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Some hotspot tracks are topographically smooth and broad (Nazca, Carnegie/Cocos/Galapagos, Walvis, Iceland), while others are rough and discontinuous (Easter/Sala y Gomez, Tristan-Gough, Louisville, St. Helena, Hawaiian-Emperor). Smooth topography occurs when the lithospheric age at emplacement is young, favoring intrusive magmatism, whereas rough topography is due to isolated volcanic edifices constructed on older/thicker lithosphere. The main controls on the balance of intrusive versus extrusive magmatism are expected to be the hotspot swell volume flux Q(s), plate hotspot relative speed v, and lithospheric elastic thickness T-e, which can be combined as a dimensionless parameter R=(Q(s)/v)(1/2)/T-e, which represents the ratio of plume heat to the lithospheric heat capacity. Observational constraints show that, except for the Ninetyeast Ridge, R is a good predictor of topographic character: for R<1.5 hotspot tracks are topographically rough and dominated by volcanic edifices, whereas for R>3 they are smooth and dominated by intrusion.