ToolJet
ToolJet runs two release trains at once, and neither has changed direction in months
Comparison · Infra & APIs
Depot vs Hotjar
A side-by-side editorial comparison of Depot and Hotjar — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Depot vs Hotjar: at a glance
| Feature | Depot | Hotjar |
|---|---|---|
| Sector | Infra & APIs | Infra & APIs |
| Velocity score | 6.3 | 0.0 |
| Sparks · 30d | 1 | 0 |
| Top themes | ci-cd, build-acceleration, test-analytics, source-control | stale-feed, user-research, surveys, crawl-source-issue |
| Last editorial update | 1d ago | 12d ago |
| Website | — | Visit → |
What is Depot?
Depot is expanding from faster builds into the whole CI stack — tests, source control, and its own metal.
Depot has spent the last month building outward from build acceleration. Test results went generally available with JUnit ingest, org-wide flaky and slow test analytics, and timing-based shard balancing. Underneath that, Depot Metal moved CI and Sandboxes onto bare-metal microVMs the company controls end to end, and Depot Code entered private beta as a diskless git server backed by blob storage. The smaller releases fill in the surrounding surface: Tailscale access to private networks, GitLab OIDC, Datadog CI Visibility, stacked pull requests, and macOS 26 runners on M4.
What is Hotjar?
Hotjar's update feed has gone quiet — the 2026 entries are share buttons, not releases.
The three most recent entries are not product updates at all: they are captures of the page's social share widget, carrying 'Copy link' as their title and a Facebook share dialog as their URL. Behind them, the newest genuine announcement is from April 2025, covering improvements to Surveys and User Tests including prototype testing. The substantive items below that date to 2024.
Depot vs Hotjar: editorial side-by-side
Depot
6.3INFRA · APIS
Depot is expanding from faster builds into the whole CI stack — tests, source control, and its own metal.
◆ Current state
Depot has spent the last month building outward from build acceleration. Test results went generally available with JUnit ingest, org-wide flaky and slow test analytics, and timing-based shard balancing. Underneath that, Depot Metal moved CI and Sandboxes onto bare-metal microVMs the company controls end to end, and Depot Code entered private beta as a diskless git server backed by blob storage. The smaller releases fill in the surrounding surface: Tailscale access to private networks, GitLab OIDC, Datadog CI Visibility, stacked pull requests, and macOS 26 runners on M4.
◆ Where it's heading
Each layer Depot adds is one it previously rented — compute from cloud runners, source hosting from GitHub, test insight from nothing at all. Owning the storage and hypervisor tiers is what makes the performance claims possible, and owning test data is what turns a build accelerator into something that reports on the pipeline rather than just running it faster. The pattern suggests Depot is positioning as the full CI platform, with speed as the entry point rather than the product.
◆ Prediction
Depot Code should move from private to open beta with tighter Depot CI integration, since a git server the company controls is what makes source-aware caching and test selection possible. Expect the test analytics to grow toward selecting which tests to run, not only how to split them.
Hotjar
0.0INFRA · APIS
Hotjar's update feed has gone quiet — the 2026 entries are share buttons, not releases.
◆ Current state
The three most recent entries are not product updates at all: they are captures of the page's social share widget, carrying 'Copy link' as their title and a Facebook share dialog as their URL. Behind them, the newest genuine announcement is from April 2025, covering improvements to Surveys and User Tests including prototype testing. The substantive items below that date to 2024.
◆ Where it's heading
What the real entries show is a product that expanded from behavioural analytics into structured research — surveys, user tests, prototype testing, AI-tagged responses, and a path from survey respondent to follow-up interview. Whether that expansion has continued through 2026 cannot be told from this feed, because nothing since April 2025 has been captured with content.
◆ Prediction
There is not enough recent data to predict a next move. The feed's newest real announcement is more than a year old and the entries after it are page furniture, so any read on Hotjar's current direction would be invented rather than observed.
Alternatives to Depot and Hotjar
Other Infra & APIs products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either Depot or Hotjar.
Honeycomb
Honeycomb bets that the agent, not the engineer, should notice the anomaly first
Jenkins
Jenkins is shrinking its own war file and rebuilding its UI, one weekly release at a time
GitHub
Copilot's model roster churns weekly while GitHub quietly rewires policy and billing plumbing
incident.io
Nexus does the diagnosis; the rest is on-call plumbing
werf
Four channels, one fix stream — werf's releases are mostly concurrency repairs.
See all Depot alternatives → · See all Hotjar alternatives →
Recent activity from Depot and Hotjar
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 2d agoDepotmacOS 26 is now the default macOS version for GitHub Actions runners
- 9d agoDepotDepot CI now supports native GitHub stacked pull requests
- 14d agoDepotTest results are now generally available ⚡
- 22d agoDepotAI analysis available for all Depot CI workflows and jobs
- 28d agoDepotSplit CI test suites with historical timing data (beta)
- 1mo agoDepotDepot CI now supports Tailscale
- 3mo agoHotjarShare-widget capture of the survey auto-tagging update
- 4mo agoHotjarShare-widget capture of the survey button labels update
- 4mo agoHotjarShare-widget capture of the interview invitations update
- 1y agoHotjarNew ways to get the insights you need
- 1y agoHotjarDuplicate capture of the April 2025 Surveys and User Tests update
- 1y agoHotjarSpot bugs and improve your site with User Tests
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Depot and Hotjar?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. Depot is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 0.0), with 1 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is Depot better than Hotjar?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Depot is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 0.0), with 1 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Infra & APIs products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to Depot?
Top Depot alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Depot alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/depot for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to Hotjar?
Top Hotjar alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Hotjar alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/hotjar for the full list with editorial commentary on each.