glassbox

What it is 

Glassbox is a digital experience analytics platform focused on cross-device behavior, technical performance, and compliance, especially for finance teams.

Who it's best for 

Technical teams in regulated industries that prioritize mobile tracking, error detection, and data control.

What it does

• Captures session replays, interaction heatmaps, and conversion funnels

• Tracks mobile app behavior and detects UX friction

• Uses AI (GIA) to surface insights via conversational assistant

Why it's not enough 

Glassbox is built for complex, compliance-heavy environments. This might be good if you’re in financial services, but it makes the platform inaccessible for most teams. 

There’s no free plan or VoC, setup requires significant technical resources, and it's not designed for fast, self-serve use. 

Why Contentsquare is the #1 Smartlook alternative

With Smartlook, you’ll spend your time configuring events, watching individual replays, and guessing what’s broken. 

With Contentsquare, you get AI-powered analytics that autocaptures every interaction, proactively surfaces what matters, and tells you what to do next to grow your metrics.

Here's how Contentsquare delivers results that Smartlook can't…

1. The best automatic data capture on the market

The problem with Smartlook Event-based tracking requires you to configure every event upfront. You pay for extra event capture, and anything you didn't predict and tag is lost forever.

The Contentsquare advantage Smart Capture automatically tracks every user interaction, error, and event across web and mobile apps from day one:

• One-click setup, complete coverage: eliminate engineering bottlenecks, and reduce tracking errors

• Retroactive analysis: explore historical data any way you want, analyze new metrics or unexpected dropoffs instantly

• Unlimited events, predictable pricing: no event caps or hidden costs as your data collection scales

• Full mobile app support: mobile Smart Capture gives you complete visibility into native app behavior, not just mobile web

• Privacy-first, anonymous data: capture interactions securely at scale and turn aggregated data into insights without compromising user privacy

• Data Connect: automatically export behavioral data straight to your warehouse of choice

💡Pro tip: we also have Sense Mappng Assistant to automatically group pages together (like product detail pages, checkout pages, and blog posts) so you can analyze patterns across page types without manual setup.

“With Smart Capture, if I forgot to track it, Contentsquare tracked it anyway. If I get questions two months later, I never need to worry—because the data is there.” - Matthew Gomes, Director of Marketing at OppLoans

2. The smartest AI for proactive analysis

The problem with Smartlook You watch replays, build funnels, and generate heatmaps manually and you're still left guessing what all the data means for your business and where to focus first. 

There's no intelligence layer to flag trends, explain shifts, or surface what matters.

The Contentsquare advantage AI is built into every workflow to save you time and focus your efforts on what’s guaranteed to move the needle:

• Sense Analyst: a custom AI agent to automate analysis and get recommendations based on fresh data straight to your inbox

• Sense Chat: ask simple questions like "How can I improve revenue today?" and get clear visual answers and next-steps

• AI Alerts: get notified when metrics shift while filtering out noise

• Session Replay Summaries: skip manual review by automatically highlighting key patterns across hundreds of sessions

• Error Summaries: quickly understand technical issues and their impact

Tell Sense AI what you need and it runs the analysis automatically

3. The only platform that quantifies revenue impact everywhere

The problem with Smartlook Smartlook’s revenue insights are limited to funnels and require manual setup via API. You can't see the business impact of errors, dropoffs, or friction across your entire digital experience, making it impossible to confidently prioritize what to work on first.

The Contentsquare advantage We put advanced Impact Quantification and Impact evaluation to work across the platform:

• Calculate the revenue or conversion impact of every dropoff, error, and behavior across websites and mobile apps

• Use Journeys to identify user paths that lead to high-value outcomes and remove friction where it hurts revenue most

• Compare segments to identify differences in performance

• Predict future UX opportunities and prioritize investments based on ROI

1-click impact analysis for every dropoff, error, and behavior across websites and mobile apps

By baking impact into your workflows, you’ll guarantee ROI while keeping your team focused on high-value improvements. 

That’s why Forrester found that brands using Contentsquare achieved a 602% ROI, $6.6M in recovered income and additional profit and payback in just six months. 

(And that was before we added out AI agent 😉)

Final take: the best Smartlook alternative to connect behavior to business outcomes

Smartlook tracks behavior. But if you can't connect that behavior to revenue, prioritize fixes by impact, or get insights fast enough to act, you're just collecting data, not driving growth.

With Smartlook, you'll spend your time configuring events, watching individual replays, and guessing what's broken. 

With Contentsquare, AI does the analysis for you, autocapturing every interaction, surfacing what matters, and telling you exactly what to work on next.

We've invested over $1.4 billion building a platform that gives you the best automatic data capture on the market, the smartest AI for proactive analysis, and the only revenue impact quantification that works everywhere.

That’s why we're trusted by 30% of the Fortune Global 100 and 1.3+ million websites worldwide.

Ready to see the difference for yourself? Take a product tour or request a demo today. 

FAQs about Smartlook alternatives