> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.fullsession.io/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.fullsession.io/1.-introduction.md).
# 1. Introduction
### 1.1 What is FullSession?
Welcome to FullSession! This chapter gives you a high-level understanding of what FullSession is, how it works, and the vocabulary you'll see throughout the rest of the documentation. If you're new to FullSession, start here — the later chapters assume you're comfortable with the concepts introduced below.
FullSession is a **session-replay and product-analytics platform** that helps you understand how real people use your website. Instead of guessing why visitors drop off, abandon a cart, or fail to convert, you can *watch* their actual sessions, see exactly where they get stuck, and quantify those moments across thousands of users.
In a single platform, FullSession brings together:
* **Session replay** — pixel-perfect recordings of real user visits, complete with mouse movement, scrolls, clicks, taps, console errors, and network activity.
* **Heatmaps** — aggregated visualizations of where people click, how far they scroll, and which elements cause frustration.
* **Funnels** — multi-step conversion flows that show exactly where users drop off, with one-click access to the sessions behind each drop-off.
* **Segments** — saved groups of users defined by behavior, location, device, or any custom attribute you send.
* **Dashboards & insights** — customizable views built from your own metrics and widgets.
* **Feedback & surveys** — an in-page widget for collecting CSAT scores and qualitative responses.
* **Lift AI** — natural-language analysis that surfaces issues, builds segments from a prompt, and explains funnel drop-offs in plain English.
* **Alerts** — proactive notifications when something in your funnel, segment, or site behavior changes.
#### Who FullSession is for
FullSession is built for the people who care about the user experience on a website:
* **Product managers** — validate feature usage and prioritize what to build next.
* **UX & design teams** — see how visitors actually interact with new layouts.
* **Growth & conversion specialists** — diagnose funnel drop-offs and run experiments.
* **Customer support** — replay a specific user's session to debug an issue they reported.
* **QA teams** — reproduce hard-to-find bugs by watching the exact session where they happened.
* **Executives** — track high-level KPIs across all of your sites in one dashboard.
#### What problems does it solve?
| You want to know… | FullSession answers it with… |
| ----------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------ |
| *Why are users dropping off at checkout?* | Funnels + session replays of drop-offs |
| *Which buttons do people actually click?* | Click heatmaps |
| *Is anyone hitting that new feature?* | Custom events + insight cards |
| *What did the user do right before this error?* | Console & network panels inside the player |
| *How happy are visitors with this page?* | Embedded CSAT widget |
| *Are conversions getting worse this week?* | Alerts on segments and funnels |
***
### 1.2 How FullSession Works
FullSession has three stages: **capture → process → insights.** Once it's set up, the entire pipeline runs automatically — you only interact with the third stage.
#### Stage 1 — Capture
A small JavaScript snippet (the **tracker**) runs on every page of your site. As visitors browse, it records:
* DOM mutations needed to replay the page exactly
* Mouse movement, clicks, taps, and scrolls
* Page navigation and URL changes
* Console messages and JavaScript errors
* Network requests
* Custom events and user identity (if you choose to send them)
The tracker is asynchronous and designed to have no measurable impact on page performance. Sensitive content (passwords, credit-card fields, anything you mark) is **masked at capture time** — it never leaves the visitor's browser.
#### Stage 2 — Process
Captured data is streamed to the FullSession cloud, where it is:
1. **Indexed** so you can filter sessions by any attribute in milliseconds.
2. **Aggregated** into heatmaps, page statistics, segment counts, and funnel metrics.
3. **Analyzed** by Lift AI for emerging issues and conversion problems.
4. **Stored** for the retention period included with your plan.
You don't have to do anything here — processing happens within seconds of a session ending, and most sessions are watchable in near real-time.
#### Stage 3 — Insights
This is where you spend your time. From the FullSession web app you can:
* Watch any session in the **player**
* Build **funnels**, **segments**, and **dashboards**
* View **heatmaps** for any page
* Read **feedback & survey responses**
* Configure **alerts** that notify you when things change
***
### 1.3 Key Concepts & Glossary
These terms appear throughout the documentation. Knowing what each one means will make every other chapter easier to read.
#### Site
A **site** is a property you track in FullSession — typically one domain (e.g. `example.com`). You can have multiple sites under the same account, each with its own tracker, settings, sessions, and dashboards.
#### Visitor
A **visitor** is a unique person browsing your site. Visitors are anonymous by default. If you send identity information through the tracker (such as an email or user ID), they become **identified visitors** and are searchable by those traits.
#### Session
A **session** is one continuous visit by a single visitor. It begins when they land on your site and ends after a period of inactivity or when they leave. Every session has a recording you can play back.
#### Event
An **event** is any meaningful action recorded during a session — a click, a page view, a form submission, a console error, or a custom event you define (such as "Added to cart"). Events are what funnels, segments, and insight cards are built on.
#### Element
An **element** is anything you can point at on the page — a button, link, image, form field, or container. FullSession lets you target elements by CSS selector to build heatmaps, watched-element reports, and custom events.
#### Tag
A **tag** is a label attached to a session, so you can find or group sessions later. Some tags are **predefined** (e.g. "rage click", "error"), and some are **custom** — added manually or automatically based on rules you set.
#### Segment
A **segment** is a saved group of visitors or sessions matching a set of conditions ("Mobile users from Germany who reached the checkout page"). Segments power filtered dashboards, funnels, alerts, and AI analysis.
#### Funnel
A **funnel** is a sequence of steps you want users to complete (for example: *View product → Add to cart → Checkout → Purchase*). FullSession shows the conversion rate between each step and the sessions where users dropped off.
#### Heatmap
A **heatmap** is an aggregated visualization of behavior on a single page — where people clicked, how far they scrolled, or which elements they interacted with most.
#### Dashboard
A **dashboard** is a customizable page made up of **widgets** — charts, counters, lists, and other visualizations powered by your data. FullSession ships with role-based templates (Executive, Growth, Engineering, Product, Digital Ops) and you can build your own from scratch.
#### Insight Card
An **insight card** is a single widget on a dashboard. Each card shows one metric (such as "Average session duration this week vs. last week"). You build dashboards by combining cards.
#### Alert
An **alert** is a rule that watches a metric, segment, or funnel and notifies you when something changes — a conversion rate drops, an error spikes, or a goal is met.
#### Lift AI
**Lift AI** is FullSession's built-in assistant. It can analyze funnels, generate segments from a natural-language description, and surface user-experience issues automatically.
***
### 1.4 Plans & Feature Availability
FullSession is available on several plans, each unlocking a different set of features and capacity (sessions per month, data retention, team seats, etc.).
#### Plan tiers at a glance
| Plan | Best for | Highlights |
| -------------- | ---------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Free** | Individuals and small sites trying FullSession | Limited monthly sessions, core replay, basic dashboards |
| **Pro** | Established product & growth teams | Lift AI, advanced alerts, longer retention, custom roles |
| **Enterprise** | Organizations with security & compliance needs | SSO (SAML / Auth0), audit logs, dedicated support, custom retention |
> **Note** — exact session quotas, retention periods, and pricing are listed on the \[FullSession pricing page]. Always check the pricing page for the most current details, as plans evolve over time.
#### Feature availability by plan
Throughout this documentation, features that are not on every plan are marked with a tag:
* `Pro` — available on Pro and higher
* `Enterprise` — available on Enterprise only
For example, **SSO** and **audit logs** are `Enterprise` features, while **Lift AI** and **custom roles** are `Pro+`.\
\
 
#### Upgrading or changing plans
You can change plans at any time from **Account → Billing**. Upgrades take effect immediately; downgrades take effect at the end of your current billing cycle. See \[Chapter 17 — Billing & Subscriptions] for the full walkthrough.
#### What happens if you exceed your quota?
If you hit your monthly session limit, FullSession will continue to display your existing data but will **pause new recording** until the next cycle or until you upgrade. You'll receive an in-app notification and an email warning well before you reach the limit.
***
> **Next up:** \[Chapter 2 — Getting Started] walks you through creating your account, adding your first site, installing the tracker, and watching your first session.
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