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Heap for user engagement analysis – quick summary
- Heap is a good choice for user engagement analysis and it comes with features such as feature tags, in-app events, behavioral analytics, and survey analytics.
- 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.
- If you’re looking for a better option for user engagement analysis, Userpilot exceeds both functionality and value for money compared to Heap.
- Ready to see Userpilot in action? Schedule a demo today to explore its powerful user engagement analysis capabilities firsthand.
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.
Must have features of user engagement analysis tools
Here are some must-have features that you should look for when considering a user engagement tool:
- Have different UI patterns such as checklists, modals, tooltips, banners, and hotspots – so you can build interactive in-app experiences to drive engagement.
- Options to offer in-app support by creating a resource center so you can provide users with easy access to help articles, tutorials, and FAQs.
- Advanced segmentation features that allow you to filter customers based on product usage, in-app behavior, user feedback, etc. – so you can trigger flows or send hyper-personalized messages.
- A/B test for driving engagement that helps you identify what change is necessary to improve user experiences and increase conversion.
- User survey features for you to collect insights on user engagement and satisfaction – so you can improve your product offerings.
- Product analytics feature for engagement data visualization which enables you to track and act on user behavior data.
Heap features for user engagement analysis
Monitoring user behavior can be instrumental in helping you understand how users interact with different elements and features. Also, it offers insight into various paths users take to navigate your product. That, in turn, can help you identify users who repeat an action, reach a goal, or churn.
Heap facilitates user behavior analysis with the following tools:
- The Autocapture feature tracks user actions and collects event data as soon as you install Heap into your product. You need not set up custom events. That means you can monitor user behavior retroactively.
- Session Replays and Heatmaps provide you with an in-depth overview of how users navigate your product, including the actions they take and the roadblocks they face.
- With the Usage over time chart, you can monitor how different user segments interact with your product and even compare the behavior of different segments.
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 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.
Heap’s behavioral analytics
Monitoring user behavior can be instrumental in helping you understand how users interact with different elements and features. Also, it offers insight into various paths users take to navigate your product. That, in turn, can help you identify users who repeat an action, reach a goal, or churn.
Heap facilitates user behavior analysis with the following tools:
- The Autocapture feature tracks user actions and collects event data as soon as you install Heap into your product. You need not set up custom events. That means you can monitor user behavior retroactively.
- Session Replays and Heatmaps provide you with an in-depth overview of how users navigate your product, including the actions they take and the roadblocks they face.
- With the Usage over time chart, you can monitor how different user segments interact with your product and even compare the behavior of different segments.
Heap’s survey analytics
First things first — Heap doesn’t offer pre-designed templates or built-in tools to implement user feedback surveys. If you’re looking to create and deploy in-app surveys, you might be better off using a platform like Userpilot.
Having said that, Heap offers various features to help you monitor any surveys you’ve implemented. For instance:
- You can set up a funnel to track how many users take an in-app survey after following a specific path.
- You can use Session Replays to understand the steps users take before and during a survey. It can help you understand why some users complete a survey while others don’t.
- You can also integrate Heap with platforms like Userpilot to collect and analyze data from in-app surveys and segment users based on the results.
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.
Looking for a Better Alternative for User Engagement Analysis? Try Userpilot!
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.
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.
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 user engagement analysis
Behavioral analytics make it possible to monitor user activity, group data into cohorts, and extract relevant metrics/insights. Userpilot lets you tag features to see how users interact with them, compare goals by cohort, and create trend reports that track behavioral patterns over time.
Here are some Userpilot features you can use for user behavior tracking:
- No-Code Feature Tagging: Userpilot’s click-to-track feature tagger lets you mark features, buttons, and elements with the Chrome extension. You’ll be able to track user interactions such as clicks, hovers, or inputs to get an accurate behavioral view for specific features.
- Funnel Reports: Funnel reports show you the total number of users that enter a funnel and the percentage of users that complete each step. This can help you track behavioral paths and see which stages most users get stuck on.
- Trends Reports: Generating trends reports will help you visualize the occurrence of key events over time and break down these analytics by device, browser, operating system, country, signup date, or even individual user IDs and email addresses to see granular behavioral analytics.
- Path Reports: Path analysis is useful for understanding common user behavior patterns, gauging user interactions with UI, monitoring if users follow recommended workflows, and identifying points of drop-offs and areas for improvement. With collected events, you can easily set up Path analysis in Userpilot without coding.
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 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.
Userpilot’s behavioral analytics
Behavioral analytics make it possible to monitor user activity, group data into cohorts, and extract relevant metrics/insights. Userpilot lets you tag features to see how users interact with them, compare goals by cohort, and create trend reports that track behavioral patterns over time.
Here are some Userpilot features you can use for user behavior tracking:
- No-Code Feature Tagging: Userpilot’s click-to-track feature tagger lets you mark features, buttons, and elements with the Chrome extension. You’ll be able to track user interactions such as clicks, hovers, or inputs to get an accurate behavioral view for specific features.
- Funnel Reports: Funnel reports show you the total number of users that enter a funnel and the percentage of users that complete each step. This can help you track behavioral paths and see which stages most users get stuck on.
- Trends Reports: Generating trends reports will help you visualize the occurrence of key events over time and break down these analytics by device, browser, operating system, country, signup date, or even individual user IDs and email addresses to see granular behavioral analytics.
- Path Reports: Path analysis is useful for understanding common user behavior patterns, gauging user interactions with UI, monitoring if users follow recommended workflows, and identifying points of drop-offs and areas for improvement. With collected events, you can easily set up Path analysis in Userpilot without coding.
Userpilot’s survey analytics
Survey analytics are an essential part of extracting actionable insights from user feedback. Userpilot’s advanced analytics capabilities extend to any surveys you build with it. You’ll be able to see granular analytics for surveys, sort by audience or time period, and view NPS data separately.
Here’s an overview of the Userpilot features you can use during survey data analysis:
- Granular analytics: Each survey you create has its own analytics tab where you’ll be able to see which percentage of respondents chose a particular option, view the most popular choices, and review qualitative responses of users. You can also sort by segment, company, or time period.
- NPS dashboard: The dedicated NPS dashboard compiles survey responses to show you all relevant Net Promoter Score data in one place. This includes total views, NPS score, total responses, overall response rate, the number of qualitative responses, and how NPS is trending over time.
- User responses: Userpilot lets you review the responses of each individual user so you can see how sentiment differs on a customer-to-customer basis. This makes it easier to schedule follow-up interviews or implement suggestions made by users with the highest lifetime value (LTV).
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 user engagement analysis. Ultimately, the best choice will depend on your product and current needs.
If you’re looking for a better alternative to Heap for user engagement analysis, book a Userpilot demo today to experience firsthand how it can enhance your user experience and drive product growth!
Looking for a Better Alternative for User Engagement Analysis? Try Userpilot!
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