Smartlook Alternatives For Identifying Anonymous Website Visitors

With an estimated 97% of visitors leaving anonymously without filling out a form, businesses need tools that go beyond session replay to actually identify who's browsing their site. While Smartlook excels at behavioral analytics and heatmaps, it doesn’t identify unknown visitors— it only labels sessions when you pass in an identifier (like an email or user ID)—making identity resolution tools essential for converting anonymous traffic into actionable leads.

Key Takeaways

• OpenSend leads with contact-level identification rates and 12-140x ROI
• Smartlook focuses on session replay and behavioral analytics, but it can’t identify unknown visitors unless you pass in an identifier (e.g., user ID/email).
• The visitor identification market is projected to reach approximately $9.99 billion by 2032 with 12.4% CAGR
• Analytics platforms (Smartlook, FullStory, Hotjar) answer "what are visitors doing?" while identity resolution platforms answer "who are these visitors?"
• According to Opensend, its identity graph spans ~180M US shoppers across 100k+ sites and processes 7B+ events daily
• Multi-channel activation through email, ads, and postal mail converts identified visitors into revenue

1. OpenSend – Contact-Level Identification with Proven Revenue Impact

OpenSend fundamentally differs from Smartlook by solving a different problem entirely. While Smartlook helps you understand visitor behavior through session recordings, OpenSend reveals who those visitors actually are—delivering email addresses and contact data that enable direct outreach.

The platform reports an estimated 25–35% contact-level identification through a proprietary identity graph built from consent-based partnerships across 100K+ US sites. This network processes 7 billion events daily, matching anonymous visitors to verified contact information in real-time.

Documented Revenue Generation

OpenSend clients consistently achieve measurable returns that session replay tools simply cannot deliver:

• Benchmade generated $85,000 in placed orders within 30 days, achieving 12x ROI
• iRESTORE captured $98,000+ revenue in their first month with 6.4x overall ROI
• Decorative Ceiling Tiles increased sales by 19x ROI using the platform
• Email campaigns achieve 50-65% open rates, compared to industry averages of 15-25%

Multi-Channel Activation Beyond Identification

Unlike analytics tools that stop at insights, OpenSend powers direct action through multi-channel retargeting:

• Email marketing integration with Klaviyo, Attentive, and Omnisend for immediate follow-up
• Programmatic advertising through Facebook and Google custom audiences
• Direct mail campaigns via postal retargeting for high-value prospects
• SMS marketing for time-sensitive offers

The OpenSend Reconnect product extends this capability by unifying fragmented consumer identities across devices, enabling personalized marketing flows regardless of how visitors return to your site. For brands struggling with outdated email lists, OpenSend Revive automatically replaces bounced emails with active addresses for the same users.

Transparent Pricing Structure

OpenSend's pricing scales with your traffic:

• Tier 1: $500/month for 2,000+ identities ($0.25 per identity) – 10-50K monthly visitors
• Tier 2: $1,000/month for 4,300+ identities ($0.23 per identity) – 50-150K monthly visitors
• Tier 3: $2,000/month for 9,500+ identities ($0.21 per identity) – 100-300K monthly visitors
• $1 trial for 2 weeks with full feature access

Credits roll over monthly, and you only pay for net-new leads—a sharp contrast to session-based pricing that charges regardless of identification success.

2. FullStory – Enterprise Behavioral Analytics

FullStory focuses on digital experience intelligence for large product teams. The platform offers advanced behavioral analytics including rage click detection, error tracking, and journey mapping.

Founded in 2014, FullStory serves enterprise clients looking to optimize user experiences through granular session analysis. The platform's strength lies in its ability to capture every interaction on your site, creating a searchable database of user behaviors that product teams can analyze to identify friction points.

What FullStory does well:

• Session replay with advanced filtering and search capabilities
• Frustration signal detection (rage clicks, error clicks, dead clicks)
• Autocapture technology that requires minimal manual tagging
• Deep integration with product development workflows
• Omnisearch functionality allowing you to search through all sessions by any event or property
• Custom event tracking with retroactive analysis
• Team collaboration features including session sharing and annotations

Where FullStory falls short:

• No visitor identification – cannot reveal who anonymous visitors are
• Enterprise pricing requires sales contact with no public transparency
• Complex implementation that may require developer resources
• Focused on UX optimization rather than lead generation
• Higher learning curve compared to simpler analytics tools

FullStory serves teams needing to understand how users interact with products but cannot convert that understanding into direct outreach. Companies using FullStory for behavioral insights often pair it with identity resolution tools for complete visitor intelligence.

3. Hotjar – Mid-Market Session Replay

Hotjar offers session replay and heatmaps at more accessible price points than enterprise alternatives. The platform targets mid-market teams seeking behavioral insights without enterprise budgets.

Hotjar is widely used by teams that want heatmaps, recordings, and feedback tools in one place, Hotjar has become the go-to choice for small to medium-sized businesses looking to understand visitor behavior. The platform combines quantitative analytics with qualitative feedback tools, giving teams a complete picture of user experience.

Hotjar's strengths:

• Accessible pricing paid plans start at $49/month for thousands of monthly sessions
• Heatmaps, recordings, and feedback widgets in one platform
• Free tier available with limited sessions monthly
• Intuitive interface for non-technical teams
• Incoming feedback tools including surveys and polls
• Recruitment features for user testing
• Quick implementation with minimal technical requirements
• Integration with popular tools like Google Analytics, Slack, and Segment

Hotjar limitations:

• Zero visitor identification capabilities – purely behavioral
• Limited session volume compared to enterprise tools
• No cross-device tracking to unify customer journeys
• Cannot attribute revenue to specific visitors
• Sampling on higher traffic sites may miss important sessions
• Limited advanced filtering compared to enterprise alternatives

For e-commerce brands, Hotjar reveals where visitors drop off but cannot tell you who they are or enable direct follow-up. This gap requires supplementation with lead generation tools that capture contact information.

4. Mixpanel – Product Analytics Focus

Mixpanel specializes in event-based product analytics with advanced cohort analysis and retention metrics. The platform targets SaaS companies and product teams measuring feature adoption.

Since launching in 2009, Mixpanel has become a standard tool for product-led growth companies. The platform excels at tracking user actions within web and mobile applications, helping teams understand which features drive engagement and retention.

Where Mixpanel excels:

• Advanced funnel analysis and cohort tracking
• Robust retention reporting showing user engagement over time
• 100+ integrations with development and analytics tools
• AI-powered insights for product optimization
• Real-time analytics and alerts
• A/B testing capabilities integrated with analytics
• Flexible event tracking for custom product metrics
• Powerful segmentation allowing complex user groupings
• Predictive analytics for user behavior

Mixpanel's gaps for visitor identification:

• Designed for logged-in user analytics, not anonymous visitor identification
• No contact-level data capture from unknown traffic
• Cannot power email marketing campaigns without existing user data
• Limited e-commerce focus compared to web analytics tools
• Requires significant setup to track events properly
• Steeper learning curve than simpler analytics platforms

Mixpanel answers questions about product usage patterns but cannot solve the fundamental challenge of identifying website visitors who never create accounts.

5. Google Analytics – Free Baseline Analytics

Google Analytics provides universal adoption with unlimited free usage, making it the default analytics layer for most websites. GA4 offers improved event tracking and machine learning capabilities.

As the most widely used analytics platform globally, Google Analytics serves as the foundation for most digital marketing strategies. The latest version (GA4) represents a significant shift toward event-based tracking and cross-platform measurement.

Google Analytics advantages:

• Completely free for standard implementation
• Comprehensive traffic source analysis
• Integration with Google Ads ecosystem
• Basic funnel visualization and goal tracking
• Machine learning insights including predictive metrics
• Cross-platform tracking between web and mobile apps
• Audience building for remarketing campaigns
• E-commerce tracking with revenue attribution
• Custom reporting and dashboards
• Industry-standard data that integrates with most marketing tools

Critical limitations:

• No visitor identification at any level—company or contact
• Session-based data without individual user recognition
• Limited cross-device tracking without authenticated users
• Privacy changes reducing tracking accuracy
• Data sampling on high-traffic properties
• Complex interface with steep learning curve in GA4
• Limited historical data retention without paid upgrades

Google Analytics shows traffic patterns but leaves an estimated 90-97% of visitors completely anonymous. Brands serious about converting leads into customers must layer identity resolution on top of baseline analytics.

6. Contentsquare – Enterprise Experience Analytics

Contentsquare operates at the enterprise level with 1,500+ employees and 18 global offices. The platform combines session replay, heatmaps, and AI-powered experience analytics for large organizations.

Serving enterprise clients including Fortune 500 companies, Contentsquare differentiates itself through AI-powered analysis that automatically surfaces insights from user behavior data. The platform is particularly strong in e-commerce and large-scale digital properties.

Contentsquare capabilities:

• Zone-based heatmaps with revenue attribution
• AI analysis of behavioral patterns that surfaces issues automatically
• Enterprise-grade security and compliance
• Dedicated customer success teams
• Journey analysis tracking complete user paths
• Impact quantification showing revenue effect of UX changes
• Competitive benchmarking against industry standards
• Mobile app analytics alongside web tracking
• Voice of customer integration combining behavioral and survey data

Where Contentsquare doesn't help:

• No anonymous visitor identification
• Enterprise pricing excludes most businesses
• Complex implementation requiring significant resources
• Focused on experience optimization rather than lead capture
• Requires substantial traffic volume to justify cost
• Long sales cycles typical for enterprise software

Contentsquare helps enterprise teams optimize digital experiences but cannot reveal who unknown visitors are or enable direct marketing outreach.

Understanding the Fundamental Difference

The tools compared here solve fundamentally different problems:

Analytics Platforms (Smartlook, FullStory, Hotjar, Mixpanel, Google Analytics, Contentsquare):

• Answer: "How are anonymous visitors using my site?"
• Provide: Behavioral insights, session recordings, heatmaps, funnels
• Cannot provide: Visitor identities, contact information, outreach capability

Identity Resolution Platforms (OpenSend):

• Answer: "Who are these visitors and how can I contact them?"
• Provide: Email addresses, contact data, multi-channel activation
• Enable: Direct outreach to previously anonymous traffic

An estimated 3% of visitors fill out forms—standard analytics captures only this sliver. Identity resolution unlocks the remaining 97% who leave without converting.

Choosing the Right Approach for Your Business

Use analytics platforms when you need:

• UX optimization and conversion rate improvements
• Understanding where visitors drop off
• Diagnosing usability issues through session replay
• Product feature adoption analysis

Use OpenSend when you need:

• Email addresses of visitors for direct outreach
• Measurable revenue attribution from anonymous traffic
• Lower customer acquisition costs through retargeting
• First-party data ownership that doesn't depend on third-party cookies

Many successful e-commerce brands use both approaches: analytics tools to understand behavior and OpenSend to identify and convert engaged visitors before they leave.

Implementation and Compliance Considerations

OpenSend's cookie-less technology operates through consent-based partnerships, and states it complies with US laws including CAN-SPAM and CCPA requirements. The platform uses end-to-end encryption and sophisticated security protocols to protect identified visitor data.

Implementation requires minimal technical resources:

• OpenSend: Less than 5 minutes for pixel installation
• Smartlook/Hotjar: 10-15 minutes for script setup
• Enterprise platforms: Days to weeks with dedicated resources

For brands exploring AI-powered segmentation, OpenSend Personas builds ad-ready customer cohorts from purchase behavior data, enriched through the proprietary identity graph for smarter targeting across Klaviyo, Google, and Meta.

Ready to turn anonymous visitors into revenue? Start your $1 trial and see contact-level identification in action.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the main difference between Smartlook and identity resolution tools like OpenSend?

Smartlook focuses on behavioral analytics—session recordings, heatmaps, and funnel analysis—to help you understand how visitors use your site. OpenSend focuses on identity resolution, revealing who those visitors are through contact-level identification of 25-35%. Smartlook shows you what visitors do; OpenSend tells you who they are and enables direct outreach.

How does identifying anonymous website visitors improve my marketing ROI?

When you identify anonymous visitors, you can retarget them through email, ads, and direct mail rather than losing them forever. OpenSend clients document $85,000-$2,000,000 in revenue within 30-90 days, with ROI ranging from 12-140x. This direct attribution makes every marketing dollar more effective.

Is it legal to capture email addresses of unknown website visitors?

Yes, when done through compliant methods. OpenSend operates through consent-based partnerships with thousands of sites where users have agreed to partner marketing. The platform complies with US laws including CAN-SPAM and CCPA, using only first-party data from opt-in consumer profiles.

What kind of integrations should I look for in a Smartlook alternative?

For identity resolution, prioritize integrations with email service providers (Klaviyo, Attentive), e-commerce platforms (Shopify, WooCommerce), and advertising platforms (Facebook, Google). OpenSend offers native integrations with major ESPs and CRM systems, enabling automatic sync of identified visitors into your marketing workflows.

How much does a typical identity resolution service cost?

OpenSend's transparent pricing starts at $500/month for 2,000+ identities, scaling to $2,000/month for higher-traffic sites. Per-identity costs range from $0.21-0.25, with credits rolling over monthly. A $1 trial provides full feature access for 2 weeks, allowing you to validate ROI before committing.

What does 'cookie-less' mean in the context of visitor identification?

Cookie-less identification doesn't rely on browser cookies that users can block or delete. OpenSend's proprietary identity graph uses first-party data from consent-based partnerships, maintaining identification accuracy even as browsers phase out third-party cookies. This future-proofs your visitor identification strategy.