Lucky Orange vs SessionStack: A Definitive Comparison [June 2023]

Lucky Orange is best for understanding general user behavior with advanced heatmaps that capture interactions with both static and dynamic page elements — great for improving the overall user experience on large-traffic websites. However, it lacks features to help you dig deeper into customer journeys, site errors, and user frustrations.

With its robust set of session replay, live co-browsing, and sitewide click & error tracking, SessionStack is perfect for a diverse range of teams; from product and support to developer and engineering. It helps you quickly spot and resolve errors and user frustrations while providing real-time support for an optimal experience.

To help you better understand the key differences between Lucky Orange vs SessionStack, we’ll take a closer look at how they stack up in the following areas:

1. Price
2. Heatmaps
3. Customer journey analysis
4. Session replays (with live, co-browsing, and error tracking)

I’ll also touch on site speed impact and integrations in the comparison table below. This will give you a better picture of each tool’s strengths so you can pick the right one for your needs.

Lucky Orange	SessionStack
Price
⭐⭐⭐ Limited free plan. Starts at $18/mo (~ 2,000 sessions/mo). Grow is $35/mo, Expand is $70/mo, and Scale is $150/mo.	🏆 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Has the best free plan. Starter is $79/mo (10,000 sessions/mo) and the Scale is $129/mo (25,000 sessions/mo).
Session Replay
⭐⭐⭐ Has session replays (can be slow and glitchy) with segmentation and live features, but no dev console.	🏆 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Everything in Lucky Orange + dedicated error tracking page + live co-browsing.
Co-browsing
⭐⭐⭐ Live sessions allow for co-browsing but lacks a view of user states and actual co-browsing tools.	🏆 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Super fast co-browsing mode with pointer, pen, and control takeover features.
Heatmaps
🏆 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Has live and interactive heatmaps (click, scroll, and move) for each site page that captures dynamic elements.	⭐⭐⭐⭐ Unique site-wide click tracking that records static and dynamic HTML elements with most clicks, dead clicks, and rage clicks.
Customer Journey Analysis
⭐⭐ Has limited funnel creation and analysis features, but captures the overall and step-specific conversion rates.	⭐⭐⭐⭐ Complete funnel functionality with user segments, date filters, and linked user sessions to quickly uncover conversion-blocking friction points.
Site Speed Impact
⭐ Reported ~1171ms average page speed impact across the web. Strongest impact on main thread execution.	🏆 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Extremely lightweight JavaScript. Doesn’t block main thread execution.
Integrations
⭐⭐⭐⭐ 7 native integrations + Lucky Orange API + Zapier	⭐⭐⭐ 14 native integrations + SessionStack API
G2 Reviews
103 user reviews with 4.6 Rating	63 user reviews with 4.9 Rating
Trusted By
MTL Art Shop, Braxley Brands, ApproveMe.com, Nextiny	Kraken, Bazaarvoice, Imagine.ai, Mend, Texas.gov
Best for
Getting a general idea of user behavior on large-traffic sites with lots of dynamic elements.	Quickly identifying and resolving errors and frustrations for best-in-class  user experience.
Try SessionStack free forever (no credit card required)

What is Lucky Orange?
“Highlight user engagement hotspots” 💡🗺️ 

Brian Gruber, a former web developer and designer, wanted a better view of how users interacted with his websites. So he teamed up with his friend and colleague, Danny Wajcman, to create Lucky Orange as a solution to enable him to do so.

One of Lucky Orange’s best features is its live heatmaps — it lets you interact with each page of your website while viewing the click, scroll, and move maps of both the static and dynamic elements on the page. This gives you a better understanding of which elements on your page attract the most attention and which ones are being overlooked. Additionally, Lucky Orange offers survey, live, and chat tools, which let you validate your assumptions on visitor behavior and preferences.

As a result, Lucky Orange is best for website owners who want to gain high-level insights into user behavior and preferences, so they can better optimize the placement of different elements on their site. However, it’s not ideal for you if you require more specific and in-depth analysis of user flows and issues affecting their user experience.

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

As a former software engineer, Alexander Zlatkov realized the need for a tool to better understand how users interacted with online apps. This inspired the creation of SessionStack in 2016 as a solution to this need.

SessionStack stands out from the rest with its advanced session replay features, which has earned it G2’s “session replay category leader” for 2023. In addition to its pixel-perfect session replays, it supports live sessions with online users on your site, at an extremely low latency of less than 1 second. It further builds on this feature with a co-browsing mode, which lets you interact with a user’s screen in real-time. These features, combined with SessionStack’s dev console and dedicated error tracking page make it easy to quickly identify and resolve user frustrations and pain points.

SessionStack is designed to help a diverse group of teams — from product and customer support teams to developers and engineering teams — gain in-depth insights into user interactions on their sites and online apps, quickly resolve issues, and provide real-time support to users for optimal user experience. 

Lucky Orange vs SessionStack: Session Replay

Lucky Orange supports live sessions and chat, while SessionStack stands out with live co-browsing and error tracking.

Mouseflow	SessionStack
⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Session Replay is a feature that captures user interactions on your site, including mouse movements, clicks, scrolls, and page visits, and replays it to you in video form. In this section, we’ll take a closer look at each tool’s session replay capabilities and compare the following areas:

1. UI design,
2. User segmentation,
3. Live sessions,
4. Co-browsing, and
5. Error logs.

Session Replay’s UI design
SessionStack is easier to navigate because Lucky Orange can be very slow and glitchy.

SessionStack’s interface is optimized for simplicity, functionality, and smooth navigation — from the simple two-column layout with bold icons to the perfect sync between the session replay and the action log on the left. This makes workflows fast and productive — you can quickly jump to specific user actions and identify and resolve issues in little to no time.

Lucky Orange’s interface is simple and sleek. However, it can be sluggish and glitchy at times, resulting in a poor user experience and overall lengthy and inefficient workflows.

User Segmentation
Both tools let you create segments based on user, session, and event data but Lucky Orange stands out with its mini collection of predefined user segments.

User segmentation (aka ‘audience segmentation’) is a feature that lets you define specific attributes (eg. demographics, device features, actions taken, etc.) for grouping your website visitors. This gives you a better understanding of how different user groups interact with your site, so you can optimize your UI/UX to meet the unique needs of each group.

Building user segments is very easy and straightforward with both tools. In addition, they have about the same number of filters for creating custom segments with common options like location, device, browser, operating system, page visited, and session duration. The differences in filter options are very minimal, so choosing one over the other is a matter of preference. 

For example, SessionStack has unique filters that let you filter users by first seen, last seen, IP address, browser version, and dead clicks. In addition, it’s the only tool that lets you filter sessions by the exact time and date. 

In addition to creating custom segments (marked as “2” in the image below), Lucky Orange comes with a few ready-made segments (marked as “1”) like “bounced visitors” which tracks users who viewed less than two pages in a session, and “engaged visitors” for users who visited at least three pages in sessions that lasted for at least one minute.

While the predefined user segments are convenient for quickly filtering through session replays, the slow load times and lack of customization can get frustrating.

Live Sessions

Lucky Orange lets you watch live sessions and SessionStack has the added functionality of viewing user states.

Live sessions let you watch users as they interact with your site in real-time. This is a very handy tool for product and customer support teams to quickly respond to issues, provide support to users, and improve the overall customer experience.

Under Lucky Orange‘s “Visitors” tab, you can see all online users on your site at any point and receive immediate alerts when new users arrive. Plus, the live viewing has a minimal delay, providing a smooth and fluid experience.

Lucky Orange also has a unique chat feature, which is very helpful for taking feedback and offering personalized support to your site users through one-on-one conversations. However, this may be overkill if you have better external chat tools.

Like Lucky Orange, SessionStack has a dedicated page for viewing all online users, immediately registering new users, and super low-latency live viewing (<1s). In addition, you can view user states during live sessions:

• User is live: In this state, you’ll see the real-time interactions between the user and your site.
• User is inactive: The user has either minimized your site tab or moved to a different one.

User is offline: The user has left, and a link is provided for you to view the session playback.

While SessionStack doesn’t have a built-in chat feature, it has direct integrations with established chat tools like Intercom and Zendesk.

But what truly sets SessionStack apart is its unique co-browsing feature, which lets you elevate the user experience of your website or online app to a whole new level.

Co-browsing
SessionStack enhances live session viewing with its unique co-browsing feature.

Co-browsing lets you connect and engage directly with site users during live sessions — it’s like having a virtual hand-holding session where you guide them and quickly resolve their issues, without installing any third-party tools.

NOTE: Co-browsing and screen sharing are not the same. Unlike screen sharing, co-browsing doesn’t require both parties to install additional tools, and it only gives you access to the single browser tab where the user has your site open. Our article on co-browsing dives deeper into these differences.

SessionStack’s super low latency live sessions make co-browsing possible. The co-browsing mode is equipped with three main tools:

• A pen: Annotate a user’s screen with digital ink.
• A pointer: Highlight specific screen elements, without direct interaction with the page.
• 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.

With co-browsing, customer support teams can provide personalized support to users in real-time, leading to quicker issue resolutions and a better overall user experience. 

Error Logs

SessionStack has a log console and a dedicated error-tracking page, while Lucky Orange lacks the feature. 

SessionStack’s console lets you track logs and errors during each session replay. And it also has a dedicated page for tracking site-wide logs and errors without having to watch individual session replays.  

Also, each error is linked to the specific timestamp of the session replay where it occurred. If you choose to watch the session, it plays automatically and stops right at the mark where the error occurred (marked as “1” in the screenshot above). This helps you better understand the individual user action that led to the error. From here, you can open the console (marked as “2”) to gain more insight into the error (marked as “3”).

Lucky Orange vs SessionStack: Heatmaps

Lucky Orange captures snapshots of user behavior live, while SessionStack captures site-wide popular elements and friction points.

Lucky Orange	SessionStack
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐

Heatmaps are a visual display of aggregate user behavior, showing you website elements with the most (or least) activity. There are three main types of heatmaps: mouse maps show the area where users often move their cursors, scroll maps show how far down users scroll on a page, and click maps show areas with the most clicks. 

Lucky Orange captures clicks, hovers, and scrolls for static and dynamic elements on your site.

Lucky Orange’s live heatmaps simplify the tracking of static and dynamic elements (such as popups, menus, and other interactive features) on your website. This means you can directly interact with a page on your website while viewing the heatmaps of how other people interacted with it. 

In addition, you can view a ranking of page elements that received the most user clicks or “moves”. You can also choose to filter the heatmaps by date, location, device, browser, etc., to see how different groups of users interacted with a web page. 

SessionStack has a unique way of mapping user actions – it analyzes the most clicked elements on your website, as well as frustration signals.

Unlike Lucky Orange, SessionStack doesn’t have visual heatmaps. Instead, you get a sitewide overview of the top 10 HTML elements (both static and dynamic) that need your attention, grouped under the following categories:

• Most clicked elements: Site elements with the most clicks.
• Dead clicks: Clicks on elements that do not generate any page response.
• Rage clicks: Elements that were clicked multiple times in quick succession because users did not get an expected outcome.

This feature (in addition to error logs) makes SessionStack a powerful tool for developers and engineering teams who want to quickly identify the frustration points of users across a site or app, so they can prioritize optimization efforts, and make data-driven decisions to improve the overall user experience. 

Lucky Orange vs SessionStack: Customer Journey Analysis

Lucky Orange has limited funnel analysis features, SessionStack is best for identifying and resolving friction points

Lucky Orange	SessionStack
⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐

The funnels feature available with both tools helps you analyze customer journeys by tracking how users progress through specific steps (eg. visited a page, clicked an element, etc.) on your site. This gives you valuable insights into user flows and helps you identify areas for improvement. Here’s an example of a funnel:

Lucky Orange’s limited analysis features give you a general overview of funnel performance.

Lucky Orange lets you add infinite steps to your funnel. At each step, you can either specify a page URL, choose from one of ten event options (element clicked, rage click, super rage click, etc.), or create a custom event.

However, these events lack specificity — for example, if you select the ‘element clicked’ event, you can’t specify exactly which element you’re expecting users to click.

After creating the funnel, you can easily track the percentage conversion at each stage, the largest drop-off, and the overall completion rate.

SessionStack’s date filter and linked session recording make it easy to identify and resolve friction points in your funnel.

SessionStack lets you choose from five commonly used event options at each step of your funnel: visited URL, clicked element, user input, dead click, and rage click. Unlike Lucky Orange, you can make each event as specific as you would like.  

Additionally, you can apply saved segments and date filters to your funnel results. By using these filters, you can refine and focus your analysis—so you can uncover valuable patterns and trends within your segmented user data.

You can also see the session recordings of users who either converted or dropped off at each step of your funnel. Watching the user recordings of those who deviated from the funnel gives you a better understanding of what prevented them from converting and the different paths they took, so you can better optimize your funnels for higher retention and conversion rates. 

Lucky Orange vs SessionStack: Pricing

Lucky Orange is budget-friendly, and SessionStack gives you the best value for your money

Lucky Orange	SessionStack
⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Lucky Orange’s free plan is very limited, while SessionStack has the best free plan.  

Lucky Orange only gives you access to 500 page views per month. If on average, every user views 5 pages per session, that’s only about 100 sessions per month.

On the other hand, SessionStack unlocks all key features on the free plan for up to 3 users and 1500 monthly sessions, which is typically more than enough for teams of all sizes.

A comparison of the tool’s free plan features is shown in the table below:

	Lucky Orange	SessionStack
No. of users	Unlimited	3
No. of sites	1	Unlimited
Sessions/month	100	1,500
Live session viewing	✅	✅
Co-browsing	N/A	✅
Error logs	N/A	✅
Heatmaps	✅	✅
Funnels	✅	✅
Filters + User segmentation	✅	✅

Lucky Orange is the cheapest but lacks features, while SessionStack strikes a perfect balance between cost and value.

While Lucky Orange has the cheapest paid plans out of the tools, keep in mind that it may not be the best option for you if you need robust session replay, error tracking, and funnel features.

Moreover, for each additional site added to your account, you’ll be charged an extra $5, which can add up pretty quickly depending on how many sites you’re managing.

	Lucky Orange	SessionStack
Launch	$18 (2,000)	–
Grow	$35 (8,000)	$79 (10,000)
Business	$70 (20,000)	$129 (25,000)
Scale	$150 (60,000)	–
Enterprise	Custom	Custom
Annual Discount	20%	10%

Since SessionStack and Lucky Orange unlock all key features on their free plans, the main reason you’ll upgrade plans is to get extra sessions per month.

SessionStack Launch

SessionStack Scale

SessionStack Enterprise

10,000 sessions/mo + Unlimited co-browsing + Email & Live chat support

Launch features + 25,000 + Data export via REST API + Web call support

Scale features + Custom sessions & seats + Single Sign-on (SSO) + Self-hosted deployment + Dedicated support

However, unlike Lucky Orange, SessionStack packs additional value at every pricing tier, as shown in the table below:

Lucky Orange vs SessionStack: Pros & Cons

Lucky Orange Pros	Lucky Orange Cons
✅ Budget-friendly plans	❌ An extra site adeed to your account costs $5
✅ Modern and intuitive interface	❌ Heavily limited sessions on free plan
✅ Live and interactive heatmaps	❌ Session replays can be slow and glitchy
✅ Live session replays & in-built chat feature	❌ No dev console & error tracking features
✅ Feedback, polls, and form analytics tools	❌ Very limited funnel features
✅ Integrates with Zapier

SessionStack Pros	SessionStack Cons
✅ All key features unlocked on the free plan	❌ Session replay lacks annotations
✅ Unlimited site connects across all plans	❌ No page-specific visual heatmap tool
✅ Captures all user sessions with pixel-perfect playbacks	❌ Does not integrate with Zapier
✅ Super fast live and co-browsing sessions
✅ Dedicated error tracking page
✅ Has the most native integrations
✅ Very minimal impact on website’s performance

Final Verdict: Lucky Orange vs SessionStack

Lucky Orange	SessionStack
Best for: High-traffic site owners who want to understand general user behaviors and patterns.	Best for: Product, customer support, developer, and engineering teams who want to quickly resolve errors and pain points for an optimal user experience.

Lucky Orange is best for understanding aggregate user behavior with its live and interactive heatmaps that make it super easy to track interactions with multiple dynamic elements on a page. Meanwhile, SessionStack’s robust live replays, co-browsing, and error-tracking features make it best for quickly identifying and resolving site or web app issues in real time.

Use Lucky Orange if:

• You don’t need tools to identify, track, and solve errors.
• You have a highly dynamic site that attracts lots of traffic.
• You want visual dynamic heatmaps that capture actions on dynamic elements on your site as well.
• You are looking to uncover aggregate user insights rather than specific user interactions.

Use SessionStack if:

• You need a tool with robust session replay features.
• You want to stay on top of site errors and quickly resolve them.
• You want tools to surface the most common user frustrations site-wide.
• You want to take your customer support to the next level and offer real-time help without any added third-party software on your site.

Click here to get started with SessionStack for free!