🎧 Hearback
Drop-in feedback & NPS widget, self-hosted. Unlimited responses, one-time price.
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 $29.
Hearback, as it actually looks — a real screenshot, not a mockup.
Features
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.
An inbox that works
Filter by mode, category, rating and status; full-text search; detail drawer; new → in progress → resolved workflow.
NPS dashboard
Live score, promoter/passive/detractor breakdown, weekly trend chart.
Widget designer
Accent color, position, button/panel/thank-you copy and NPS timing — with live preview.
Yours, entirely
SQLite storage, CSV export, BYO-SMTP email alerts, per-IP rate limiting + honeypot spam protection, zero telemetry.
Hearback vs Hotjar
Hotjar at $32/mo runs roughly $384/year — $768 over two years. Hearback is $29, once.
| Hearback | Hotjar | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $29 once | $32/month ($384/yr) |
| Cost over 3 years | $29 | ~$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 |
One month of Hotjar costs more than Hearback does once. Everything after day 28 is free.
Three steps, no subscription
Buy once on Whop
One-time $29 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.
Honest answers
Is it really free on GitHub?
Yes — MIT source at github.com/bensblueprints/feedback-widget. $29 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.
Deep-dive comparisons:
Own Hearback forever
$29 once. Deploy on your own server — your data never leaves it. No renewal, no account with us, no meter. Or build it yourself from the MIT source — it's the same app.