Heap (by Contentsquare)

The pioneer of autocapture product analytics for non-technical teams

Analytics 4.4 / 5 Free tier / Custom Pricing Updated Mar 2026
🚀 Best for fast-moving startups without dedicated data engineers

Quick Verdict

Heap completely removes the engineering bottleneck from product analytics. By automatically capturing every single click, swipe, and pageview without custom tracking code, it empowers non-technical Product Managers to build retroactive funnels instantly. It is the ultimate tool for startups moving fast, though data governance can become slightly messy at enterprise scale. With its recent acquisition by Contentsquare, it now seamlessly blends quantitative funnel data with qualitative session replays.

Quick facts: Founded in 2013 by Matin Movassate & Ravi Belani · Acquired by digital experience giant Contentsquare (valued at $5.6B) in December 2023 · Famous for its "Smart Capture" technology that provides instant retroactive data.

Ease of Use (Setup)
5.0
Retroactive Analysis
5.0
Feature Depth
4.2
Data Governance
3.5
Pricing Predictability
3.8

What is Heap Analytics?

To truly appreciate Heap, you must understand the pain of explicit tracking. If you use traditional tools like Mixpanel or Amplitude, and you launch a new "Save for Later" button on your e-commerce site, a product manager must write a tracking spec. An engineer must take that spec, write a specific Javascript event (mixpanel.track('Save For Later')), push it to staging, QA it, and deploy it to production. That takes two weeks. If the engineer makes a typo, the historical data is ruined forever.

Heap Analytics, founded in 2013 by Matin Movassate and Ravi Belani, completely inverted this paradigm through a technology now branded as Smart Capture (autocapture). You install the Heap snippet exactly once. From that moment forward, Heap records every single DOM interaction made by every user in the background.

In December 2023, Heap was acquired by Contentsquare, a massive digital experience intelligence platform valued at over $5.6 billion. By 2026, this integration means Heap users now benefit from world-class session replays and heatmaps seamlessly layered over their retroactive funnel data.

Key Features That Matter

Smart Capture Foundation

Collects all user interactions natively on web, iOS, and Android without requiring manual event instrumentation or explicit engineering tracking specs.

Retroactive Data Availability

The moment you define a new event in the UI, you immediately have access to historical data for that event dating back to the very first day you installed the Heap snippet.

Visual Event Designer

A point-and-click interface that overlays your live website or app. PMs and marketers can visually select specific buttons or form fields to label them as measurable "Events".

Journeys & Path Analysis

Visualizes the complex, non-linear paths users take to reach a conversion goal. See exactly what users actually do before they drop off, rather than guessing a linear funnel.

Native Session Replay

Powered by Contentsquare. When you see a drop-off in a funnel, click a button to watch a video playback of the exact user session where the drop-off occurred.

Illuminate AI

Heap's built-in data science engine automatically scans your autocaptured data to flag hidden friction points—like a specific form field causing rage clicks—automatically.

Pricing Breakdown (2026 INR Context)

Following the Contentsquare acquisition, Heap operates on a sales-led, usage-based pricing model that scales heavily with monthly session volume and selected modules.

Free Tier

₹0
Free forever
  • ✅ Up to 10,000 sessions/month
  • ✅ Core Smart Capture
  • ✅ Basic visual event designer
  • ⚠️ Limited data retention

Enterprise

Custom
Annual contracts
  • ✅ Unlimited seats/projects
  • ✅ Dedicated Customer Success
  • ✅ Raw data export (Snowflake)
  • ✅ Full Contentsquare integration

Who Should Use Heap?

Heap is the absolute best choice for non-technical Product Managers, Growth Marketers, and founding teams who do not have dedicated Data Engineers or front-end developers to spare for analytics instrumentation.

It is incredibly valuable for SaaS products and e-commerce stores where the UI changes rapidly, allowing the PM to adapt their tracking instantly without waiting for the next two-week sprint cycle.

Who should NOT use it: Massive enterprises with extremely strict data governance policies. Because Heap captures everything, your event dictionary can become a chaotic mess of thousands of unnamed CSS clicks if not managed with strict discipline. For highly regulated Indian fintechs, explicit tracking (via Amplitude) is often preferred to ensure PII (Personally Identifiable Information) isn't accidentally autocaptured.

First 5 Setup Steps for Product Teams

  1. Install the Snippet: Paste the single JavaScript snippet into the <head> of your website or initialize the mobile SDK.
  2. Wait for Data: Wait 24 to 48 hours for Heap to passively collect a baseline of raw DOM interaction data from your live users.
  3. Launch the Visual Designer: Open your live website, activate the Heap extension, and click your primary conversion button (e.g., "Sign Up").
  4. Define the Event: Name the event clearly using a standard taxonomy (e.g., Clicked_Signup_Button). Heap instantly calculates how many times it was clicked historically.
  5. Build Your First Funnel: Navigate to the dashboard and build a 3-step funnel to instantly see your conversion drop-off without writing SQL.

Pros and Cons

Pros

  • Zero engineering dependency for tracking new buttons or pageviews.
  • Retroactive data means you never miss insights just because you forgot to track something.
  • Visual Event Designer is incredibly intuitive for non-technical marketers and PMs.
  • Contentsquare integration adds best-in-class session replays to quantitative funnels.
  • Illuminate AI automatically surfaces hidden friction points you didn't know to look for.

Cons

  • Data governance can become a nightmare; teams often create duplicate, poorly named events.
  • Autocapture can sometimes break if engineering drastically changes underlying CSS class names.
  • Pricing is opaque and scales steeply based on session volume.
  • Less suited for highly regulated industries (healthcare, fintech) due to accidental PII capture risks.

Tired of Waiting for Engineering?

Stop filing Jira tickets just to track a button click. Our product experts can help you deploy Heap Analytics, establish a clean event taxonomy, and train your PMs to pull their own insights instantly.

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