Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Countly VS Heap

Compare Countly VS Heap and see what are their differences

Countly logo Countly

Product Analytics and Innovation. Build better customer journeys.

Heap logo Heap

Analytics for web and iOS. Heap automatically captures every user action in your app and lets you measure it all. Clicks, taps, swipes, form submissions, page views, and more.
  • Countly Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-30

Countly is a product analytics solution and innovation enabler that helps organizations track product performance and user journey and behavior across mobile, web, and desktop applications. Ensuring privacy by design, it allows organizations to innovate and enhance their products to provide personalized and customized customer experiences, and meet key business and revenue goals.

Track, measure, and take action - all without leaving Countly.

  • Heap Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-05

Countly features and specs

  • Open-Source
    Countly offers an open-source version, enabling organizations to host the analytics platform on their own servers, ensuring full control over their data and customization.
  • Data Privacy
    With sensitive data handled in-house, Countly provides high data privacy and security, reducing the risk of data breaches compared to cloud-hosted analytics solutions.
  • Real-Time Analytics
    Countly provides real-time analytics, allowing businesses to get immediate insights into user behavior and make timely, data-driven decisions.
  • Customizable
    Countly is highly customizable with a wide range of plugins, enabling users to add or remove features based on their specific needs.
  • Multi-Platform Support
    Countly supports multiple platforms including web, mobile, and desktop, providing comprehensive insights across different user environments.
  • Extensive Reporting
    Countly offers detailed reporting features, allowing users to generate and analyze a variety of reports to better understand user engagement and app performance.
  • User-Friendly Interface
    The platform has an intuitive and user-friendly interface, making it easy for non-technical users to navigate and use the tool effectively.

Possible disadvantages of Countly

  • Self-Hosting Complexity
    The open-source version requires self-hosting, which can be complex and resource-intensive, requiring technical expertise and additional hardware.
  • Cost
    While the open-source version is free, the enterprise version with additional features can be expensive, potentially limiting accessibility for smaller organizations.
  • Limited Plugin Availability
    Some advanced features are only available through paid plugins, which may not be accessible to all users or could become costly over time.
  • Learning Curve
    For those new to self-hosted solutions or analytics platforms, there could be a steep learning curve to effectively utilize and manage Countly.
  • Reliance on Community Support
    Users of the open-source version may have to rely on community support for troubleshooting and assistance, which may not always be timely or sufficient compared to dedicated support.
  • Integration Complexity
    Integrating Countly with other third-party tools or services might be more complex compared to cloud-based solutions that often offer seamless integrations.
  • Scalability Issues
    For very large-scale deployments, users might encounter scalability issues that require additional infrastructure and optimization efforts.

Heap features and specs

  • Automatic Event Tracking
    Heap captures all user interactions automatically without requiring manual event setup, making it easier to get started and ensuring comprehensive data collection.
  • User-friendly Interface
    Heap provides a clean and intuitive interface, which allows non-technical users to easily create and analyze custom reports and dashboards.
  • Retroactive Analysis
    With Heap, users can define events at any time and view historical data, enabling analysis of past behaviors without prior configuration.
  • Comprehensive Data
    Heap collects a wide array of data points including clicks, form submissions, page views, and more, offering a holistic view of user interactions.
  • Integrations
    Heap offers robust integration capabilities with other analytics platforms, CRM systems, and data warehouses, facilitating seamless data flow between tools.

Possible disadvantages of Heap

  • Cost
    Heap can be expensive for smaller businesses or startups, particularly as the volume of tracked events and the number of users increases.
  • Learning Curve
    Despite its user-friendly interface, some users report a steep learning curve when it comes to leveraging Heap's more advanced features and capabilities.
  • Limited Customization
    While Heap provides a lot of data out-of-the-box, some users may find the customization options for tracking and reporting somewhat limited compared to other tools that offer more flexibility.
  • Data Redundancy
    The automatic tracking feature, while comprehensive, can sometimes lead to data redundancy or capturing irrelevant events, which may require additional data cleaning.
  • Reporting Complexity
    Some users have expressed that creating complex reports and funnels can be challenging and may require a deeper understanding of the platform's capabilities.

Countly videos

Countly Community Edition

Heap videos

Septimus Heap Series by Angie Sage || Spoiler Review

More videos:

  • Review - Fargo Season 1 Episode 8 "The Heap" Review
  • Review - Data Structures: Heaps

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Countly and Heap)
Analytics
24 24%
76% 76
Web Analytics
16 16%
84% 84
Mobile Analytics
35 35%
65% 65
Product Analytics
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Countly and Heap

Countly Reviews

Top 5 Self-Hosted, Open Source Alternatives to Google Analytics
Use Case Example: A mobile app development company uses Countly to track user engagement across their portfolio of apps and websites, streamlining their marketing and development efforts.
Source: zeabur.com
Top 5 open source alternatives to Google Analytics
Heavily targeting marketing organizations, Countly tracks data that is important to marketers. That information includes site visitors' transactions, as well as which campaigns and sources led visitors to your site. You can also create metrics that are specific to your business. Countly doesn't forgo basic web analytics; it also keeps track of the number of visitors on your...
Source: opensource.com
Find the Best Mixpanel Alternatives for Your Product Team
While Countly is a great option for security-conscious product teams, it still requires manual event setup. Pricing starts with an open source, free-forever plan that’s extensible with the right engineering resources. However, Countly doesn’t have a way for less technical users to easily get started.
Source: heap.io
On Migrating from Google Analytics
The initial installation of Countly isn't too difficult. They offer a pretty convenient One-Liner Countly Installation script. According to the documentation they suggest a server with 2GB of RAM. I ran Countly on such a server for several months, but eventually downgraded to a server with 1GB of RAM, and haven't encountered any issues so far.

Heap Reviews

10 Best Mixpanel Alternatives for Product Analytics in 2024
Heap is a web and mobile data analytics platform that captures every user interaction via secure session recording. Use it to get insights into customer behavior and to streamline your digital experiences. ⏩
Source: clickup.com
7 best Mixpanel alternatives to understand your users
On the other hand, Mixpanel requires you to manually define the events you want to track from the start. While this might take some extra time, it provides more detailed reports right off the bat, which makes the analysis straightforward. The choice between Heap and Mixpanel depends on whether you prioritize comprehensive data capturing (Heap) or a more detailed analysis...
Source: www.hotjar.com
Best Mixpanel Alternatives for SaaS
Heap is a robust product analytics platform that provides users with a plethora of in-depth insights into customer behavior and needs. With Heap, you can track user interactions in real time across all touch points within your product. Insights from Heap help you dig deeper into the paths users take when navigating your product and identify precise points of friction. Plus,...
Source: userpilot.com
Top 5 Plausible Analytics Alternatives in 2024
Additionally, Heap suggests reports for your review. You can define events, create segments, and utilize the event visualizer to delve into detailed user data.
Source: www.putler.com
Top 9 Plausible Analytics alternatives in 2024
Heap’s automatic event tracking and retroactive analytics offer a hassle-free approach, simplifying complex data analysis. Its user-friendly interface and intuitive tools enable effortless data exploration, offering detailed insights into user journeys without the need for manual tracking. Although it provides detailed user data, some users might find limitations in customer...
Source: usermaven.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Heap should be more popular than Countly. It has been mentiond 11 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Countly mentions (6)

  • Want your dedicated (and managed) product analytics server?
    Hello HN, founder of Countly (https://count.ly) here. As you might know, we are the creators of one of the first open-source product analytics platforms that has 10+ SDKs for mobile, desktop and web applications. We've been working on a new SaaS, myCountly, to help you launch your own Countly servers in any location, so your user data stays close to home. We are going to do an alpha launch soon, and looking for... - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • Which crash reporting platform do you use for your Vue apps?
    Is countly still operational? Can't connect to their website https://count.ly/. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Ask HN: Best alternatives to Google Analytics in 2021?
    Always surprised more people don’t use countly. Runs nice in docker or digital ocean. https://count.ly. Been self hosting it for years with few issues. - Source: Hacker News / over 3 years ago
  • Open Source Analytics Stack: Bringing Control, Flexibility, and Data-Privacy to Your Analytics
    Countly (website, GitHub) is also an open-source product analytics platform that is designed primarily for marketing organizations. It helps marketers track website information (website transactions, campaigns, and sources that led visitors to the website, etc.). Countly also collects real-time mobile analytics metrics like active users, time spent in-app, customer location, etc., in a unified view on your dashboard. - Source: dev.to / over 3 years ago
  • Google Analytics deleted my entire account because I didn't log in for 60 days
    Self-hosted alternatives to Google Analytics include: Matomo, open core with a broad feature set: https://matomo.org Countly, open core with desktop and mobile tracking: https://count.ly/ Plausible, open source with a simple feature set: https://plausible.io. - Source: Hacker News / almost 4 years ago
View more

Heap mentions (11)

  • free-for.dev
    Heap.io — Automatically captures every user action in iOS or web apps. Free for up to 5,000 visits/month. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Question about testID in prod vs dev builds
    Check out Heap for React Native - https://heap.io. Source: over 2 years ago
  • All 2200+ companies in my db have a dedicated page now.
    How heavily does the site depend on heap.io for its core functionality? Like, say Heap went under completely out of the blue (god forbid) and you had to switch to Google analytics, how much tech debt are you in? Source: almost 3 years ago
  • Thousands of Popular Websites See What You Type–Before You Hit Submit
    Aren't services like Heap effectively worse versions of this? On their landing page they outright list this as their value prop: > Heap collects all the data on your customers - automatically. What they click. Where they go. What they do, even when you’re not looking. All without the need for engineers. [1]: https://heap.io/. - Source: Hacker News / about 3 years ago
  • We (Still) Believe in Private Offices (2015)
    Author here, surprising to see this blog post of mine trending, but it has held up pretty well! Happy to answer any questions about my time at Stack Overflow. I've since moved on to Heap (https://heap.io/) and we are hiring. We're virtual first so we don't have private offices, but we have the same values about treating developers well and giving them the space they need to do deep work. We're hiring for basically... - Source: Hacker News / over 3 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Countly and Heap, you can also consider the following products

Google Analytics - Improve your website to increase conversions, improve the user experience, and make more money using Google Analytics. Measure, understand and quantify engagement on your site with customized and in-depth reports.

Mixpanel - Mixpanel is the most advanced analytics platform in the world for mobile & web.

Adobe Analytics - Adobe Analytics is an industry-leading solution that empowers you to understand your customers as people and steer your business with customer intelligence.

Amplitude - Chart Your Path to Growth with Digital Analytics

Matomo - Matomo is an open-source web analytics platform

ThingSpeak - Open source data platform for the Internet of Things. ThingSpeak Features