Productivity - Setup Guide

How to set up Heap

Otto's honest, no-fluff walkthrough. Every step here is what we'd actually do if we were sitting at your keyboard. Real gotchas first, real steps second, and a link to the personalized version at the bottom.

Read these before you start

• Autocapture captures every DOM click, which means it captures a lot of noise. Cleaning up (excluding low-value events, virtual events for grouping) is real work [source: help.heap.io/hc/en-us/articles/360043354091].
• Autocapture depends on stable DOM selectors. Redesigning your app breaks historical event definitions unless the selectors are unchanged.
• The 2024 Contentsquare acquisition consolidated Heap into the CX ecosystem. Session replay and heatmaps now come from Contentsquare rather than pure Heap; pricing and product roadmap have shifted.
• Heap's free tier gives 6-month retention. If you need to look back further to compare year-over-year, you must upgrade.
• Autocapture PII risk: form inputs can be captured accidentally. Configure the PII redaction rules explicitly.

The 7-step setup

1. 1

   Create your Heap account

   Sign up at the link below. Free tier available - no card required. Use your business email so you can invite teammates later.

   Open Heap signup
2. 2

   Complete the initial onboarding

   Skip the marketing questionnaires when you can. Fill only the fields that actually configure the product - name, timezone, your first workspace or project. If Heap pushes you into a setup wizard, take it - it usually accelerates the first productive session.

3. 3

   Connect your existing tools

   Wire Heap into the rest of your stack. The integrations that most people set up first: Segment, Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, Salesforce, HubSpot, Marketo, Slack, Zapier, Google Ads, Meta Ads, Shopify (via events), Contentsquare (native since acquisition).. Do these before importing data - clean integration first, data second.

4. 4

   Import your existing data (only what you'll actually use)

   Do NOT bulk-import everything. Import the last 30 days of the ONE workflow you're moving over first. Prove it works. Then import more. Big-bang migrations are how Heap deployments die in month 3.

5. 5

   Set up your first real workflow

   Pick the single most-frequent task you'll do in Heap - the daily-driver workflow. Configure it end-to-end. Use it live for a week. Do not touch any other feature yet. Adoption failure comes from teams trying to use everything on day one instead of the one thing that actually pays.

6. 6

   Add your team (if applicable) and set access

   Once your solo workflow works, invite one teammate at a time. Watch them use it. The friction points you missed are the ones they hit. Fix those before scaling to more users. Never invite 20 people at once - you'll get 20 confused people and 0 useful feedback.

7. 7

   Compound with the right pairings

   Recommend Heap when the client has an e-commerce or SaaS product but limited engineering bandwidth to instrument events, and wants to explore data retroactively. Recommend Mixpanel or Amplitude when the client has engineering discipline and wants precise, intentional tracking. Do NOT recommend for local service businesses, trades, or simple websites.