Product analytics involves collecting and analyzing user data to understand how they engage with a product. This enables businesses to track, visualize, and analyze user behaviour to make informed decisions.
These insights help make data-driven product decisions, such as introducing new features or making UI modifications to enhance the user experience.
Kissmetrics is a popular product analytics tool, but it has its drawbacks. In this article, we'll dive into Kissmetrics and showcase a few alternatives that might suit you better.
- What is Kissmetrics used for?
- Kissmetrics Pricing
- Kissmetrics Reviews
- Alternatives to Kissmetrics
- What to look for in an analytics tool
- Final Thoughts
What is Kissmetrics used for?
Kissmetrics is a product analytics tool. Kissmetrics primarily focuses on automating customer engagement. They provide a solution to track customer behavior. It focuses on providing data discovery and visualization support on its platform. In addition, Kissmetrics is also tracks keywords and is used for funnel analysis and goal tracking.
Kissmetrics Pricing
Kissmertics offers three types of plans in the product-led growth segment. These are Silver, Gold, and Platinum. It provides these packages based on monthly tracked users, number of user seats, and number of domains followed.
While the functionality of the Silver plan is relatively limited, it starts at a whopping $299/month. The Gold plan costs even more and tops at $499/month. Kissmetrics also has a Platinum plan. This is a custom offering and is based on varied parameters and can change from business to business.
Kissmetrics Reviews
What do you like best about Kissmetrics?
Kissmetrics is easier to use than Google Analytics if you are trying to create funnel metrics. We were able to quickly assign URL's to specific funnels to test out the conversions.
What do you dislike about Kissmetrics?
There can be a bit of a learning curve at first - it is pretty overwhelming, and you can suffer from analysis paralysis as a result. It does take a lot of effort and time to set up
What problems is Kissmetrics solving and how is that benefiting you?
We are a memberships business - and we are always trying to find a way to test out different campaigns to find the most efficient path for someone to become a member. This allows to see how our tests are performing.
Alternatives to Kissmetrics
Kissmetrics is a fullblown product analytics tool that helps track user behaviour and engagement insights to make data-driven decisions. However, it's relatively expensive and too many features make the UI cluttered. You might want to check on some other alternatives.
Simple Analytics
Simple Analytics is a straightforward analytics tool that gives you the insights you need while being 100% GDPR-compliant. It's affordable tool that doubles as a web -and product analytics tool.
Pros of using Simple Analytics
- Simplified UI - Simple Analytics offers a straightforward user interface that makes analysis easier. It's 10x easier to work with than GA4. Checkout the public dashboard to see what that looks like.
- Affordable Pricing - Simple Analytics starts at a reasonable price.
- No cookie banner - Simple Analytics gives you the insights you need without using cookies or trackers. Hence, no need for an annoying cookiebanner on your website.
- Chat with your analytics - Simple Analytics AI is the latest features that lets you chat with your analytics and get insights directly.
Cons of using Simple Analytics:
The user interface of Simple Analytics is made to look simple and easy to understand so everyone, be it the founder or marketing teams, can use it easily. A Product Manager may need a few more screens, but that is something that can be quickly built with goals.
Pricing of Simple Analytics:
Simple Analytics is one of the most cost-efficient tools available in its segment. The product is perfect for businesses. It caters to companies and has plans for individuals and businesses.
The pricing of Simple Analytics starts at a low $9/month, making it a pocket-friendly tool for all businesses.
Smartlook
Smartlook is a product analytics platform that allows businesses to track user behavior and interactions on their websites and mobile applications. As a result, it provides insights that help companies to improve user experiences and conversion rates.
Also, Smartlook is in the process of being acquired by Cisco, which might bring lots of product changes soon.
Pros
- Affordable pricing
- Provides additional features such as crash reports
Cons
- Pricing can be expensive for high-traffic sites
- Uncertain future as it’s in the process of being acquired
Pricing
Smartlook offers three pricing plans: a free plan with limited features, a pro plan that starts at $55/month, and an enterprise plan with private pricing.
Recently Cisco has shown intent to acquire Smartlook, which may affect their product pricing as Cisco might want to make it a more enterprise-focused tool.
Snowplow
Snowplow is an open-source event analytics tool that collects and analyzes behavioral data and passes the same to business information tools, machine learning models, or for advanced data analytics.
It’s a complex tool specially built for large organizations to make data-driven product decisions at scale.
Pros
- Provides accurate data to make decisions.
- Solves the problem of understanding users at scale.
Cons
- Complex, and most users don’t have the resources to implement it
- Requires to be connected to other tools for a complete analytics
- Expensive tool
Pricing
Snowplow is an open-source tool, meaning you can self-host some parts, but their core behavioral data platform pricing starts at $800/month. This pricing might suit large-sized organizations but is unsuitable for most businesses.
Posthog
PostHog provides businesses with product analytics that assists in obtaining insights into their user behaviour. It is a GDPR-compliant platform that empowers entities to monitor user interactions and scrutinize data instantly.
Using it, companies can establish personal events to track explicit actions on their website or app, like button clicks or page views. PostHog also integrates with well-known tools like Slack, Segment, and Zapier.
Pros
- Affordable paid plan and generous free plan
- Open-source
- GDPR-compliant
Cons
- Customer support isn’t available for every plan
- Too complex for many
Pricing of Posthog
PostHog offers a paid plan starting at $0.0003068/event and $0.005/recording. There are also custom plans available for larger companies. It’s relatively affordable; however, if you want to have support, you’ll need to upgrade.
FullStory
FullStory is a digital experience analytics platform that allows you to track user behavior and interactions on their websites or mobile applications. It also provides real-time analytics and insights that help companies to improve customer experiences and identify potential issues.
Pros
- Provides session replay and usage heatmaps
- Auto captures product metrics and events
Cons
- Still expensive to most businesses
- UI can be hard to navigate
Pricing of FullStory
FullStory offers three plans, but the pricing isn’t mentioned on their pricing page; however, according to a Capiche and this Twitter thread, the pricing can range in-between $247/month to $850/month based on requirements.
They also have a startup program that reduces the price to ~ $1000/year.
Heap
Heap is a product analytics tool with features like session replay, heatmap, and user journey. Its primary role is to be the single source of truth for all product-related metrics.
Anyone using Heap can customize it as per their requirements, as it allows users to create custom dashboards and charts. Heap is widely used in the industry for funnel optimization and to improve product adoption.
Pros
- Provides data enrichment
- Provides in-depth product analytics
Cons
- Can get overwhelming
- Expensive tool to use
Pricing
Heap is an enterprise-grade software tool with three paid plans, Growth, Pro, and Premier. The pricing isn’t publicly available on their website. However, some review sites say it starts at $3,600/year for 300K sessions/year (25K sessions/month).
Do note that the starting pricing doesn't contain all the features that Heap offers; you’d have to upgrade to a higher plan.
Woopra
Woopra is a customer analytics tool designed to track user journeys from start to end. The data provided by Woopra can be used to understand user journeys, analyze trends and improve user retention. It also comes with additional automation to help engage users in real time.
Pros
- Generous free plan
- Supports multiple single-click integrations
Cons
- Poor data retention policy
- Unclear GDPR compliance
Pricing
Woopra offers many plans with varying prices. It has a generous free plan, but if you move to the paid options, most will feel expensive. It starts with the pro plan for $999/month for 5 million actions in the Pro plan. The Enterprise plan goes beyond that, but its pricing is undisclosed.
You can contact the Woopra team and get a quote with pricing depending on the actions tracked per month. For companies requiring even more actions, tailored options are available.
What to look for in an analytics tool
Selecting a tool for your analytics is a crucial decision. Be sure to go through this checklist before making a choice. You're good to go if the tool provides these:
Ease of Use: You shouldn’t spend your time on a complex web analytics tool that takes time and experience to get familiar with.
Accuracy: Getting an accurate picture of what’s happening on your website is important.
Straightforward UI: Most of the time, you don’t need 75 custom dashboards (looking at you, Google).
Lightweight: Installing an analytics script has an impact on your page speed. Choose an analytics tool that doesn’t slow your website down.
Privacy: The world is moving in a direction where privacy is becoming increasingly important.
Integration: Your analytics should be able to integrate with other tools.
Pricing: Consider the tool's pricing and ensure it aligns with your budget.
Although this checklist can assist you in getting started, there may be other factors for your organization that you need to consider.
Final Thoughts
If you want a tool that checks these boxes, then check out Simple Analytics. It provides the insights you need in a straightforward dashboard while being 100% GDPR compliant.
Want to see what that looks like? Check our public dashboard here
We believe the internet should be an independent place that is friendly to website visitors. By opting for Simple Analytics, you’ll be supporting us in our mission and protecting the privacy of your website visitors. If this resonates with you, feel free to give us a try.