Heap for Cohort Analysis: Features, Pricing, and Review

Looking for an effective cohort analysis tool and wondering if Heap is the best option for your SaaS company?

With numerous Heap alternatives, it can be challenging to make a final decision.

In this article, we’ll delve into precisely that – helping you determine whether Heap is the ideal choice for your cohort analysis needs. We’ll explore its features, pricing, and offer a comprehensive review to aid in your decision-making process.

Let’s get started!

TL;DR

• Heap is a good choice for cohort analysis and it comes with features such as paths, funnels, and user segmentation analysis.
• 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 cohort 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 cohort 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 cohort analysis tools

Cohort analysis is like having a microscope to examine your users’ journey. But what makes a cohort analysis tool truly instrumental? Here are some features to look for:

• Flexible customizations: Customize user group views based on the acquisition date, product usage, or demographics to understand individual behavior.
• Comprehensive metrics: A dashboard that gives access to key metrics like churn rate, retention, and average order value for a quick health checkup of user groups.
• Visualization tools: So that you can translate data into clear visuals to quickly identify trends and make informed decisions.
• Customer segmentation: Segmenting customers lets you customize marketing and product efforts. By addressing specific needs and interests, you ensure maximum impact every time.
• Retention analysis: To monitor user return rates to gauge product attractiveness and determine if users are engaged long-term.
• A/B testing: Test and refine strategies for various user cohorts. The goal? Enhanced conversion rates and user satisfaction.
• Other analytics tools: Cohort analysis tools should offer additional analytical features, like funnel analysis, heatmaps, and session recordings, so you can validate customer insights.

Heap features for Cohort analysis

Cohort analysis is indispensable for improving customer retention and minimizing churn. It involves dividing users into different cohorts based on shared attributes and behaviors and analyzing their usage patterns.

Here’s how you can use Heap to perform cohort analysis:

• Heap lets you segment users based on their actions, behavior, and demographic properties. For instance, you can segment users based on their location, IP address, or whether they complete a specific action.
• You can also create groups for users who repeat certain events or re-engage with your product. It can help you create user groups like promoters and detractors. These are the kinds of segments that work best for cohort analysis.

• Once you’ve created these segments, you can use Retention charts under Analyze to compare retention rates for different cohorts.
• Similarly, you can use the Funnel chart to compare conversion rates for different cohorts and understand user behaviors/properties that lead to desired outcomes.

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 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 cohort analysis

Cohort analysis is indispensable for improving customer retention and minimizing churn. It involves dividing users into different cohorts based on shared attributes and behaviors and analyzing their usage patterns.

Here’s how you can use Heap to perform cohort analysis:

• Heap lets you segment users based on their actions, behavior, and demographic properties. For instance, you can segment users based on their location, IP address, or whether they complete a specific action.
• You can also create groups for users who repeat certain events or re-engage with your product. It can help you create user groups like promoters and detractors. These are the kinds of segments that work best for cohort analysis.

• Once you’ve created these segments, you can use Retention charts under Analyze to compare retention rates for different cohorts.
• Similarly, you can use the Funnel chart to compare conversion rates for different cohorts and understand user behaviors/properties that lead to desired outcomes.

Heap’s user segmentation analysis

User segmentation is crucial to implementing personalized onboarding workflows and improving product adoption. Heap lets you segment users into different groups based on their actions and properties.

Here’s how you can do that:

• Head to the Data section in your Heap dashboard and select Segments. Any user segments you’ve defined earlier will be available here.
• Click Define Segment to create a new user group. You can segment users based on their actions, behavior, and properties (demographics, devices, etc.). Make sure you add a relevant label to each segment.
• Once you’ve created a segment, you can use it to filter all kinds of data, including Funnel, Engagement, and Retention analysis.

It’s worth noting that Heaps offers limited segmentation criteria. If you’re looking to segment users based on more detailed parameters, such as feedback and interaction with tagged features, Userpilot would be a better fit.

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.

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 cohort analysis

User retention is critical for the success of digital products, it’s linked to the product’s ability to consistently deliver value to the users and is a key measure of business health. It is also essential in the process of achieving a product-market fit and retaining constant growth.

For starters, Userpilot allows you to collect accurate data on user behavior inside web apps without any coding.

Thanks to its Chrome extension, you can easily tag features and create custom events to track with a few clicks.

Once you have the data, you can use it to build the cohort analysis table.

Userpilot allows you to:

• Create cohorts on the user and company level.
• Choose the start and return events defining retention in your product, like ‘Signed in’ and ‘Invited teammate’.
• Filter the events by events, user, and company properties.
• Choose the interval by which you view the data (days, weeks, months) and date range (e.g. last 2 weeks, or last 180 days).

Clicking on each cell reveals data on specific users that were retained.

You can also visualize the average retention as a line graph, both linear and cumulative.

Cool isn’t it?

It gets even better!

You can enhance the insights from cohort analysis by pairing it up with other analytics features:

• Heatmaps – to analyze user clicks, hovers, and text infills on a page.
• Funnel analysis – to visualize user conversions and drop-offs at key stages in the journey.
• Trends analysis – to track key metrics over time.
• Paths – to visualize all the events leading up to or following a conversion.

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 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 cohort analysis

User retention is critical for the success of digital products, it’s linked to the product’s ability to consistently deliver value to the users and is a key measure of business health. It is also essential in the process of achieving a product-market fit and retaining constant growth.

For starters, Userpilot allows you to collect accurate data on user behavior inside web apps without any coding.

Thanks to its Chrome extension, you can easily tag features and create custom events to track with a few clicks.

Once you have the data, you can use it to build the cohort analysis table.

Userpilot allows you to:

• Create cohorts on the user and company level.
• Choose the start and return events defining retention in your product, like ‘Signed in’ and ‘Invited teammate’.
• Filter the events by events, user, and company properties.
• Choose the interval by which you view the data (days, weeks, months) and date range (e.g. last 2 weeks, or last 180 days).

Clicking on each cell reveals data on specific users that were retained.

You can also visualize the average retention as a line graph, both linear and cumulative.

Cool isn’t it?

It gets even better!

You can enhance the insights from cohort analysis by pairing it up with other analytics features:

• Heatmaps – to analyze user clicks, hovers, and text infills on a page.
• Funnel analysis – to visualize user conversions and drop-offs at key stages in the journey.
• Trends analysis – to track key metrics over time.
• Paths – to visualize all the events leading up to or following a conversion.

Userpilot’s user segmentation analysis

User segmentation is a key part of building a contextual onboarding experience for new customers. Userpilot lets you segment your customers when they meet specific conditions, filter through analytics using user attributes, and trigger flows for users in different segments.

Here are some of Userpilot’s customer segmentation capabilities:

• Conditional Segments: Userpilot lets you build segments for users who match conditions on what device/browser/OS they’re using, which country they live in, what their NPS score is, and any custom events they’ve performed. You can then use these segments as filters/triggers.

• Analytics Filters: The product analytics and user insights dashboards on Userpilot can be set to only show data from certain user segments or companies. This makes it possible to identify actionable insights from specific user cohorts and benchmark performance between segments.
• Flow Triggers: Userpilot audience settings make it possible to target in-app flows to certain user segments or only show flows to users who meet specific conditions. You could also add event-based or page-specific triggers to show relevant flows with contextual timing.

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, user feedback, and customization.
• Growth: The Growth plan starts at $499/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 cohort analysis. Ultimately, the best choice will depend on your product and current needs.

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