Case Study: Heap achieves advanced, lightning-fast web and mobile analytics at massive scale with Citus Data

Heap Powers Advanced Web & Mobile Analytics on Massive Amounts of Data With Citus

Heap captures every user action across web, iOS, and Android for over 6,000 customers, ingesting roughly 500 billion events (~500 TB). That volume—up to 100× more data than typical analytics tools—made it hard to deliver immediate, complex queries; Heap’s Redshift-based first generation couldn’t scale or support the advanced analyses customers demanded without long delays or redesign.

Heap migrated its datastore to Citus (a PostgreSQL extension) and scaled to a 40‑node cluster with ~10 TB RAM, storing ~500B events and enabling a mostly relational model with custom extensions for funnels and retention. The result: cost‑effective horizontal scale, lightning‑fast, advanced analytics on all captured events, and faster product growth and customer satisfaction.

Heap

Dan Robinson

CTO