LogRocket vs SessionStack: A Definitive Comparison [June 2023]

LogRocket’s unique approach to funnels and advanced error tracking make it great for developers that need a powerful console tool and for marketers that need more granular insights into their funnels. However, it’s not optimal if you want to understand how users interact with online platforms due to its limited session replay features.

SessionStack fills in this gap perfectly. With its pixel-perfect session replay, practical error logs, sitewide click trends, and real-time co-browsing tools it enables UX designers, product managers, and customer support teams to get impeccable insights into how users are using SaaS platforms and web apps, letting them quickly identify and resolve frustrations and improve the overall user experience.

In this article, I’ll dive deeper into the comparison—LogRocket vs SessionStack—by reviewing the following key areas:

1. Price
2. Heatmaps
3. Error tracking
4. Customer journey analysis
5. Session replay & co-browsing

I will also talk about user experience throughout the article and mention integrations in the table below:

LogRocket	SessionStack
Price
⭐⭐⭐ Limited free plan. The Team plan starts at $99/mo, and the Business plan starts at $550/mo.	🏆 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Has the best free plan. The starter plan is $79/mo and the Scale plan is $129/mo.
Session Replay
⭐⭐⭐ Basic features like segmentation, player controls, user details, action logs, and a dev console.	🏆 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Everything in LogRocket + live co-browsing + smoothest error tracking experience.
Co-browsing
❌ Live session replays and co-browsing are not supported.	🏆 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Super low latency (< 1 second)  co-browsing mode with pointer, pen, and control takeover features.
Error Tracking
🏆 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Has key features in SessionStack with additional advanced features like viewing DOM elements and performance tracking.	⭐⭐⭐⭐ Has a dedicated space for tracking log and error events with direct links to specific time stamps where the error occurred.
Heatmaps
🏆 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Has the most heatmap types: click, scroll, and hover maps. Only available for specific pages.	⭐⭐⭐⭐ Unique site-wide click tracking for most clicked elements, rage clicks, and dead clicks.
Customer Journey Analysis
🏆 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Has multiple views for analyzing conversion graphs including a nifty Path analysis view.	⭐⭐⭐⭐ Has key features for funnel creation and analysis, handy for quick decision-making.
Integrations
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 42 native integrations + LogRocket API	⭐⭐⭐⭐ 14 native integrations + SessionStack API
G2 Reviews
702 user reviews with 4.6 Rating	63 user reviews with 4.9 Rating
Trusted By
Ikea, Pinterest, MGM Resorts, Swiss Life	Kraken, Bazaarvoice, Imagine.ai, Mend, Texas.gov
Best For
Troubleshooting errors on sites or apps and mapping customer journeys.	Finding user frustrations with apps or websites and providing an exceptional customer experience.
Try SessionStack free forever (no credit card required)

What is LogRocket?
“See the bigger picture through data visualization” 🧐🖼️

Matthew Arbesfeld and Ben Edelstein founded LogRocket in 2016 to help web app owners stay competitive by enhancing their user experience.

Today, LogRocket is equipped with all key web analytics tools. As for user experience analytics, they offer three types of visual heatmaps for viewing aggregate user behavior: click maps, scroll maps, and hover maps. It also has a unique path analysis view for conversion graphs — which doesn’t only show you where users are dropping off in your funnel, but also the alternate routes they’re taking. Out of the three tools, LogRocket has the best performance monitoring and error-tracking features, from a dedicated errors page that lets you view and triage issues, to an advanced dev console for displaying network logs, Javascript errors, DOM elements, and site performance.

LogRocket’s features make it best for understanding general user flows, optimizing retention and conversion rates, and efficiently resolving errors that arise on your site or app. But due to its limited replay features, you can’t view live sessions of users and provide them with real-time support when needed.

What is SessionStack?
“Become the hero of seamless user experience” 🦸‍♂️💫

During his time as a software engineer at Progress, Alexander Zlatkov noticed a lack of tools to understand user interactions with websites and online apps. He founded SessionStack in 2016 to create a solution that addressed this gap in the market.

SessionStack’s advanced session replay features have earned it G2’s title “session replay category leader” for 2023. It supports live sessions and lets you interact with online users in real-time via the co-browsing mode at a remarkably low latency of less than 1 second. It also has a dedicated error tracking tool, which is perfectly synced with session replays for quickly identifying and resolving issues. With its dashboard metrics and user segmentation features, you get a bird’s eye view of the most common user frustrations on your site, enabling you to make targeted and data-driven improvements.

SessionStack’s robust session replay features make it perfect for a wide range of teams (product management, development, customer support, etc.) who are focused on quickly identifying and resolving errors, and user frustrations, and improving the overall experience customers have on their site and web apps.

LogRocket vs SessionStack: Session Replay

LogRocket stands out with extensive user segmentation options, while SessionStack shines with its live co-browsing and error-logging features.

LogRocket	SessionStack
⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Session Replay is a “video-like” playback of user interactions (e.g. page visits, window resizing, cursor movements, clicks, etc.) on your website. In this section, we’ll compare the following areas of each tool’s session replay feature:

1. UI design
2. User segmentation
3. Live sessions
4. Co-browsing

Session Replay’s UI design
LogRocket’s UI feels complex at first, while SessionStack’s is simple and easy to navigate.

SessionStack’s interface is designed with the user in mind, featuring a simple two-column layout, bold icons, and large buttons that make navigation intuitive and effortless.

The synchronized action log on the left allows you to easily follow and pinpoint specific user actions during session replays. This design ensures workflows remain fast and efficient, even for long sessions — you can quickly jump to specific user actions, and find issues in little to no time.

LogRocket‘s interface is minimalistic but can be confusing for first-time users. It also lacks any commenting and navigation features that make it easy to highlight specific areas in session replays and switch between them seamlessly.

There’s also no option for slowing down a replay which can make it difficult to analyze complex user interactions at your own pace.

User Segmentation
Both let you create segments with user, session, and event filters but LogRocket is better equipped with customization options.

User segmentation (aka ‘audience segmentation’) is a feature that lets you categorize your site users based on various criteria including their demographics, hardware and software, and the actions they take on your site. It’s an essential tool for gaining a deeper understanding of how users interact with your website.

With SessionStack, creating user segments is a breeze for both technical and non-technical users. You can easily build and save multiple customer segments by setting up specific user, session, and event filters to gain a comprehensive understanding of user behavior and engagement on your app.

Compared to SessionStack, LogRocket has more extensive options for nuanced customer segments. It also has a “Recents” feature which makes it easier and faster to re-use your most common segmentation filters.

Live Sessions

SessionStack offers live views with minimal delays, while LogRocket doesn’t have the feature.

Live sessions are the sessions of users who are currently active on your site, and you can choose to view these sessions in real-time. It’s a very handy tool for teams in charge of providing support and assistance to their site users.  

SessionStack’s live sessions are super low latency — it shows live users almost immediately after hitting the refresh button on the “live users” page and the live session latency is consistently less than 1 second.

This low-latency environment allowed SessionStack to add a very unique and handy tool for customer support teams — co-browsing.

Co-browsing
SessionStack is the only tool that builds on top of its live session feature with co-browsing.

Looking for a way to offer real-time guidance to site users during live sessions? Co-browsing is the solution. With this feature, you can join and engage in user sessions without the need for any additional software, plugins, or add-ons.

SessionStack’s co-browsing mode is super fast and smooth on both ends and is equipped with three key tools to enhance the overall experience:

• A pointer: Highlights various elements on a user’s screen, without interacting with the page itself.
• A pen: Annotates a user’s screen with pen strokes.
• Control takeover: Gain complete control of a user’s screen (with their permission) while they’re on your site, and perform actions on their behalf.

Co-browsing works great for customer support teams during onboarding or problem-solving, as it allows them to assist customers over a phone call, chat session, or email conversation, offering prompt and personalized service in real-time. While SessionStack doesn’t have a built-in chat feature, it has direct integrations with established chat tools like Intercom and Zendesk.

LogRocket vs SessionStack: Error Tracking

SessionStack’s dev tools track console & network logs and errors, while LogRocket equips devs with one of the most holistic consoles out there.

LogRocket	SessionStack
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐

Error tracking is the process of identifying and resolving errors that occur on a website or web application. Errors can range from user interface glitches to critical issues that prevent site users from achieving their intended goals. 

This feature works alongside session replays so that, not only do you see the error message, but also the exact sequence of user actions and events that led to that error, and the site or application’s response to it. 

SessionStack has a dedicated logs and error tracking page which shows you when each listed event first and last occurred, the number of occurrences, and the affected users. Each of the events is also linked to a specific time stamp in a session replay, which makes it super fast and easy to dive in-depth into the source of an error. 

So when you open the session replay, it plays and stops right at the point where the error occurred (marked as “1” in the screenshot above). From here, you can pull up the dev tool (marked as “2”) to show more details about the console or network error (marked as “3”).  

Similar to SessionStack, LogRocket has an “Issues” page for tracking JavaScript and network errors. You can manually or automatically group errors on this page as high impact, low impact, or ignored — a helpful feature for prioritizing your team’s efforts in resolving issues that drive the most impact.

Additionally, LogRocket balances its developer-friendly dev mode with additional features that let you view DOM elements and the performance of specific sessions.

LogRocket vs SessionStack: Heatmaps

LogRocket gathers page-specific insights, while SessionStack gives you a bird’s eye view of site-wide insights.

LogRocket	SessionStack
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐

Heatmaps are visual summaries of the interactions captured in session replays. They show you areas with the most activity (clicks, scrolls, and mouse movements) so you can identify the strengths and weaknesses of the user experience.

Mouse maps (aka hover maps) show the areas where users frequently move their cursors, scroll maps show how far down users go on a page, and click maps tell you the elements users click on the most. These clicks can be filtered by dead clicks and rage clicks. 

Dead clicks are all the “non-clickable” elements users clicked on while rage clicks occur when users click on an element multiple times in quick succession, usually signaling frustration. Read more on this in our article about click trends.

LogRocket has page-specific click, hover, and scroll maps.

LogRocket has click maps and scroll maps but it also has hover maps which give you another layer of data on how users interact with a page. Sure, clicks are the most important engagement data points, but understanding where users hover can help you identify whole new optimization opportunities.

However, LogRocket’s are embedded within session replays, so loading and switching between them is very slow and time-consuming. Also, its heatmaps can’t be filtered by user segments, which makes it difficult to get a better understanding of specific user behaviors and patterns.

SessionStack’s unique approach to heatmaps gives you a better grasp of site-wide health and performance.

Unlike LogRocket, SessionStack doesn’t have visual heatmaps and therefore isn’t limited to only capturing data on static elements. Instead, you get a sitewide overview of the top HTML elements across your entire site or app that need attention, grouped in the following categories:

• Most clicked elements,
• Dead clicks, and
• Rage clicks.

Since SessionStack tracks user interactions with individual HTML elements, it also logs interactions with dynamic elements that aren’t visible on visual heatmaps (drop-down menus, pop-ups, and accordions). Another advantage of this approach is that you don’t have to spend a bunch of time going through individual pages, looking at erratic color patterns.

LogRocket vs SessionStack: Customer Journey Analysis

SessionStack lets you create and track funnels, while LogRocket gives deeper insights.

LogRocket	SessionStack
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐

You can analyze customer journeys on your site using the funnels feature in all three tools. Funnels can be set up to track user progress through specific steps (e.g. clicking a target element), allowing you to identify pain points and make informed decisions about site improvements. An example of a funnel is shown below:

SessionStack’s funnel creation and conversion tracking is simple and straightforward.

SessionStack lets you add unlimited steps to your funnel with the following four event types: viewed a page, clicked an element, rage click, and dead click. 

Additionally, you can easily track conversions at each stage of your funnel with graphs, and view the session recordings of users who either converted or dropped off at each step of your funnel. This is very useful for identifying areas of friction within your design and taking prompt action to remove them.

LogRocket has multiple views for viewing conversion graphs. 

LogRocket has multiple views for conversion graphs, the most notable one being “path analysis”. This gives you a visual summary of all the different paths users take when they deviate from the sequence of steps outlined in your funnel. It creates these alternate routes organically (as shown in the image below), without the need for any manual setup.

The path analysis view helps you identify the distracting elements that turned users away but also understand where they went and what prevented them from reaching the end of your funnels.

So it’s a great tool for testing your marketing funnel thesis’ because you get to see the other side of it.

LogRocket vs SessionStack: Pricing

LogRocket is very pricey, while SessionStack offers the most bang for your buck.

LogRocket	SessionStack
⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

LogRocket’s free plan has limited features, while SessionStack offers all features on its free plan.

LogRocket’s free plan gives you access to 1000 user sessions per month and 3 team seats. However, features like heatmaps and user feedback, error tracking, and advanced filters are unavailable. 

SessionStack takes this a step further and offers 1500 sessions per month with 10 co-browsing sessions for free. 

SessionStack’s paid plans are more budget-friendly than LogRocket’s.

Just like their free plan, LogRocket’s starter plan keeps most of their key features locked — the only difference is that it unlocks 5 team seats and 10,000 to 50,000 sessions per month starting from $99/month.

To unlock all features, you have to purchase the Professional plan which starts at $550/month. Whether you’re upgrading from the free or starter plan, the huge price leap (shown in the graph below) is unjustifiable unless you rely heavily on aggregate and visual data (like heatmaps and multiple funnel views).

Unlike LogRocket, SessionStackdoes not hide key features on the highest plan and is very scalable — the main reason to upgrade is to unlock more team seats and monthly sessions, which makes its model way more customer friendly. 

SessionStack Launch

SessionStack Scale

SessionStack Enterprise

10,000 sessions/mo 5 team seats Metrics & Analytics Unlimited co-browsing Email & Live chat support

Launch features 25,000 sessions/mo 10 team seats Data export via REST API Web call support

Scale features Custom sessions & seats Single Sign-on Self-hosted deployment Dedicated support

LogRocket vs SessionStack: Pros & Cons

LogRocket Pros	LogRocket Cons
✅ Has visual heatmaps	❌ Limited features on free plan
✅ Has click, scroll, and hover maps	❌ Non-scalable pricing structure
✅ Nifty path analysis view	❌ No live sessions
✅ Works with mobile devices	❌ Replay speed can’t be slowed down
✅ Advanced error logging features	❌ Heatmaps are slow to load
✅ Extensive integrations (like Jira, Github, Google Analytics, Sentry…)

SessionStack Pros	SessionStack Cons
✅ All key features unlocked on the free plan	❌ Session replay lacks annotations
✅ Affordable pricing plans	❌ No visual heatmaps
✅ Extremely easy to set up and navigate	❌ Few native integrations
✅ Low-latency live and co-browsing sessions
✅ Dedicated error tracking page
✅ Pixel perfect replays that can be slowed to 0.5x & 0.25x

Final Verdict: LogRocket vs SessionStack

LogRocket	SessionStack
Best for: Developers troubleshooting errors and marketers optimizing site funnels.	Best for: Managing web apps or sites through analyzing user frustrations and providing an exceptional customer support experience.

LogRocket shines with its developer-friendly console tools and unique path analysis insights, while SessionStack has the most advanced session replay, co-browsing, and error-tracking features. 

Based on my experience…

Use LogRocket if:

• You want a visual and aggregate representation of user behaviors with heatmaps and funnels.
• You want to gain insights on general trends, rather than in-depth user interactions.
• You‘re looking for great error-tracking features in a developer-friendly interface.

Use SessionStack if:

• You want to take your customer support to the next level with real-time assistance.
• You need a tool for product analytics to quickly surface errors and user issues on your site or web app.
• You like a tool that is easy to set up and navigate.

Click here to get started with SessionStack for free!