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Mixpanel vs Segment: What are the differences?
Mixpanel and Segment are analytics platforms that help businesses gather insights from user interactions. Let's explore the key differences between them:
Pricing Structure: Mixpanel offers a pricing structure based on data points, allowing users to pay for the actual volume of events tracked. On the other hand, Segment provides a pricing model based on monthly tracked users, which can be more suitable for businesses with a large number of users but fewer events.
Data Collection and Integration: Mixpanel is mainly focused on event-based analytics, enabling users to track specific actions taken by users within an application or website. In contrast, Segment offers a versatile data collection platform that allows for consolidating data from multiple sources and sending it to various third-party tools, including Mixpanel.
Real-Time Analytics: Mixpanel's strength lies in its ability to provide real-time data analysis and insights. It provides immediate feedback on user actions, making it suitable for real-time decision-making processes. Whereas, with Segment, real-time analytics are not a primary focus, rather it focuses on the centralizing and routing of data to different destinations.
Ease of Implementation: Mixpanel requires integration with its SDK to track events within applications or websites, which can involve more complex implementation steps. Conversely, Segment offers a simplified implementation process through its unified API and integrations with various analytics and marketing tools, reducing the time and effort required for implementation.
Analytics and Reporting Capabilities: Mixpanel offers a comprehensive analytics and reporting platform with features like funnel analysis, user segmentation, A/B testing, and retention analysis. In contrast, Segment primarily focuses on data collection and routing, relying on its integrations with other analytics and marketing tools for advanced analysis and reporting capabilities.
Data Privacy and Security: Mixpanel has specific data privacy concerns due to its event-based tracking system, as it requires sending individual user actions to its servers. On the other hand, Segment prioritizes data privacy by offering features like data anonymization, data deletion, and strict access controls.
In summary, Mixpanel specializes in event tracking and user behavior analytics, offering detailed insights into user interactions. Segment, as a customer data platform, simplifies data integration across multiple tools, enabling businesses to collect and leverage customer data seamlessly across their analytics and marketing stack.
Hi,
This is a question for best practice regarding Segment and Google Tag Manager. I would love to use Segment and GTM together when we need to implement a lot of additional tools, such as Amplitude, Appsfyler, or any other engagement tool since we can send event data without additional SDK implementation, etc.
So, my question is, if you use Segment and Google Tag Manager, how did you define what you will push through Segment and what will you push through Google Tag Manager? For example, when implementing a Facebook Pixel or any other 3rd party marketing tag?
From my point of view, implementing marketing pixels should stay in GTM because of the tag/trigger control.
If you are using Segment and GTM together, I would love to learn more about your best practice.
Thanks!
Hello Iva,
I think it is a good exercise to think about this framework once you start to add tags, triggers, and parameters and connect data between different tools (Amplitude, Google Ads, Linkedin Ads, Twitter Ads). I really love a post where Daniel Wolchonok shared a video about the Data Stack at Reforge (https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6963174688554414080/). My suggestion and what I see in other startups, centralise everything in one platform, Segment, and then send data whatever you need. Allow Google Tag Manager to be the tool for marketers and don't allow them to use Segment (I am a marketer). It is good that marketers have the freedom to set up tags and triggers for conversions and audiences but it is good that they don't have access to everything. So, I found it very simple to do it that way, Segment for everything and then connect Segment with Google Tag Manager where Google Tag Manager will allow marketers to work on the events, conversions, tracking, pixels, etc.
I hope you find this helpful. I will try to work on creating basic documentation to collect all of that information. I found really interesting for many startups at the beginning.
Cheers,
I am trying to decide on a solution to better track our user data. We need to track which google ads are leading to signups, and which signups are performing various actions on the site. We then need to visualize this data in various ways. We also need to run A/B tests on features and content, to track which ones lead to the most paid conversions.
Functionally, Amplitude and Mixpanel are incredibly similar. They both offer almost all the same functionality around tracking and visualizing user actions for analytics. You can track A/B test results in both. We ended up going with Amplitude at BaseDash because it has a more generous free tier for our uses (10 million actions per month, versus Mixpanel's 1000 monthly tracked users).
Segment isn't meant to compete with these tools, but instead acts as an API to send actions to them, and other analytics tools. If you're just sending event data to one of these tools, you probably don't need Segment. If you're using other analytics tools like Google Analytics and FullStory, Segment makes it easy to send events to all your tools at once.
Another option you might consider is Google Analytics App+Web.
It is a new type of Google Analytics property which is event-based (like Amplitude and Mixpanel). In App+Web you can collect exactly the same data and in the same format as the other 2 tools mentioned.
The great things about it are: - it is free - there is a free integration with BigQuery (though you'll need to pay for BigQuery, but for most SmB's it is peanuts - $5-30 a month)
Not so great: - reporting side is pretty buggy (App+Web is very new).
So if you are ok building your reporting in something like Google Data Studio, App+Web will be a great option. Your data analyst will especially be happy to have all the data in SQL format (BigQuery).
If you choose App+Web, then you can use Google Optimize (also free) as an A/B testing solution.
Hello Ben,
I have been using Mixpanel and Amplitude and both of them are good solutions in order to track events on your product; events, funnel analysis, retention and so on. The most important thing is that you set up properly the taxonomy and naming convention of your events' structure. I don't have anything against Segment I tried once but I didn't work with that tool but it for sure is a good one based on other workmates' opinions. ¡Important! When tracking distribution channels, take into consideration the attribution channel and all the touches that the users do in all the channels before your conversions. Some of them are good to open a path and other ones good to close.
Besides that, for A/B testing there are several options in the market but VWO is a good one that with a lot of features to get good insights into the A/B testing. Another one could be Optimizely or Google Optimize. ¡Important! Some teams instead run A/B testing because sometimes that could be a technological issue, they run cohort tests, where basically they change features on the product and they analyse this performance with the new users and compare. That could have another issue like seasonality but it is another option.
Overview, I recommend Amplitude and VWO but just to make simple the answer, because Mixpanel, Segment and the other options that the other users wrote here are good too.
All the best, and let me know how your experience was with all these tools. :)
Cheers,
Pros of Mixpanel
- Great visualization ui144
- Easy integration108
- Great funnel funcionality78
- Free58
- A wide range of tools22
- Powerful Graph Search15
- Responsive Customer Support11
- Nice reporting2
Pros of Segment
- Easy to scale and maintain 3rd party services86
- One API49
- Simple39
- Multiple integrations25
- Cleanest API19
- Easy10
- Free9
- Mixpanel Integration8
- Segment SQL7
- Flexible6
- Google Analytics Integration4
- Salesforce Integration2
- SQL Access2
- Clean Integration with Application2
- Own all your tracking data1
- Quick setup1
- Clearbit integration1
- Beautiful UI1
- Integrates with Apptimize1
- Escort1
- Woopra Integration1
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Cons of Mixpanel
- Messaging (notification, email) features are weak2
- Paid plans can get expensive2
- Limited dashboard capabilities1
Cons of Segment
- Not clear which events/options are integration-specific2
- Limitations with integration-specific configurations1
- Client-side events are separated from server-side1
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