5 Smartlook alternatives for smarter experience analytics

Smartlook (now owned by Cisco and integrated into Splunk DXA) used to do the basics well: free or low-cost session replays, heatmaps, and funnels to visualize website behavior. But Splunk DXA doesn’t have a free plan and requires custom setup before you can start to get value.

In this guide, we take you through 5 strong Smartlook alternatives and competitors that bring back what people used to like about Smartlook, namely free behavior analytics tools and autocapture setup for non-technical teams. We also show you how to go beyond basic experience analytics and show you exactly why Contentsquare is the smartest choice (pun intended) for turning digital behavior into measurable growth.

Key takeaways

• Smartlook was a standalone behavior analytics tool with replays, heatmaps, and funnels. It’s now one part of Splunk known as DXA (or Splunk Digital Experience Analytics), a subsidiary of Cisco

• Unlike Smartlook, Splunk DXA doesn’t have a free plan; new customers must sign up for premium enterprise licensing and requires you to be already using Splunk RUM. It’s no longer a smart choice for small teams or startups who just wanted simple, cheap, behavior analytics tools

• Contentsquare is the best Smartlook alternative because it fills the gap Smartlook’s end-of-life notice creates: we have a generous free plan (up to 200k sessions/month) and include Heatmaps, Session Replay, and Journeys, with complete autocaptured web and app data and unlimited seats as standard

Why you're looking for a Smartlook 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

This is an easy one: Smartlook no longer exists! It was bought by Cisco in 2023 and stopped allowing new customers to sign up at the end of May 2026. The last day of support is August 31st 2027. 

Some of Smartlook’s functionality has been brought into Cisco’s Splunk DXA, but it’s a completely different product with enterprise-only pricing and complex setup. Here are the 3 main things to look for when replacing Smartlook with a new platform to get some of what they did well back:

1. Autocapture analytics

Without autocapture, you have 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.

The alternative: 

Contentsquare’s Smart Capture gives you the best automatic web and mobile 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. AI to surface what matters

You can collect infinite data, but 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. Insights prioritized by business impact

If your insights aren’t linked to real business metrics like conversions and revenue, 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. And if you’re trying to find an entry-level tool like Smartlook used to be, make sure the platform has a free plan to get started with.

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 AI-native experience intelligence platform that transforms digital behavior, feedback, and conversations 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 instead of guesswork.

What it does

• Combines Heatmaps, Session Replay, Mobile Analytics, Product Analytics, Error Analysis, Web Performance , Journey Analysis, Surveys, and Conversation Intelligence in one powerful platform

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

• Comprehensive Error Analysis,  Web Performance, 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 finding opportunities, flagging anomalies, summarizing replays and errors, and recommending next steps

• Built for all stages of growth, we support startups with a generous free forever plan (up to 200k monthly sessions) and scale all the way up to enterprise

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. 

The old 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-nativr 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

Some Smartlook alternatives make 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 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 used to be, 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 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, very limited support, and Microsoft has the right to use 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 analysis and find quick wins

Why it's not enough 

Fullstory outperforms the old Smartlook offering 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. There’s no way to analyze customer conversations at scale, dynamically calculate the lifetime value (LTV) impact of friction, or run synthetic monitoring to find issues before they have an impact.

5. PostHog

What it is 

PostHog is an open source all-in-one product analytics platform designed for developers.

Who it's best for 

Product engineers and technical founders at early-stage companies who want to maintain data control while optimizing their products.

What it does

• Open-source and self-hosted (optional) product and web analytics

• A/B testing, surveys, heatmaps session replay, and feature flags

• Generous free plan for startups

Why it's not enough 

While it has a generous free plan and large suite of optimization tools, PostHog requires a lot of technical setup and therefore isn’t very accessible to broader digital teams including marketing, UX, and customer success.

Why Contentsquare is the #1 Smartlook alternative

With Contentsquare, you get AI-native analytics that autocapture every interaction, proactively surface what matters, and tell you what to do next to grow your metrics.

Here's how Contentsquare delivers results that Smartlook never could…

1. The best automatic data capture on the market

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

• 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.

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. 

Smartlook never had an 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 were limited to funnels and required manual setup via API. You couldn'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

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 used to track 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'd spend your time 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.

And if you’re just getting started, our generous free forever plan covers up to 200k monthly sessions. 

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