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What is Heap?
Heap is cloud-based data analytics and customer behavior tracking tool. It provides real-time analytics by tracking every user interaction with the web or app, highlighting the user’s digital journey while using the product.
The analyzed data can be used by businesses to improve customer retention and optimize the user experience. Heap also supports integration with other tools as well to provide businesses with accurate analytics quickly and easily in an optimized way.
Heap offers impressive features, but it also has some limitations that might not meet your needs. Fortunately, the market is filled with alternatives to Heap, providing you with a vast array of options that can be overwhelming to navigate.
To simplify your search, we have compiled a list of 7 Heap competitors. In addition to providing a list of product analytics tools, we have also performed a comprehensive comparison of each tool to help you determine the one that best fits your business requirements.
Related: Guide To Tracking Website Visitors & Top 6 Tools for 2023
Why would you need an alternative to Heap?
As a SaaS business, the choice of an analytics tool is highly personalized and depends upon the needs and goals of the company. Therefore, depending on every business’s requirements, Heap may not always be the best choice.
- While Heap is undoubtedly a powerful analytics tool, it is not beginner-friendly, which means a lot of training is required to utilize the platform entirely.
- Setting up Heap is sophisticated and time-consuming, and the platform is relatively slow, and some companies might need a more performant platform.
- The Heap customer support is sluggish, according to most users. While this tool can provide complete insights, too much data can often force businesses to require additional approval, creating a storage dilemma.
- From the pricing point of view, Heap could be more budget-friendly, especially for small businesses.
- Technical limitations exist since Heap does not support compatibility with most available technologies.
These factors show that Heap as an analytics tool lacks in some areas of concern for businesses, leading to opting for an alternative analytics tool that best fits a business’s goals and product growth objectives.
Related: SaaS Metrics You Should Care About In 2023
Limitations of Heap
Although Heap is a successful digital insight platform, it has the following limitations:
- High Data Storage Costs: The cost of data storage is one of the major concerns of this tool since the tool provides comprehensive analytics data about each user interaction. Therefore, considerable data space is required, forcing businesses to opt for additional storage support, which can concern small businesses. Also, it pushes companies to invest in data privacy, protection, and backup technology.
- Difficult to Master UI: User Interface is another significant limiting factor since a better UI will make the user’s life easier while interacting with the tool. Heap, although comprehensive, offers a somewhat complex UI with a steep learning curve for beginners or people with a minimal technical background.
- Data Privacy Concern: Companies have privacy and security concerns about PII (Personally Identifiable Information) exposure, especially in finance and healthcare. Thus, regulations may require them to look for an alternative for more robust security measures.
- Integration Limitations: The need for integration with many industry solutions is another limitation of the Heap tool, like no Flutter support for mobile apps. Integration with other tools may require additional development.
- Despite all the automation, you need to have some experience with HTML tagging to use Heap. For this reason, people who have no computer knowledge can find this product analytics tool confusing.
Top 7 Heap alternatives and competitors
Having learned the limitations of the Heap analytics solution, let’s look at the Heap alternatives and competitors that might be a better fit for your business needs and goals.
Best Heap alternative: Usermaven
Usermaven is the best choice for a privacy-friendly analytics tool for both website and product analytics, with many top features to offer, as follows:
Top features of Usermaven:
- Easy to use and takes less time to set up.
- Easy on the pocket
- Supports retroactive data tracking
- Funnel Analysis can help filter out and track channels causing conversions
- Individual channel tracking and Cohort Analysis for identifying opportunities for business growth.
- User behavioral analysis to track user journeys with a focus on individual users' interests in the product or website.
- You can identify Power users as well as track Slipping away users
- Monthly and Weekly reports with in-depth insights about each nick and cranny of the website.
- Adblocker bypassing and cookie-less tracking with its pixel white-labeling technology.
Pricing Plan:
- Starter - Free forever
- Pro - Staring $14/month
- Premium - $99/month
Usermaven has several pricing plans starting from the free “Starter plan,” which supports web and product insights analytics, only 1 million events can be tracked in a month, six months of data history, and one user support.
The “Pro plan” supports different price packages starting from $14/month with 100,000 events tracking and going up to $99/month with 5 million events tracking, storage of data history up to 2 years, unlimited user support, use of pixel white-labeling technology, privacy law compliance, and much more.
The “Premium plan,” from $99/month to $324/month, supports everything the Pro plan gives but with unlimited users, data history, and even company-level analytics.
User Reviews
Usermaven allows in-depth privacy-friendly analytics, which is also backed up by its users as well.
According to Mike Hill (Founder at Curator.io & Frill. co):
“Finally, I have user-level and company-level analytics for my SaaS. After trying a bunch of different products, Usermaven stood out because it was easy to set up and simple to use.”
Pendo
Pendo holds its place as a reliable product analytics tool in the market. Some of the main features that show why Pendo’s analytics is great are given below:
Top Features:
- Visualization of every possible sequence of events
- Funnel analysis to see every sequence of steps
- Different reports, such as page views, guide views, tracked events, etc
- Retention tracking to see how frequently customers return to use the product.
- The segmentation feature of Pendo allows you to see how a specified segmented user group interacts
Pricing Plan:
- Free Package
- Starter Package - $7000 per year with additional features
- Portfolio Package - Price can be requested from Pendo
In terms of pricing, Pendo comes with many different options for starters. It provides a “Free package” that includes active users of up to 500/month with product analytics and In-app guides with other features.
The “Starter package” costs $7,000/yr, including up to 2,000 active users per month, product analytics, and in-app guides. A Net promoter Score (NPS) is also included, besides many other features like data management & access, security, etc.
The “Portfolio package” is the best option for organizations with multiple products. This package offers a wide range of features and support. The pricing details can be requested from the Pendo support team.
Apart from the packages, Pendo provides some customs add-on packages too.
User Reviews
The reviews by the users are primarily positive, with Pendo rocking a rating of 4.5/5 on GetApp. Some of the popular reviews are given below:
Andrew M.’s review of GetApp:
“ Great User Data & Analytics with ease.”
Related: 7 Best Tools For Privacy-Friendly Analytics
Mixpanel
Mixpanel is a powerful web and product analytics tool. It provides top features for keeping proper track of the product’s performance.
Top Features:
- Mixpanel provides interactive reports to make querying user data easy.
- Customizable boards which can monitor different KPIs in one place
- Real-time alerts keep businesses updated whenever a spike occurs in product flows.
- The team-sharing feature of Mixpanel can keep your team in the loop.
- Through segmentation, businesses can break down different analytics according to the selected events.
Pricing Plan:
- Free Plan - 100k monthly tracked users
- Growth Plan - $25/month
- Enterprise Plan - Custom pricing
For pricing, the “Free plan” allows 100k monthly tracked users and access to unlimited data history, core reports, monitoring & alerts, integrations, limited data exports, two-factor authentication, and more.
The “Growth plan,” starting from $25/month, includes everything the Free plan has and offers other features like data modeling, email support, reports & cohorts saving (unlimited), different add-ons, etc.
The “Enterprise plan” allows businesses to request custom plans that suites there needs. It includes all Growth plan features, advanced access controls, dedicated customer success, experiment reports, and more.
User Reviews
Mixpanel’s user feedback shows the tool is very useful for them. Here is what Devendra had to say about it:
Devendra S. review on G2: Rating of 4/5
“Mixpanel: A Comprehensive Tool for Tracking User Behavior and Analyzing Data.”
Google Analytics
Google offers a web analytics service known as Google Analytics. Some of those features via which Google Analytics climbs the charts to be one of the top free analytics tools are given below:
Top Features:
- Google Analytics provides in-depth analysis of different metrics using reports.
- Through visualization features, the view of different reports and a quick analysis are possible.
- A customizable dashboard enables users to set up the dashboard as per their need for a quick analysis.
- An advanced level of funnel analysis is possible using the Google Analytics tool. Through different types of funnel analysis, users can track the complete user journey.
- Multi-channel funnels allow you to track users from different traffic sources to your website.
- Google Analytics allows users to add tracking codes to their website/app using its Tag Management System.
Pricing Plan:
Google Analytics tool is available for its users free of cost. Its advanced version, “Google Analytics 360”, is priced at $150,000/yearly, available for large-sized companies since it was built keeping large organizational use in mind.
User Reviews:
The reviews and ratings of the Google Analytics tool are good. On Gartner, Google Analytics has a 4.5/5 rating according to 1372 ratings.
According to one reviewer on Gartner: Rating 4/5
“Excellent Platform For Performance Analysis and User Activity Analysis.”
Amplitude
Amplitude is another powerful web and app analytics tool. It is perfect for analyzing complex digital journeys to get insights into how customers perform their actions. Apart from this, Amplitude supports the following features:
Top Features:
- With powerful behavior cohorts, the analysis of VIP customers is easily done using Amplitude.
- Amplitude allows businesses to visualize their customer journey with precision.
- Amplitude supports funnel analysis that allows businesses to view valuable insights.
- Customer retention measurement is also possible through Amplitude’s analytics, which shows how customers are retained.
- Amplitude’s dashboard is excellent for getting a bird’s eye view into KPIs about the product for any business.
Pricing Plan:
- Free Starter Plan
- Growth and Enterprise Plans have Custom Pricing
For startups with small teams, Amplitude has a “Starter plan” free of cost. It offers core KPI analytics in chart form, advanced collaboration with other teams, unlimited user support, data sources, etc.
The “Growth plan” is available at request and offers everything in the starter plan plus behavioral reports, Single Sign-On (SSO), cohort analysis features, third-party integration, and more.
The “Enterprise plan” is perfect for large organizations with everything the Growth plan includes root cause analysis, advanced security protections, dedicated CSM, etc.
User Reviews:
Amplitude on G2 has a 4.5/5 rating, and most reviews are positive.
A review from Adria A. on G2: Rating of 5/5
“Efficient tool to track your app data.”
Kissmetrics
Kissmetrics is a modern analytics tool at an entry-level price. Whether for SaaS or eCommerce businesses, Kissmetrics can measure the desired metrics to drive more audience towards product growth. Some of the top features include:
Top Features:
- Kissmetric offers real-time data monitoring of different metrics related to product performance.
- Through funnel reports, the visualization of insights regarding the different paths customers take while using the product is possible.
- The customer profiles feature provides a complete picture of each customer.
- Another feature of Kissmetrics is the multi-platform and cross-device support.
Pricing Plan:
- Silver plan - $299/month
- Gold plan - $499/month
- Platinum plan - Custom Pricing
In terms of Pricing, Kissmetrics offers different plans with an annual agreement. The “Silver plan” is $299/month and is billed annually. This plan provides tracking of up to 10k monthly users, three user seats, one domain tracked, different types of reports, and other additional support like email, etc.
The “Gold plan” is available for $499/month, billed annually. It is stacked with features as it offers 25k monthly user tracking, ten user seats, three domains for monitoring, all the reports provided in the Silver plan, 24 months of data retention, and many more features. The “Platinum plan” can also be availed with pricing depending on the business’s custom needs.
User Reviews:
Kissmetrics has a 4.4/5 rating on Gartner. Here’s what its users say:
A review on Gartner: Rating of 4/5
“Excellent funnel marketing software.”
Adobe Analytics
Adobe Analytics is the final tool in our list of Heap alternatives among many online analytics tools. Some of these features include:
Top Features:
- The advanced segmentation IQ feature runs an automated analysis of different metrics and dimensions.
- The Ad hoc analysis workspace feature offers customization ability to its users to set up the canvas for different analysis projects.
- The tool also offers cross-device analytics to help gather insights about the customer journey from different devices.
- Cohort analysis allows businesses to identify and analyze trends by comparison of different groups of customers with shared characteristics.
Pricing Plan:
Adobe Analytics offers different packages. The pricing information can be requested from Adobe by selecting the desired plan. The three plans come with various feature categories: basic analytics, data collection (channel analysis), data transformation, privacy and governance, audience segmentation, and more.
- Select plan - enterprise-grade marketing analytics
- Prime plan - digital intelligence for enterprises
- Unlimited plan - digital intelligence for the experience enterprise
The “Select plan” offers enterprise-grade marketing analytics. This basic analytics plan includes features like an analysis workspace, quick insights, reports, ad-hoc analysis, and a mobile dashboard.
The “Prime plan” offers digital intelligence for enterprises, including all the Select plan features with additional features such as segment comparison, context-aware sessions, retroactive data, intelligence alerts, and many more.
The “Unlimited plan” provides digital intelligence for the experience enterprise. This plan offers complete power of Adobe Analytics tool to the businesses.
User Reviews
Adobe Analytics has 4.1/5 ratings on G2. Here is what its users have to say about its performance.
From Luis A. on G2: Rating 4.5/5
“Excellent Analytics and reporting platform and improves when integrating with other Adobe tools.”
