Heap

Heap is product analytics built on autocapture. Its snippet records page views, clicks, changes to form fields and form submissions on every page, so you can define an event later ("clicked Start trial") and see it on past data. On top sit charts for usage over time, funnels, journeys (the paths people take), retention and segments, plus Illuminate, which Heap says points out friction in flows you were not watching. Paid plans add Sense, an AI chat assistant.

Account analytics, the engagement matrix and report alerts come with Pro. Session replay, heatmaps and error analysis are add-ons on Pro and Premier. Heap Connect, which copies your data to a warehouse such as Snowflake, BigQuery or Redshift, is an add-on on Pro and included on Premier. Heap also captures mobile apps, so a journey can run from the website into the app.

Contentsquare, an experience analytics company founded in Paris, bought Heap in 2023, and it also owns Hotjar. Heap.io still sells Heap under its own name, and Contentsquare says existing Heap accounts and plans keep working as usual. Heap's privacy policy now points to Contentsquare's.

Heap suits SaaS companies, online retailers, and financial and healthcare teams (the sectors its own pages target) that want funnels, journeys and retention without writing tracking code for every button. It shines when questions come up after the fact: a product manager can ask how many people opened a settings page last quarter, even if nobody planned that event.

It suits less well a content site that mainly counts readers, a team that needs a price before talking to sales, or anyone who needs numbers that are fresh to the minute. If you want product analytics with public prices, look at Mixpanel. For a broader comparison, see the product analytics shortlist.

Installing is one script in the page head. Heap's guides also cover Google Tag Manager, WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, Segment, iOS, Android, React Native, Flutter and other platforms, and data starts arriving at once. A new account gets one main project with two environments, production and development, and Heap suggests sending test data to development first.

The time goes into the next steps. You name raw clicks as events with the visual labeller, and send user identities through the identify API so a person's sessions join up across devices. You add properties such as plan or company, and use the capture controls to block pages or subdomains you do not want recorded. Then you learn which chart answers which question. On Growth and up, the Sense chat assistant is meant to shorten that learning.

Expect a first funnel on day one, and a few weeks before your event definitions are tidy enough to trust.

Charts are built from users, sessions and events, filtered and grouped by any property, and saved to dashboards. Funnels show conversion between steps and how long people take; journeys map paths before or after an action; retention shows who comes back; segments group users by behaviour and work across charts. Because autocapture keeps the raw data, a new event definition applies to the past as well. Rage clicks are captured automatically on paid plans.

Saved charts and dashboards can be emailed daily, weekly or monthly, with a CSV attached. CSV exports and chart customisation come with Growth, and report alerts and the engagement matrix need Pro. For data outside the app, Heap offers APIs on every plan, Heap Connect to sync data to your warehouse, and a one-time CSV export of your data if you leave.

Heap's live data feed streams raw and labelled events as they arrive, up to about 15 seconds behind, which is useful for checking your tracking. The rest of the app is slower. Heap says it does not provide data in real time, and that a new event typically takes less than an hour to move from the live feed into charts.

Heap sets first-party cookies. The main one (_hp2_id or _hp5_meta, depending on the snippet version) holds a user ID for 13 months minus a day. Accounts with session replay get two more, one of them kept for 2 years. The newer SDK can keep data in localStorage instead, but there is no cookieless mode.

By default Heap also captures the visible text of elements people click. You can switch that off, redact text and attributes with Heap Redact, or block pages and subdomains in the capture controls. Heap says it does not capture IP addresses by default and uses them only to find a visitor's country, region and city, which you can also turn off.

Heap's sub-processor list puts its main hosting on AWS in Virginia, with an EU location on AWS in Ireland, and Heap's pricing lists region-specific storage only on Premier. The same list places Heap's AI features and the session replay add-on in the US. Heap's data processing agreement includes standard contractual clauses for transfers from the EU to the US.

Data history is 6 months on Free and 12 months on paid plans, and Pro and Premier can buy up to 2 more years. Heap deletes data older than 37 months, or older than your history limit if that is longer. Whether you need a consent banner depends on the law where you operate.

Heap counts sessions, not events. On the web, a session ends after 30 minutes without a page view. A small site pays nothing up to 10,000 sessions a month, with autocapture, core charts, 6 months of history and one project. Note what happens at the limit: Heap keeps collecting, but asks you to upgrade before you can view your data again.

A growing product moves to Growth. Heap publishes no price for it: you install the snippet and get an estimate based on your sessions. Growth adds the Sense assistant, unlimited users and reports, CSV exports and 12 months of history, but still no session replay or heatmaps.

A larger organisation buys Pro or Premier, both on custom session pricing from sales. Pro adds account analytics, report alerts and a customer success manager, with replay, heatmaps, Heap Connect and extra history as add-ons. Premier includes Heap Connect, unlimited projects, advanced permissions, audit logs and region-specific storage. Contentsquare also sells Heap's features inside its own Product Analytics plans, also on quote.

Because no paid price is public, compare your quote with tools that publish theirs: see our web analytics pricing comparison.

WireBoard (made by us) fits if Heap's delay is the problem and you mainly need web analytics. Its dashboards update within seconds, it tracks events, goals, funnels and revenue on every plan, and its prices are public: free for 50,000 pageviews a month on 2 sites, then $9 a month for 100,000 pageviews on 50 sites.

Mixpanel covers funnels, retention and flows with public prices, and includes session replay and heatmaps on its free plan of 1 million events a month.

Matomo offers funnels, cohorts, heatmaps and recordings in open-source software you can host yourself, or on its cloud in Frankfurt from $26 a month.

Hotjar, now sold as part of Contentsquare, focuses on heatmaps, recordings and surveys rather than product analytics, with a free plan for 200,000 sessions a month. Our heatmaps shortlist lists the other options.

Pricing is the first wall. Only the Free plan has a public price: Growth shows an estimate once you install the snippet, and sales quote Pro and Premier. Free stops at 10,000 sessions a month with 6 months of history, and if you pass the limit you have to upgrade before you can see your data again.

Heap is not real-time. Its own docs say it does not provide data in real time, and the live data feed is a tool for checking that events arrive. Session replay and heatmaps, which Mixpanel includes on its free plan, cost extra here on quote-only plans.

Autocapture means a lot of raw data. Someone has to name events and keep definitions tidy, or reports become hard to trust, and clicked text is captured by default, so check what your pages show. With a 13-month cookie and US hosting by default, plan for consent in the EU.