If you have been looking for an analytics platform to increase conversion and revenue, you may have come across FullStory. But, have you ever wondered if this service can fulfill your needs and expectation?! Are you interested to know all the hidden facts about this tool?! If yes, go ahead and read our comprehensive breakdown of Fullstory reviews!
Fullstory dubs itself as a CRO tool that tells you everything you need to know about how your visitors interact with your website. According to their claims, it can automatically uncover hidden issues that cause leaks in the funnel. But what is the reality?! That’s what we’re here to discuss. In this article, we’re going to provide detailed Fullstory reviews from real clients and go through all the features and pros and cons.
Now, if you already know Fullstory limitations and don’t want to miss out on its best alternative, sign up on WatchThemLive and cover all shortcomings for Free!
Let’s get started on our exclusive Fullstory review. Ready?
What Is Fullstory
According to its official website, it’s a ‘digital experience intelligence (DXI) platform’ that uses web and mobile app analytics to monitor your visitors’ behaviors and interactions. It claims to offer all qualitative and quantitative data to improve your UX. But how?
Well, it provides all users’ interactions via behavioral analytics tools like session replay, heatmap, and funnel analysis. In general, this website visitor tracking tool promises to offer three main services including ‘complete data capture’, ‘product analytics’, and ‘session insights.’
So, buckle up, and let’s dive into its features!
Fullstory Reviews: Top Analytics Features
This platform claims to help businesses optimize their channels, improve engagement and conversion rate, and enhance income. Fullstory describes itself as a solution that gives actionable insights into visitors’ behaviors through session replay tools and website heatmaps.
Let’s get into Fullstory analytics features:
Fullstory Session Replay
Like any other analytics platform, Fullstory enables you to record all users’ sessions on your website. You can replay the videos to find the bugs that lead to a poor user experience on your site. This service gives you insights into the customer journey and helps you figure out the reasons behind what visitors did on your website.
Disclaimer: Although Fullstory does its best to track all changes and visitors’ behaviors, it fails to track custom events on the web and mobile apps. If you need more information other than clicks, page views, scrolls, and user engagement statistics, Fullstory can’t meet your needs! Instead, you must import them from a third-party platform through Fullstory’s API.
Another important downside is that FullStory is a pretty expensive tool compared to other similar platforms since they charge you by session, not users. To clarify, if you have a lot of visitors per month, and if a visitor comes back after a few minutes, Fullstory counts another session. So, you’ll find that the ROI is very low considering the price it demands.
Did I also mention that your storage needs to be cleared?! Yes, you read it right. If your subscription storage capacity is full, you must delete some recordings. Otherwise, Fullstory won’t record sessions anymore. Such a time-consuming process!
Fullstory Heatmaps
It claims that its scroll maps can give you a big picture of user engagement and the reasons behind their behavioral patterns. This service promises to help you answer ‘what do visitors click on first? How do they interact with your campaigns and CTAs buttons? Do you need to redesign your webpage to reduce bounce rate and improve conversion?’ And all common questions heatmap tools are supposed to answer!
Disclaimer: The big red flag is that Fullstory doesn’t offer a built-in environment for further analysis of the collected data. The metrics stored aren’t accessible for longer than 90 days. So, you need to write Java code to move data from Fullstory to the database with the help of APIs to support data transition.
On top of these, you have to worry about what the service deems as a ‘rage click’. It may be inaccurate!
Fullstory Funnels & Conversions
Your eCommerce conversion funnel includes all the steps a user takes to make a purchase. It is one of the important workflows on your website, so finding and resolving any snags in this process is vital to improving conversion and increasing revenue.
Fullstory describes itself as a DXI solution that is able to offer insights into the purchasing process. But how? The ‘Funnels & Conversions’ service promises to help you understand which elements on your website have a negative impact on UX. So, using this feature, you can find at which stage the users drop off most and fix the barriers for funnel optimization.
Disclaimer: Unfortunately, its implementation process is fairly overwhelming and challenging. So, you need an expert or developer to complete its technical process. Moreover, its UX/UI is a bit complex and it’s incredibly hard to learn how to use it.
Fullstory Review: Analytics Dashboard
Wanna build your own personalized dashboard by adding key cards?! Well, this platform offers a customizable dashboard that allows you to mix and match dozens of metrics based on your needs. It will automatically track all key metrics and monitor them over time. You can use the search bar in the Fullstory analytics dashboard to find what you’re looking for. But is it exactly like your homepage of dreams? Absolutely no. Let’s see!
Disclaimer: Have you ever used software that takes a long time to load?! It’s annoying, isn’t it?! If you don’t want to experience such things, switch from Fullstory and replace it with another tool. This tool loads slowly, especially when you have other apps open on your desktop simultaneously.
Now you may want to know:
How Is Fullstory Pricing
It is worth noting that there is no free plan on Fullstory. So, if you want to try it, you must pay first. It provides 3 subscriptions including Business, Advanced, and Enterprise. Its Business plan has a free 14-day trial. Fullstory pricing plans don’t have a fixed and pre-set price. That is, you should contact its sales team and negotiate the price.
There is a problem with its plans! There are a lot of limitations to its Business plan. For example, it doesn’t offer any journey mapping, conversion analysis, and retention analysis. That’s unfortunate, right?!
Before going to Fullstory disappointing reviews and shortcomings, let’s take a look at its pros and cons.
Fullstory Reviews: Pros & Cons
By now, we have explained all about Fullstory. Now, here’s a list of its pros and cons. Let’s take a quick look!
Fullstory Pros
- It can track customer journeys and issues,
- It provides website heatmaps, such as scroll maps and click maps.
- It helps you understand customer problems and realize what changes are required,
- And, it gives you a snapshot of the quantitative data of how everything is within a segment.
Fullstory Cons
- It’s slow and it has a considerable loading time,
- It takes a long time to start capturing sessions,
- It is charged by sessions, not users (that is, if a user leaves webpage and comes back after some minutes, Fullstory counts it as another session. In each plan, it offers a limited number of sessions),
- Moreover, its prices are unreasonable and expensive.
Now, it’s time to dive deeper into Fullstory reviews by their real clients and users. Here, you’ll find why you need a Fullstory alternative!
Fullstory Reviews: What Real Clients Experienced
In this section, we will explain why you need other analytics tools to analyze and optimize your website. Stay tuned to see its shortcomings that make you consider switching to Fullstory competitors and alternatives.
#1 “It’s Too Expensive”
As I mentioned before, Fullstory pricing is unreasonably high, and it will increase if you have a lot of visitors per month. So if you’re running a startup business and it’s hard to pay based on the sessions, Fullstory is not best suited for you. Let’s take a look at its users’ feedback about pricing.
Here’s a similar comment:
As you can see, its pricing structure is based on the number of sessions. Additionally, they don’t provide any filtering option, including the option to record just important sessions or track the session of users from a particular location.
In the following comment, the user preferred to use Fullstory competitors that match their needs with reasonable prices.
If you’re also looking for an all-in-one CRO tool with better pricing, sign up here!
#2 “The Software Loads Slowly”
As I mentioned before, Fullstory takes a long time to load. But you might think I’m exaggerating. Yet, let’s see what the real customers are saying:
Who would have thought Fullstory is such a disappointing tool?! Let’s take a look at another shortcoming.
#3 “Fullstory UI Isn’t Intuitive”
The fullstory’s help articles are confusing and its interface is overly complicated. It’s not a valuable tool for UI and customer support. Let’s read one of their client’s comments regarding the user interface:
So, if you don’t have a technical team, it’s better to look for user-friendly software! Here’s an ideal behavioral analytics alternative to Fullstory.
What Is the Best Fullstory Alternative
So far, we’ve discussed all Fullstory’s shortcomings and real users’ feedback about this service. Now, if you’re looking for one of the best Fullstory alternatives, here’s an introduction to an all-in-one behavioral analytics tool. Ready?
WatchThemLive: The Best & Free Alternative for Fullstory
WatchThemLive is the best conversion rate optimization tool on the market. It aims to analyze users’ behaviors and interactions with your website to help you figure out why they do particular actions, inform you about the site barriers and bugs, and help you optimize your website.
Ready to know about it? Sign up now for FREE and take full advantage of its services risk-free!
Let’s jump right into its features!
WatchThemLive Features
With the help of its amazing features, there’s no need to worry about website conversion and revenue. But how? You may ask. Well, go ahead and read all about its features to find the answer!
Analytics Dashboard
Looking for a website visitor tracking tool? Want to know what your website traffic referrers are? Where are your visitors from?
You’re in the right spot. WatchThemLive provides all you need in your dashboard. This service enables you to track and monitor the site’s traffic and visitor data such as location, language, devices, etc. There is an option to show these data in a visualized format like graphs. The good news is that all data is exportable into either CSV or PDF.
Session Replays
If you want to dig deeper into the insights that the analytics dashboard already provides, you should use session replays and heatmaps. If your data on the dashboard tells you there is a sharp drop in page views during the last month, you can jump into session replays to understand why.
All visitors’ sessions are recorded in WatchThemLive’s session replay software, and you can watch them all at any time you want. It’s good to find website bugs and fix them before they contact the customer support team, so you can deliver great UX and increase conversion.
Click Heatmaps
If there are a lot of things you don’t know about placing CTAs, filling out forms, running campaigns, or even website design, WatchThemLive helps you figure them out. This service offers clickmaps of areas on your website that got the most (or least) clicks. By finding these spots, you can find the best place to add links or CTAs.
Using heatmap, you will understand whether you need to replace the sign-up button to get more attention from users. Moreover, with the help of the click map feature, you can find dead clicks and find out how to redesign your website efficiently.
WatchThemLive’s Astonishing Features
In the following, we introduce two breathtaking widgets that make WatchThemLive shine among other similar tools:
Visual Live Chat
Want to have fully responsive and fast customer service? Do you struggle with understanding users’ issues by reading their explanations of messages? Don’t worry anymore! WatchThemLive visual live chat gives you an opportunity to watch users’ sessions after they left a message on the chatbox.
Therefore, there is no need to ask them to explain their issues in detail, send a screenshot and describe your website bugs. By watching their sessions, you will find their problems easily and help them faster.
Video Testimonials
Nobody wants to be the first person who tries something. So, you need social proof, rather than a promise, to encourage users to buy your product. The best way to achieve proof is by showcasing your clients’ feedback and experiences.
As you may know, it is hard to bring clients in front of a camera and record a video to improve your social skills. WatchThemLive makes the process of collecting stories easier and encourages more users to record videos. How? You may wonder.
Well, WatchThemLive’s video testimonials feature provides pre-set questions that will be displayed on the users’ screen. So, all the users need to do is answer them after pressing the record button. Pretty straightforward, isn’t it?!
Why are you waiting, then? Sign up on WatchthemLive and give it a try!
WatchThemLive’s Pricing
WatchThemLive offers incredible features in free and paid plans. Its free plan provides goal tracking, user journey, clickmaps, unlimited data retention, and session recordings. Its paid plans start from $24 to $83 per month. But if you want to pay annually, there are considerable discounts for all of them.
It’s hard to believe? Well, sign up right now and see!
To learn more about this powerful tool, you can read our complete WatchThemLive review.
Fullstory vs. WatchThemLive: Which One Is the Winner
So far, we’ve discussed what people think of Fullstory and all their negative experiences. According to its real users, this service is very expensive, and you can find a better and more affordable tool that offers similar functions.
Unlike Fullstory, WatchThemLive offers a free plan and 3 other paid plans at an affordable price. So, if you’re assessing these 2 software with the goal of collecting useful analytics, optimizing conversion rate, and driving more sales at a lower price, WatchThemLive is likely to be a better fit.
Still not convinced?!
Well, If you don’t want to close other apps and browser tabs while using analytics tools, Fullstory isn’t recommended. Because this platform struggles with performance and loads slowly when other apps are running on your system. Additionally, If you need to analyze large volumes of data, you’re better off using WatchThemLive.
Who wouldn’t use a free plan with similar functionalities?! Sign up on WatchThemLive now and get instant access!
FullStory Review FAQs
We’ve provided a complete review of Fullstory and its shortcomings. Now, it’s time to answer some of the frequently asked questions in this regard. Shall we?!
1. Hotjar vs. Fullstory vs. WatchThemLive: Which One Is Better?
Hotjar, Fullstory, and WatchThemLive all help you understand users’ behaviors through analytics tools like heatmaps and session replays. Unlike Fullstory and Hotjar which need programming knowledge to track events, WatchThemLive’s implementation process is easy and non-technical users can use it.
Both Hotjar and Fullstory aren’t strong on quantitative analysis and they have limited quantitative analysis features. But WatchThemLive combined both qualitative and quantitative data analysis features to generate more leads and conversions. Generally, you can use its website analytics dashboard to find problem areas, then use qualitative analysis (session replays, click maps, goal tracking,…) to see what exactly the problem is and why it happens.
On top of these, both Hotjar and Fullstory take a long time to load and their loading speed is overly low. In this case, WatchThemLive helps you improve conversion and analyze sites without making your website loading time longer. Moreover, it isn’t required to close other apps and tabs on your desktop to work well.
Additionally, WatchThemLive offers free trials and free forever plans! Sign up on WatchThemLive now and start its free plan!
2. Is Fullstory Free?
No! It doesn’t offer a free forever plan. But there is a 14-day free trial with its Business plan. After the end of the free trial, you must contact their sales team to discuss the plan options.
3. Where Is Fullstory Data Stored?
According to the Fullstory help center on their official website, all your data is both processed and stored within Google Cloud Platform’s data centers located on the Us and the EU.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that Fullstory is one of the popular DXI tools to help you analyze your visitors’ interaction data. However, it has its weaknesses, as well. While this service has its strengths, it offers common features with a lot of limitations that you can’t ignore. So, you need an alternative to cover its downsides.
Don’t hesitate to start analyzing your website visitors’ behavior by giving WatchThemLive a try. Sign up now to gain actionable insights to increase conversion rates without slowing down your website’s loading speed.
