Smartlook Reviews: Why You Should Reconsider + Best Alternatives in 2023

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If you’ve been looking for a solution to optimize your website and conversion, you may have heard about Smartlook. But is it the best tool, or are you missing out on the best Smartlook alternative? Don’t worry! In this article, we’re covering a comprehensive Smartlook review and introducing the best alternatives. 

Smartlook describes itself as a conversion rate optimization tool that observes your visitors’ interactions, finds their expectations, and helps you satisfy them. But how true is it?! That’s what we’re here to discuss! Here, we’ll provide detailed Smartlook reviews from their clients and go through all its shortcomings.

Now, if you’re using it already, you must be wondering about the best alternative you can switch to! In that case, look no further and sign up on WatchThemLive for FREE!

Now, let’s get started!

What Is Smartlook

According to their official website, Smartlook is a cloud-based and mobile-based analytics platform that helps you fix bugs, improve the efficiency of your website performance, and optimize eCommerce lead generation. But how? Well, Smartlook promises to provide in-depth insights into your user behaviors by offering different services.

Smartlook Homepage
Smartlook Homepage

Smartlook claims to give you a set of behavioral analytics tools to provide data on your traffic rate, referrers, page views, user movements, and so on.

Now, let’s jump right into its features:

Smartlook Reviews: Analytics Features

It claims to help you analyze user behavior on your websites as well as iOS and Android apps. This qualitative analytics solution might give a way to understand your customer behaviors at the micro level. How? You may ask. Now, let’s dive deep into Smartlook analytics features:

Smartlook Session Recordings

All session replay tools give you the full context behind users’ behaviors and interactions with your website. Smartlook recordings enable you to watch your visitors’ sessions like all other analytics tools! These videos will answer questions like:

  • How did your visitors browse your web pages?
  • Where did they spend most of their time?
  • Where did they click?
  • What did they do before leaving your webpage?
  • And, Why did they do what they did?

You can see their geolocation, device type, and browser, and you can also know whether a specific user is registered. If so, you can see their name and other customer details such as email address and user ID. By website visitors tracking and checking their journeys, you will understand all their needs and expectations.

Disclaimer: Unfortunately, there is no option to view the sessions in a pop-up window or a panel on the same screen. Therefore, you can’t organize the videos into folders or even tag the most important ones. In addition, it doesn’t provide Javascript console errors to show the errors that occurred while you played their recorded video.

Smartlook Heatmaps

Heatmap tools are the solution to analyzing your use behaviors in visualized form. You may ask ‘how?’ Well, the heatmaps will give you in-depth insights into how visitors interact with a specific page. It can help you redesign the webpage or make some changes to retain more visitors and boost conversion.

To use the Smartlook heatmap feature, you should click on the ‘create heatmap’ button in the top left corner of its menu. This behavioral analytics tool offers 2 types of heat mapping, including: scroll heatmaps and clickmaps.

Disclaimer: Some features of Smartlook heat mapping tools may irritate you! Such as the inability to compare A/B test heatmaps on the same map. Besides, you can’t download your heat maps. Another important downside is that it takes a long time to create heatmaps on Smartlook! 

Smartlook Event Tracking

It records all users’ events automatically. All you need to do is select actions (a.k.a. events) to display in your dashboard. These are some examples of what you can track:

  • Opening or visiting a specific webpage/ URL
  • Clicking on a specific button

Disclaimer: Looking for more flexibility with pinning stacked events charts (while comparing multiple events) as dashboard tiles? Smartlook can’t fultill these needs!

Smartlook Funnel Analysis

This feature enables you to analyze all steps in the customer journey and figure out what your visitors do before completing a conversion event. Funnel analysis is a crucial feature in boosting conversion rate and improving UX as a whole.

Using Smartlook, you can access funnel analysis by doing the following 3 steps:

  1. Firstly, you should define at least 2 events,
  2. Second, you must create a funnel and choose a name for it. You need to put the events in the order your users follow. After that, Smartlook creates your funnel visualization automatically,
  3.  Lastly, you can analyze events and funnels with screen recordings. To clarify, you can watch screen recordings of users who drop off between different stages of the funnel.

Disclaimer: Smartlook monetization is incomplete. They limit funnels and events to increase their revenue!

Now you may be wondering: 

How Is Smartlook Pricing

As you can see in the following screenshot, Smartlook offers a 1-month free plan that gives you access to 3 heatmaps, 2 event tracking, 1 funnel analysis, and 1,500 sessions per month. 

Smartlook Pricing
Smartlook Pricing Page

There’s a problem, though! There are a lot of limitations on its free subscription. For instance, Smartlook’s free plan doesn’t offer any session vault, integrations, DEVTools, and Enterprise features such as custom paperwork or REST API. Moreover, you can’t share your heatmaps or save important recordings to watch them later. Annoying, isn’t it?

You may say, ‘that’s fine; I’ll buy the first paid plan to get rid of these limitations.’ But the bad news is that all these limitations also exist in its Startup subscription. Besides, using the Startup plan (paid one), you just have 10 heatmaps which aren’t upgradable to 100. If you want more heatmaps, you must pay more! That’s unfortunate, right?!

This is just one of Smartlook’s downsides that might make you consider switching to another affordable and reliable tool. Before I explain Smartlook’s disappointing reviews and shortcomings, let’s take a quick look at its pros and cons.

Smartlook Reviews: Pros & Cons

By now, you all know what Smartlook is and all its features. Now, Here’s a list of its pros and cons:

Smartlook Pros

  • It offers a free plan,
  • It provides a 10-day free trial,
  • It’s easy to use the analytics tool,
  • And, Smartlook active session recordings allow you to provide your customers with real-time assistance.

Smartlook Cons

  • Its pricing is unreasonable,
  • It is hard to cancel your subscription,
  • If offers insufficient and disappointing eCommerce customer service,
  • There is no A/B testing,
  • Moreover, there are many limitations with its free version or even the first paid plan.

Now, I wanna dive deeper into Smartlook reviews by clients and real users. Here, you’ll see why you need an alternative to Smartlook.

Smartlook Reviews: What Real Clients Say

We’ve discussed all features and pros and cons. By now, you must have figured out that Smartlook might not be a good solution for analyzing and optimizing your website.

Now let’s jump into what Smartlook’s real users have experienced, shall we?!

#1 “It’s Very Hard to Cancel Your Subscription”

In the following client review, you can see that this unfortunate customer couldn’t cancel his subscription to Smartlook, and they charged him again even after he had removed their service. Such a modern scam, isn’t it?!

Smartlook client reviews
Smartlook Client Reviews

The worst thing is that he didn’t receive any answer from their team either! That is, Smartlook failed to offer responsive customer service. Here’s another user’s comment who thinks Smartlook is a scam!

Smartlook client's feedback
Smartlook Client’s Feedback

Imagine you want to end or cancel your subscription; there isn’t any unsubscribe button on the setting. They’ll charge you again and won’t send any messages to remind your plan’s expiration date.

Even If you forgot to write a ticket to their support service, they would charge you for the next month! Moreover, due to their politics, your money isn’t refundable! This is a huge red flag!

Who would have thought this popular analytics tool was so disappointing?! Let’s take a look at other Smartlook’s shortcomings.

#2 “It’s Pricey and Isn’t Worth Your Money”

As I mentioned before, Smartlook pricing is unreasonably high. Besides, there are better tools with similar or even more functionalities. Some clients decided to replace it because of its expensive packages. You might think I’m exaggerating, but nope! 

Here’s some feedback about Smartlook’s price:

Smartlook Client's Experience
Smartlook Client’s Experience

As you can see, he mentioned that ‘Smartlook isn’t cost-effective, its features weren’t what they needed, and ‘it lacks support,’ so they got into trouble!

So, Smartlook is not worth your money and time, and you should replace it with another, more valuable tool. Read the following reviews about its customer support service:

#3 “Smartlook’s Support Team Is Awful.”

In the previous comments, we saw the clients were unsatisfied with Smartlook’s support because they didn’t answer their messages. But the following feedback hit me like a ton of bricks!

The client complained that Smartlook’s support team behavior and messages aren’t professional.

Smartlook client's comment
Smartlook Client’s Comment

Now, read the following comment from one of their UK customers:

#4 “Smartlook’s After-Sales Service Is a Shame!”

The disappointing thing is that they didn’t refund the VAT to his credit card. 

Smartlook Customer's Feedback
Smartlook Customer’s Feedback

Can you trust your money and time with this tool? If not, check out an ideal alternative to Smartlook.

What Is the Best Smartlook Alternative

So far, we discussed its downsides and reasons why their clients left negative comment about their services. Looking for the best alternative to Smartlook? Here’s an all-inclusive behavioral analytics tool that provides more features than Smartlook, and with a more reasonable price. Ready?

WatchThemLive: Best & Free Alternative to Smartlook

WatchThemLive is the best alternative for Smartlook. If your traffic rate has started to decline, your visitors are reluctant to stay, and your website income has decreased, don’t worry! WatchThemLive is an all-in-one solution that helps you get rid of these problems. 

But how? you may ask. With the help of its incredible features, you can observe your visitors’ entire journey, figure out their needs and expectations, and find out how to improve your UI and UX.

Ready to learn more about WatchThemLive? Sign up now and take full advantage of its FREE plan!

Let’s dive in and learn about the features now!

WatchThemLive’s Features

This service offers impressive analytics features to increase customer retention and boost conversion rates. Here I’ll explain all features in detail:

Analytics Dashboard

With watchthemLive’s website analytics dashboard, you can get an immediate overview of all you need as a website owner. It offers different widgets that answer questions like:

  • Who are your visitors?
  • What are their device type, browser, operating system, and even screen resolution?
  • What web pages did they visit?
  • Where are they from (location)?
  • What are their landing and exit web pages?
  • How many of them are directed from social media?
  • How much is your website bounce rate?

The good news is that you can export all data into either CSV or PDF. Additionally, you can narrow down your data by using active filters based on range, name, page, country, and more. What else do you need?!

Session Replays

WatchThemLive replays let you watch recordings of past visitor sessions to understand what went wrong and how to fix the bugs and improve UX. All your visitors’ sessions are recorded. Therefore, agents can review them on an ongoing basis and reach out to a customer when they notice an issue.

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 What is it good for? Well, this capability allows you to contact the customer with a solution or find your website bugs before they need to contact customer support. Pretty straightforward, right?!

Heatmaps

Currently, WatchThemLive offers click heatmaps which show the spots that your visitors click the most. Those areas which get the most clicks are shown in red color. It is a helpful service when it comes to running campaigns, placing CTA, or even filling out forms.

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Using heatmaps, you’ll see whether your sign-up button gets any attention from users. If not, you should redesign and replace the button to get the most clicks. 

WatchThemLive’s Secret Weapons

2 new features make WatchThemLive shine!

Live chat: 

If you always have a problem understanding your users’ issues when they leave a message on the chatbox, don’t worry anymore! WatchThemLive’s live chat helps you understand and resolve their issues faster. But how, you may ask.

Well, this feature enables you to get access to the user’s recorded session so you watch it and find the problem. You’ll be confident that you learn about your users and their issues without having to ask them to explain issues, take screenshots or describe bugs.

Video Testimonials:

If you care about what your clients say about your products, but they won’t record a video, go for WatchThemLive’s video testimonials. This service will bring your customer in front of the camera and display pre-set questions on their screen. All they need to do is answer the question after pressing the record button.

It will encourage other potential customers to use your products or services. It’s hard to believe? Well, sign up right now and give it a try!

You can also read this complete WatchThemLive review and learn more about its features!

WatchThemLive’s Pricing

WatchThemLive offers its valuable features in free and paid plans. Its free plan equips all clients with the user journey, heatmaps, goal tracking, unlimited data retention, and session recordings. Moreover, if you choose to pay annually, there are considerable discounts for its paid plans.

WatchThemLive's Pricing and Packages
WatchThemLive’s Pricing

Why are you waiting, then? Sign up on WatchThemLive for FREE!

Smartlook vs. WatchThemLive: Why WatchThemLive

As Smartlook’s clients have pointed out before, this platform is not worth your money. Although it has a free plan, there are too many limitations you can’t ignore. For example, its free plan only offers 1,500 recordings per month and just 3 heatmaps! Moreover, it lacks REST API. To cap it all, these limitations are not limited to the free plan but also exist in the first paid plan!

Other obstacles might also get under your skin! For instance, Smartlook  lacks standard integrations like Google Analytics or Slack. In case you use this service, you won’t have access to DevTools to make your job easier with the Javascript console.

While WatchThemLive’s free plan doesn’t have such downsides! You can conveniently record all your visitors’ sessions without any limit. Moreover, you will have unlimited data retention, which enables you to save your important sessions. 

Unlike Smartlook, it has a console error that displays a detailed list of all that happened in your visitors’ browsers (It is under the user’s recorded session while you are watching them). In addition, the WatchThemLive paid plan costs $24 per month, while the Startup plan in Smartlook starts from $31, even with those limitations I’ve mentioned.

Who wouldn’t prefer an affordable tool?! So sign up now and get immediate access.

FAQs on Smartlook Reviews

So far, we have been honest and provided a complete review of Smartlook to help you know why you should replace it with another valuable platform. Now, let’s answer some of the frequently asked questions regarding this tool.

1. What Is Smartlook Used for?

Smartlook is a visitor tracking tool that lets website owners see their users’ sessions and find their website barriers. Let’s say it promises to let you watch your website through visitors’ eyes.

2. What Does Smartlook Analytics Dashboard Offer?

After your Smartlook login, its analytics dashboard is the first place you can see. It is the place you can choose from the different tiles and add them to your own dashboard. The tiles include event, funnel, top errors, recordings, visitors’ locations, and whatever you want.

3. What Level of Support Does Smartlook Offer?

It offers the following support options: Phone and email support, Chat, and FAQs. But let’s be honest! Its supporting service is disappointing. According to its clients’ experiences, they rarely answer their users’ messages! So, I can venture to say that Smartlook doesn’t offer any support if you face a problem!

Conclusion

Smartlook describes itself as an excellent solution for website optimization and conversion rate optimization, but it is not true! Based on its users’ experiences, there are downsides that make every user reconsider and replace it with an alternative.
If you’re looking for a Smartlook alternative, consider using WatchThemLive to monitor your website and visitors, improve UX, and boost conversions. It has a free version, so you can try out their solution risk-free!

Najme

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