Session Replay Software – Cloud Ratings Category Report 2023

Read our interactive PDF report:

Session Replay Software - Cloud Ratings

Defining Session Replay Software:

Session replay software is a powerful tool designed to capture and recreate user interactions on a website or application, allowing organizations to gain valuable insights into user behavior. Its core functionality revolves around recording user sessions, including mouse movements, clicks, scrolls, and keystrokes, and replaying them in a visual format. By accurately reproducing the exact sequence of user actions, session replay software enables businesses to analyze user experiences, identify pain points, optimize user interfaces, and enhance overall website or application performance. It serves as a key resource for user experience (UX) designers, marketers, and developers, providing a deeper understanding of user engagement and helping to drive data-informed decision-making for website or application improvements.

This report focuses on the core competency of session replays. Adjacent and overlapping software categories – like Digital Experience Platforms or Product Analytics – are not reflected in the session replay software category assessment.

Cloud Ratings Chart for Session Replay Software:

Over 7,000 customer ratings (inclusive of vendor-supplied NPS data) factored into our category assessment: 

Chart Quadrant Summary:

(Presented Alphabetically by Quadrant)

Leaders – High Market Adoption + High Customer Ratings:

Contentsquare

Glassbox

Log Rocket

Quantum Metric

Market Excellence – High Market Adoption:

FullStory

Hotjar

VWO

Product Excellence – High Customer Ratings:

Attention Insight

Auryc/Heap

CUX

Lucky Orange

Mouseflow

Plerdy

SessionStack

Challenger – Market + Customer Validation:

Crazy Egg

Notable Vendor:

Dynatrace

EyeQuant

Medallia Digital Suite

Microsoft Clarity

WalkMe

Session Replay Software Vendors:

(Presented Alphabetically)

Attention Insight – Product Excellence

Auryc/Heap – Product Excellence

Contentsquare – Leader

Crazy Egg – Challenger

CUX – Product Excellence

FullStory – Market Excellence

Glassbox – Leader

Hotjar – Market Excellence

LogRocket – Leader

Lucky Orange – Product Excellence

Mouseflow – Product Excellence

Plerdy – Product Excellence

Quantum Metric – Leader

SessionStack – Product Excellence

VWO – Market Excellence

Dynatrace – Notable Vendor

EyeQuant – Notable Vendor

Medallia – Notable Vendor

Microsoft Clarity – Notable Vendor

WalkMe – Notable Vendor

Methodology:

Cloud Ratings Category Report process combines private vendor responses to our Request For Information (RFI) with publicly visible measures of market adoption and customer satisfaction.

All vendors are presented with the opportunity to complete the RFI. 

The Cloud Ratings RFI focuses on measures of:

  • Customer Satisfaction: Greatest weight is given to internal Net Promoter Score (NPS) data. Why? Certain software vendors are skilled at driving (and often incentivizing) happy customers to submit reviews to popular software directories. This can lead to situations where publicly observable vendor reviews are more favorable than the “silent majority” of customers that do not submit to software review platforms. As such, Cloud Ratings’ use of private NPS data provides a more holistic view of customer experiences. To measure adoption and implementation risk, significant consideration is also given to vendor responses regarding severely negative customer outcomes and retention rates.
  • Market Adoption: The RFI covers a range of traction metrics, including but not limited to revenue, revenue growth, and the current number of customers. Why? Vendors can appear to have an artificially high market share through aggressive marketing spend, public relations, and skillful solicitation of reviews to software directories. Accordingly, Cloud Ratings’ use of RFI-derived information helps provide software buyers with a more realistic view of market adoption.       

Definitions:

Shaded Areas of Category Chart: Each category of software has a unique likelihood of generating business value and positive experiences for customers. Accordingly, Cloud Ratings customizes the shaded surface area for each category as a visual representation of the zones of positive customer outcomes. A category with higher risk or lower satisfaction ratings (like ERP or HR software) will have smaller Zones of Excellence and Zones of Solutions than a safer, higher satisfaction category.  For Session Replay Software, a normalized customer rating score of 4.55 (on a 5.00 scale) was used in setting the Zones’ surface area.  

Zone of Excellence (Light Green): This represents a category’s strongest vendors as reflected by their combination of market share and high customer satisfaction scores.   

Zone of Solutions (Light Yellow): Encompasses vendors with both meaningful marketplace adoption and sufficiently high absolute customer satisfaction ratings.

Notable Vendor: This distinction highlights other vendors identified in the research process as worthy of buyer consideration. Common reasons for Notable Vendors to not be featured in the Category Chart include differing levels of product focus (a secondary feature within a broader suite) or comparatively lower market adoption metrics, especially for earlier-stage companies.      

Momentum: Derived from sources like RFI-sourced vendor growth metrics and buyer search interest, the Momentum indicator compares a category’s growth rate with overall information technology (IT) spending growth. 

Risk: Influenced by RFI-sourced vendor NPS and adverse outcomes data, the Risk indicator compares the risk profile of a software category to software applications generally. The distribution of strongly negative public user reviews also factors into the Risk indicator level.  

Cloud Ratings Disclaimer:

Cloud Ratings research analysis and publications represent opinions – expressed at a specific moment in time – and should not be viewed as statements of fact. 

Cloud Ratings is not responsible for any incorrect information supplied by vendors, customers of vendors, or derived from publicly accessible information. 

Cloud Ratings assumes no liability for damages resulting from the application or usage of information, content, or research. 

Cloud Ratings disclaims all warranties as to the commercial success or outcome of any resulting business activities, vendor selections, or investment decisions from the information provided. 

Cloud Ratings does not endorse any solution or service named in its research.

All product names, logos, and brands are the property of their respective owners. All company, product, and service names used in this website are for identification purposes only.

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