Branch vs. Smartlook

Smartlook

Overview
Product	Rating	Most Used By	Product Summary	Starting Price
Branch	Score 8.6 out of 10	N/A	Branch provides a cross-platform linking and attribution platform, offering solutions that unify user experience and measurement across devices and channels. Branch powers mobile links and cross-platform measurement to more than 3 billion monthly users across the globe. It provides cross-platform marketing, engagement and measurement solution for over 50,000 apps — including Reddit, Buzzfeed, Twitch, Groupon, and many more.	N/A
Smartlook	Score 8.2 out of 10	Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)	Smartlook is an analytics solution tool for websites, iOS/Android apps, and various app frameworks, that answers the "whys" behind users' actions. It helps users understand precisely how customers interact with website and app — watch recordings, create heatmaps, use automatic tracked events, and build conversion funnels. Data is seen on one central dashboard, which enables sharing and collaborating with colleagues. This is to support clear, data-driven decision-making for product managers,…	$55 per month 5000 sessions

Pricing

Branch

Smartlook

Editions & Modules

No answers on this topic

Pro: $55
per month 5000 sessions
Free: Free forever
per month 3000 sessions
Enterprise: Custom pricing

Offerings

Pricing Offerings
Branch	Smartlook
Free Trial
No	Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No	Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No	No

Entry-level Setup Fee

Optional

Additional Details

Our main platform is free to all. Some of the free products that most apps find useful are content sharing, custom onboarding, referrals and organic app search. We have specialized products (Journeys (Smart Banner), Deep Linked Email, Dynamic Ads and Data Integrations) which are typically priced by volume of a company.

All Smartlook packages support both web and mobile app platforms.

More Pricing Information

Community Pulse
	Branch	Smartlook
Considered Both Products	Branch Jon Neseth Manager, Customer Experience Chose Branch Branch's links are the most consistent in the mobile space. They work across desktop and mobile, where AppsFlyer and Deeplink's didn't consistently perform in both places. Branch's measurement is more consistent across all customer touch points as well, which gives our … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Branch Appsflyer has a lot more of clients, and have a very good support team. Adjust on the other hand is loosing clients, and doesn't have a top level support. Nevertheless, Branch is a good platform that delivers good for the price. We still are more use to using Appsflyer as it is … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Branch We ended up selecting AppsFlyer due to its better integration with media and more reliable fraud protection system. Nevertheless, Branch.io is a great app which solves universal linking and mobile app attribution issues by allowing users to see which actions were taken from … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Branch Branch offers more than any of these tools considered individually. Moreover, cost-wise, it is much more effective as well. Incentivized Helpful? Ben (Xiaojun) Li Cofounder Chose Branch Branch's tracking analytics are not as effective. Currently, Branch Links only show stats for clicks from different platforms (Desktop/iOS/Android, etc.). It would be important if there is a way to know how to collect and show more user profiles such as location, male/female, … Incentivized Helpful? Prashant Mahajan Senior Lead Product Manager Chose Branch Deep linking is better. Appsflyer has more integrations. Incentivized Helpful? Sam Lepak Head of Digital Marketing Chose Branch We used to use AppsFlyer but unfortunately, we found errors in their mobile app attribution reporting. Firebase on the other hand, is a basic tool that has a lot of features, but the features are not extremely robust - especially the attribution or funnel reporting. As a result … Incentivized Helpful? Matheus Teixeira Torrano Co Owner Chose Branch It's really important that you analyze all your needs and compare them to the benefits that Branch provides to see if it fits. Incentivized Helpful? Arif Khan Senior Android Developer Chose Branch Firebase links have many shortcomings which Branch supports excellently like - Support for cross platform development tools, Integrations with marketing channels/platforms, web to app tools etc Incentivized Helpful? MH Mark Hetherington Programmer Chose Branch Branch is a much lighter solution largely targeted to attribution and deep links that can be available at no cost for the basic service. Adjust is much heaver and supports custom events but has a significant cost to consider so when optimising the costs vs income for the … Incentivized Helpful? Kunal Verma iOS Developer Chose Branch Branch is better for link tracking and data passing. Incentivized Helpful?	Smartlook Joseph Shapiro CEO (Chief Executive Officer) Chose Smartlook I like it more in different aspects such as pricing, capabilities, UI, etc. When it comes to the pricing, I have been using it for many years, and always was easy to use and to see what was happening with conversions. It's the most undervaluable tool these days. When I was … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Smartlook FullStory, Hotjar and Mixpanel Incentivized Helpful? Francesco Tonti Development Director Chose Smartlook I find that SmartLook has a simpler interface to use than Hotjar. Incentivized Helpful? Firoz Parakkat Co-Founder & Head of Product Chose Smartlook Easy Integration and Ease of Use. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Smartlook FullStory is more complex, detailed, better-looking and way more expensive. Therefore I think it makes sense to start with Smartlook at least. FullStory also has yearly plans which is really annoying. Hotjar doesn't have browser error logging which is a huge disadvantage for … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Smartlook Smartlook is the better overall value of all the solutions we've tried. Hotjar was overpriced, Lucky Orange seems more like an experimental project than a full-fledged product and Mouselflow seems to have some problems dealing with some types of browsers that we did not … Incentivized Helpful? AK Aaron King Owner Chose Smartlook Both were great to use, but Smartlook was WAY more affordable. Incentivized Helpful? CT Chris Turowski Tech Lead Chose Smartlook Smartlook is couple steps ahead of the solutions we've used before. Especially when it comes to funnels. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Smartlook For me personally, I use Smartlook more for the debugging side of things, so I wish it had more debugging/error reporting features. Incentivized Helpful? EK Eric Kowallis Product Manager Chose Smartlook Like I mentioned, Smartlook is younger than FullStory and it seems like they're trying to improve. The dashboards are lacking. I wish I had more control over what I see there instead of the standard. We use the API to determine customer name and company and I'd like to see some … Incentivized Helpful? David Mynář Head Of Online Marketing Chose Smartlook We use both intensively in our agency. Google Analytics is our first go-to analytics suite, but we often combine it with Smartlook to prove or disprove our hypotheses. Both our web design and marketing projects benefit greatly from this synergy. Google Analytics offers better … Incentivized Helpful? SB Sarah Bellaiche Product Design/Development Engineer Chose Smartlook For me, Smartlook gathers everything a product designer or even a product manager needs. We have everything gathered in a single platform, and it's very powerful we can analyze everything we need. It's the only product where recordings are as well done. The UX/UI of the … Incentivized Helpful? AG Axel Gislason Engineering Manager Chose Smartlook Smartlook has all the features of the other products I have tried but was both simpler to use and cheaper. Incentivized Helpful? Leandro Chaves Analista de sistemas Chose Smartlook Smartlook is better and costs less than many other similar systems. Incentivized Helpful? IG Ivan GadeaSaez Assistant Director Chose Smartlook I have never used other products similar to Smartlook. Incentivized Helpful? Giuseppe Avagliano Marketing Director Chose Smartlook Smartlook seems smoother than Hotjar and it also offers more customizable options such as events and funnels. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Smartlook Compared to Hotjar, the first, and most important criteria for us is the performance impact on our customers. We've always had problems with Hotjar's rather resource-intensive script, which causes a noticeable degradation even on medium to high-performance client devices. In … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Smartlook Smartlook is better in tracking events, building advanced funnels, and filtering out the sessions than Hotjar. It's definitely cheaper and more user-friendly than Fullstory. Incentivized Helpful? Nicholas Fenmor Collins Director Chose Smartlook Smartlook is far more cost-effective and simple to use for agencies with multiple clients than Hotjar, which targets the user companies more directly. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Smartlook So much simpler to the user and way more effective. The pricing for our requirement was also much better. Incentivized Helpful? Michael Freeman Head Of Marketing (Acting) Chose Smartlook The thing about Hotjar is they became too big too fast. They forgot what their product was all about and then started to charge an exorbitant amount for what is a glorified heat map. Smartlook has taken into account new features but always kept the essence of what they're … Incentivized Helpful? Shane McCallum Director of Product Chose Smartlook Far better bang for your buck. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Smartlook At my old company, we debated using FullStory, but I believe Smartlook was the better option financially. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Smartlook 100% better. Microsoft had no support at all. They directed you to a forum where other users "could" assist, but there was no assistance. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Smartlook In terms of analytics, we are still using other products, which are more suited to our needs and more complex. In terms of user behavior and session recording, this is by far the best tool there is! Incentivized Helpful?

Best Alternatives
	Branch	Smartlook
Small Businesses	Firebase Crashlytics Score 9.5 out of 10	Lucky Orange Score 3.2 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies	Firebase Crashlytics Score 9.5 out of 10	Siteimprove Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises	Firebase Crashlytics Score 9.5 out of 10	Contentsquare Score 7.3 out of 10
All Alternatives	View all alternatives	View all alternatives

User Ratings
	Branch	Smartlook
Likelihood to Recommend	8.9 (0 ratings)	9.0 (0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew	- (0 ratings)	8.9 (0 ratings)
Usability	10.0 (0 ratings)	10.0 (0 ratings)
Availability	- (0 ratings)	9.1 (0 ratings)
Performance	- (0 ratings)	8.2 (0 ratings)
Support Rating	9.0 (0 ratings)	10.0 (0 ratings)
Implementation Rating	- (0 ratings)	7.3 (0 ratings)
Configurability	- (0 ratings)	8.2 (0 ratings)
Ease of integration	- (0 ratings)	9.1 (0 ratings)
Product Scalability	- (0 ratings)	8.2 (0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale	- (0 ratings)	9.1 (0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale	- (0 ratings)	9.1 (0 ratings)

User Testimonials
	Branch	Smartlook
Likelihood to Recommend	Branch is the gold standard linking platform - other services like AppsFlyer or bit.ly aren't able to deliver the consistency Branch does. It is a developer platform as well, so your engineering team will be able to sink its teeth into many different use cases without worrying about how to "hack" it. I believe Branch can continue to become a simpler tool going forward, but the fact that it has a free tier and seeks to fit into YOUR tech stack makes it the easy choice Incentivized Jon Neseth Manager, Customer Experience Read full review	Smartlook is best for screen recordings. Especially when you are running MVPs. However, its pricing is very high. If your daily visitors are too much then either you will have to lose many of your recordings or you will have to pay too much money. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
Pros	Branch Link's Desktop SMS is a very good feature, we use it on our landing page such as: https://acetutor.io/smsBoarding Branch Link's cross platform support for redirect is another powerful feature. We use it on our main website to redirect users to the correct App Store or Google Play to download our app: https://www.acetutor.io Incentivized Ben (Xiaojun) Li Cofounder Read full review	Funnels are both easy to configure yet comprehensive enough to detect complicated customer journeys. Real-time recording provides exceptional insights to our design & engineering teams. Session recording is surprisingly lightweight and seems to cause no substantial performance degradation for our customers. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
Cons	To my understanding Branch uses a last touch attribution method. Being able to change this setting or view the data between different attribution models would be extremely useful (first click, linear, time decay, etc). Not like it's a con, but it would be great for Branch to keep running totals on attrition rate and daily active users. Also maybe look into more integrations with data export partners - Appsee, Smartlook, etc. Incentivized Sam Lepak Head of Digital Marketing Read full review	Events -- but I think this is something that we could improve ourselves in our system. Create some suggestions for funnels and heatmaps. Give general insights for a certain period of time, e.g. from Oct. 7th to 12th, 75 users left the checkout step and 60% of them left due to a payment issue. IDK just bringing some ideas! Send an e-mail with main insights. Incentivized MN Marina Neta Senior Product Design/Development Engineer Read full review
Likelihood to Renew	No answers on this topic	As my ratings show, I have been absolutely delighted with Smartlook in terms of usability, cost, support, and its benefit to our organization. I have given it such high ratings because I think it has really benefitted our organization and I think it could do the same for other companies too. Incentivized RF Rob Fielding Digital Growth Manager Read full review
Usability	It's very usable. Multiple teams in the company are using it, and it never takes more than 5 mins to explain to someone how to use this. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	Smartlook is very intuitive and simple for an average programmer (I don't know if it will be as simple for a normal user). We have never had to resort to looking for information on the web or ask for help for something we didn't understand or didn't work as expected. Incentivized IG Ivan GadeaSaez Assistant Director Read full review
Support Rating	We have never had any issue with support response yet. In fact, they have a local POC in our city too, who routes the urgent matters to their escalation matrix. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	I am always very happy when a company offers the option to use online chat, as I do not like to call customer support and writing an email is just too slow and cumbersome. I did not even expect a reply right away, yet it took the customer support team less than a minute to respond to my problem. Incentivized Michal Pekarcik Group Conversion Rate Optimization Expert Read full review
Alternatives Considered	We used to use AppsFlyer but unfortunately, we found errors in their mobile app attribution reporting. Firebase on the other hand, is a basic tool that has a lot of features, but the features are not extremely robust - especially the attribution or funnel reporting. As a result we decided to give Branch and have been extremely pleased since. Incentivized Sam Lepak Head of Digital Marketing Read full review	Like I mentioned, Smartlook is younger than FullStory and it seems like they're trying to improve. The dashboards are lacking. I wish I had more control over what I see there instead of the standard. We use the API to determine customer name and company and I'd like to see some custom dashboards. Incentivized EK Eric Kowallis Product Manager Read full review
Return on Investment	It's improved sale attribution, which allowed us to spend on more effective channels and decrease spends on less effective channels. It's saved marketing spends, which were actual fraud through affiliate networks, as we were able to prove the fraud from Branch and avoided paying out to that affiliate. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	We have increased the conversion rate from the beginning till now with 120%. We redesigned our landing pages and decreased the bounce rate by 41%. We rethinked and redesigned our menu structure and internal site linking to increase the time users spent on our site based on the data we got from Smartlook analysis. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
ScreenShots		Smartlook Screenshots