In-depth: PostHog vs Heap

Oct 08, 2024

How is PostHog different?

1. We're built for engineers

What does this mean?

It means we ship fast and iterate based on user feedback.
It means engineers do support – all product teams have a weekly support hero.
It means we have extensive public and private API endpoints, and a powerful SQL query builder.
It means we built SDKs for all popular (and many unpopular) client-side, backend, and mobile languages and frameworks.
It means we make it easy to test in production, conduct phased rollouts, run beta programs, and so much more.

2. We're an all-in-one platform

Heap is mainly focused on product analytics. This means you need to adopt additional tools for things like feature management, experiments, and surveys. They're all built into PostHog – we even have a built-in data warehouse that integrates with Stripe and Hubspot. You can replace half a dozen tools with PostHog, save money, and get more from your data.

3. We're totally transparent

How much will PostHog cost? Use our pricing calculator.
What are we working on? It's on our public roadmap?
How does sales work? We have a whole page on it.
What do we care about? We explain everything in our public company handbook.
How do we make money? That's in the handbook, too.

Oh, we're open source, too. Go take a peak at our code if you like on our GitHub repo.

Comparing PostHog and Heap

Platform

	PostHog	Heap
Product analytics Track events and conversion, analyze user behavior	✔	✔
Web analytics Easy to use analytics for marketing websites	✔	✔
Session replay Watch real users use your product, diagnose bugs	✔	✔
Feature flags Roll out features safely, toggle features for cohorts or individuals	✔	✖
Experiments Run tests on new features, optimize conversion funnels	✔	✖
Surveys Collect and analyze feedback, run NPS and PMF surveys	✔	✖
Customer data platform Sync data with third-party tools	Beta	✖
Data warehouse A single source for all your important data	✔	✖
Heatmaps Visualize where users click in your app or website	✔	✔
Notebooks Ad-hoc analysis and collaboration	✔	✖
Dark mode Choose between light and dark UI	✔	✖
Open source Build your own apps and contribute code	✔	✖

💡 Good to know: PostHog can replace multiple tools, such as Hotjar, Google Analytics, and LaunchDarkly. This makes it a lot easier to extract usable insights, since you don't have to constantly switch between tools. Running PostHog on both your product and website makes it easier to understand how marketing activity influences signups and usage, too.

Product analytics

	PostHog	Heap
Free usage How much free usage do you get each month?	1 million events	10k monthly tracked users
Autocapture Capture events without manual logging	✔	✔
SQL query editor Write your own queries in SQL	✔	✖
AI insight builder 'Talk to your data' using AI	✖	✔
Group analytics Track metrics at a company and account level	✔	✔
Dashboards Combine insights into shareable dashboards	✔	✔
Graphs and trends Build custom insights and visualizations	✔	✔
Funnels Track users through a sequence of events	✔	✔
Retention Visualize which users stay, for how long	✔	✔
User paths Track user flows and where they drop-off	✔	✔
Cohorts Combine users based on properties and events for group analysis	✔	✔
Lifecycle analysis Understand who is dormant, churning, and thriving	✔	✔
Stickiness Find out what events keep users coming back.	✔	✖

💡 Good to know Every PostHog user gets 1 million events for free each month. You can also save money by sending us anonymous events for non-identified users, which are up to 80% cheaper than identified product analytics events. Anonymous events are ideal for tracking behavior on marketing websites, or mobile apps with large consumer audiences. See our docs on anonymous vs identified events for more.

Session replays

	PostHog	Heap
Free usage How much free usage do you get each month?	5,000 recordings	None
Web app recordings Capture recordings from single-page apps	✔	✔
Mobile app recordings Capture recordings in iOS and Android apps	✔	✔
Identity detection Link recordings to user IDs	✔	✔
Console logs Capture extra content from a user's browser	✔	✖
Playlists Sort recordings into static and dynamic playlists	✔	✖
Performance monitoring Track network events within a session	✔	✖
Privacy masking Censor personal information from playback	✔	✔
Conditional capture Only capture the sessions you want	✔	✔
DOM explorer Explore an interactive snapshot of replays	✔	✖
Export recordings Save important recordings offline	✔	✖
Minimum duration Only record sessions longer than the minimum duration	✔	✖
Sample recorded sessions Restrict the percentage of sessions that will be recorded	✔	✔
Record via feature flag Only record sessions for users that have the flag enabled	✔	✖

💡 Good to know: Session replays are an essential tool for understanding how people use your product, especially for early-stage companies searching for product-market fit. Both Heap and PostHog offer session replay, though Heap lacks many developer-facing features like a DOM explorer, performance monitoring, and network events, which are useful for fixing bugs and performance issues.

Feature flags

	PostHog	Heap
Free usage How much free usage do you get each month?	1 million API requests	n/a
Boolean flags Simple flags returning true or flag	✔	✖
Multivariate flags Flags with multiple customizable values	✔	✖
Payloads Flags with string, number, or JSON payloads	✔	✖
Local evaluation Store flag definitions locally	✔	✖
Percentage rollouts Target percentages of a group	✔	✖
Custom targeting Target users based on user properties, custom contexts	✔	✖
Environments Manage flags for dev, staging, prod	Partial	✖
Scheduling Schedule flags to turn on or off	✔	✖
Bootstrapping Flags available on frontend application load	✔	✖
Early access Manage betas, test features	✔	✖

💡 Good to know: Feature flags make it easy to roll out features to specific users or groups, and safely test in production. Our feature flags are also tightly integrated with other features so you can target session replays, surveys, and more using existing feature flags. See our guide on the benefits of feature flags for more.

Experiments

	PostHog	Heap
Free usage How much free usage do you get each month?	1 million API requests	n/a
Custom goals Customize metrics that a test tracks	✔	✖
Secondary metrics Monitor impact on unrelated metrics	✔	✖
Split testing Split participants into groups	✔	✖
Multivariate (A/B/n) testing Test multiple variants of a change	✔	✖
Statistical significance Automatically checks for statistical significance	✔	✖
Recommended run time Calculates the recommended run time and sample size	✔	✖
Holdout testing Withhold multiple features to measure cumulative impact	Partial	n/a
Statistics engine How the results of an experiment are calculated	Bayesian	n/a

💡 Good to know: Our experiments integrate seamlessly with our feature flag product. This means you can easily deploy the winning variant of an experiment with a single click from the experiment UI.

Security and compliance

	PostHog	Heap
User privacy options Anonymize users, drop personal data	✔	✔
History, audit logs Manage and view flag edits and related users	✔	✔
GDPR-ready Can be compliant with GDPR	✔	✔
HIPAA-ready Can be compliant with HIPAA	✔	✔
SOC 2 SOC 2 security certification	✔	✔
2FA Enforce login with two-factor authentication	✔	✔
SAML/SSO Use SAML or single sign-on authentication	✔	✔

💡Good to know: Additional compliance features, such as HIPAA Business Associate Agreements, advanced permissions, and audit logs are available on our Teams add-on, which also includes our managed reverse proxy and white labelling for surveys and shared dashboards.

Frequently asked questions

Can I migrate from Heap?

Yes. See our Heap to PostHog migration guide for more.

How long does it take to deploy PostHog?

Deploying PostHog takes mere minutes. Just include our tracking snippet in your product or website and (thanks to autocapture) you're immediately capturing events. Once up and running, you can enable session replays and other features via your project settings. See our guide to getting started on PostHog Cloud for more info.

Can PostHog also replace Google Analytics?

Yes. PostHog can replace Google Analytics for many use cases – our marketing team uses PostHog, for example. You can integrate PostHog into your website using Google Tag Manager. See our comparison of PostHog and Google Analytics 4 and an intro to PostHog for Google Analytics users for more.

How can I estimate my usage?

The easiest way is to sign up to PostHog, integrate our snippet, then check the projection on your billing page after a few days. Alternatively, you can guesstimate by multiplying your current monthly active users by an estimate of events generated per user – 50 to 100 per user is a good starting point. See Estimating usage & costs in our docs for more.

Does PostHog block bots by default?

Yes. See the full blocklist in our docs.

What about ad blockers?

We recommend all users deploy a reverse proxy, which enables you send events to PostHog Cloud using your own domain. Events sent from your own domain and are less likely to be intercepted by tracking blockers, ensuring you capture the best data possible.

We offer a managed reverse proxy on our Team plans, and we have reverse proxy setup guides for AWS Cloudfront, Caddy, Cloudflare, Netlify, Vercel, and more, in our docs if you want to run your own.

Can I use PostHog with a CDP? (Segment, Rudderstack, etc.)

Yes. See Using PostHog with a CDP in our docs.

Can you use PostHog on e-commerce websites?

Absolutely. PostHog is easy to integrate with Shopify and WooCommerce. You can easily install PostHog on other e-commerce platforms using our Javascript snippet – see our guides to setting up Webflow analytics and Wordpress.

How does PostHog compare to Amplitude and Mixpanel?

Amplitude and Mixpanel offer similar features to Heap. Read our PostHog vs Mixpanel and PostHog vs Amplitude guides for more info. You may also find guide to the most popular Heap alternatives useful.