Product analytics is big business. Gone are the days when we could only guess what customers were doing with our products or services. Now, we can track, visualise, and analyse how they interact with them and, with that, constantly improve and optimise.
The problem is that many product analytics tools are expensive and complicated — especially for smaller businesses. They’re also packed with functionality more attuned to the needs of massive companies.
Amplitude is such a tool. It’s brilliant and it has all the bells and whistles that you’ll probably never need. Fortunately, there are alternatives. In this guide, we’ll explore the best of those alternatives and, along the way, provide the insight you’ll need to select the best analytics tool for your organisation.
Amplitude: a brief overview
To set the stage, it makes sense to understand exactly what Amplitude offers. It’s a real-time data analytics tool for tracking user actions and gaining insight into engagement, retention, and revenue drivers. It helps you analyse that data and find answers to questions about what happened, why it happened, and what to do next.
However, as good as Amplitude is, it has some significant disadvantages. While it does offer data export functionality, that seems deliberately restricted. It allows data exports for specific events, but it’s not possible to export complete data sets to manipulate or format in another tool. Even pulling it into a CSV file has a 10,000-row limit. There is an API, but not many third-party integration options.
Getting data in can also be a problem. Amplitude requires manual tags on events that must be tracked for analysis, which can leave holes in the data if every possible subsequent action isn’t tagged. That’s a time-consuming exercise, and it’s made worse because those tags will have to be updated every time the website or app is updated.
As good as it is, it can also be overwhelming because it’s stacked with features that can create confusion for novice or inexperienced analysts. It’s also expensive. There is a freemium plan that limits functionality and events. Still, when an organisation wants to upgrade for additional functionality or to analyse more events, the step up to the paid plan is massive.
Lastly, Amplitude has made some strides towards being a web analytics option, but it lacks some basic functionality that may frustrate people who are trying to see the full picture from web to app.
Snapshot of Amplitude alternatives
So, in place of Amplitude, what product analytics tools are available that won’t break the bank and still provide the functionality needed to improve your product? The good news is that there are literally hundreds of alternatives, and we’ve picked out six of the best.
- Matomo – Best privacy-focused web and mobile analytics
- Mixpanel – Best for product analytics
- Google Analytics – Best free option
- Adobe Analytics – Best for predictive analytics
- Umami – Best lightweight tool for product analytics
- Heap – Best for automatic user data capture
A more detailed analysis of the Amplitude alternatives
Now, let’s dive deeper into each of the six Amplitude alternatives. We’ll cover standout features, integrations, pricing, use cases and community critiques. By the end, you’ll know which analytics tool can help optimise website and app performance to grow your business.
1. Matomo – Best privacy-friendly web and app analytics
Privacy is a big concern these days, especially for organisations with a presence in the European Union (EU). Unlike other analytics tools, Matomo ensures you comply with privacy laws and regulations, like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California’s Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).
Matomo helps businesses get the insights they need without compromising user privacy. It’s also one of the few self-hosted tools, ensuring data never has to leave your site.
Matomo is open-source, which is also rare in this class of tools. That means it’s available for anyone to adapt and customise as they wish. Everything you need to build custom APIs is there.
