Why We Made UXHeat Free (Up to 5K Sessions)
When we launched UXHeat, we made a decision that surprised some people: a free tier with 5,000 sessions per month. Not a 14-day trial. Not a "freemium" bait-and-switch with crippled features. A genuinely useful free product.
This article explains why.
The Problem With "Free Trials"
Most analytics tools offer free trials — usually 14 days, sometimes 30. The pitch is: try it, see the value, then pay.
Here's the problem: 14 days isn't enough time to evaluate an analytics tool.
In 14 days, you might:
- Install the tracking code
- Collect some initial data
- Generate your first heatmaps
- Start to understand the patterns
But you won't have enough data volume or time range to actually optimize anything. You won't know if the tool is genuinely useful or just interesting. You'll upgrade because you're curious, not because you've proven ROI.
The result: Users pay for tools they don't actually use. They signed up because the trial was ending, not because they validated value. A few months later, they cancel — having paid for months they didn't need.
We wanted something different.
What We Believe
Belief 1: Small Teams Shouldn't Pay for Heatmaps
If you're a solo founder with a landing page, you shouldn't need to choose between understanding your users and paying rent. Heatmaps are valuable precisely when you're small and figuring things out. That's when every conversion matters most.
Charging small teams $30-50/month for analytics creates a perverse dynamic: the teams that need insights most can least afford them.
Belief 2: Free Should Mean Free
"Free" with a 14-day limit isn't free — it's a trial. "Free" with 35 sessions per day isn't free — it's a demo.
Real free means: you can use this product indefinitely without paying, and it's genuinely useful. Not a teaser. Not a downgrade. A real product.
Belief 3: Pricing Should Reflect Value
The value of heatmaps increases with traffic volume and business complexity. A solo founder running a landing page gets less value from heatmaps than an e-commerce site processing thousands of orders.
Pricing should scale with value. Low-traffic sites should pay little or nothing. High-traffic sites should pay proportionally.
Belief 4: Users Should Upgrade Because They Want To, Not Because They Have To
The best customer relationships are built on voluntary exchange. You use our free tier, find it valuable, and upgrade when you genuinely need more. Not because we artificially limited the product. Not because a trial ended. Because you chose to.
This creates better customers: higher retention, better word-of-mouth, and genuine satisfaction.
How We Make It Work
"That sounds great, but how do you stay in business?"
Fair question. Here's the math.
Cost Structure
The marginal cost of serving a free user is low:
- Storage: Session data is compressed and relatively compact
- Processing: Heatmap generation is computationally light
- AI insights: Batch-processed, not real-time
- Infrastructure: Cloud infrastructure scales economically
Our cost per session is fractions of a cent. A free user with 5,000 sessions costs us roughly $2-5/month in infrastructure.
Conversion Economics
Not every free user converts. We don't expect them to.
Here's our mental model:
- 60% of free users are small sites that may never pay — and that's fine
- 25% of free users will grow into paid plans over 6-12 months
- 10% of free users become advocates who refer paying customers
- 5% of free users are evaluating for larger organizations
The 25% who convert become sustainable revenue. The 10% who advocate provide marketing value. The 60% who stay free cost us less than traditional customer acquisition.
Customer Acquisition Cost
Traditional SaaS spends $200-500 acquiring a customer through paid advertising. That customer might churn in 3 months.
Our approach: spend that money on infrastructure serving free users instead. Some become paying customers. The CAC (customer acquisition cost) of free-to-paid conversion is effectively $0 in marketing spend — just infrastructure cost.
The math works out surprisingly well.
What "Free" Actually Includes
Let's be specific about what the free tier includes:
| Feature | Free Tier | |---------|-----------| | Sessions/month | 5,000 | | Heatmaps | Unlimited pages | | Session recordings | Yes (within session limit) | | AI insights | Yes | | Priority scoring | Yes | | Rage click detection | Yes | | Dead click detection | Yes | | Error capture | Yes | | Team members | Unlimited | | Data retention | 90 days | | Support | Email (48hr response) |
There's no feature gating. Free users get the same AI insights, the same priority scoring, the same analysis as paid users. The only differences are volume (sessions/month) and retention (90 vs. 365 days).
What "Free" Doesn't Include
To be transparent:
Volume limits: 5,000 sessions/month is generous for small sites, but you'll need to upgrade if you're bigger.
Extended retention: Free keeps data for 90 days. If you need year-long historical analysis, you'll need a paid plan.
Priority support: Free users get email support within 48 hours. Paid users get faster response and Slack access.
Future enterprise features: SSO, advanced permissions, and compliance documentation will be paid-only when we add them.
These are reasonable trade-offs. They let us serve free users economically while creating upgrade paths for growing businesses.
Comparison to Competitors
How does our free tier compare to alternatives?
vs. Hotjar Free
| Metric | UXHeat Free | Hotjar Free | |--------|-------------|-------------| | Sessions/month | 5,000 | ~1,050 (35/day) | | Data retention | 90 days | 365 days | | AI insights | Yes | No | | Upgrade trigger | Volume | Volume + features |
UXHeat offers nearly 5x the sessions but less retention. We think volume matters more for early-stage teams — you can't analyze data you don't have.
vs. Microsoft Clarity
| Metric | UXHeat Free | Clarity | |--------|-------------|---------| | Sessions | 5,000/month | Unlimited | | AI insights | Prioritized recommendations | Session summaries | | Data retention | 90 days | 30 days | | Privacy controls | GDPR-compliant | Limited | | Support | Email | Community only |
Clarity offers unlimited sessions (can't beat that price) but less intelligence, shorter retention, and no support. The trade-off is volume vs. insight quality.
vs. Crazy Egg
| Metric | UXHeat Free | Crazy Egg | |--------|-------------|-----------| | Free tier? | Yes (5K sessions) | No | | Entry price | $0 | $29/month |
Crazy Egg has no free tier at all. For budget-constrained teams, the choice is obvious.
The Philosophy Behind the Decision
Beyond the business math, there's a philosophical dimension.
We've been the small team evaluating expensive tools. We've felt the pressure of 14-day trials ending before we could validate value. We've paid for software we didn't fully use because the alternative was losing access to data we'd already collected.
That experience sucked. We didn't want to create it for others.
The golden rule of SaaS: Build the pricing model you'd want as a customer.
We wanted:
- Time to evaluate without pressure
- Access to real features, not crippled demos
- Upgrade paths that reflect our growth, not artificial cliffs
- A vendor relationship based on value, not lock-in
So that's what we built.
FAQ
Will the free tier stay free forever?
We intend for it to. Our business model depends on sustainable unit economics, not bait-and-switch. If we ever need to change free tier limits, we'll grandfather existing users.
What happens if I exceed 5,000 sessions?
We stop recording new sessions for that month. Your existing data remains accessible. You get email warnings at 80% and 100% of your limit. We never charge automatically — you choose whether to upgrade.
Is there a catch?
The "catch" is that we hope you'll upgrade when you grow. We're betting that a great free experience creates loyal customers who choose to pay. That's the whole business model — no hidden tricks.
Why 5,000 specifically?
5,000 sessions/month covers:
- A landing page getting ~150 visitors/day
- A small blog getting ~100 readers/day
- An early SaaS product with ~50 daily active users
It's enough to be genuinely useful for small sites, while creating natural upgrade triggers for growing businesses.
What if I have multiple sites?
Your session limit is shared across all projects. A free user could run two sites with 2,500 sessions each, or five sites with 1,000 sessions each. For agencies managing many sites, the Agency plan ($149/mo for 500K sessions) is designed for this.
The Bottom Line
We made UXHeat free because we believe:
- Small teams deserve good analytics tools
- "Free" should mean something real
- Users should upgrade by choice, not coercion
- Generosity creates better customer relationships
The math works because free users cost less than traditional customer acquisition. The philosophy works because we're building the tool we wish existed.
5,000 sessions per month. All features. No trial period. No credit card required.
Questions about pricing? See our complete pricing guide, or learn how to set up UXHeat in under 1 minute.