Every form on your website is a step where a visitor decides whether to continue. A page can look fine and still lose people at the moment they are asked to fill something in. Form analytics tools answer the question behind that loss: how many visitors start a form, how many submit it and how many leave before finishing. The category is useful, but comparing it is harder than it looks, because most “best tools” lists are published by the tools themselves. The same shortcut that helps you judge any analytics product applies here: start with the criteria that matter, look at a shortlist of real products, then try a tool on your own traffic before you commit.
What form analytics adds to your analytics
Form tracking counts what visitors do with a form: whether they start it, submit it or leave without submitting. Someone who starts a form and never sends it is a drop-off, and the abandonment rate is the share of visitors who never finish. A useful report shows starts, submissions and exits, compares submission rate and success rate over 7, 30 or 90 days, and filters by device or by exact page.
The key point is what the tool collects. The most privacy-friendly form analytics count interaction patterns only, never the values people type. The aggregate report shows how visitors interact with a form, not the answers they entered. That is also what keeps form analytics manageable: it answers the funnel question of where people give up, while a session replay answers the individual question of what one visit looked like. If you are new to the idea, our guide to what form tracking is explains the difference in more detail.
Form analytics is strongest as an investigation tool. When the same form loses visitors every week, the report shows the shape of the drop-off, and the recorded visit behind a number shows what the step looked like in practice. It does not replace your form processor’s submission records; it adds the behaviour behind the numbers.
What to check before you compare tools
Every form analytics tool in a roundup looks similar on the first read. The differences that decide how useful it will be come from a few concrete choices:
- What the report measures. Does the tool report form-level totals only, or field-level drop-off, which shows you the exact field where visitors stop?
- How success is decided. Does the tool treat every submission as success, or can you confirm and correct the result with a signal from your own code? Automatic success detection is the useful baseline; a way to override it is the difference between a guess and a fact.
- What gets collected. Are only interaction patterns tracked, or are the values people type also captured and stored? If values are stored, check the masking and access controls carefully.
- Setup effort. Is it one tracking code that sits beside your existing analytics, or does each form need its own instrumentation and extra configuration?
- The rest of the toolkit. Can you open the recorded visit behind a drop-off number? Does the tool combine form analytics with session replay, heatmaps and error tracking in the same account?
- Plan fit and free tier. Where form analytics sits on the plan matters more than the headline price, and a free tier lets you test the workflow on real traffic before buying.
- Privacy and access. Can guests opt out, are sensitive fields masked by default, and who in the team can view reports and change collection settings?
None of these answers is right in the abstract. The right tool depends on how deep the form report goes, what you already use, and how much setup your team will maintain.
A shortlist to compare
The table below puts a shortlist side by side on the same criteria, so you can compare actual products rather than a category sketch. It is not a ranking: we are not scoring these products or claiming to have run a hands-on test of all of them. For every row, the vendor’s own site is the primary source for that tool, and our comparison page is the Hitsteps-specific reference. The vendor free-plan figures and form-analytics rows come from those comparisons, which record the vendor’s own published pages (pricing checked 30 Oct 2026; feature rows checked 7 Nov 2026). Vendor features and pricing change, so treat the linked pages as the current reference.
| Tool | Free entry | Form analytics and what else ships with it | Built for | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hitsteps | Free plan: 1 website, up to 2,000 pageviews a month, 14 days of history; a 7-day Pro trial is included at signup | Form tracking on Pro and higher plans and in the free Pro trial: starts, submissions and visitors who left without submitting over 7, 30 or 90 days, with recorded visits behind each number; availability is being opened gradually | Owners and marketers who want form analytics beside the analytics they already read | This article; form analytics guide |
| Microsoft Clarity | Free plan with no traffic limits | Session recordings and heatmaps, all free; no form report is listed in its filters documentation, so forms are inspected inside recordings | Teams that want free recordings and heatmaps | clarity.microsoft.com; our Clarity comparison |
| Hotjar | Free plan, up to 200k monthly sessions and 1 month of data access | Session recordings, heatmaps and surveys; no current form analytics report, as its older Forms report was retired | Marketing and UX teams | hotjar.com; our Hotjar comparison |
| Mouseflow | Free plan with limited recordings | A form report on its Premium and Enterprise plans, beside session replay, funnels and heatmaps | Product, marketing and UX teams | mouseflow.com; our Mouseflow comparison |
| Inspectlet | Free tier with limited recordings | Form analytics with field drop-off, beside session recordings and A/B testing | Product and marketing teams | inspectlet.com; our Inspectlet comparison |
| Lucky Orange | Free trial; check its site for current terms | Form analytics with field drop-off, with recordings, heatmaps, surveys and live chat in one dashboard | Owners who want behaviour tools in one place | luckyorange.com; our Lucky Orange comparison |
Where the main tools differ
Knowing the group a tool belongs to helps you read past the marketing page.
Form-first specialists are built around the form itself. They push the deepest field-level reporting, showing exactly which field loses people, often at the cost of a lighter toolkit elsewhere.
Behaviour suites offer form analytics as one report inside a wider stack of recordings, heatmaps and surveys. The form view sits in the same account as the behaviour tools, which is convenient when your team works across both.
Free and replay-first tools give you recordings and heatmaps at no cost but no dedicated form report, so you watch forms inside recorded sessions instead of reading a form-specific chart. That works when you investigate a handful of forms, and it gets slow when you manage forms across many pages.
Analytics-first tools put form tracking next to the reports you already read, so the form funnel and the traffic that reaches it live in one dashboard, like Hitsteps.
None of these groups is better in the abstract. The right one depends on how deep the form report needs to be, who investigates the drops, and where the rest of your analytics already lives.
What Hitsteps offers
Hitsteps keeps form analytics in the same account as the rest of your analytics, so you do not wire a separate report into your funnel.
- What it measures. Form tracking shows how many visitors start a form, how many submit it and how many leave without submitting. You can compare submission rate, success rate and visitors who left without submitting over 7, 30 or 90 days, and filter by device or exact page.
- Recorded visits behind the numbers. Each figure opens a view of the recorded visits behind it, so you move from “half the visitors gave up” to “here is what the step looked like today” without switching products.
- Success you can verify. Successful submissions are detected automatically, and an optional signal from your own code can confirm or correct the result.
- Values stay private. Only interaction patterns are tracked. Entered values are never stored, only how visitors interact with the form.
- Gradual availability. Form tracking is being opened gradually. An eligible plan or trial does not by itself enable it for every website, and the report is based on sampled Experience visits, not a census of every visitor. Dashboard read access is enough to view the report; changing collection settings and display names needs website-management access.
A free account includes a 7-day Pro trial. When the trial ends, you can stay on the Free plan (1 website, up to 2,000 pageviews a month) if your email is verified and your site fits its limits, or choose a paid plan. There are no automatic charges.
How to test a form analytics tool without signing up
The fastest test is to see the report and the player on realistic data. Hitsteps runs an interactive demo that replays a simulated visit, so you can judge the form report, the recorded visit and the workflow before creating an account.
Try the live demo with no signup: Open the Hitsteps Experience demo. It replays a simulated visit to a made-up shop with example data, not recordings from real visitors on your website.
