If you're running a SaaS team and you're tired of guessing what your users are actually doing, you've probably heard of Heap. Maybe your VP of Product is hyped about “data-driven” decisions, or your sales lead wants better insight into what makes deals close. Either way, you want to know: Does Heap actually help B2B SaaS teams transform their go-to-market (GTM) strategy, or is it another analytics tool with a shiny dashboard?
I've spent years in SaaS, both building and selling, and I've seen enough analytics products to know that most promise the moon and deliver a pie chart. This review cuts through the noise to show what Heap really does for B2B teams, where it shines, and where you might want to look elsewhere.
What Heap Actually Is (and Isn't)
Heap is a product analytics tool. Its main pitch is “capture everything” — instead of setting up custom event tracking, it automatically records every click, pageview, and form fill in your web app. You can then retroactively define events, build funnels, and slice the data without waiting for an engineer.
What Heap is great at: - Speed to insight: You get up and running fast. No waiting for devs to add tracking code. - Non-technical access: Product managers, marketers, even customer success folks can build reports and answer questions without SQL. - Retroactive analysis: Forgot to track a button? Define it later and analyze past usage.
What Heap is not: - A replacement for your CRM or sales pipeline tool. - A full-blown business intelligence (BI) platform. - A tool that will magically turn data into strategy. It still needs people to ask the right questions.
Why B2B SaaS Teams Care About Heap
B2B SaaS GTM teams have specific challenges: - User journeys are messy (think trials, demos, multi-seat rollouts). - Sales cycles are long, and multiple stakeholders interact with your app. - You need to tie product usage to revenue, not just clicks.
Heap promises to help by: - Showing you which features actually drive conversions. - Highlighting where prospects drop during onboarding or trial. - Helping sales and CS teams identify “healthy” accounts based on real usage, not just guesswork.
Here’s what that actually looks like.
Step 1: Setting Up Heap for a B2B SaaS App
The setup is easy — mostly. You drop a snippet into your app, and Heap starts collecting data immediately. If you have a marketing site and a web app, you’ll want Heap on both.
What you’ll probably want to do right away: - Map user identities: Connect Heap’s anonymous IDs to your actual user records. If you’re not careful here, your analysis will be a mess. This means sending user IDs, company names, and roles from your backend to Heap. - Define key events: Heap auto-captures a lot, but you’ll want to mark things like “Started Trial,” “Invited Teammate,” or “Upgraded Plan” as explicit events. - Configure account-level tracking: B2B SaaS is all about accounts, not just users. Heap lets you group users under accounts, but this takes some extra setup.
Pro tip: Don’t skip the identity resolution step. If you do, you’ll end up with a pile of anonymous usage that’s impossible to tie back to real customers or pipeline.
Step 2: Building Useful Reports (Without Drowning in Data)
Heap’s interface is clean. You can build funnels, segment users, and look at cohort retention without writing code. For a PM or marketer, this means you can actually answer questions like: - Where do trial users drop off? - Which features do paying customers use most? - Is there a usage pattern that predicts upgrades or churn?
What works well: - Funnels are fast: You can build a “Free Trial Signup → Key Feature Used → Upgrade” funnel in minutes. - Segmentation is easy: Slice by plan, user role, or company size. - Retroactive filtering: Since Heap records everything, you can define new events and re-analyze past data without waiting.
Where you’ll hit limits: - Complex, custom metrics: You can do a lot, but if you want advanced calculations (LTV, custom revenue attribution), you’ll hit walls. - Data overload: Heap captures everything. That means it’s easy to build reports that look impressive but don’t actually help you make decisions. Focus on questions that matter for your GTM.
Pro tip: Start with a handful of metrics tied to your actual funnel — trial activation rate, time-to-value, and the “aha moment” feature adoption. Ignore vanity metrics.
Step 3: Using Heap for Go-To-Market Strategy
This is where Heap goes from “nice dashboard” to “actual business value,” but only if you use it right.
1. Product-Led Growth (PLG)
If your GTM relies on users discovering value before they ever talk to sales, Heap helps you: - Spot where users get stuck in onboarding. - See which features drive conversion to paid. - Find “power users” who could be advocates or upsell targets.
Reality check: Heap can show you what users do, but it can’t tell you why. Pair Heap data with qualitative feedback or session replays for the full story.
2. Sales-Assisted Motions
If your sales team gets involved early, Heap can: - Alert reps when a prospect hits key milestones (“invited 3 teammates” or “exported data”). - Give CS teams usage health scores for renewals. - Identify accounts with lots of usage but no recent sales engagement.
What works: Heap’s Salesforce integration is solid, but you’ll need to work with your ops team to get it right.
3. Revenue Attribution
This is where most analytics tools overpromise. Heap lets you see if certain actions correlate with deals closing, but actual revenue attribution (especially in multi-stakeholder deals) is messier than any tool makes it seem.
Don’t expect: Perfect, linear attribution. Use Heap to spot trends, not to automate your QBRs.
What Heap Does Better Than Most
- Retroactive tracking: No more “oops, we missed that event” headaches.
- Non-technical usability: Actual team members can answer their own questions.
- Fast time-to-value: You’ll see insights within days, not weeks.
What Heap Doesn’t Fix (and What to Ignore)
- Bad data in, bad decisions out: Heap can’t fix a messy signup process or a leaky onboarding flow. It just shows you what’s happening.
- Data silos: Heap isn’t a replacement for a data warehouse. If you want to combine marketing, sales, and product data in one place, you’ll still need a stack.
- Analysis paralysis: The more data you have, the easier it is to get lost. Heap’s dashboards can become a graveyard of unused reports if you’re not careful.
- “Aha moments” are still hard: Finding your product’s true value driver takes real work. Heap helps you spot patterns, but it won’t hand you answers.
Pricing and the Real Cost
Heap isn’t cheap, especially for larger teams or high-traffic apps. The free tier is generous for early-stage SaaS, but you’ll hit limits as you grow. The real cost isn’t just the subscription — it’s the time your team spends building reports and digging for insights.
Pro tip: Assign someone to own analytics. Otherwise, you’ll end up with a bunch of half-finished dashboards no one trusts.
Honest Take: Who Should (and Shouldn’t) Use Heap
Use Heap if: - You want product analytics without bugging your dev team every week. - Your GTM depends on understanding user behavior in your app. - You have at least one person who’ll actually drive the analytics effort.
Look elsewhere if: - You need deep BI, not just product analytics (look at Looker or Tableau). - Your sales cycle is entirely high-touch and you rarely use a self-serve funnel. - You’re not committed to acting on what you learn. More data won’t solve a lack of ownership.
Bottom Line: Keep It Simple, Iterate Fast
Heap is a solid tool for SaaS teams who want to understand how real users engage — and who are willing to focus on a few key questions, not get lost in endless charts. Start small, define the metrics that tie directly to your GTM, and don’t expect magic.
You don’t need perfect data to get value — you just need to start, ask the next most important question, and use what you learn to make your product and your go-to-market tighter. The rest is just noise.