PostHog vs. Mixpanel: Each Product’s True Strengths

Unsure which instrument to choose between PostHog and Mixpanel? PostHog is greatest for groups that want tight management over their information and don’t thoughts getting their fingers soiled with technical work, whereas Mixpanel is good for SaaS groups that need an open-and-go resolution.

Let’s dive into the options PostHog and Mixpanel provide and the way the 2 evaluate. 

PostHog vs. Mixpanel: A Fast Snapshot

TL;DR? Right here’s a fast overview of the 2 conduct and web site analytics instruments. 

Characteristic Breakdown: PostHog vs. Mixpanel

1. Occasion-Primarily based Monitoring

PostHog

PostHog is a product analytics platform that lets groups seize customized occasions—aka, particular person person actions—throughout their web sites and cellular apps. 

PostHog may be very developer-friendly, and you may ship occasions to PostHog by way of software program improvement kits (SDKs) or API. These occasions can then be sliced and diced into funnels, segmentation, and development charts to research what customers are doing in your platform. 

In contrast with Mixpanel, PostHog can routinely seize a wider vary of person interactions, like clicks, net vitals, and errors. You don’t have to show autocapture on, however if you happen to do, there’s much less guide setup to do. 

(Psst—see these PostHog alternatives for extra glorious instruments to think about.)

Mixpanel

Mixpanel’s autocapture is a bit more fundamental. It focuses extra on high-level interactions like pageviews and kind submissions. In order for you deeper interplay information—the likes of which PostHog routinely offers you—you’ll must manually outline which occasions you need Mixpanel to trace. 

Like PostHog, although, Mixpanel is basically based mostly on occasion monitoring, not pageviews like another net and person analytics instruments. 

With SDKs for net, cellular, and server-side monitoring, Mixpanel tracks the actions customers take inside a product, like utilizing a function, making a purchase order, or altering one thing in an account. As with PostHog, these occasions then get fed into Mixpanel’s funnels, retention evaluation charts, and reporting instruments. 

One massive distinction between Mixpanel and PostHog is that PostHog offers you the selection to self-host or run this system on the cloud. If you happen to want tight management over your information, you’ll be able to self-host. In order for you the comfort of the cloud, you’ll be able to have that too.

Mixpanel is a cloud-hosted service solely, which implies much less management however extra simplicity. See our full Mixpanel review for much more info on this common instrument.  

2. Funnel Evaluation

PostHog

With PostHog, you’ll be able to outline a particular sequence of person occasions to trace. As an illustration, you’ll be able to create a funnel comprised of “seen pricing web page” + “signed up without spending a dime trial” + “used function for the primary time.”

From there, PostHog will measure what number of customers make it by every step of the funnel. It’ll present you the place customers drop off, provide you with conversion charges, and phase the funnels by properties or cohorts that you simply outline. 

PostHog’s funnel outcomes are slightly bit cluttered—to my eye, no less than—and fewer visually pleasing than Mixpanel’s. However PostHog’s viewers of builders most likely appreciates that the main target is extra on presenting information than on making that information look fairly.   

Or perhaps—and truly, that is most likely it—they’re tremendous devoted to the Nineties vibe.

If individuals don’t convert—and there will be a lot who don’t, as a result of that’s simply how the sport goes—PostHog helps you to create cohorts out of those customers so you’ll be able to examine their conduct and attempt to win them again.

Mixpanel

Mixpanel’s stories are additionally constructed on occasion sequences. They measure how customers go from one occasion to a different inside a set timeframe. (This conversion window function isn’t out there on the similar stage on PostHog.)

In Mixpanel, you too can see what number of customers full every step of a journey and spotlight the place drop-offs occur. 

It then calculates the conversion charges between every step of a funnel, and, like PostHog, helps you to phase customers by particular attributes, conversions (or lack thereof), and ranges of time. 

Plus—in my humble, non-developer-brained opinion—Mixpanel’s funnels are simply prettier. They current extra information than PostHog, surprisingly, however with color-coding, the info is straightforward to soak up and examine.

See what I imply?

3. Cohorts and Consumer Segmentation

PostHog

PostHog lets your staff create person cohorts based mostly on conduct or different properties that you simply outline. It’s pretty straightforward to arrange cohorts. First, you’ll establish particular occasions you need to monitor, like “Accomplished Signup” or “Used Characteristic A.” 

Subsequent, you’ll establish the occasion frequency you need to monitor, if any. To see how typically somebody makes use of an essential function, you’ll be able to outline a cohort as any person who “Used Characteristic A greater than 3 occasions,” as an example. 

After you’ve outlined the occasions and frequencies you need to monitor, you’ll be able to additional filter the cohort by person properties and behavioral traits, together with: 

• Geographic location
• Plan sort
• Sort of system (net, iOS, Android)
• Working system or net browser
• Visitors supply
• Account creation date
• Any customized person attributes your staff needs to outline and monitor 

Cohorts in PostHog replace routinely as customers meet the standards, and drop them in the event that they now not meet it. You don’t must do any of that routinely. As soon as the cohorts are arrange, you should use them for funnels, development charts, function flags, retention stories, A/B tests, and surveys. 

Mixpanel

Like PostHog, Mixpanel helps behavioral, event-based cohorts. You possibly can create them in line with: 

• Completion of an occasion
• Frequency of an occasion
• Consumer profile properties
• Time- and date-based situations 

You can even monitor customers and cohorts in line with a number of situations with Mixpanel. As an illustration, you’ll be able to create a cohort that’s a mixture of “Customers who signed up” + “Customers who’ve used Characteristic A no less than two occasions” + “Customers who’re on the Professional plan.”

I like how deeply you’ll be able to filter cohorts on each Mixpanel and PostHog. This sort of precision helps you optimize every space of your web site or app for each sort of person who touches your platforms. 

4. Integrations

PostHog

PostHog helps quite a lot of integrations and connections that funnel information into and out of its analytics platform. These embrace: 

• SDKs (JavaScript, Python, React Native, and the like) and an API to ship occasions, work together with information, and combine PostHog into varied web site and cellular merchandise.
• Third-party connectors, together with Zapier, which connects PostHog to 1000’s of instruments with out pushing you to make use of any code. 
• Direct integrations with instruments like Jira, Linear, GitHub, Mailchimp, ClickUp, and different common platforms. 

Take into account, although, that the direct integrations are not as straightforward to make use of because the native integrations Mixpanel affords. It’s important to configure the complete integration your self by managing API keys and viewers IDs. It’s not plug-and-play. 

Contemplating that PostHog’s major viewers is groups with technical know-how, this isn’t essentially a foul factor, until you need plug-and-play integrations. 

For that, you’ll need Mixpanel as a substitute of PostHog. 

Mixpanel

Whereas PostHog is available in each self-hosted and cloud-hosted choices, Mixpanel solely affords a cloud-hosted product. This implies its integrations are geared extra towards ease of use fairly than providing customers full management over each little element. 

Mixpanel affords associate integrations with a bevy of instruments, from Hubspot and Slack to ABTasty and—yep—Mailchimp!

All you need to do to set these integrations up is go to the Integrations part in Mixanel, select which instrument you need to combine with, authenticate the app, and configure what information to sync. 

Not like with PostHog, you received’t be doing practically as a lot guide API key administration or all the opposite technical issues the extra hands-on instrument requires you to do.

After all, I’m not saying PostHog is dangerous at integrations. Removed from it. The distinction is extra within the philosophy of how information flows between methods. With PostHog, you get deeper management however extra upfront work to do. With Mixpanel, you’ve gotten much less management but in addition much less work.

5. Dashboards and Reporting

PostHog

With PostHog, your staff can construct a customized dashboard with the whole lot you need to see: developments, funnels, retention stories, and the like. Simply as a observe: stories are first constructed as “Insights,” as PostHog calls them. 

These are simply single, analytics queries, like a particular chart or report, that PostHog builds utilizing your occasion information. When you create an Perception, you’ll be able to add it to a dashboard or simply reserve it to check future Insights with later. 

All in all, dashboards and stories are query-first with PostHog. Insights are the constructing blocks for the particular dashboard configurations your staff curates.

As with each PostHog function, the dashboards’ visible attraction and readability is slightly misplaced in 1990s-era websitecore, if you’ll, but it surely’s nonetheless tidy and readable. 

Mixpanel

Mixpanel additionally lets you create absolutely customizable dashboards, and as with PostHog, you construct these dashboards utilizing saved stories. 

In Mixpanel, they aren’t all known as one factor, although—the constructing blocks right here embrace Insights (aka development stories), Funnels, Retention, or Flows. These every characterize a unique sort of Mixpanel-powered evaluation. 

When you save a report, you’ll be able to add it to a Board—Mixpanel’s time period for a dashboard. 

You rearrange the dashboard, apply date and time filters, and share the outcomes along with your teammates. The dashboards listed below are extra trendy, and due to this fact rather less cluttered, than what you get with PostHog. 

However functionally, the 2 are equals with regards to dashboards and reporting capabilities.

Pricing Breakdown: Which Has the Finest Worth?

How do PostHog and Mixpanel evaluate, pricing-wise? Let’s have a look.

Last Verdict: Is PostHog or Mixpanel Proper for You?

After learning each instruments, right here’s my takeaway: 

Select PostHog if you would like plenty of management over your product, love the nerdy, retro, and but one way or the other additionally refined really feel of the platform, and don’t thoughts establishing and configuring issues your self to get precisely the extent of precision you need.

Select Mixpanel if you would like a contemporary, cloud-based net and product analytics platform that’s simpler to arrange and handle with no need engineering know-how.

And if what you actually need is a conduct analytics instrument to your web site that additionally consists of instruments like heatmaps, session recordings, surveys, and A/B assessments, strive Loopy Egg. 

With clear, upfront pricing (and free-forever instruments that embrace net analytics, immediate heatmaps, conversion analytics, and surveys) Loopy Egg has the whole lot you want at one predictable month-to-month worth. Study extra about how Crazy Egg’s web analytics work to provide the insights you want.