If you are a Product Manager looking for a product analytics tool, you have likely heard about Mixpanel and Amplitude.
Both of these tools offer powerful features. However, it boils down to
- What scale is your product at?
- What’s your budget?
- Whether you want one tool for multiple things or a tool which is very good in product analytics alone?
- How deep do you want to go into your product data? and more.
By comparing these tools side-by-side(which we will help you with 😉), you’ll be better suited to make an informed decision that takes your biz forward.
Core Philosophies and Approach
When comparing Mixpanel and Amplitude, it is necessary to understand their approach and philosophy to product analytics, these differences will tell how each platform serves its users and the type of insights they provide.
Mixpanel: Simplicity and Collaboration
Mixpanel’s core philosophy centers on making product analytics accessible to everyone in an organization.
- Smooth user experience with a limited number of core reports for straightforward data exploration.
- Encourages collaboration and insight-sharing across teams to build a data-driven culture.
- Focus only on product analytics reporting.
Amplitude: Product Intelligence
- Highlights deep data instrumentation and governance — the process of ensuring consistency and data validity by keeping it clean and simple for everyone to understand.
- Best suited for teams that require in-depth analysis and complex reporting capabilities.
- It is a hub that connects your product and marketing data.
Key Features and Differentiators
As we are doing Mixpanel vs Amplitude, let’s see their unique features and differentiators which are important for Product Managers to make informed decisions.
1. Ease of use
Mixpanel’s UX is far simpler to understand than that of Amplitude. So, if you are just getting started with product analytics and want a fast learning curve to get started with a tool, Mixpanel is the right choice for you.
Mixpanel has simple UX to get you started by building funnel reports, retention reports, user journeys, overview charts, etc.
2. Diversity of features
Amplitude offers a wider range of features compared to Mixpanel. Here are a couple of examples:
It includes a built-in customer data platform, which is essentially a system that stores not only product analytics data but also data from customer interactions, such as responses to push notification campaigns, sales data, and more. This information is unified under individual customer profiles. If you use Mixpanel and have multiple sources of customer data beyond just product analytics, you might need to use a separate customer data platform as you grow.
Amplitude also has an experimentation tool that allows you to set up experiments, define different versions (variants) and control groups, and determine what percentage of users should see each version. It then helps you analyze the results. While Mixpanel does offer basic A/B test analysis, you’ll need an additional tool (or an internal solution) to set up experiments.
In summary, Amplitude provides a more comprehensive set of features that extend beyond just product analytics.
3. Effort of Integration
If you’re looking for high-level data without the need to dive too deeply, Amplitude is a good option. It has an “autotrack” feature that automatically records all user interactions with your product, which you can label and use later. However, it doesn’t capture finer details—such as if a user clicks on the “add to cart” button, it won’t show you what was in the cart or the total price at the time of the interaction.
Mixpanel, on the other hand, intentionally does not offer autotracking. They focus on encouraging deeper analysis of your product data.
For more detailed insights, like how Facebook identified that getting users to connect with seven friends in 10 days increased engagement, both Mixpanel and Amplitude can provide this level of analysis. The only catch is that it requires some setup—you’ll need to plan the events you want to track, get a developer to implement them, and test them properly.
This is where Iterate AI can help. It automates the setup process for product analytics tools, eliminating barriers and saving time. You can check out the demo video here.
4. Pricing
Both Mixpanel and Amplitude offer generous free plans for new or early-stage products, but their pricing models differ.
Mixpanel’s pricing is based on the number of events. An event is any user interaction, and the total number of events is calculated by multiplying the number of active users by the number of times any specific event happens and the number of different events being tracked. The free plan allows up to 20 million events per month.
Amplitude, on the other hand, charges based on the number of Monthly Tracked Users (MTUs). An MTU is any user who triggers at least one event in a given month. The free plan supports up to 1,000 MTUs.
If your product is in its early stages, many users will likely just be exploring without interacting much. This means you’ll have a high number of MTUs but fewer total events, making Mixpanel the more cost-effective option.
However, if your product is more established and users are highly engaged, with fewer casual visitors, Amplitude could be the more budget-friendly choice.
5. Privacy
Your choice may also depend on your country’s regulations regarding data storage. For example, Indian fintech companies are not allowed to store data on servers outside of India.
This is where Mixpanel can be useful, as it offers server locations in the US, EU, and India.
Amplitude, on the other hand, stores data on US servers if you are on their free or starter plans. Only paying customers, who have been manually added by an Amplitude employee, can have their data stored in the EU Data Center.
Conclusion
As you evaluate analytics tools like Mixpanel and Amplitude, consider how iterate-ai.com can complement traditional solutions.
Iterate AI provides an AI agent capable of implementing event tracking for product teams using both Mixpanel and Amplitude.
Unlike other analytics tools, Iterate AI’s agent can generate a comprehensive list of events and attributes based on inputs entered by Product Managers. Not only this, the AI agent even raises a pull request for review, ensuring seamless integration with your development workflow.
This streamlines the process, allowing teams to focus on strategic decision-making rather than getting carried down because of the dev workflow.
Happy Tracking.
