Product analytics tools compared

Web analytics counts visits: pageviews, sources, campaigns, countries. It answers "how many people came, and from where?". Product analytics counts what people do, as events tied to a user: signed up, created a project, invited a colleague, paid. It answers questions such as "what share of new users reach the second step in their first week?" and "do people who use feature X stay longer?".

The difference is the unit. A web analytics report adds up visits. A product analytics report follows one person over weeks or months, across devices once they log in, so it can tell you who came back and what they did first.

That is why these tools suit web apps, SaaS products, subscription businesses and shops with accounts. For a content site that mainly counts readers, they are more than the job needs. Mixpanel builds every view from events rather than pageview summaries, Heap's own pages aim it at SaaS, retail, healthcare and financial services teams, and Woopra starts at $999 a month.

Many teams run both kinds: a web analytics tool for the marketing site and campaigns, and a product analytics tool for what happens after sign-up.

• Funnels show how many people complete each step of a sequence (sign-up, first project, first invite) and where they drop out. Mixpanel and Heap call them funnels; Woopra builds them as journey reports.
• Retention shows what share of people come back after their first visit or first action, week after week. It tells you whether a product keeps its users. All three tools have it.
• Cohorts group users by when they started or by what they did ("signed up in March", "exported twice"), so you can compare groups over time. Mixpanel's free plan lets you build cohorts but not save them.
• Journeys show the paths people take before or after an action, which reveals routes you did not design. Mixpanel calls them Flows.
• User profiles list one person's events over time. Woopra is built around them: its People reports list and segment individual users, and triggers act on what a person does.
• Breakdowns split any of these by a property such as plan, country, device or campaign. Mixpanel splits every report by any property you send, and Heap has segments everywhere.

If you sell to companies rather than people, check account-level analysis: it is a paid add-on at Mixpanel (group analytics), part of Pro at Heap (account analytics) and part of Enterprise at Woopra (B2B organisation tracking).

A product analytics tool only knows what you send it. There are two ways to start.

Planned events. You list the actions that matter, name them, decide their properties (plan, price, source) and have a developer send them. Woopra's guide suggests planning events in a spreadsheet first, then describing them in a schema so teammates can read the reports. Mixpanel works the same way: its JavaScript library can autocapture page views, clicks, scrolls and form submissions, but you have to switch that on, and useful funnels still need named events.

Autocapture. Heap records page views, clicks, form changes and submissions on every page from one snippet. You define an event later, by naming a click with its visual labeller, and it applies to data collected before. That saves the plan up front, but someone has to name events and keep definitions tidy, or reports become hard to trust. It also stores more: by default Heap captures the visible text of clicked elements.

Identity. Either way, following one person across devices means telling the tool who they are when they sign up or log in: Mixpanel's identify call (and reset at log-out), Woopra's identify() with an email address, or user identities sent through Heap's API. Without it, each device stays a separate anonymous user.

Budget developer time for both, and for upkeep: every new feature means new events.

These tools charge for volume, so the bill follows your traffic and how much you track.

• Mixpanel counts events across all your projects, including events imported from a warehouse. If you track page views, each one counts. The first million a month are free; Growth then costs $140 a month at 1.5 million, $613 at 5 million and $2,289 at 20 million on monthly billing, about 29% less billed yearly. Above 20 million, Mixpanel quotes.
• Heap counts sessions. Free stops at 10,000 a month; Growth shows an estimate after you install the snippet, and Pro and Premier are quoted. Over the free limit, Heap keeps collecting, but you must upgrade before you can view your data again.
• Woopra counts page views, downloads, custom actions and each change to a profile property, such as a new email address. Pro starts at $999 a month for 5 million events, and events above your tier are billed as overage.

Two habits keep costs in check: send the events you will analyse, not every click, and check the price at two or three times your current volume before you commit. Mixpanel gives the first year free to startups founded less than 5 years ago with up to $8 million in funding.

Tool	Free plan	Paid from	Tracking	Data kept	Data stored in
Mixpanel	1 million events a month, unlimited seats	$140 a month at 1.5 million events (monthly billing)	Planned events; autocapture you switch on	Events deleted after 2 years by default; only Enterprise can change it	The US, or the EU (Netherlands) on every plan
Heap	10,000 sessions a month, 1 project	Growth estimated after install, Pro and Premier quoted	Autocapture by default	6 months on Free, 12 on paid plans, up to 3 years with an add-on	The US by default, or Heap's EU data centre (Ireland)
Woopra	None (first month of Pro free)	$999 a month for 5 million events	Page views, then identify() and track() calls	24 months on Pro, 50 or more on Enterprise	The United States

Session replay and heatmaps come on every Mixpanel plan, and are add-ons on Heap's quote-only Pro and Premier plans.

Following users over time needs a persistent identifier, and all three set one by default: Mixpanel a first-party cookie kept 365 days, Heap one kept 13 months minus a day, and Woopra one named wooTracker kept 2 years. Mixpanel and Heap can keep the ID in localStorage instead, which is still storage on the visitor's device. In the EU, plan for a consent banner with any of them.

Mixpanel and Heap say they use IP addresses for location and do not store them by default; Woopra records them unless an admin hides them. Mixpanel offers EU data residency on every plan, chosen when you create a project and impossible to move later. Heap runs an EU data centre and lists region-specific storage on Premier. Woopra keeps data in the United States.

• You want to start free and grow: Mixpanel. The free plan has the core reports, replay and unlimited seats, and the paid prices are public.
• You cannot plan every event up front: Heap, whose autocapture lets you answer questions about behaviour you never planned to track. Expect a sales conversation for any paid plan.
• You want each customer's full story, and actions in other tools: Woopra, if $999 a month and developer time are acceptable.
• You need a funnel or two on a website: a web analytics tool may be enough. Umami includes funnels, journeys, retention and cohorts on its free cloud plan, Matomo's cloud includes funnels and cohorts, and Google Analytics has funnel and cohort explorations at no cost.

Before you install anything, write down the five or ten questions you want answered. The event plan follows from those questions, not the other way round. Then test on your own data: Mixpanel and Heap both have free plans to try it on, and Woopra's first month of Pro is free, with billing from the second month.