In-depth: PostHog vs Heap
Contents
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
💡 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
💡 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 recordings
💡 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
💡 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
💡 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
💡Good to know: Additional compliance features, such as HIPAA Business Associate Agreements, advanced permissions, and audit logs are available on our some of our platform packages, 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 to 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 guides to the most popular Heap alternatives useful.