When web app builders turn to privacy-first analytics tools like Umami, they’re typically getting a clean and open-source experience—but with one major limitation: no support for advanced visual tracking like heatmaps and scrollmaps. For those who want deeper insight into how users engage with their web apps, there are several excellent open-source alternatives out there.
TLDR: While Umami satisfies basic privacy-friendly analytics needs, it lacks visual behavior tracking tools such as heatmaps or scrollmaps. Developers who want more granular insights often turn to other open-source tools that prioritize user interaction mapping. In this article, we’ve handpicked the top 7 tools that strike the balance between transparency, control, and powerful user experience tracking. Whether you’re optimizing UX or debugging UI elements, these open-source tools offer the visual data you can’t get from Umami alone.
Contents of Post
Why Heatmaps & Scrollmaps Matter
Understanding where users click, how far they scroll, and which areas are completely ignored can reveal far more than traditional metrics. Heatmaps show the intensity of user interaction on specific zones of a page, while scrollmaps track how deep users go before bouncing. As a developer or UX designer, these insights help answer crucial questions:
- Which CTAs are working—or not?
- Are users engaging with below-the-fold content?
- Is there visual confusion on a key page?
To uncover these behaviors, here are the top 7 open-source click tracking tools used by web app builders when Umami isn’t enough.
1. Heatmap.js
Best for: Lightweight front-end based heatmaps with easy integration.
Heatmap.js is one of the most popular lightweight libraries for rendering heatmaps built entirely on JavaScript. It doesn’t include session recording or scrollmaps out-of-the-box, but it does offer:
- No server dependency—fully client-side
- Customizable data input and gradients
- Canvas-based rendering for high performance
This makes it ideal for developers building their own analytics pipeline where full control is needed. It can be easily embedded into apps to track custom interactions and render heatmaps on-the-fly.
2. Self-Hosted MouseStats Clone
Best for: Advanced behavior tracking similar to paid tools like Hotjar.
This isn’t a project with a clean name or central repo, but several developers have created open-source clones of MouseStats and Hotjar that combine:
- Click heatmaps
- Scrollmaps
- Visitor recordings
- Form analytics
Setups require more tinkering but allow full control over data privacy and infrastructure. If you want the features of paid SaaS platforms with open data pipelines, this type of system offers a complete solution—and some freelancers even help you deploy it quickly.
3. Umami + Custom Heatmap Plugin (Concept)
Best for: Developers who already use Umami and want to extend it.
If you love Umami but miss visual data, a few community-built scripts can extend event tracking into “click zones” and then use libraries like D3.js or Heatmap.js to render heatmaps. Though still in early experimental stages, it’s a growing DIY trend for technical builders who prefer:
- Sticking with Umami’s ecosystem
- Modular tracking reports
- Own data warehousing + reporting stack
This isn’t plug-and-play but it shows the rising need for visual data even in minimal analytics stacks.
4. D3 Heatmap
Best for: Full control of rendering and data manipulation with D3.js.
D3.js is a robust data visualization library often used by developers who want custom plots and reporting. The D3 Heatmap project allows building pixel-accurate heatmaps with scroll coordination and flexible color mapping. Features include:
- SVG or Canvas rendering modes
- Interactive data overlays
- Integration with existing event data streams
It’s not a standalone tracking solution—instead, it’s perfect for teams feeding interaction data from multiple sources and rendering their own UX dashboards.
5. HeatmapClickTracker
Best for: A plug-and-play click tracking with MySQL backend.
This handy open-source tool package takes care of both tracking and rendering. You get a simple JavaScript snippet to embed in your app, and it logs events into a MySQL database. The admin panel then offers:
- Click heatmap views by page
- Browser and device segmentation
- Data filtering to isolate behaviors
Though not maintained actively as of now, it’s a good base for developers to build self-hosted, GDPR-compliant heatmap solutions.
6. SessionStack Self-Host Clone
Best for: Session recording and visual analysis in complex SPAs.
Not strictly just heatmaps, but this tool logs mouse movement, scrolling, and clicks as part of session replays. Developing this on your own stack gives you:
- Full browser behavior capture
- Playback controls for debugging flows
- Heatmap-compatible data layers
More suitable for technical teams focused on debugging and QA pipelines rather than pure marketing optimization.
7. Plausible + Heatmap Integration (Experimental)
Best for: Users of Plausible Analytics wanting visual data via third-party scripts.
Much like Umami users, Plausible users are also seeking lightweight analytics with optional heatmap support. Though Plausible doesn’t natively support heatmaps, some developers use third-party overlays like:
- Integrating visually with Heatmap.js
- Tracking interaction zones via custom events
- Visualizing with charting libraries
It’s an active field of GitHub discussion and low-code innovation, proving that open-source builders are merging tools to get combined benefits without compromising privacy.
Final Thoughts
If you’re building a web app and want to truly understand what users are doing—beyond just visitors and pageviews—then heatmaps and scrollmaps are vital. While Umami remains an excellent analytics backend, its lack of inbuilt visual tracking shouldn’t limit your potential insights. Fortunately, with the growing landscape of open-source tools, you don’t need to pick privacy over capability. You can have both.
Evaluate how technical your team is, how much customization you need, and whether you want a quick solution versus a built-from-scratch ecosystem. Each tool listed here offers something unique. In the world of user behavior analytics, open-source is not just catching up to mainstream SaaS—it’s redefining it.