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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Heap

    Score8.1 out of 10
    Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
    Heap is a web analytics platform captures every user interaction on web iOS with no extra code. The tool allows you to track events and set up funnels to understand user flow and dropoff. It also provides visualization tools to track trends over time.

    $0

    per month

    IBM Instana

    Score7.8 out of 10
    N/AInstana, an IBM company since the December 2020 acquisition, provides APM services for SOA, microservices, containerized applications and Kubernetes, and cloud native applications, as well as discovery and monitoring for IT assets.

    $75

    per month per Managed Virtual Server (MVS)

    Pricing
    HeapIBM Instana
    Editions & Modules
    Free
    $0
    Up to 10k sessions/month
    Growth
    Starting at $3,600 annually
    Up to 300k sessions/year
    Pro
    Contact Heap Sales
    Custom sessions per month and unlimited projects
    Premier
    Contact Heap Sales
    Custom sessions per month
    Essentials
    $20
    per month per Managed Virtual Server (MVS)
    Standard
    $75
    per month per Managed Virtual Server (MVS)
    Self-Hosted
    $93.80
    per month per Managed Virtual Server (MVS)
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    HeapIBM Instana
    Free Trial
    YesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
    Additional DetailsHeap pricing is based on session volume. A session is a period of activity from a single user on your app or website. It can include many pageviews or events.—
    More Pricing Information
    Features
    HeapIBM Instana
    Monitoring Tasks
    Comparison of Monitoring Tasks features of Heap and IBM Instana
    Feature
    Heap
    -
    Ratings
    IBM Instana
    7.6
    3 Ratings
    9% below category average
    Remote monitoring00 Ratings9.14 Ratings
    Network device monitoring00 Ratings5.54 Ratings
    Multiple Server Monitoring00 Ratings8.94 Ratings
    Multi-device monitoring00 Ratings5.54 Ratings
    Automated alerts and notifications00 Ratings9.14 Ratings
    Management Tasks
    Comparison of Management Tasks features of Heap and IBM Instana
    Feature
    Heap
    -
    Ratings
    IBM Instana
    5.5
    1 Ratings
    23% below category average
    Software and hardware inventory00 Ratings6.42 Ratings
    Policy-based automation00 Ratings4.52 Ratings
    Reporting
    Comparison of Reporting features of Heap and IBM Instana
    Feature
    Heap
    -
    Ratings
    IBM Instana
    6.5
    3 Ratings
    20% below category average
    Performance data reports00 Ratings8.34 Ratings
    Customizable reporting00 Ratings4.52 Ratings
    Data visualization00 Ratings8.83 Ratings
    Risk analysis00 Ratings4.52 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    HeapIBM Instana
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    Mixpanel
    Score8.3 out of 10
    Amazon CloudWatch
    Score7.8 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Gainsight PX
    Score7.6 out of 10
    LogicMonitor
    Score8.9 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Gainsight PX
    Score7.6 out of 10
    ManageEngine Site24x7
    Score10 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    HeapIBM Instana
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.4
    (233 ratings)
    7.8
    (60 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.3
    (9 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (65 ratings)
    8.3
    (3 ratings)
    Availability
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    8.4
    (61 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.0
    (8 ratings)
    4.5
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    9.0
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Configurability
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    7.3
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    HeapIBM Instana
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Contentsquare
    Scenarios when Heap was well suited: It is when a user claims that he encountered a bug without giving us the details of the error message. Scenarios where it is less appropriate: Its when we try to capture user interaction in our mobile app
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    Well-suited for an org with a large application base, where many microservices are created and destroyed daily. IBM Instana doesn't require any manual configuration, so deploying the Instana agents takes very little time. Data capture from IBM Instana is highly granular and can detect even short spikes lasting a few seconds. Not suitable for legacy applications where there will be rarely any changes. They can use a simpler monitoring mechanism. Also, highly dense data capturing can sometimes overload the information.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Contentsquare
    • Realtime interactions which are captured automatically is a unique feature which no other product offers.
    • Low code implementation is a big plus for marketing teams, as there is less dependency on engineering
    • Detailed customer behaviours can be studied with captured replay sessions
    • Due to all the above points - it helped to improve customer experience
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    • Can monitor application(s) and system(s) with very large throughput of transactions by the second ( it gets everything !!!)
    • Provide strong drill down for your applications and will tell you where the points of failure of an application's is ( servers , network , Databases , etc you name it )
    • Very easy to set up and have it up and running when using the SaaS solution. There's an on premise solution which works just as well but requires more effort and preparation from an infrastructure point of view for your teams to implement.
    • Continuously improve their features and their agents auto-update and keep up. All while not interfering with your applications.
    • Let's you create your own dashboards and visualizations that can be tailored for different kind of users with the data collected.
    • Create your own events and smart alerts so you can know on the spot if something is happening or is likely to happen that needs addressing on your applications / systems
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Contentsquare
    • I think Heap can improve its onboarding; I would love to see some info that is helpful for someone who isn't in Heap every single day.
    • Sharing dashboards can be tricky, it feels like a huge learning curve that I already have forgotten how to do.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    • It's very difficult to create custom dashboards, only a handful of scenarios can be visualized to dashboards.
    • Extracting information from Instana to further analysis into excel for example is something that can be improved. Using an API to get data is very limiting.
    • Open telemetry features which allow to send application data to Instana is not working as documented.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Contentsquare
    It's a great platform. I'm glad that one of our product managers introduced it because it has allowed us to create all kinds of new functionality. We're not only able to create a better product experience from our communications because of Heap, but we're also able to generate all kinds of helpful analysis.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    Instana has been able to fulfill our all requirement and provide out of box solution for multiple component like AWS RDS Monitoring and real time alerting setup on basis of that. it is also easy to integrate with other open-source alerting and monitoring tools which makes it easier to incorporate into our solutions
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Contentsquare
    On a scale from 1-10, I find Heap to be incredibly user-friendly and easy to use. I enjoyed the training videos available and was quickly able to pick up how to create events and reports to track user interactions on our product. I would recommend Heap for its usability first and foremost.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    IBM Instana totally alters our monitoring approach since it increases the stability of the system and simplifies the process of problem solving. And since it helps to lower the degree of alert exhaustion that we experience, it is a total game changer for us.
    Incentivized
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    Reliability and Availability
    Contentsquare
    I've never run into any issues with Heap's availability, Heap is always there when I need it. I haven't run into any issues like application errors or unplanned outages during my 2+ years of using Heap. Each and every time I log in to Heap I have a completely functional experience
    Incentivized
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    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    Contentsquare
    Heap doesn't affect page load times considerably nor has a large impact [on] our overall score, as far as page loading times inside of the tool its pretty reliable to retrieve data as much as "instant" that it can be the delay seems to be on data getting tracked into the servers to be read but it's not significant.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Contentsquare
    Heap support has allowed us to troubleshoot and test a lot of different items. Their support team is always helpful and friendly, even when we come to them with the most complicated questions. I think this greatly improves the value proposition of the product because their support team is knowledgable and friendly.
    Incentivized
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    IBM
    IBM instana support team is good but when we ask them for support, they keep asking same thing again and again and mostly there is no solution
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    Contentsquare
    The implementation was smooth and easy. The Heap team helped us with implementation and it went great! Within a few weeks, we were fully up and running and utilizing the platform to its full capability. This is an additional thing that has made this platform so great and we couldn't recommend it enough.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Contentsquare
    Heap offers a ton of functionality on a single platform.It also has an smart data science layer to offers suggestions for next steps in the analysis, allowing us to explore alternative paths we may not think to take. The low-code option for updating data is appealing, and there is a lot of automation with minimal engineering effort.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    Instana is much more robust and modern compared to our previous product which was AppDynamics. We compared Dynatrace and Datadog and they were very similar in many aspects. The licensing simplicity with Instana and our existing relationship with IBM made it a much more enticing option and accelerated the adoption timeline
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Contentsquare
    The most challenging part of using Heap in a growing organization is the naming and structure in which reports and dashboards are organized. I work within the marketing department and our Heap leader internally works within the IT/Product department, which makes it challenging because we often don't speak the same language, so the learning curve has been steep without any specific use-case examples to leverage online.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Contentsquare
    • It has helped us make decisions on what products to scope for our MVP based on the usage data.
    • It's allowed us to measure success with our beta product.
    • It's helped us view our conversion rates in an easy and usable manner.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    • Increase up time by early failure identification and performance optimization based on findings in Instana.
    • Enhance user experience by mapping user issues with backend failures
    • Automated actions help fixing known issues without human intervention
    • increase support team efficiency by root cause analysis which decrease the incident solving time
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Heap Screenshots

    Screenshot of Dashboard in Heap (Use to get Product or User Behavior Insights)Screenshot of Effort Analysis provides the first-ever quantitative measurement of user friction, capturing the difficulty users face when moving through every step of every user flow across the digital experience.Screenshot of Heap Illuminate looks for the most common events between two steps in a funnel and generates a Top Events table that displays how well paths including different events convert to the next step so you can understand how that behavior is helping or hurting conversion.Screenshot of From Top Events you can choose an event and use Path Comparison to fork your funnel and see how the selected behavior impacts conversion downstream.