The journey to a good rom-com: Hotstar vs Prime vs Netflix

5 min readSep 20, 2023

P.S: These opinions are my own, based on my limited knowledge, and are not affiliated with any of the companies in any way. This case study is purely for my own learning.

A few months ago, I had posted case studies on Toucan and Nykaa, as a way to break down and understand what a user journey could look like.

I received a comment requesting this case study.

I thought it would be a good challenge to do a deep dive on how the 3 streaming platforms compare to each other — especially in terms of onboarding and content discovery.

P.S: This case study is based on the product experiences in April 2021, so things may have changed since then

Without further ado, jump in:

Case Study

Tip: view this on your laptop, in full screen, and click on the arrows on the screen or on your keyboard to navigate the case study

Breaking Down The Experience

By the end of the case study, you will have seen that there was a clear winner, as one streaming platform led me to actually watching a movie while the others didn’t. However, I think each platform has some pros and cons in the entire experience, which I break down below.

Home page

Hotstar: shows all the content even before logging in, which may be overwhelming for users (or great for users who want to know exactly what they are getting). According to research done by Netflix, seeing all the content upfront led to people going into “shopping mode” and ultimately found that it led to poorer results than when users were shown just a glimpse of the content.
Prime: the minimal content preview potentially doesn’t show enough to pique one’s interest
Netflix: there’s a “wall of content” which strikes a good balance between showing just enough, but not too much, content.

Pricing options

Hotstar: the pricing options are confusing — there’s no way to select the “free plan” that they show on the page; there is lack of consistency in the duration of the plans (VIP does not have a monthly plan); there are a ton of metrics on which the 3 plans differ which is not easy to understand at a glance
Prime: the 30 day free trial is attractive and made very clear (they lead with it as the primary call to action); but if you are picking a payment plan the two prices are not on the same time horizon, similar to Hotstar.
Netflix: The prices of the different plans are all comparable as they are all monthly plans, and there are not too many metrics shown

Free plan

Hotstar: there appears to be a free plan but (a) it doesn’t say what it includes (b) you can’t select it in the sign up process (c) there’s no guidance on actually finding the free content on the site
Prime: has a generous 30 day free trial and advertises that front and centre on the home page, makes you input your credit card details but makes it clear that you can cancel anytime
Netflix: does not have a free trial sadly— but doesn’t pretend to have one either.

Sign up flow:

Hotstar: The login v/s subscribe options may be confusing for new users trying to sign up; the login with Facebook option adds to the confusion since it does not actually work
Prime: There’s a very long sign up process with 3 different OTPs (1 email verification, 1 mobile verification for linking your phone, 1 mobile verification for the payment) — which is quite frustrating for a new user.
Netflix: There’s a clear sign in v/s get started option. And there’s a singular way of signing up with one’s email with no verification process, which is more straightforward. It also shows the number of steps in the onboarding process to make it feel within reach. There are also small touches like porting over your email ID for you so you dont have to enter it twice. The playful copy adds some personality and the progress indicator helps make the goal of signing up feel within reach.

Personalisation

Hotstar: from the get-go, there is no preference selection so the content and recommendations that Hotstar offers feel generic and irrelevant. Plus the “recommended for you” section before logging in feels a bit…silly.
Amazon Prime: similar to Hotstar, there is no preference selection, so the content can feel generic and irrelevant, and the recommendations don’t carry any weight.
Netflix: Netflix is the only one that takes the time to understand users’ tastes and preferences in the sign up flow and thus can offer more relevant content, but selecting the movies itself could be a bit of a chicken-and-the-egg problem if you haven’t seen any of them before.

Content discovery

Hotstar: The movies category doesn't have any organisation by genres (I later found out that the genres I was looking for were in the “Premium” section — which is not the most intuitive place to look for movies). The content is also not labeled to show whether it’s free/premium/VIP until you click on it — which involves a lot of clicking to figure out if you’re eligible to watch the content.
Prime: The content is grouped by genre, making it easy to parse through; the funky search results for Amanda Bynes was amusing but not the best experience; hovering on the movie brings up the trailer which is a nice touch.
Netflix: The content is grouped by genre and there are “popular” or “trending” sections to guide people who may not know what they want to watch; the audio defaulting to Hindi was a strange experience, especially since changing your language preferences was a roundabout and unintuitive process. The trailer playing on hover with sound on is great to capture your attention (although may catch you by surprise)

Social proof

Hotstar: doesn’t include any reviews to help you pick between movies
Prime: Includes the IMDB ratings to offer more guidance in selecting content, but this may work against them if the ratings are consistently low
Netflix: Offers a custom match score to help guide users’ choices, but it’s unclear what the match % is based on — and slightly suspicious that all the match scores were so high.