When comparing Heap vs Alexa, the Slant community recommends Heap for most people. In the question“What are the best analytics tools for a SaaS web applications?” Heap is ranked 3rd while Alexa is ranked 24th. The most important reason people chose Heap is:
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.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
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.
Pro Provides information about competitors
Alexa, in addition to on-site metrics, provides traffic, engagement and reputation data about other sites.
Cons
Con No Android integration
Heap lacks Android integration.
Con Unknown ranking accuracy
Alexa's ranking is based on users that have installed one of their browser extensions and sites that have installed a tracking script. It's unknown what kind of users are installing the extensions and how big is the sample size (Alexa claims it to be millions).