Heap vs. Pendo: Product Overview And Alternatives

In the rapidly evolving space of digital product analytics, Heap and Pendo are amongst the most popular tools on the market, each with their unique features and capabilities. Heap makes data collection automatic and retroactive, eliminating the need for manual tracking set-up. Pendo, on the other hand, excels in user engagement and feedback, providing in-depth insights into user behavior. 

Both tools have revolutionized how organizations approach product development, fostering data-driven decision-making. However, choosing between the two can take time and effort. This article aims to provide a comprehensive comparison between Heap and Pendo, offering an overview of their functionalities, strengths, and potential alternatives. Let's dive in!

What is Heap?

Heap is a powerful tool that helps businesses understand and analyze user behavior. By automatically capturing every interaction that users have with your website or app, Heap provides a detailed and comprehensive view of how people engage with your product. From clicks and taps to form submissions and pageviews, Heap tracks it all. 

But what truly sets this platform apart is its ease of use. Unlike other analytics tools that require significant set-up, configuration, and maintenance, Heap is designed to be plug-and-play. With just a few lines of code, you can collect data and gain insights in minutes. 

What is Pendo?

Pendo is a product experience platform that provides businesses with insights to understand and guide users by tracking their interactions within a product. It offers product analytics, in-app user guides, surveys, feedback, and roadmap features. With Pendo, companies can measure and elevate their customer experience within their applications, increasing customer satisfaction and retention. 

Pendo serves various industries, including software, e-commerce, finance, and healthcare, helping them deliver superior product experiences.

Pendo vs. Heap: Which is the better session replay tool? 

Now that we've covered the basics of both Heap and Pendo, it's time to compare them. We'll touch on their features, pricing, use cases, and customer reviews to help you make an informed decision about which one is best for your business.

Features 

Heap and Pendo really differ in the depth and range of their feature sets. We'll dive into each platform's features below:

Pendo features

• Analytics: Pendo provides a deep understanding of user behavior, enabling you to track and analyze their interactions with your product.
• Mobile experiences: Pendo helps create exceptional mobile experiences, allowing you to optimize your product for mobile platforms.
• In-app guides: With Pendo, you can communicate directly with your users within your app, providing useful guides and tips.
• Feedback: Pendo allows you to collect user feedback directly, helping you understand what your users want and how to improve their experience.
• Integrations: Pendo can be integrated with your favorite apps, extending its functionality and improving its performance.
• Roadmaps: Pendo helps align all your product stakeholders, ensuring everyone is on the same page regarding product development and strategy.
• Services & support: Pendo offers services and support to ensure your goals become a reality, assisting you in implementing and optimizing Pendo.
• Data Sync: Pendo allows you to export your data, making it easy to share insights and analyses with your team.

Heap features

• Session Replay: This feature provides the ability to replay user sessions in real time, giving you a complete context of user interactions with just a single click. You can see exactly what users do on your site, from mouse movements to clicks and keystrokes. This can help identify any issues or barriers that may be preventing users from completing desired actions.
• Heatmaps: Heap's Heatmaps allow you to visualize user behavior instantly. They show you where users are clicking, scrolling, and spending time on your pages. This visualization can help you identify hot spots of activity, as well as areas of your site that may not be engaging users as effectively as you'd like.
• Illuminate: With the Illuminate feature, Heap uses data science to pinpoint areas of friction that you may not even know exist. It reveals complex user behaviors and patterns that could be causing users to leave your site or not complete a desired action. With this information, you can make informed decisions about where to focus your optimization efforts.
• Journeys: Journeys provide visual maps of all user flows through your site or app. This feature helps you understand the paths users take, from their initial entry point through to conversion or drop-off. By understanding these journeys, you can identify opportunities to streamline the user experience and guide users more effectively toward desired outcomes.

Pricing 

Heap offers a free package that includes access to its core analytics charts, guide integrations, six months of data history, and guides integrations, as well as up to 10k monthly sessions. If you're looking for additional features, you'll need to upgrade to their Growth plan, which includes all the free features and 12 months of data history, e-mail support, CSV exports, and unlimited users and reports. To get the pricing of their Growth package, you'll need to reach out to their sales team. 

Pendo offers a free package that includes up to 500 monthly active users, in-app guides, product analytics, roadmaps, and more. If you need more, you'll need to upgrade to their starter package, which starts at $7,000/year for 2,000 active users.

Target market and use cases

When it comes to a great session replay solution, Heap is going to be the better option, as Pendo does not offer its own session replay feature. Heap is also a great option for businesses who want to gain deep insights into their user activity and quickly optimize their product experiences with ease. Pendo, on the other hand, is ideal for companies that are looking to collect customer feedback, create in-app guides, and increase customer engagement and retention.

User reviews

Pendo pros

Pendo has a 4.4-star review on G2. Users love that "Pendo has a simple technical implementation and allows for page and feature tagging without the need for developers". Users also love Pendo's click stream tagging. Additionally, one user commented "Pendo provides a comprehensive suite of useful features for customer success management. The platform offers analytics, user onboarding, in-app messaging, and customer feedback capabilities."

Pendo cons

Some users have stated that Pendo has limited ad-hoc report building and that the "reporting on the feedback side could use a revamp."

Heap pros

Heap has a 4.3-star rating on G2. Users love that Heap is so simple. "It makes it really easy to get up and running with our reports without the extra development time required with other technologies". Users also love the straightforward event tagging and editing.

Heap cons

Some users have noted that they "find the interface for creating segments in Heap cumbersome and tedious. Having to rebuild it every time I want to make a simple adjustment is particularly frustrating, especially when analyzing multiple areas at once." Others have noted that "for a hybrid web-based app, a lot of extra set-up was required, which was slightly tedious."

Alternative to FullStory and Heap: Fullview

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Fullview is an excellent alternative to both Fullstory and Heap for the following reasons:

• With Fullview, you can auto-record all user sessions in your app to see user behavior, bugs and other product issues in context.
• Unlike most other product analytics and session replay tools on the market, Fullview also includes a cobrowsing functionality, wherein support teams or developers can call users directly within their app, take control of the user's screen, and help them with any problems they may be experiencing. This makes it much faster and easier to resolve support tickets.
• Fullview also includes console logs to make it easier to troubleshoot and diagnose issues. You can see these console logs when you are watching session replays or on a cobrowsing call with a user.
• Fullview is 100% GDPR compliant as all data is stored on EU servers, making it a safe and secure option for companies. If desired, companies who use Fullview can choose to store their data on US servers.
• Fullview automatically blurs sensitive information during cobrowsing calls and session replays, and gives you additional customizable options regarding the data you want to capture and what you want to leave out.
• Fullview offers a forever free plan that includes four cobrowsing sessions per agent each month and 1000 session replays per month. Its paid plans start at just $49 per seat and provide unlimited cobrowsing and 10,000+ session replays a month, making it one of the most affordable session replay tools on the market.

Wrapping It Up

Product analytics tools are essential for any business that wants to gain deeper insights into their user activity and quickly optimize their product experiences. While Pendo and Heap both offer great solutions, companies may want to consider using an alternative such as Fullview due to its GDPR compliance and unique features such as console logs and cobrowsing.