What is Heap?

Heap is a robust product analytics platform that provides users with a plethora of in-depth insights into customer behavior and needs. With Heap, you can track user interactions in real time across all touch points within your product.

Insights from Heap help you dig deeper into the paths users take when navigating your product and identify precise points of friction. Plus, the platform uses sophisticated data science capabilities to help you make better-informed, data-driven decisions to improve user experience.

Heap features for product analytics

As a cutting-edge product analytics tool, Heap is packed with features that help you monitor product usage, activation, and adoption. Insights from Heap can help you identify points of friction in user journeys and optimize the user experience to drive product growth.

Here’s how Heap facilitates seamless product analytics:

• Once you install Heap’s code snippet into your product, it automatically starts tracking user actions. You can access this raw data on your Heap dashboard and label the most relevant events.

• You can use the Live data feed for a glimpse of how users move through your product in real time. This makes it easier to identify and eliminate roadblocks.

• You can use Session Replays to monitor the exact journey a user takes within your product. It’ll help you identify points where they struggle to complete an action or leave without taking the desired action.

• Head to the “Usage over time” chart in the Analyze section for an overview of different events, user behavior, and conversion rates. Heap provides numerous filters for these events too.

• Other product analytics features that come in handy include Journey Maps, Funnel analysis, Retention analysis, and Heatmaps.

Heap’s feature tags

Despite being an analytics tool, Heap does not come with the feature tag function. In short, if you can’t just tag a feature without coding in Heap.

Instead, it tracks everything but you have to install a code snippet in the header of your website or use Google Tag Manager to record the event on all pages.

However, these events won’t be ready for use when you need to perform a product analysis until you label them. To see details of specific events, you have to use Event Visualizer, which is a point-and-click interface to label events. As you give it a name, you can see all the details relating to the event in Heap’s Explore event dashboard.

Heap’s funnels

Setting up and monitoring conversion funnels is a crucial part of improving the customer experience and driving product adoption. Each user funnel comprises various events that drive users to a specific goal, such as sign-up or purchase.

Here’s how you can define and track funnels in Heap:

• Heap requires you to choose the events in the right order. Also, you’ll have to label events before you can use them in a funnel.

• You can filter the funnel using various user properties, segments, and date ranges.
• You can perform a side-by-side comparison of the funnel for different user segments.
• Heap shows you conversion rates at each stage of the sales funnel.
• Journeys also come in handy for funnel analysis by helping you monitor the different paths users take within an in-app experience.

Heap’s paths

Path analysis is crucial to understanding user behavior. It can also give you a glimpse into how users interact with different on-page elements and help you identify points of friction.

Heap offers various features and tools to facilitate path analysis. These include:

• Session Replays to help you step into a user’s shoes. It offers a first-hand view of the journey users take through a product.
• Heatmaps to monitor how users interact with different in-app elements. You get a closer glimpse of things they struggle with. You can create heatmaps for various URLs and select date ranges too.

• Journeys charts to analyze the different paths users take within a particular in-app experience.

• Funnel charts for an overview of how conversion rates change between different events and where users drop off.

Heap’s in-app events

Event tracking is one of the most common use cases of product analytics tools. Measuring and monitoring event data lays the foundation for analyzing user behavior and improving the customer experience.

Heap facilitates event tracking in the following ways:

• The Auto Capture feature automatically tracks all user actions within your product. These include clicks, page views, form fills, etc. In other words, you don’t have to set up custom events.
• Under the Data tab of your Heap dashboard, you can access raw event data. It provides insight into common actions users take in your product.

• You can also identify the most important actions and assign meaningful labels to them. The events will be available in the Labeled events sections.
• The Live data feed ensures you can track and analyze the necessary events in real time.
• In the Properties section, you can find more relevant information about events and user interactions.

What are the pros and cons of Heap?

Heap’s pros

As a cutting-edge digital insights platform, Heap offers several valuable features for product developers, marketers, and customer success teams. Let’s take a closer look at its benefits.

• Automated data capture – Heap’s Autocapture feature lets you automatically track user actions, such as clicks, swipes, page views, and form submissions. That means you don’t have to worry about setting up custom tracking for each event. Also, you can track events retroactively.
• Easy setup – Getting started with Heap is as easy as installing a code snippet into your product. In other words, you don’t need a lot of technical knowledge or expertise.
• Advanced analytics – Besides Autocapture, Heap also lets you track custom events and services-side events to help you build a comprehensive user behavior data set. With features like Heatmaps and Session Replays, it results in unparalleled insights into how users navigate your product and the paths that lead to desired outcomes.
• Real-time insights – With the Live data feed, you get a chronological and real time view of all Heap events (raw and labeled). That means you can track and analyze user interactions as they happen.
• Seamless collaboration – Features like Shared Spaces facilitate collaboration and reporting among cross-functional teams. Similarly, you can share Session Replays with other team members.
• Web and mobile support – Heap works on all kinds of products, be it websites, web applications, or mobile apps.
• Extensive integrations – Heap supports integrations with more than 100 platforms, including customer engagement tools, data warehouses, product adoption tools, etc.
• Emphasis on customer education – Heap provides a variety of helpful resources to get you get started with the platform and use it to the fullest. These include Heap University (video tutorials), Heap Plays (how-to guides), Help Center, and a comprehensive blog and content library.

Heap’s cons

Heap comes with an impressive set of features that provide you with a 360-degree view of how users navigate your product and interact with various elements. But the product analytics platform isn’t without limitations.

Here are a few drawbacks of Heap worth mentioning:

• Steep learning curve – While the setup is a cakewalk, Heap involves a fairly steep learning curve due to its vast array of features. As a new user, it’ll take you a while to get a grip on all its features.
• Data storage requirements – Heap’s Autocapture feature requires you to collect and store a ton of data. Things can get expensive quickly as your product attracts new users.
• Lack of an engagement layer – While Heap offers an in-depth overview of user behavior and product usage, it doesn’t let you act on these insights. You’ll need other customer engagement tools to trigger targeted in-app experiences based on data and insights from Heap.
• Limited segmentation capabilities – Heap lets you segment users based on events and properties. It can be restrictive when you want to build hyper-personalized user journeys.

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What do users say about Heap?

Heap boasts a rating of 4.3 (out of 5 stars) on G2 and 4.5 (out of 5 stars) on Capterra. Most users praise the platform’s advanced data capture and analytics capabilities and the intuitive UI.

Here’s what a Heap user has to say:

“Retroactive conversion rate and funnel data without tag manager”

We’ve been using Google Analytics for years but have time and time again found ourselves limited to reporting on what we had the foresight to create tags for. Heap doesn’t make us regret not having thought ahead and instead, we feel rewarded with historical data and benchmarks for conversion and click rates for anything we can think of.

Some of the reports appear to be very similar in what they are showing us, but that is also a positive in that we have the flexibility to arrive at insights via a number of paths.

Heap helps us determine what elements on our website have a positive impact on our SaaS lead gen website’s conversion rates and which produce bottlenecks and confusion.

• Chris K. (Mid-Market)

Despite generally stellar ratings and reviews, some Heap users complain about the overwhelming learning curve and lack of thorough onboarding.

Here’s what a user has to say about Heap:

“6 months into Heap, has not drove value for product analytics team yet”

Auto capture and snapshotting are very cool in theory, but they don’t work all the time. The implementation was not done perfectly in onboarding, so tagging roadblocks and limitations constantly come up.

Extremely challenging to natively tag a complex site with microsites, clients, etc. involved in the product funnel. iOS and Android app tagging are not straightforward, and most end users of Heap can’t figure out how to do it, even with documentation and video instruction. Segment integration doesn’t work seamlessly. The lack of support from Heap reps (specifically in the form of workshops, examples using our data, walk-throughs, q&a has been pretty terrible. We had one session right when onboarding to walk us through the tool, but nothing since.

• Jordan S. (Mid-Market)

Heap’s pricing

Pricing for Heap is available on request. You’ll have to contact the sales team for a quote. The final price will depend on various factors, including the number of sessions and integrations you need.

That said, Heap offers a free plan that lets you track up to 10,000 user sessions per month and stores your data for 6 months. Review platforms like G2 say that paid plans start at $3,600 per year. All paid plans come with a 14-day free trial, too.

You can choose from the following plans:

• Free – Ideal for teams looking to establish product-market fit.
• Starter – Suitable for startups looking to scale their business.
• Growth – Useful for companies that need advanced features, such as account analytics and report alerts.
• Pro – Tailored for enterprise businesses with robust security and compliance requirements.

It’s worth mentioning here that Heap offers a handy ROI calculator to help you get a clearer picture of whether it’s worth the investment.

3 Reasons why you might need a Heap alternative

Heap is one of the most sophisticated product analytics tools available in the market. But it isn’t without flaws.

Here are three scenarios where it makes sense to look for a Heap alternative:

• Your team lacks technical know-how – While it’s easy to install and configure Heap, navigating its features requires a bit of technical expertise. If your team members come from non-technical backgrounds, they might struggle to use Heap to the fullest.
• You want to trigger in-app experiences based on analytics – Heap doesn’t offer built-in tools to personalize the user experience based on product analytics and insights. You’ll need to use third-party engagement tools to turn these insights into actions. A product adoption platform like Userpilot can help you bypass the process of finding the right engagement tools.
• You’re on a budget – You need to set up a robust data storage infrastructure to retain all the data and insights collected from Heap. This is in addition to the monthly or annual subscription fee you’ll pay to use Heap. As a result, you’ll likely end up overshooting your budget, which makes Heap unsuitable for small teams and early-stage startups.

Userpilot – A better alternative for product analytics

Product analytics lets you collect and analyze data about how users interact with your product so you can extract actionable insights. Userpilot lets you look at granular product analytics, such as which features have the highest adoption rates, and big-picture insights like trend reports. Here are Userpilot’s top product analytics features:

• Feature tagging: Userpilot’s click-to-track feature tagger lets you view how many times a feature has been used and by how many users to measure its adoption. Users on the Starter plan can add up to 15 feature tags while those on the Growth or Enterprise tier can create unlimited tags.

• Trends and funnels: Userpilot’s trends and funnels report lets you extract actionable insights from big data. You’ll be able to see which stage of an onboarding/conversion funnel most users drop out on and create trend reports with detailed breakdowns by user or time period.

• Retention tables: This lets you gauge product performance – how effective it is at retaining users using cohort tables and retention curves.

• Paths: You can generate and access path reports directly within the reporting builder in Userpilot, alongside funnels, trends, and retention reports. With Paths, you can have an overview of how users navigate your product features – offering invaluable insights into their interactions with your products.

• Saved reports: The saved reports analytics dashboard shows you all the reports you’ve created and lets you filter, export, or delete any reports in a single click. In addition to adding filters or sorting by report type, you can also edit or duplicate reports to help you review analytics.

• Analytics dashboards (Product Usage, New Users Activation, Core Feature Engagement, User Retention): These dashboards enable you to keep track of your key product performance and user behaviour metrics at a glance, without any technical setup required.
• Analytics integrations: Userpilot integrates with some of the most popular analytics tools like Amplitude, Mixpanel, Segment, Google Analytics, and more. This makes it possible to sync product analytics both ways between the tools in your tech stack (two-way integration is only available for Hubspot at the time of writing, more to come).

Userpilot’s feature tags

Tracking feature adoption is essential to identify under-utilized features and push users toward discovering them. Userpilot lets you tag features without writing any code, track adoption through engagement analytics, and visualize feature usage with heatmaps.

Here’s how you can use Userpilot to conduct feature audits and drive feature adoption:

• No-code tagging: Userpilot’s no-code feature tagger lets you add tags through the Chrome extension’s visual builder. You’ll also be able to select whether the tag should track clicks, hovers, or text inputs from users to get contextual data that reflects actual feature usage.

• Feature tags: The advanced feature analytics of Userpilot lets you track feature performance trends, see the top 20 features across your user base, and see granular data for individual features. You’ll also be able to filter your data by segment, company, or time period.
• Usage heatmaps: Userpilot heatmaps show you the features/elements with the most interactions. Heatmaps can be generated on the Features & Events dashboard by clicking on a tagged feature, editing it in the builder, and then clicking the heatmap icon on the bottom toolbar.

Userpilot’s funnels

Tracking user funnels is essential to getting a deeper understanding of the customer journey and reducing friction points. Userpilot helps you track user funnels by creating funnel reports, reviewing saved reports in bulk, and seeing key metrics like the average time it takes to complete a funnel.

Here’s how you can use Userpilot to generate funnel charts:

• Funnels: Userpilot’s funnel reports can show you the percentage of users that progress from one stage to another. Stages could consist of pages, actions, or other activation points. You can also set a specific order that these steps need to be completed or adjust the time period.

• Reports: The saved reports area of your Userpilot account lets you view, edit, duplicate, delete, or export (as a CSV file) all the analytics reports that you (or your teammates) have generated. You can also filter results by the teammate who created the report or the type of report.
• Duration: The granular funnel analytics can offer more insights into each stage of a particular user funnel, such as how long it took the majority of your users to complete it from start to finish. You can filter by time period and set minimum/maximum parameters to remove outliers.

Userpilot’s paths

Path reports are essential for understanding user flows and journeys, offering invaluable insights into their interactions with our platform or application.

Within the Paths chart(s) visualization in Userpilot, you can:

• See the different flows/links users take from one step/event to another.

• Choose how many steps after or before the starting/ending event you want to report Users’ flows for.
• Choose whether you want to include Pages (i.e. Both User-Tagged and Untagged) in the visualization.

• Change the period of the analysis.
• Change the way you want to view the analysis: All Paths vs. Top Path (i.e. most common).

• Narrow down the targeted end-users by applying global or inline (event-specific) filters.
• View a breakdown of the end-users (or their associated companies) upon clicking on a specific node/step in the visualization chart.

You also have automatic path analysis in Userpilot’s core feature engagement analytics dashboards without having to set up anything. This will give you an overview of user navigation and engagement with your product so you have insights to work on improving their experience.

Userpilot’s in-app events

Tracking and analyzing event data gives you a better understanding of user behavior so you can capitalize on opportunities to improve the in-app experience.

Here are the ways you can use Userpilot as an event-tracking tool:

• Event tracking: The Userpilot flow builder lets you track custom events by tagging individual features (Feature Tag), by API (called Tracked Events) or by setting them up using a combination of feature tags and tracked events (Custom Events).

• Feature tags: Userpilot’s no-code feature tagger lets you track important features/elements based on different interaction types (clicks, hovers, and text inputs). You can then display the engagement and performance of different features through heatmaps.

• Data integrations: Userpilot has native integrations with popular analytics tools like Amplitude, Mixpanel, Google Analytics, and more. This makes it possible to sync your event data across multiple tools within your tech stack.

What are the pros and cons of Userpilot?

Userpilot pros

As a full-suite digital adoption platform, Userpilot has all the features you need to onboard users, track analytics, and gather feedback from customers without writing a single line of code. Here are a few pros of using Userpilot as your product growth solution:

• No-code builder: Userpilot’s Chrome extension lets you build flows, add UI elements, and tag features without writing a single line of code.
• UI patterns: There are plenty of UI patterns to choose from when using Userpilot, such as hotspots, tooltips, banners, slideouts, modals, and more!
• Startup-friendly: Userpilot’s entry-level plan gives you access to all available UI patterns so you can hit the ground running.
• Walkthroughs and flows: Build engaging interactive walkthroughs and personalized onboarding flows that target specific segments of your user base.
• Self-service support: Build an in-app resource center to help users solve problems, customize its appearance to align it with your brand, and insert various types of content (videos, flows, or chatbots) to keep your customers satisfied.
• A/B testing: Userpilot’s built-in A/B testing capabilities will help you split-test flows, iterate on the best-performing variants, and continually optimize based on user behavior.
• Feedback collection: Userpilot has built-in NPS surveys with its own unified analytics dashboard and response tagging to help you retarget users. There are other survey types to choose from and you can even create your own custom survey.
• Survey templates: There are 14 survey templates to choose from so you can gather feedback on specific features or run customer satisfaction benchmarking surveys like CSAT and CES.
• Advanced analytics: Userpilot lets you analyze product usage data, monitor engagement on all in-app flows, and use the data to create user segments that are based on behaviors instead of demographics.
• Event tracking: Userpilot’s no-code event tracking lets you tag UI interactions (hovers, clicks, or form fills) and group them into a custom event that reflects feature usage.
• Third-party integrations: Userpilot has built-in integrations with tools like Amplitude, Mixpanel, Kissmetrics, Segment, Heap, HubSpot, Intercom, Google Analytics, and Google Tag Manager so you can share data between all the solutions in your tech stack.

Userpilot’s cons

Of course, no tool is perfect and there are a few cons to consider before choosing Userpilot as your user onboarding or product growth solution:

• Employee onboarding: Currently, Userpilot only supports in-app customer onboarding.
• Mobile apps: Userpilot doesn’t have any mobile compatibility which could make it difficult for developers with cross-platform applications to create a consistent user experience for both versions of their product.
• Freemium plan: There’s no freemium Userpilot plan so those bootstrapping their startup and need sub-$100 solutions should consider more affordable onboarding platforms like UserGuiding or Product Fruits.

What do users say about Userpilot?

Most users laud Userpilot for its versatile feature set, ease of use, and responsive support team:

I recently had the pleasure of using Userpilot, and I must say it exceeded all my expectations. As a product manager, I’m always on the lookout for tools that can enhance user onboarding and improve overall user experience. Userpilot not only delivered on these fronts but also went above and beyond with its impressive new features, unparalleled ease of use, and truly exceptional customer support.

What truly sets Userpilot apart is its outstanding customer support. Throughout my journey with Userpilot, the support team has been responsive, knowledgeable, and genuinely dedicated to helping me succeed. Whenever I had a question or encountered an issue, their support team was always there to assist promptly, going above and beyond to ensure my concerns were addressed effectively.

Source: G2.

Of course, other users are also kind enough to share constructive criticism regarding specific features like event tracking filters:

“The filtration while analyzing specific events is a little confusing. Understanding of custom properties and data management configuration could have been more organised.”

Source: G2.

Userpilot’s pricing

Userpilot’s transparent pricing ranges from $249/month on the entry-level end to an Enterprise tier for larger companies.

Furthermore, Userpilot’s entry-level plan includes access to all UI patterns and should include everything that most mid-market SaaS businesses need to get started.

Userpilot has three paid plans to choose from:

• Starter: The entry-level Starter plan starts at $249/month and includes features like segmentation, product analytics, reporting, user engagement, NPS feedback, and customization.
• Growth: The Growth plan starts at $749/month and includes features like resource centers, advanced event-based triggers, unlimited feature tagging, AI-powered content localization, EU hosting options, and a dedicated customer success manager.
• Enterprise: The Enterprise plan uses custom pricing and includes all the features from Starter + Growth plus custom roles/permissions, access to premium integrations, priority support, custom contract, SLA, SAML SSO, activity logs, security audit, and compliance (SOC 2/GDPR).

Conclusion

There you have it.

It should be easier now to make an informed decision whether Heap is your go-to option for product analytics. Ultimately, the best choice will depend on your product and current needs.

If you’re looking for a better alternative to Heap for product analytics, book a Userpilot demo today to experience firsthand how it can enhance your user experience and drive product growth!