The Rise of Alternative Analytic Suites and Event Tracking Platforms

Key Takeaways

• While Google Analytics has long been the default for digital marketers, the expansion of alternative analytics suites and event-tracking platforms has provided more user-friendly, highly capable options.
• The rise of new event-tracking platforms, like PostHog, MixPanel, and Amplitude, has begun to provide marketers with strong Google Analytics alternatives.
• Marketers must remain prepared to adapt by embracing a shift toward event-based tracking, learning the various strengths of new tools, and respecting clients’ tech stacks.
• Our team has found success in leveraging new platforms and platform-specific reporting for more granular data while continuing to study ways to integrate new technologies to meet specific client needs.

Growing Tech Stacks in Marketing Analytics

Over the last few years, Google Analytics and Adobe have gradually lost their positions as the only suitable options for event tracking and data collection. As these options have grown, rather than defaulting to Google Analytics, marketers can now choose from a full array of product analytics tools. Newer platforms like MixPanel and PostHog are giving marketers a choice of tools, empowering them to weigh the pros and cons of various options to determine what is best for their needs. 

While this shift provides many benefits, it also requires that marketers be versatile enough to adapt to growing tech stacks and be well-versed enough to know what belongs in a tech stack to meet a client’s goals and what can be left out. Altogether, digital marketers must be prepared to handle the expansion of tools and adapt to growing tech stacks, either to improve their own marketing efforts or adapt to their clients’ existing analytics suites. 

Below are some of the Google Analytics alternatives and related trends we’ve seen causing growing tech stacks in digital marketing analytics, as well as how we’re adapting in our approach to product analytics.

Examples of Alternative Analytic Suites and Event Tracking Platforms

Not all have the name recognition of GA4 quite yet, but the number of solutions in marketing departments’ toolkits is growing. We’ve come across some of the following common alternative event-tracking platforms in the field.

1. MixPanel

MixPanel is an event-based product analytics platform we hear of often, and it offers several advantages compared to Google Analytics, including its user-centric approach, ability to segment behaviors, and retroactive data and funnels that allow you to see exactly where users interact and drop off. 

While GA4 has moved to a primarily event-based platform, Mixpanel is highly user-centric, focusing on the individual journey to see what steps they’ve taken, over several weeks or even months. It’s also very user-friendly, allowing product managers to easily see the paths users take when interacting with the business. 

2. PostHog

Screenshot of PostHog.com 

PostHog is an open-source product analytics platform that features a generous free tier and has quickly become a favorite among many in the marketing space. Not to mention, it’s one that I’ve grown particularly fond of upon exploring many options. 

Although some users find it has a steeper learning curve, it is incredibly customizable and provides the option to self-host with its open-source nature, which preserves data sovereignty and privacy. We’ve found this to be one of the fastest-growing platforms in the industry currently, and have directly seen multiple clients begin to adopt it.

3. Amplitude

Amplitude has become a significant player in the analytics world and is a strong alternative to Google Analytics for many. Its three-tier identifier system helps provide insight into a single user’s journey across web, mobile, and offline events, also improving its ability to scale its Pathfinder feature compared to GA4’s Path Exploration. 

Amplitude also conducts no data sampling, which means all of the information is 100% based on the data it gathers, rather than just a fraction of it. Its extensive behavioral identification and behavioral cohort compilation are among its sharpest selling points, enabling you to group users based on more complex behavioral patterns, such as “users who open 5 emails are more likely to make a new purchase within 1 month”.

4. Matomo

Matomo, formerly known as Piwik, is a platform committed to privacy and transparency, placing it in strong contrast to Google Analytics. Matomo sets itself apart as a self-hosted, sovereign analytics tool that provides advanced data privacy and security. 

While Google collects data and connects it to its identity graph, Matomo never shares data with external advertisers. However, it does provide insight into your more privacy-conscious audience. Matomo also reports on 100% of your data without sampling, providing greater accuracy. 

5. Plausible

Screenshot of Plausible.io

Plausible is a less technical solution compared to Google Analytics and is well-suited for those who prefer a more lightweight and user-friendly setup. Some of its key selling points include being entirely cookieless and not requiring consent banners on sites due to its tracking methods. 

Without cookies, it does lack some helpful features like heat mapping and path tracking. Still, while it lacks some of the nitty-gritty details, it’s great for people who are focused strictly on the key details and don’t need the extra information for their overarching marketing goals.

Other Platforms

There is now a long list of options for event tracking and analytics platforms out there, and the expanding field is giving marketers plenty to consider. Some of the other platforms out there include: 

• Contentsquare
• Fathom analytics
• Clicky
• Woopra
• Statcounter
• Simple Analytics

While there’s no need to overcomplicate your analytics technology suite, it’s good to understand your options. While one tool may work for five different clients, another may be beneficial for that sixth client you onboard; knowing different tools’ strengths only makes you a better advocate for your clients. 

Benefits of New Platforms

Google Analytics is the default for many in need of a digital marketing analytics tool, but the bloom of more alternatives challenging its hold has made marketing analytics easier and more accessible. Any time a big player is challenged, it leads to valuable refinements and useful features. The expansion has brought several benefits for those in the marketing space, ranging from more intuitive user experiences to better data management.

Some of these benefits include:

• More granular and insightful data 
• Simpler UI for companies unfamiliar with Google Analytics
• Stricter data privacy compliance laws 
• Direct integrations with more non-Google services
• Greater access to data for small and medium-sized businesses
• More control over your data through self-hosting

Ultimately, these tools make meaningful data more accessible for even the newest or most hands-off marketing teams. Whether it’s GA4’s steep learning curve for new clients or a desire for more detailed analytics, many have reason to celebrate the rise of alternative platforms. Rather than being cornered into using a single tool, marketing teams can now explore new options or combinations of options that are a better fit for their needs, skills, and desired level of involvement.

Challenges of Expanding Platforms 

The growing number of product analytics platforms means more decision-making, as teams may struggle to decide which tools are best for them and how to use all options effectively.  The biggest challenges with a broader landscape are:

• Deciding on the Best Platform: While having a lot of choices can be a benefit, it can lead to a bit of analysis paralysis, which may spin your wheels before allowing you to dive into your data. This can apply to both your own stack and when advising clients.
• Knowing When to Double Up – In some cases, multiple tools may be needed. For example, Google Analytics is still particularly useful for many features, such as its connection to Google Ads, so it’s often beneficial to keep it as a side tool, but the rise of tools may cause you to have to do more juggling. 
• More Training and Versatility – For teams that have long relied on Google Analytics, it can be a hassle to have to branch out, learn several new technologies, and conduct team training to keep up with clients. That said, despite the initial discomfort, learning and expanding your skill set is always a net positive. 

With a variety of options available to digital marketers, it will become more difficult to consult clients and even your internal team on the “best” platform to use, requiring a bit more effort to decide which tools are ideal for your specific toolbelt. Marketers will have to consider the pros and cons that each platform has to offer and be equipped to have the conversation about their and their clients’ goals.

What This Means for Marketers

Anyone who’s been a strong Google Analytics user for years may find themselves needing to adjust to new platforms and ways of doing things. Marketers now have to consider all the following.

A Greater Focus on User Privacy and Data Compliance

Privacy and data compliance are important to consumers, and as new platforms arise that allow greater control of your data, marketers should embrace this change. The increase in open-source tools and self-hosting options has made it easier to develop that focus so you can control your data directly. Meanwhile, new tools have new ways, like cookieless tracking, to respect user privacy while still collecting meaningful insights from their actions.

There’s a Need to Become More Well-Rounded

Marketers must be equipped to work across a variety of platforms to meet either their clients’ needs or their own. Whether you’re onboarding a client who uses multiple tools or need to add on a new platform in-house to better scale your path exploration capabilities beyond what GA4 can offer, being familiar with several tools will allow you to get the information you need and gather even deeper insights into user behavior.

More Diverse Tools Mean More Specialized Insights

The diversification of available tools enables deeper insights tailored to each use case or even marketing role. Examples include better attribution capabilities that help your ad manager understand which campaign led to which pathways or behavioral cohort insights that help your product manager see which features drive higher retention. 

Rather than having a generalized view that a high percentage of users dropped off on a landing page, some tools, like Amplitude or Mixpanel, help you see which elements these users clicked on the page to help you understand why some converted and some didn’t. Different tools with different specialties mean more ability to see new insights and even integrate them together to get a more holistic view of the user journey.

A Shift Toward Event-Driven Analytics

Gone are the days of session-based analysis, as event tracking brings more granular and real-time data to better understand user behavior within modern-day technologies and user interfaces, such as websites, applications, and more. Instead of relying on session-based information, more platforms are focusing on event-based analytics for real-time insights and customizable tracking.

How We’re Adjusting at collystring

At collystring, we’re adapting to the increasing availability of new event-tracking platforms by staying flexible and continuing to educate ourselves on new tools so we can continue to meet client needs. By branching out into new platforms and collaborating closely with clients to identify which platforms work best for their specific needs, we’ve been working to stay sharp.

Some of the ways we’ve adjusted include: 

• Adopting alternative platforms that align with each client’s unique needs and goals
• Exploring new tools to gather more granular and unique data
• Learning to leverage platform-specific reports to respect and work within each client’s unique tech stack
• Continuing to study available resources to understand how traditional digital marketing technologies can integrate or be enhanced by new platforms (For example, we’ve looked into how to merge user identifiers in search of improved crossover/parity between platforms)

Above all else, we’ve accepted that growth and experimentation are part of the process so that we can determine which platforms work best for which use cases and for which clients.

Refine Your Data and Event Tracking with collystring 

The increased availability of event tracking platforms has given digital marketers more options than ever to gather and analyze consumer data. We’ve extended well past the days of Google Analytics and Adobe being the only reasonable data tracking platforms, so marketers must be prepared to be flexible and adapt to the new wave of technologies available.

We can provide support with tracking data, analyzing crucial metrics, and offering our cross-platform expertise to help you make action-oriented decisions based on that data. At collystring, our Data and Analytics team is staying on our toes to understand the best tools for every use case. We maintain a robust infrastructure of tracking and reporting technologies to cement an analytics strategy that meets your team’s unique needs and solves for your biggest pain points. 

Schedule a call with us. Let’s discuss your goals and how we can help you improve your insights.