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Heap vs. Kissmetrics vs. Optimizely Feature Experimentation

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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

    Kissmetrics

    Score9.6 out of 10
    Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
    Kissmetrics is a customer engagement automation platform. This solution includes behavioral analytics, segmentation, and email campaign automation.

    $150

    per month

    Optimizely Feature Experimentation

    Score8.2 out of 10
    N/AOptimizely Feature Experimentation unites feature flagging, A/B testing, and built-in collaboration—so marketers can release, experiment, and optimize with confidence in one platform.N/A
    Pricing
    HeapKissmetricsOptimizely Feature Experimentation
    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
    Growth
    $500
    Monthly Tracked People
    Power
    $850
    Monthly Tracked People
    Enterprise
    Custom
    Monthly Tracked People
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    HeapKissmetricsOptimizely Feature Experimentation
    Free Trial
    YesYesNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesNoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesNoYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeOptional$1,500 per installationRequired
    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.What are Monthly Tracked People? Monthly Tracked People are unique visitors that engage in an Event on your website or with your product, that gets tracked by you in Kissmetrics. Monthly Tracked People can be anonymous or identified.—
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    HeapKissmetricsOptimizely Feature Experimentation
    Considered Multiple Products
    Contentsquare
    Chose Heap
    all of them may have their own strong suits but Heap is backed by best in class ML and AI algorithms. not only that all this powerful and robust backends are well handles also from the frontend. no matter how good your software is, if it is somewhat hard to navigate or to get …
    Incentivized
    Chose Heap
    Heap is far easier to use compared to these.
    Incentivized
    Chose Heap
    Heap was the clear winner in our comparison as it had a clear interface which allows for easy graph and table making. The best part of Heap is that it saves each and every action performed on all of our webpages. Even if a certain event is not defined, it can still be created …
    Incentivized
    Chose Heap
    We tested Kissmetrics but Heap was superior in nearly every way. Sure, Kissmetrics has functionality to integrate with an external database linking your website data to orders and revenue but when it came down to it this functionality is less than perfect and Kissmetrics …
    Kissmetrics
    No answer on this topic
    Optimizely
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    95%
    Would buy again
    216 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    89%
    Would buy again
    41 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    99%
    Delivers good value for the price
    149 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    97%
    Delivers good value for the price
    33 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    95%
    Happy with the feature set
    215 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    91%
    Happy with the feature set
    42 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    97%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    117 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    88%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    21 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    89%
    Implementation went as expected
    121 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    80%
    Implementation went as expected
    28 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    HeapKissmetricsOptimizely Feature Experimentation
    Small Businesses
    Mixpanel
    Score8.3 out of 10
    Matomo Analytics
    Score9 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    Gainsight PX
    Score7.6 out of 10
    Lead Forensics
    Score9 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Enterprises
    Gainsight PX
    Score7.6 out of 10
    Chartbeat
    Score9.2 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    HeapKissmetricsOptimizely Feature Experimentation
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.4
    (233 ratings)
    8.9
    (48 ratings)
    8.2
    (47 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.3
    (9 ratings)
    7.4
    (27 ratings)
    4.5
    (2 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (65 ratings)
    7.1
    (6 ratings)
    7.6
    (26 ratings)
    Availability
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    8.3
    (6 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    8.4
    (61 ratings)
    8.5
    (6 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.0
    (8 ratings)
    9.0
    (9 ratings)
    3.6
    (1 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.6
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    9.0
    (3 ratings)
    7.3
    (7 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Configurability
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    7.3
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    5.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    HeapKissmetricsOptimizely Feature Experimentation
    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
    Kissmetrics
    [Kissmetrics is well suited for the] abandon cart scenario to re-engage users on the purchase journey. Engaging users to personalized content using the visit metrics derived from the data captured at each digital touch points. [Implementing] website campaign and journey orchestration is easy. You get visitor profile to segment upon using different visit metrics and action.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Optimizely
    Based on my experience with Optimizely Feature Experimentation, I can highlight several scenarios where it excels and a few where it may be less suitable. Well-suited scenarios: - Multi-Channel product launches - Complex A/B testing and feature flag management - Gradual rollout and risk mitigation Less suited scenarios: - Simple A/B tests (their Web Experimentation product is probably better for that) - Non-technical team usage -
    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
    Kissmetrics
    • The more events you track and properties you send along, the more you can see how specific users use your product/service. The user based timeline gives you a perfect start point to get in touch with users, because you can see where they get stuck.
    • Tracking your traffic sources and how they influence conversions is awesome. You can get a perfect view of how much a traffic source contributes to revenue.
    • Funnel reports give you more insights into micro and macro conversion steps and give you actionable data to work with.
    • Customer support!
    Read full review
    Optimizely
    • It is easy to use any of our product owners, marketers, developers can set up experiments and roll them out with some developer support. So the key thing there is this front end UI easy to use and maybe this will come later, but the new features such as Opal and the analytics or database centric engine is something we're interested in as well.
    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
    Kissmetrics
    • Installing.... yes this is also a negative. While you can install and have the program running in minutes, if you use Unbounce, the form tracking process is quite complicated!
    • Updates... I feel like the product updates have slowed a lot lately. Thankfully, the product functionality is so amazing that it hasn't impeded the use of it. However, it is still disappointing to see less frequent software updates.
    • Occasionally clunky UI... there are a few reports that are really easy to mess up and leave you scratching your head on why it isn't showing you any data.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Optimizely
    • Would be nice to able to switch variants between say an MVT to a 50:50 if one of the variants is not performing very well quickly and effectively so can still use the standardised report
    • Interface can feel very bare bones/not very many graphs or visuals, which other providers have to make it a bit more engaging
    • Doesn't show easily what each variant that is live looks like, so can be hard to remember what is actually being shown in each test
    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
    Kissmetrics
    Price sensitivity and the different choices that now exist in the Analytics industry. I think it makes sense for us sometime this year to rethink our analytics strategy to see how we may leverage the best of GA (which has included lots of new features and updates the past years_, Kiss and other tools as need be
    Read full review
    Optimizely
    Competitive landscape
    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
    Kissmetrics
    Right after login, you'll get to a dashboard which shows you a quick view on how your business is doing across the events you are tracking. There is no need to dig deeper than that unless you want to, in which case it's very easy to do so just by clicking on the metric on which you want more information. The interface is very intuitive.
    Read full review
    Optimizely
    Easy to navigate the UI. Once you know how to use it, it is very easy to run experiments. And when the experiment is setup, the SDK code variables are generated and available for developers to use immediately so they can quickly build the experiment code
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Read full review
    Kissmetrics
    The application was very rarely down; during the period we used the application, I can think of only two or three occasions in which the site was down. Notably, at no time was the the performance of our own site compromised as a result.
    Read full review
    Optimizely
    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
    Kissmetrics
    Speed improved dramatically as the service matured. Early iterations of the publicly-released application would occasionally provide slow processing of results, but those delays became much rarer occurrences during the last year that we used KISSmetrics. One of the more impressive views (which started out feeling more like a toy) is the live view of visits. Knowing that you could see, in real time, what events a user triggered, was gratifying and instructive.
    Read full review
    Optimizely
    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
    Read full review
    Kissmetrics
    Our front-line product support person (Mika) is great. She is responsive and great to work with.

    However, the data accuracy issue described earlier is the reason for the low score here. This issue was escalated from front-line to support to level 2 technical support and then it disappeared into a black hole. Escalations, in general, do not go well. We get no response for days, or I have to chase things down. This is not acceptable. Marketing metrics are critically important to me and I need answers quickly. I cannot afford to wait around for days / weeks for a response.

    Just to be clear, these comments only apply to escalated support issues.
    Read full review
    Optimizely
    Support was there but it was pretty slow at most times. Only after escalation was support really given to our teams
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    In-Person Training
    Contentsquare
    No answers on this topic
    Kissmetrics
    Again, we were fortunate to work with KISSmetrics as they built their application, but Hiten, their CEO and founder, was incredibly helpful to me personally, and to our metrics-driven business as a whole, as we adopted their tool.
    Read full review
    Optimizely
    No answers on this topic
    Online Training
    Contentsquare
    No answers on this topic
    Kissmetrics
    I loved this aspect of the product. It wasn't just that the documentation and online tutorials are great - which they are - the on-boarding process though was really stellar. Once you have set everything up, you get a welcome message followed by a step-by-step guide to get you started that is built right into the product interface. For example, the UI asks you to first do X, and then copy this code snippet and send it to your developer who will know what to do with it. When you come back after the first interaction with the product, it continues the process by explaining right in the UI how to track events etc. This kind of step-by-step approach is incredibly efficient. Although there are various forms of supporting documentation (PDFs videos etc) to support every step, you don't really need them. This approach means that you are up and running very quickly with virtually no training time or documentation consultation. Highly efficient process.
    Read full review
    Optimizely
    No answers on this topic
    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
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    Kissmetrics
    In order to build trackability down to revenue, there was quite a lot of work to integrate Kissmetrics with our software and internal process. We had to build the hooks so that Kissmetrics could call back into our software and billing system, etc.. However, we didn't need additional expertise to do this. Once you understand the API, and you own systems, making it work is not too difficult. We did not require an outside consultant or anything like that
    Read full review
    Optimizely
    It’s straightforward. Docs are well written and I believe there must be a support. But we haven’t used it
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Kissmetrics
    Kissmetrics is a next-level step up for people who are used to getting their tracking and reporting from Google Analytics or Shopify's CMS. While HubSpot arguably has a better user interface, Kissmetrics certainly has the power and usability necessary to track important conversion data and help you make better marketing decisions.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Optimizely
    When Google Optimize goes off we searched for a tool where you can be sure to get a good GA4 implementation and easy to use for IT team and product team. Optimizely Feature Experimentation seems to have a good balance between pricing and capabilities. If you are searching for an experimentation tool and personalization all in one... then maybe these comparison change and Optimizely turns to expensive. In the same way... if you want a server side solution. For us, it will be a challenge in the following years
    Incentivized
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    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
    Kissmetrics
    No answers on this topic
    Optimizely
    had troubles with performance for SSR and the React SDK
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Kissmetrics
    • Unfortunately for this client (small business) the cost of Kissmetrics was just too prohibitive. But it's obvious that for a larger company that can afford it, the data would be invaluable to gain more insight in how to gain more active users and orders for a funnel.
    • The data provided really increases an understanding of how best to provide the right experience for the users...happy users equals increase in ROI.
    Incentivized
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    Optimizely
    • We have improved various metrics throughout the course of our experimentation program with Optimizely and therefore sharing numbers is tricky. Essentially we only implement versions of the product that perform the best in terms of CVR, revenue/visitor, ATV, average order value, average basket size and so forth dependent on the north star we are trying to move with each release.
    Incentivized
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    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.

    Kissmetrics Screenshots

    Screenshot of Kissmetrics Activity Report is a part of our report suite called AnalyzeScreenshot of Kissmetrics Populations allow your to track your most important segment over timeScreenshot of Kissmetrics Campaigns allow you to engage your user with automated behavior-based emails when it is most effective

    Optimizely Feature Experimentation Screenshots

    Screenshot of Feature Flag Setup. Here users can run A/B and multi-armed bandit tests, as well as:

- Set up a single feature flag to test multiple variations and experiment types
- Enable targeted deliveries and rollouts for more precise experimentation
- Roll back changes quickly when needed to ensure experiment accuracy and reduce risks
- Increase testing flexibility with control over experiment types and delivery methodsScreenshot of Audience Setup. This is used to target specific user segments for personalized experiments, and:

- Create and customize audiences based on user attributes
- Refine audience segments to ensure the right users are included in tests
- Enhance experiment relevance by setting specific conditions for user groupsScreenshot of Experiment Results, supporting the analysis and optimization of experimentation outcomes. Viewers can also:

- examine detailed experiment results, including key metrics like conversion rates and statistical significance
- Compare variations side-by-side to identify winning treatments
- Use advanced filters to segment and drill down into specific audience or test dataScreenshot of A Program Overview. These offer insights into any experimentation program’s performance. It also offers:

- A comprehensive view of the entire experimentation program’s status and progress
- Monitoring for key performance metrics like test velocity, success rates, and overall impact
- Evaluation of the impact of experiments with easy-to-read visualizations and reporting tools
- Performance tracking of experiments over time to guide decision-making and optimize strategiesScreenshot of AI Variable Suggestions. These enhance experimentation with AI-driven insights, and can also help with:

- Generating multiple content variations with AI to speed up experiment design
- Improving test quality with content suggestions
- Increasing experimentation velocity and achieving better outcomes with AI-powered optimizationScreenshot of Schedule Changes, to streamline experimentation. Users can also:

- Set specific times to toggle flags or rules on/off, ensuring precise control
- Schedule traffic allocation percentages for smooth experiment rollouts
- Increase test velocity and confidence by automating progressive changes