24 tools · 7 jobsConversion rate optimization tools, by the job they do.
Every list of CRO tools is thirty names in a row, which is no help if you do not yet know which part of your funnel is leaking. These are grouped by the question each one answers, in the order the questions are worth asking.
Where our interest lies: BetterPopup is a popup tool. It appears once below, in job 5, next to four competitors — one of which is free and two of which are cheaper than us. Jobs 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 7 have nothing to do with us. No third-party pricing is quoted anywhere on this page on purpose: prices across twenty vendors go stale faster than a page can be maintained, and a stale price is worse than none. Capability descriptions were checked on 17 August 2026.
Where are people dropping out?
Everything else is guesswork until you can name the step that leaks. This is the only category you cannot skip, and the one most stacks already have and never look at.
Google Analytics 4
FreeFunnel exploration, path analysis and ecommerce events. Free, and already on most stores.
PostHog
Product analytics with funnels, session replay, feature flags and experiments in one tool — useful when you would otherwise buy three.
Plausible / Fathom
Lightweight, cookie-free page analytics. Less depth, far less consent friction.
Why are they dropping out?
Analytics tells you the checkout leaks; replay tells you the shipping field rejects a valid postcode. This is the fastest category to get value from, and the one people skip.
Microsoft Clarity
FreeSession recordings, heatmaps, rage-click and dead-click detection. Free with no seat or session cap.
Hotjar
Heatmaps, recordings and on-page surveys — the category's default for a decade.
Lucky Orange
Replay plus live chat and form analytics, popular on smaller ecommerce stores.
FullStory
Replay with search across sessions, aimed at larger teams with a dedicated analyst.
What do they say is wrong?
Replay shows behaviour but never motive. One well-placed exit survey routinely beats a quarter of A/B tests for finding out what is actually blocking a purchase.
Hotjar Surveys
On-page and exit surveys attached to the same tool doing your replay.
Typeform
Longer post-purchase and research surveys people will actually finish.
Lyssna
First-click, five-second and preference testing before a design ships.
Which version actually wins?
The category everyone buys first and needs fourth. Below roughly a few hundred conversions a month, most tests cannot reach significance and you are better served by jobs 1 to 3.
Optimizely
Enterprise experimentation across web and product, with the price tag that implies.
VWO
Testing, heatmaps and surveys bundled — a common mid-market consolidation.
AB Tasty
Testing plus personalisation, strong in European retail.
Convert
Testing focused on privacy and consent handling.
Statsig
Feature flags and experiments, developer-led rather than marketer-led.
How do I keep the visit I already paid for?
Most store traffic leaves without buying and without identifying itself. Capture is what turns a paid click into something you can talk to again — and it is the category this page's author sells into, so read this one with that in mind.
OptiMonk
Popups and onsite messaging with a genuinely free tier. The place to start on no budget.
Klaviyo Forms
Included with Klaviyo and capable. If Klaviyo is your only destination you already own this.
Compared with BetterPopup →Privy
Popups plus the email and SMS sending in one bill — good when you have no email platform yet.
Compared with BetterPopup →OptinMonster
The widest set of campaign formats and templates, across six website platforms.
Compared with BetterPopup →BetterPopup
usOne popup that writes a signup to six providers at once and can withhold itself from anyone already subscribed through any of them. Narrow on purpose.
Is the page fast enough to convert at all?
A slow page loses conversions before any of the above gets a chance. Worth checking first, because it is free and takes four minutes.
PageSpeed Insights
FreeGoogle's own lab and field data, including the Core Web Vitals your store is judged on.
WebPageTest
FreeWaterfall detail when PageSpeed says something is slow but not what.
Can I change the page without a developer?
Only relevant once jobs 1 to 3 have told you what to change. Buying this first is how CRO budgets get spent redesigning pages that were converting fine.
Unbounce
Standalone campaign landing pages with built-in testing.
Instapage
Landing pages at ad-campaign scale, with per-audience variants.
If you only do three things.
The order matters more than the brands.
- 1Run PageSpeed Insights on your top landing page and your product page. Free, four minutes, and it occasionally explains everything.
- 2Install Microsoft Clarity and watch ten recordings of people who reached the cart and left. You will not need a hypothesis; you will have three.
- 3Only then decide whether the next spend is a testing tool, a capture tool, or a developer. Two of those three are usually the wrong answer.
CRO questions, answered plainly.
Including why a popup company wrote this.
Software that helps you turn more of your existing traffic into customers, rather than buying more traffic. In practice the label covers seven quite different jobs — measuring where visitors drop out, watching why, asking them directly, testing changes, capturing the visit, making pages fast, and building pages. Most tools do one of those well and gesture at the others.
There is no single best, because the categories are not interchangeable — a session replay tool and an A/B testing tool do not compete. The useful question is which job is unblocked next. If you cannot name the step in your funnel that leaks, that is job 1 and no other purchase will help yet. This page lists 24 tools across the seven jobs.
Yes, and two of them are genuinely worth building a stack around. Microsoft Clarity gives unlimited session recordings and heatmaps free, and Google Analytics 4 plus PageSpeed Insights cover measurement and speed at no cost. A store can work jobs 1, 2 and 6 for nothing before spending anything.
SEO increases how many people arrive. CRO increases the share of arrivals who do what you wanted. They share diagnostics and compete for the same budget, but they fail differently — SEO fails slowly and invisibly, CRO fails in a way you can usually watch happening in a session recording.
Roughly the order above. Analytics, then replay, then surveys, because those three are diagnosis and cost little. Testing comes fourth and only once you have the traffic to reach significance. Capture is worth adding early if a lot of paid traffic is leaving unidentified. Page building comes last, when you finally know what to change.
Because popups are one of the seven jobs and not the first one. BetterPopup appears once on this page, in job 5, alongside four competitors — two of which are cheaper and one of which is free. A list that put us first would not be much use to you.
Job 5, if that is the one you are on.
Keeping the visit you already paid for. That is the only part of this list we do.
Still deciding? Ten capture tools compared on published price — six cheaper than us.