Best Mixpanel Alternatives for SaaS Companies Looking to Migrate14 min read
Mixpanel is a popular choice for product analytics, known for its robust features and powerful insights. But it can also be incredibly complex to use and its high costs can be limiting, especially for growing teams.
These challenges often push teams to explore alternative tools that are easier to use, more affordable, or just better suited to their needs.
So whether you’re ready to move on from the tool or just starting your search, the good news is you’ll be spoiled for choice. In fact, there are so many Mixpanel alternatives in the market to offer you valuable insights without breaking the bank or having to settle for a tool that doesn’t fully meet your needs.
To help you decide, let’s look at some of the best Mixpanel alternatives out there.
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Why should you consider Mixpanel alternatives?
While Mixpanel might be one of the more well-known names in the product analytics space, it has limitations that might not work for every team.
Here are some reasons you might consider other Mixpanel alternatives:
- You prefer a more intuitive and less complex solution: Mixpanel’s analytics are powerful but complex. Setting it up requires developers and manual tracking, which can slow down projects and make non-technical members dependent on technical support.
- You want to combine all your analytics needs in one place: Mixpanel is great at quantitative data but lacks features like in-app surveys or autocapture for qualitative insights. This means you might need extra tools to fill the gaps, which complicates your tech stack and fragments your data.
- You want to cut costs: Mixpanel’s pricing is event-based, which means you pay for every user action it tracks, like button clicks, page views, or feature usage. As user activity grows, this can quickly get expensive. Considering it’s an analytics tool only, it’s not a cost-effective option.
What are the best Mixpanel alternatives?
If Mixpanel doesn’t quite work for your team, there are plenty of other tools worth looking at.
Here are some top picks and what makes them stand out:
- Userpilot – Best for no-code analytics and engagement for product teams. Price starts at $249/month, with a free trial available.
- Heap – Best for autocapture and live data feeds. Pricing available on request, with a free trial offered.
- Amplitude – Best for advanced user behavioral analytics. Free plan available; premium plans start at $49 per month.
- FullStory – Best for web analytics with visual insights like heatmaps and session recordings. Pricing based on user sessions, details available on request, with a free trial offered.
- PostHog – Best for cost-effective, self-hosted analytics solutions. Free plan available; paid plans based on usage.
- Hotjar – Best for qualitative insights like heatmaps, session recordings, and surveys. Free plan available; paid plans start at $39/month.
Userpilot – Best no-code analytics tool for product teams
Userpilot is a complete solution that lets you track, understand, and act on user interaction data, all in one tool. Unlike Mixpanel, Userpilot combines user analytics with engagement tools, such as triggering contextual help based on user actions.
This is why Userpilot is one of the ideal Mixpanel alternatives for product teams with limited technical resources. It focuses on offering powerful analytics and engagement features without depending too much on engineering support.
Userpilot’s main features:
- Autocapture with visual labeler – Userpilot’s autocapture feature simplifies event tracking by capturing front-end events without coding. It makes sure you always have access to both historical and live data, eliminating the “waiting for data” issue common with tools like Mixpanel.
- Session recordings with segmentation filters – Userpilot lets you replay user sessions, skip inactivity, add notes, and generate bug reports. This helps you understand user behavior and spot issues easily.
- In-app survey for qualitative data – Userpilot allows you to collect direct feedback with in-app surveys to understand user preferences better. Unlike Mixpanel, which lacks built-in survey tools, Userpilot combines qualitative and quantitative insights in one platform.
- Customizable dashboards and built-in templates – You can also easily track your metrics over time, by picking a dashboard template or building your own.
- Reports for granular analysis – Get deeper insights into user behavior with detailed reports like funnels, paths, trends, and cohorts. These reports also come with segmentation filters so you can study users on a granular level, like seeing how many users on each plan are using a specific feature.
- Engagement capabilities – Userpilot lets you trigger contextual help based on user behavior, making it easier for users to navigate your product. Unlike Mixpanel, which focuses solely on analytics, Userpilot helps you act on insights so you can build a smoother and more engaging product experience.
Userpilot is excellent for no-code tools and engagement features, but it doesn’t yet support mobile apps, which can be a limitation for some teams. However, mobile support is expected to roll out this year.
Pricing of Userpilot: Unlike Mixpanel’s event-based pricing, Userpilot follows a predictable pricing structure based on active users.
The Starter plan starts at $249 per month for up to 2,000 MAUs with essential analytics and engagement features. The $799/month Growth plan adds advanced analytics, while the Enterprise plan is customizable with premium integrations and advanced security.
Heap – Best tool for autocapture and live data feed
Among Mixpanel alternatives, Heap is a strong option, thanks to its autocapture feature, which automatically tracks all user interactions without manual setup. It was one of the first tools to offer live data feeds, which allows you to monitor user behavior in real-time, something Mixpanel lacks.
If you don’t want to decide which events to track or wait for data to come in, Heap is an excellent choice.
Heap’s main features:
- Autocapture and post capture – Unlike Mixpanel, Heap automatically tracks all user interactions without requiring manual setup or coding, which saves you a lot of time and effort.
- Live data feed – Heap also offers real-time user behavior tracking, a feature Mixpanel doesn’t have, so you can act on insights immediately.
- User Journeys – Like Userpilot’s Paths, Heap helps you analyze users’ paths within your product. This can be a much simpler way to understand user flows compared to Mixpanel’s complex setups.
- Data governance – Heap has built-in features to clean, organize, and manage event data, which helps you get more accurate insights.
- Acquisition analysis – It offers clear insights into the performance of all your acquisition channels, which makes it easier to compare and analyze their effectiveness.
Heap is great for capturing frontend interactions but it lacks backend capabilities. Also, it doesn’t offer native in-app surveys for qualitative feedback. To get a full view of user behavior, you might need to rely on other tools to make up for these missing features.
Pricing of Heap: It has four pricing plans: Free, Growth, Pro, and Premier.
The Free plan includes up to 10,000 sessions per month and basic analytics features, but storage is limited to 6 months. Pricing for the paid plans isn’t listed, so you’ll need to contact Heap for details. Unlike Mixpanel’s event-based pricing, Heap charges based on user sessions, which can make budgeting tricky as your product grows.
Amplitude – Best user behavior analytics platform
Amplitude is one of the closest alternatives to Mixpanel, but it also offers more advanced features for tracking and analyzing user behavior, like cohort analysis, revenue tracking, and in-depth segmentation.
Amplitude works well for mid-market and enterprise teams that need deep analytics and don’t mind a steeper learning curve. So if your focus is on getting deeper insights and handling complex customer data, Amplitude might be worth the effort.
Amplitude’s main features:
- Behavioral cohort analysis – Amplitude’s cohort analysis is more advanced than Mixpanel’s, with deeper segmentation features and more options to help you analyze user retention and behavioral trends over time.
- Revenue tracking – Amplitude is also good at giving insights into financial impact by directly tracking revenue and lifetime value. This is not something Mixpanel offers natively.
- Built-in A/B testing – Compares user behavior in experiments to see which product changes work best. Unlike Mixpanel, Amplitude has this A/B testing feature built-in.
- Comprehensive pathfinder reports – Amplitude’s path analysis maps complex user journeys in detail, whereas most tools tend to be more limited.
- Machine learning insights – Amplitude also uses machine learning to highlight retention trends and user predictions.
Amplitude’s steep learning curve can make it challenging for beginners or teams without technical expertise. Also, its reporting features can be complicated, with some users saying they rely on basic charts because they find advanced reports harder to interpret.
Setting up events might also require time and a skilled team, which might not be the best option for smaller teams.
Pricing of Amplitude: Amplitude offers four pricing plans: Starter, Plus, Growth, and Enterprise. The Starter plan is free, while the Plus plan starts at $49 per month, with pricing based on the number of Monthly Tracked Users (MTUs). The Growth and Enterprise plans are not publicly listed but the number is said to be from $17K a year.
FullStory – Best web analytics platform for customer data insights
If visual analytics are a priority for your team and Mixpanel isn’t doing the job, FullStory might be a good tool to consider.
Apart from familiar tools like funnel and journey analysis, FullStory is great at heatmaps and session recordings, features that Mixpanel doesn’t offer. It also has frustration signals that show exactly where users struggle, which helps UX and design teams quickly identify pain points.
FullStory’s main features:
- Heatmaps and click maps – Helps you visualize data, like where users click, scroll, or focus most on a page. Note that Mixpanel lacks heatmap functionality.
- Rage click detection and frustration signals – FullStory automatically flags moments of user frustration so you can quickly fix UX issues. Mixpanel doesn’t track user frustration signals.
- OmniSearch – Helps you locate specific user sessions, events, or interactions in large datasets. This detailed search capability is missing in Mixpanel.
- Session recordings – Unlike Mixpanel, FullStory allows you to replay user sessions in real time or on demand, offering a clear view of how users navigate your product.
New users might find FullStory overwhelming. For instance, setting up metrics or user segments isn’t always easy, and the lack of advanced training makes it harder to get the most out of the tool. Some users also report that FullStory’s data capture can slow down website performance.
Pricing of FullStory: FullStory offers four pricing plans: Free, Business, Advanced, and Enterprise. Its pricing is session-based, which can be more predictable than Mixpanel’s event-based model, but unfortunately, neither tool is transparent with their pricing.
Posthog – Best cost-saving analytics tool to track user behavior
PostHog is an open-source product analytics tool known for being simple, affordable, and flexible. Unlike most competitors, including Mixpanel, it allows self-hosted deployment, so you can have full control over your data and privacy.
Overall, PostHog is a solid choice for teams of all sizes, from startups to enterprises, that want advanced analytics without breaking the budget.
PostHog’s main features:
- Open-source platform – Unlike Mixpanel and other tools on this list, PostHog is fully open-source. This gives you a lot of flexibility to access, modify, and customize the tool to suit your needs.
- Self-hosting option – Offers you full control over your data and privacy, ideal for security-conscious teams.
- Built-in feature flags – Lets you roll out, test, and control new features. Mixpanel requires third-party tools to achieve this.
- Event-based analytics – Tracks user actions at a granular level, similar to Mixpanel, but with the flexibility of open-source customization.
- A/B testing – Allows you to compare the impact of product changes directly within the platform, a feature Mixpanel offers but without PostHog’s self-hosting advantage.
PostHog offers many features, but some feel basic compared to tools like Mixpanel. For example, its dashboards have limited customization options, which makes it harder to tailor reports. Its free and self-hosted plans also come with restrictions like shorter data retention and fewer projects.
Pricing of PostHog: PostHog offers flexible pricing with options for teams of all sizes. It starts with a generous Totally free plan that supports one project. The Ridiculously cheap plan supports six projects, while the Starship enterprise plan starts at $2,000 per month.
Unlike Mixpanel’s event-based pricing, PostHog is definitely more affordable and also offers customizing options with add-ons like Teams and Data Pipelines, so you only pay for what you need.
Hotjar – Best analytics tool for capturing user interactions
Hotjar is one of the great Mixpanel alternatives for teams focused on understanding user behavior through tools like heatmaps, session recordings, and surveys.
Unlike Mixpanel, which is more geared toward product analytics, Hotjar is all about user research. By combining behavioral data with direct user feedback, it helps you understand not just what users do, but why they do it.
Hotjar’s main features:
- Heatmaps – Shows you where users click, scroll, and move on a page so you can identify areas of interest or confusion. While some other tools like FullStory also offer this, Mixpanel doesn’t.
- Surveys and feedback widgets – Collects user feedback to understand their needs and frustrations, which Mixpanel lacks as it doesn’t include in-app survey tools.
- Engagement zones – Highlights parts of a page that users engage with the most, so you can improve page layouts.
- Session recordings – Lets you replay user sessions to see their journey and identify issues; Mixpanel doesn’t offer this feature.
Some users find Hotjar’s pricing expensive compared to similar tools, especially for features like feedback and session recordings. While there is a free plan, it comes with restrictions on recordings, page views, and data storage, which might not be enough for small businesses with high traffic.
Pricing of Hotjar: The good thing about Hotjar is that it makes its pricing clear, so it’s easier to plan based on your team’s budget.
Hotjar offers a free Basic plan that lets you track up to 35 daily sessions. Paid plans include Plus at $39/month for 100 daily sessions, Business starting at $99/month for 500 daily sessions, and Scale for larger needs.
Looking to migrate from Mixpanel?
If Mixpanel’s complexity or pricing isn’t working out for you, it’s time to move on. Consider Heap for in-depth user research, or PostHog for a more affordable, self-hosted option.
For a more complete solution with no-code analytics and autocapture, Userpilot might be the right choice. If you’re ready to migrate, Userpilot makes it easy with bulk import API. Transfer data from any analytics tool, including Mixpanel, and get up and running quickly without losing valuable insights.
Schedule a Userpilot demo to see how it can support your product goals.
FAQ
Who are the competitors of Mixpanel?
Mixpanel’s main competitors include tools like Userpilot, Google Analytics, Heap, and Amplitude. Each offers unique features like autocapture, session recordings, and pricing models that may better suit your team’s needs.
Why not to use Mixpanel?
Mixpanel’s event tracking setup can be complex, and its event-based pricing becomes expensive as user activity scales. Teams looking for more intuitive and cost-effective product analytics tools might consider Userpilot, Heap, and Amplitude. Meanwhile, teams focused on web traffic and marketing data might prefer Google Analytics.
Is Mixpanel better than Google Analytics?
Mixpanel focuses on in-depth product and user behavior analytics, while Google Analytics tracks website traffic and marketing performance. The better choice depends on your specific analytical needs and whether tools like Mixpanel, Google Analytics, or another tool meet those requirements.
Is Amplitude better than Mixpanel?
Amplitude and Mixpanel offer similar analytics for product teams. Amplitude provides more advanced features like revenue tracking but has a steeper learning curve. Mixpanel is simpler but may lack the depth some teams need.