In-Depth Comparison: Microsoft Clarity vs. Mouseflow

Figuring out how users navigate your digital spaces is crucial for success. Whether it's website visitors or employees using internal tools, understanding their behavior is the key to making improvements. This article puts two user behavior analytics giants, Microsoft Clarity vs Mouseflow, head-to-head. We'll compare their features, pricing, and target audiences to help you pick the right tool to transform your website and web applications into user-friendly havens.

Core Functionalities

Both Microsoft Clarity and Mouseflow equip you with essential tools to analyze user behavior. These include:

Session Replays: Witness how users navigate your website or web enterprise applications with user session recordings.

Heatmaps: You can use heatmaps to see how users interact with your website. Heatmaps show which parts of your website users access the most and the least. This information can help you understand user behavior better. It can also guide you in making improvements to your website.

Image: Heat Maps in Mouseflow

Image: Heatmaps in Microsoft Clarity

Click and Scroll Tracking: Analyze user interactions at a granular level, pinpointing exactly where users click, scroll, and hover on your web pages. This helps identify areas of high user engagement and identify issues such as drop-off points.

Image: Scroll Data in Mouseflow

Image: Scroll Data in Microsoft Clarity

Conversion Funnels: Visualize the user journey through your website's conversion funnel, identifying where users drop off and optimizing each stage for maximum efficiency.

Surveys: Gather direct user feedback through targeted surveys embedded within your website to understand user needs and pain points. This is built into Mouseflow. While it isn't built in with Microsoft Clarity, you can get it with the Microsoft Clarity/VisualSP integration.

Focus on Privacy: Both tools prioritize user privacy by default. They anonymize IP addresses by default and offer options for GDPR and CCPA compliance, which can be important for businesses operating in regions with stricter data privacy regulations.

Where Microsoft Clarity and Mouseflow Diverge

While both tools offer core functionalities, Mouseflow has additional features designed to optimize user experience and drive conversions:

• A/B Testing: With their Optimizely integration, you can test different versions of your website elements (e.g., call-to-action buttons, product layouts) to see which ones perform better and improve conversion rates.
• Form Analytics: Gain insights into how users interact with forms on your website, identify areas of difficulty, and optimize forms for higher completion rates.
• More Heatmaps: Mouseflow offers 6 types of heatmaps (click, scroll, movement, attention, geo, live), while Microsoft Clarity has 3 (click, scroll, and area heatmaps).
• Friction Score: Mouseflow includes a Friction Score feature that identifies friction events like rage clicks and click-errors, detailing their locations and causes. It also scores pages and individual recordings based on the frequency and type of these events. While Microsoft Clarity helps you identify rate clicks and click-errors, they do not connect scoring with it.

Here are some of the ways that Microsoft Clarity stands out from Mouseflow:

• Free Plan with No Data Limits: While Mouseflow offers a limited free plan, Microsoft Clarity provides a completely free plan with unlimited data storage and traffic. This makes it a budget-friendly option for businesses just starting out with user behavior analytics.
• Integration with Other Microsoft Products: Using the VisualSP/Microsoft Clarity integration, you can make Clarity integrate seamlessly with other Microsoft products within the Power Platform like Dynamics 365 and Azure. This allows for a more unified data ecosystem for businesses heavily invested in the Microsoft suite.
• Mobile Applications: Microsoft Clarity is compatible with mobile apps, while Mouseflow isn't.
• Copilot Insights: Microsoft Clarity uses Copilot to provide summaries and key takeaways from session replays and Google Analytics data, making web analytics more accessible and understandable.

Image: Microsoft Clarity Copilot Insights

The Easiest Way to Get Started with Microsoft Clarity: VisualSP's Microsoft Clarity Integration

If you choose to go with Microsoft Clarity, we recommend doing so with the VisualSP/Microsoft Clarity integration since it simplifies the implementation process significantly. VisualSP is a Digital Adoption Platform (DAP) that provides on-demand training and support directly within web applications, helping users learn and use software more effectively.

Here are ways that VisualSP makes using Microsoft Clarity easier:

• Streamlined Implementation: Traditionally, using Microsoft Clarity requires manually installing the tracking code on each web application you want to monitor. VisualSP eliminates this repetitive task. With a simple toggle within VisualSP, you can activate Clarity for any website within your domain, saving you significant time and effort.
• Dynamics 365 Integration: Microsoft Clarity has limitations and cannot be directly installed on some platforms like Dynamics 365. VisualSP bridges this gap. Through its extension, VisualSP allows you to leverage Clarity's user behavior analytics within Dynamics 365, providing valuable insights into how users interact with your CRM system.
• Expert Support: VisualSP boasts a team of Microsoft Clarity experts who can assist you throughout the setup process, creating your first Clarity project for you.

Get started free with VisualSP and Microsoft Clarity today.

Bottom Line: Mouseflow vs Microsoft Clarity

If you need advanced features like conversion funnels, A/B testing, and form analytics, Mouseflow offers a wider range of functionalities for you. On the downside, you may end up having to pay for some of that.

If you're on a budget and starting out, Microsoft Clarity's free plan with unlimited data is ideal. Since both VisualSP and Microsoft Clarity offer free starter plans, leveraging them together is a strategic decision that delivers exceptional value.