Heap vs Smartlook
Feature checklists rarely decide anything. What decides it is the pricing metric, who has to write the tests, and which limitation you can live with.
Entry price
Free tier available
Free tierFree tier available
Free tierWhat drives the bill
The metric that actually scales your invoice.
Paid tiers are quote-based by session volume.
End of Sale is in effect, so there is no current list price for new buyers: Cisco stopped new subscriptions on 31 May 2026, existing customers could renew only until 31 August 2026, paid subscriptions end 31 August 2027 and the platform is decommissioned with data deleted on 30 September 2027. Export anything you need before then.
Free tier
Free plan with a monthly session limit.
Free plan with a monthly session limit.
Open source
Self-hostable
No-code authoring
Languages
Platforms
Fits teams
Adoption
Widely used
Contentsquare · since 2013
Established
Cisco · since 2016
Strengths
- Retroactive event definition eliminates 'we didn't track that' entirely.
- Very fast time to first insight — no instrumentation project required.
- Warehouse sync for teams that want the raw data.
- Genuinely good native mobile replay, including Flutter and React Native.
- Always-on event tracking without pre-instrumentation.
- Reasonable pricing for mid-sized traffic.
Limitations
- Autocaptured data needs governance or the event list becomes unusable noise.
- Session-based pricing on high-traffic products.
- Acquisition means overlap with Contentsquare's own products.
- End of life announced by Cisco: sales closed 31 May 2026, dashboards and historical data go on 31 August 2027.
- Web analytics features are behind Contentsquare and FullStory.
- Interface is less refined than the market leaders.
Best for
Product teams that want analytics without an instrumentation backlog.
Nobody starting today. Existing users should be planning a migration.
All of these integrate with: Segment, Slack.
Pricing last reviewed August 2026 and is indicative only — confirm on each vendor’s own page.