Hypothesis vs SiteDots

Hypothesis adds shared annotations to digital course materials, letting learners mark passages, ask questions, and reply to peers alongside the content. Users can create private highlights and page notes, add tags, and hold threaded discussions. Supported material includes web pages, PDFs, EPUB files, YouTube videos, and content from VitalSource and JSTOR. For institutional use, Hypothesis lists LTI 1.3 integrations with Canvas, Blackboard, Moodle, D2L Brightspace, and Sakai; annotations can also sync with LMS gradebooks, including Canvas SpeedGrader. A free account is available for personal use and collaboration. The web app works with a Chrome extension on Chrome and other Chromium browsers, or a bookmarklet in Firefox and Safari. Hypothesis also offers API access, exports in JSON, plain text, CSV, and HTML, and JSON import. The Free plan costs nothing, billed per student/yearly, and includes core annotation, private groups, and self-service support. The project was founded as an open-source project in 2011.

SiteDots lets people place comments, feedback and fix requests directly on a live website. Its Chrome extension adds tags to page elements through isolated scripts, and the maker says setup takes under two minutes without scripts or code snippets. Comments record the screen size and device type when posted; the maker says annotations stay attached to their target elements as screen size changes. Projects can include teammates and clients who view, edit, create and approve tags. Invitees need no paid plan and can join projects without limit. The maker says the extension works with WordPress, Shopify, Webflow and custom-built sites, including private pages the user can access. It currently works in Chrome, with support for other browsers being worked on. Trello, Notion, Slack and Discord syncing, plus Webhooks and Zapier automation, are marked coming soon in pricing. The free plan allows one project/domain, three users and 12 dots per project. Paid plans are $10 USD per month billed yearly and $33 USD per month billed yearly.