If you could be bothered, it is easy-ish to convert HDT heels to NiO heels. I've done it for pretty much all the heels in my game.
It's mostly just a process. At a high level it involves:
1. Removing the HDT magic effect from the mod.
2. Attaching heel height info to the _0 & _1 meshes. Or better yet, edit the single bodyslide mesh so any heels you build will have the height info. But many heels don't have bodyslide files.
The only sort of 'fiddly' part is guestimating what height to attach to the heels (it's a number you pick) which involves some going into the game and checking out if you're either sunk into the ground or floating above it. But after a doing a few you get an idea of the ball-park numbers to use. When eyeballing the height in game make sure the ground your standing on is 'right' first. Check it out wearing normal (non-heel) boots. Some of the floor collisions in skyrim aint right from the get-go.