Analytics Tools Beyond Google Analytics 2025

Overview

Mixpanel pioneered the product analytics category and remains one of the most powerful platforms available. Their event-based tracking model, combined with sophisticated analysis tools, helps teams understand user behavior at a granular level.

The platform excels at answering questions like "What actions predict user retention?" and "Where do users drop off in onboarding?" With strong segmentation capabilities, you can slice and dice your data by any user property or behavior.

Key Features

• Event Analytics: Track and analyze any user action with custom properties
• Funnels: Build multi-step funnels with conversion analysis
• Retention: Measure how well you retain users over time
• Flows: Visualize the paths users take through your product
• Cohorts: Group users by behavior for targeted analysis
• A/B Testing Integration: Analyze experiment results
• Alerts: Get notified when metrics change significantly
• Data Governance: Manage your tracking plan and data quality

Pricing

• Free: Up to 20 million events/month, core reports, unlimited data history
• Growth: $28/month for 10,000 MTU (monthly tracked users)
• Enterprise: Custom pricing for advanced features and support

Mixpanel's free tier is one of the most generous in the industry, making it accessible for early-stage startups.

Best For: Startups and growth-stage companies that need to understand user behavior deeply. Excellent for product managers and growth teams focused on activation, retention, and feature adoption.

Overview

Amplitude competes directly with Mixpanel at the enterprise level, offering sophisticated analytics capabilities for complex products. The platform has expanded beyond core analytics to include experimentation, CDP functionality, and session replay through acquisitions.

Amplitude's strength lies in its behavioral cohorting and predictive analytics, which help teams identify the user behaviors that correlate with long-term retention and success. For large organizations with complex products, Amplitude provides the depth of analysis needed.

Key Features

• Behavioral Cohorts: Define user segments based on any combination of actions
• Compass: Discover which behaviors correlate with retention
• Experiment: Built-in A/B testing with automatic analysis
• Audiences: Sync cohorts to marketing and ad platforms
• Pathfinder: Visualize user journeys and drop-off points
• Revenue Analytics: LTV prediction and revenue attribution
• Session Replay: Visual session recording (recently added)
• Data Connections: Warehouse integration and data sync

Pricing

• Starter: Free up to 50,000 MTU, core analytics
• Plus: From $49/month, advanced analytics
• Growth: Custom pricing, full platform access
• Enterprise: Custom pricing, dedicated support and SLA

Best For: Growth-stage and enterprise companies with complex products and dedicated analytics teams. Particularly strong for companies running frequent experiments and needing advanced behavioral analysis.

Overview

PostHog has emerged as a compelling alternative for teams that want product analytics, session recording, feature flags, and A/B testing in a single platform. Being open-source, you can self-host for complete data control or use their cloud offering for convenience.

The platform takes an opinionated approach to product analytics, combining multiple tools that teams typically buy separately. This integration means your feature flags, experiments, and analytics all share the same data and user identities.

Key Features

• Product Analytics: Events, funnels, retention, paths, and trends
• Session Recording: Watch user sessions with console logs
• Feature Flags: Roll out features gradually with targeting
• A/B Testing: Run experiments with statistical analysis
• Heatmaps: Click and scroll heatmaps
• Surveys: Collect user feedback in-product
• Data Warehouse: Query your data with SQL
• Open Source: Self-host option available

Pricing

• Free: 1 million events/month, 5,000 recordings/month
• Paid: Usage-based pricing starting at very low rates
  • Events: First 1M free, then from $0.00031 per event
  • Recordings: First 5,000 free, then from $0.005 per recording
• Self-Hosted: Free to host yourself

Best For: Teams that want an all-in-one platform and value open source. Excellent for startups that want to minimize tool costs while getting analytics, session recording, and feature flags together.

Overview

Heap takes a fundamentally different approach to product analytics: instead of requiring you to define and implement events before you can analyze them, Heap automatically captures every click, pageview, and form interaction. You then retroactively define events by pointing at elements in your UI.

This auto-capture approach solves one of the biggest pain points in analytics: the "I wish we had been tracking that" problem. With Heap, you can analyze any historical interaction without having to wait for developers to implement new tracking.

Key Features

• Auto-Capture: Automatically track all user interactions
• Visual Labeling: Define events by clicking on UI elements
• Retroactive Analysis: Analyze past behavior without pre-defined tracking
• Funnels and Retention: Standard product analytics reports
• Paths: Visualize user journeys through your product
• Session Replay: Watch user sessions (added recently)
• Segments: Create user groups based on behavior
• Integrations: Connect with warehouses and other tools

Pricing

• Free: Up to 10,000 sessions/month
• Growth: Custom pricing based on sessions
• Pro: Custom pricing with advanced features
• Premier: Enterprise features and support

Best For: Teams that want to analyze user behavior without heavy tracking implementation. Good for organizations where product and marketing teams need to move quickly without waiting for engineering resources.

Overview

Plausible offers refreshingly simple web analytics in an era of increasingly complex tools. The platform focuses on essential metrics: pageviews, visitors, sources, and goals. It does this without cookies, without personal data collection, and with a script that is under 1KB.

This simplicity is intentional. Plausible's founders believe most websites do not need the complexity of Google Analytics and that simpler tools lead to better decisions. The privacy-first approach also means no cookie banners are required in most jurisdictions.

Key Features

• Cookie-Free Tracking: No consent banners needed
• Simple Dashboard: One page with all essential metrics
• Traffic Sources: Referrers, UTM campaigns, search terms
• Goals and Events: Track conversions and custom events
• Lightweight Script: Under 1KB, no impact on page speed
• Open Source: Self-host option available
• Public Dashboards: Share stats publicly if desired
• EU-Based: Data stored in EU for compliance

Pricing

• 10,000 pageviews: $9/month
• 100,000 pageviews: $19/month
• 1 million pageviews: $69/month
• 10 million pageviews: $169/month
• Self-Hosted: Free (you pay for infrastructure)

Best For: Content sites, blogs, and businesses that want simple analytics without privacy concerns. Excellent for teams tired of complex dashboards and cookie consent headaches.

Overview

Fathom competes directly with Plausible in the privacy-focused analytics space. Founded by indie developers with strong privacy convictions, Fathom has built a loyal following among developers, creators, and businesses that prioritize user privacy.

The platform offers similar simplicity to Plausible but with some unique features like built-in uptime monitoring and email reports. Fathom has also invested heavily in compliance, with detailed documentation about their approach to GDPR, CCPA, and other regulations.

Key Features

• Privacy-First: No personal data collection
• Simple Dashboard: Clean, focused interface
• Uptime Monitoring: Get alerted when your site goes down
• Email Reports: Weekly or monthly summaries
• Event Tracking: Track custom conversions
• EU Isolation: Option to keep data in EU only
• API Access: Pull data into other tools
• Unlimited Sites: Track all your sites on one plan

Pricing

• 100,000 pageviews: $15/month
• 500,000 pageviews: $29/month
• 2 million pageviews: $59/month
• 5 million pageviews: $99/month

Best For: Teams that want privacy-focused analytics with additional features like uptime monitoring and email reports. Good for agencies managing multiple client sites.

Overview

Hotjar pioneered the category of visual behavior analytics and remains the most widely used tool for heatmaps and session recording. The platform has expanded beyond recordings to include surveys, feedback widgets, and user interviews.

Hotjar's strength lies in making qualitative research accessible to everyone. You do not need to be a UX researcher to watch session recordings and understand where users struggle. This democratization of user research has made Hotjar a staple in startup toolkits.

Key Features

• Heatmaps: Click, move, and scroll heatmaps
• Session Recordings: Watch user sessions
• Surveys: On-site and external surveys
• Feedback Widgets: Collect instant feedback on any page
• User Interviews: Recruit and schedule user research
• Funnels: Basic conversion funnel analysis
• Forms: Form analytics and drop-off tracking
• Integrations: Connect with analytics and product tools

Pricing

• Basic: Free - 35 daily sessions, limited heatmaps
• Plus: $39/month - 100 daily sessions
• Business: $99/month - 500 daily sessions, advanced features
• Scale: $213/month - Unlimited sessions, priority support

Best For: Teams starting with qualitative research and wanting an all-in-one platform for recordings, heatmaps, and feedback. Good for marketing teams and UX researchers.

Overview

Microsoft Clarity entered the behavior analytics market with an unbeatable proposition: it is completely free with no limits on traffic or recordings. While Microsoft likely uses aggregate data to improve their products, for many teams, the trade-off is worthwhile.

Clarity offers surprisingly robust functionality for a free tool. Session recordings, heatmaps, and even some unique features like rage click detection and dead click identification are all included. For budget-conscious startups, Clarity is a no-brainer addition to the analytics stack.

Key Features

• Session Recordings: Unlimited recordings, no traffic limits
• Heatmaps: Click, scroll, and area heatmaps
• Rage Clicks: Identify frustrated users clicking repeatedly
• Dead Clicks: Find clicks on non-interactive elements
• Quick Backs: Detect users who leave and return quickly
• Scrolling Insights: See how far users scroll
• Filtering: Filter recordings by URL, country, device, and more
• Google Analytics Integration: Connect with GA4 for deeper analysis

Pricing

Free: Completely free, unlimited traffic, unlimited recordings, forever

Best For: Any startup that wants session recording without paying for it. An excellent complement to product analytics tools, and hard to beat on value.

Overview

FullStory positions itself as a Digital Experience Intelligence platform, combining session replay with sophisticated analytics capabilities. The platform goes beyond simple recording to offer searchable sessions, frustration signals, and journey mapping.

What sets FullStory apart is its ability to search across all sessions for specific interactions. Looking for everyone who encountered an error on checkout? Search for it. Want to find users who rage-clicked on a specific button? FullStory can surface those sessions instantly.

Key Features

• Session Replay: High-fidelity session recordings
• Omnisearch: Search across all sessions by any interaction
• Frustration Signals: Automatic detection of user frustration
• Journeys: Visualize user paths through your product
• Heatmaps: Click maps and scroll depth
• Conversions: Funnel analysis with session drill-down
• Dashboards: Custom analytics dashboards
• Privacy Controls: Advanced data masking and compliance

Pricing

• Free: Limited sessions per month
• Business: Custom pricing based on sessions
• Enterprise: Custom pricing with advanced features

Best For: Growth-stage and enterprise companies that need sophisticated digital experience intelligence. Best when your team has the capacity to fully utilize the advanced features.

Overview

LogRocket takes a developer-centric approach to session replay. While other tools focus on UX research and marketing insights, LogRocket is built for debugging and understanding technical issues. Every session includes network requests, console logs, and Redux state (for React apps).

When a user reports a bug, LogRocket lets you watch exactly what happened, see the network requests that failed, and read the console errors that occurred. This makes it invaluable for development teams trying to reproduce and fix user-reported issues.

Key Features

• Session Replay: Visual playback of user sessions
• Network Logging: See all API requests and responses
• Console Logs: JavaScript console output per session
• Redux/Vuex/NgRx: State management integration
• Error Tracking: Automatic error capture and grouping
• Performance Monitoring: Core Web Vitals tracking
• Product Analytics: Basic funnel and retention analysis
• User Identification: Link sessions to your user database

Pricing

• Free: 1,000 sessions/month
• Team: $99/month - 10,000 sessions
• Professional: $250/month - 25,000 sessions, advanced features
• Enterprise: Custom pricing

Best For: Development teams that need to debug user-reported issues. Excellent for SaaS products where understanding the technical context of user problems is critical.