Hotjar charges $32/month for surveys with a 500-response cap on the entry plan. Feedbackfish is $29 every month. Hearback is the same drop-in widget — floating button, emoji ratings, NPS surveys, an inbox with a dashboard — running on your server, with your data, for a one-time $79.
This is the full pricing breakdown: what Hotjar actually costs over one, two and three years, what Hearback gives you for $79 paid once, and the honest cases where the subscription is still the right call.
What Hotjar actually costs you
At $32/mo, one Hotjar subscription adds up to $384 every year — $1,152 over a three-year window, for software you stop owning the day you cancel. Hearback is $79 the day you buy it, and the meter never runs again.
| Hearback | Hotjar | |
|---|---|---|
| Sticker price | $79 once | $32/mo |
| Cost after 1 year | $79 | $384 |
| Cost after 2 years | $79 | $768 |
| Cost after 3 years | $79 | $1,152 |
Three years in, the gap is $1,073 — and every year after that adds another $384 to the subscription side of the ledger.
Hearback vs Hotjar, feature by feature
Price is only half the story — here's how the two line up on the things that decide day-to-day use:
| Hearback | Hotjar | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $79 once | $32/month ($384/yr) |
| Cost over 3 years | $79 | ~$1,152 |
| Response limits | None | 500/mo on entry plan |
| NPS surveys + dashboard | Yes | Yes |
| Your data on your server | Yes | No |
| Works behind a VPN / intranet | Yes | No |
| Cookie-banner headaches | None — first-party | Third-party scripts |
| Source code | MIT, yours | Closed |
What you get for $79, once
Self-hosted feedback + NPS widget with an inbox, dashboard and CSV export — unlimited responses. The highlights:
- ⚡ One-line embed — A single script tag. Self-contained JS + CSS in a shadow DOM, so your site's styles never leak in and the widget never leaks out.
- 😀 Feedback form — 1–5 emoji rating, Issue / Idea / Praise category, message, optional reply email.
- 📈 NPS surveys — The classic 0–10 with a follow-up question — shown once per visitor with a frequency cap enforced in the browser and on the server.
- 🧾 Auto-captured context — Page URL, user agent, viewport, referrer and an anonymous visitor token arrive with every response.
Three months of Hotjar costs more than Hearback does once. Everything after that is free.
Switching is 3 steps
- Buy once on Whop. One-time $79 for the packaged version with 1-click setup and updates.
- Create a project, paste the snippet. Copy the embed from the Widget tab into any site — the shadow-DOM widget can't clash with your CSS.
- Read, triage, act. Responses land in your inbox with full context; NPS trends chart themselves; export everything to CSV whenever you like.
When paying Hotjar is still the right call
Being straight about it: the subscription earns its keep in three situations. If your team is large enough that Hotjar's collaboration features, permissions and admin controls are genuinely load-bearing; if your workflow is built on its integrations and leaving means rebuilding that plumbing; or if you have enterprise requirements — SSO, audit logs, SLAs, a vendor to call — that a pay-once app doesn't come with. Everyone else is paying $32/mo for a job that runs fine on hardware they already own.
If that's you, Hearback is $79, once. For the deeper dive, read the Hearback vs Hotjar head-to-head or the full Hotjar comparison.
Frequently asked questions
Is it really free on GitHub?
Yes — MIT source at github.com/bensblueprints/feedback-widget-mvp. $79 buys the packaged version, 1-click setup and updates.
Does it do heatmaps or session recordings?
No — and we'll be straight about that. Heatmaps and recordings are Hotjar's other half, and Hearback doesn't attempt them. If you need to watch session replays, keep Hotjar. If what you actually use is surveys and feedback, Hearback covers it for 1/12th of one year's bill.
Are responses really unlimited?
Yes — they're rows in your own SQLite file. Hotjar's entry plan caps you at 500 survey responses a month; your disk is the only cap here.
Will the widget break my site's styles?
No — everything renders inside a shadow DOM, so your CSS and the widget's can't touch each other. The whole thing is ~9 KB of dependency-free vanilla JS.
Do I need a server?
For public sites, yes — a $5 VPS with the included Docker setup. It also works on intranets and behind VPNs, where third-party tools like Hotjar can't go at all.
More on Hotjar pricing
Hearback — product page, demo & full feature list · Clickmap vs Hotjar pricing · All OneTimeSuite pricing breakdowns
Try Hearback — $79, once
Self-hosted feedback + NPS widget with an inbox, dashboard and CSV export — unlimited responses.