When comparing Mixpanel vs Heap, the Slant community recommends Mixpanel for most people. In the question“What are the best analytics tools for a SaaS web applications?” Mixpanel is ranked 1st while Heap is ranked 3rd. The most important reason people chose Mixpanel is:
On Mixpanel you can view live activity on the site from both streams of events or broken down into your actual users. This can be very practical for de-bugging and catching errors as they happen, especially for new, buggy products.
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Pros
Pro Updates in real time
On Mixpanel you can view live activity on the site from both streams of events or broken down into your actual users. This can be very practical for de-bugging and catching errors as they happen, especially for new, buggy products.
Pro Behavioural messaging
Mixpanel allows you to send notifications based on users actions. For example, you can use it to improve customer retention by analyzing the conditions where your users decide to leave your product and then send targeted messages designed to bring them back. This is an amazingly powerful feature that really bridges the gap between analyzing the data and acting on it.
Pro Easy to use web interface
Online interface makes it simple to view events, and aggregate data.
Queries can be built by selecting actions and associated properties from a drop-down, and the corresponding data will be displayed. These queries can then be bookmarked for later use. A table view and CSV export option is also available. Multiple queries can be displayed together, making it easy to compare two sets of data, or to view the relationship between them.
The interface also features a "Live View", allowing you to watch events as they are sent, which is useful for testing, and viewing realtime events.
Pro Contact users directly through the people page
Mixpanel allows you to directly contact users from the people dashboard via push notifications, sms, and email. After viewing the user history, or filtering on events and metrics, you can send an individual user, or a segment direct messages.
Pro Automatic iOS event integration
Mixpanel can integrate with iOS, exposing app screen, and allowing you to set events through an online visual interface.
Pro Remote configuration of events on iOS
On iOS, you can change or add events reported through the web interface so you don't have to submit a new version of the app to alter events.
Pro Funnel analysis
Funnel analysis allows you to see how many people have performed certain sequence of actions. You can use this to understand what part of the sequence needs to be improved the most.
Pro People analysis
Events can be grouped on a per-user basis allowing you to view each user's event history. You can use that information to see how individual users use your product.
Pro Straightforward setup
It's very easy to set up.
Pro Cohort analysis
Cohort analysis allows you to compare things like user retention over time, what kind of progress has been made with that retention over time, how many people perform certain actions from a set starting point over time, etc.
Pro Successful companies use it
Pro Capture everything, organize it later
After adding a JavaScript snippet to the site, Heap captures every event that you can organize later instead of having to define events upfront. It means that if you decide to track something new you have data from the past as well.
Pro User friendly
Heap does not require any coding knowledge to set up.
Pro Free plan
If your site has less than 5000 monthly visitors, you can use Heap for free indefinitely.
Pro Highly detailed
Since every single data point is logged you can do highly specific analysis.
Pro Tracks guest-turned-user data
Heap will combine registered user data with data before registering.
Pro Powerful and easy to set up cohort analytics
Cohort analysis allows you to compare things like user retention over time, what kind of progress has been made with that retention over time, how many people perform certain actions from a set starting point over time, etc.
Pro Visit based pricing
Heap determines cost of service based on monthly visits instead of the more common data point based pricing that incentivises tracking less data points to save money.
Cons
Con Expensive
The smallest plan is $150 per month, and only gets you 500k events.
Con Only allows one filter per funnel step
Each funnel step can only include one filter, so you could have "browser" and "city" but not both.
Con Charts are not very configurable
For instance the retention charts are pretty static. You can change dates but not a lot of definitions.
Con Steep learning curve
Con Revenue tracking metrics won't work for advertising businesses
Because the revenue tracking doesn't allow for fractions of dollars per visit (at least not as of 2014) any site that makes money based on advertising won't be able to leverage the revenue metric features.
Con Limited public visitor and authenticated user merging
Con No built-in solution for installation tracking
It's possible to enable installation tracking by using third-party services like Adjust or AppsFlyer and routing their data to Mixpanel.
Con No Android integration
Heap lacks Android integration.