Amplitude review and a Better alternative

Amplitude and Mixpanel have been the biggest names when it comes to product analytics. We won't discuss Mixpanel today, but we'll dive deeply into Amplitude and present a more suitable option for exploring and optimizing your product.

This blog will cover Amplitude's features, strengths, and weaknesses. We'll introduce you to an exciting alternative that brings a fresh perspective to product analytics. This will enhance your decision-making and take your company to new heights.

Let’s dive in!

1. Amplitude
2. Amplitude Reviews
3. Simple Analytics: A simpler and affordable alternative
4. Feature comparison between Amplitude and Simple Analytics
5. Conclusion
6. FAQs: A Better Alternative to Amplitude
   1. What can Amplitude Analytics do?
   2. What are some Amplitude alternatives?
   3. What are the characteristics of Amplitude?
   4. How does Amplitude track its users?

Amplitude

Amplitude started as an internal tool for Sonalight’s (a tool to let users send text messages via voice) Android App that lets them track product metrics. While their app (Sonalight) didn’t see much success, their internal tool did see a lot of interest from other companies with similar needs. While Sonalight didn’t see much success, their internal tool did see a lot of interest from other companies with similar needs.

Seeing this demand, Sonalight decided to work on Amplitude and relaunched itself as a mobile analytics service in February 2014.

It aims to provide product metrics such as real-time analytics and cross-platform tracking.

Amplitude also has an excellent security system paired with great customer support features. Constant development has made Amplitude one of the most popular Product Analytics Tools on the market.

Pros of Amplitude

• Comprehensive analytics capabilities
• Efficient campaign administration
• Multiple sites can be managed from a single dashboard
• Pageview tracking at the granular level

Cons of Amplitude

• Users reported the UI to be less intuitive compared to peers
• Customer support on the free plan is slow
• Paid plans are expensive
• Users have complained about the goal-setting/tracking tool
• It’s really difficult to move data in and out of Amplitude

Amplitude Reviews

"Efficient tool to track your app data."

What do you like best about Amplitude Analytics?

I really like the UX/UI Amplitude uses to visualize the data of your app allowing you to create correlated dashboards and charts that show you in a second key performance insights.

I also like the simplicity they have used for non-data people to manage and extract useful indicators about the performance and user experience of your app.

What do you dislike about Amplitude Analytics?

In my opinion Amplitude could make it a little bit easier to create and define events so it is more simple to interrelate different events in funnels specially. I find it somehow too techie for a business person to implement it from scratch.

What problems is Amplitude Analytics solving and how is that benefiting you?

Amplitude allows me to avoid missing vital information about my app and my users' experience from small bugs and problems that can be structured to different user experience flows that we hadn't thought in the first place.

***Adrià A. |CEO & Co-Fundateur,** Small-Business*

Source: G2

"Data access democratization for the win"

What do you like best about Amplitude Analytics?

• Easy to set up funnels, and conversion charts, find the conversion drivers, and so on
• Can add all my team members, build your own list of dashboards and charts, has SSO for access and the UX is great
• Great search, user lookup, and event stream for users
• Easy to create custom events with custom names

What do you dislike about Amplitude Analytics?

Event stream for users -- could show some stats; if I open a user, I would love to see the distribution of events by name (e.g., top 30 most popular events done by this user); this feature was in Kissmetrics a long time ago but not in Amplitude :(

Conversion drivers -- have performance issues if you have a ton of events (we do)

User cohorts work with bugs, and we stopped doing a/b testing calculations in amplitude as a result. The way they dynamically update is unreliable, and support wasn't helpful here.

What problems is Amplitude Analytics solving, and how is that benefiting you?

• Data democratization within the company, anyone can do analytics without the analysts :)
• Building and sharing charts and analysis
• Keeping releases history to see what affected metrics

*Tanya A. |Director of Product, Mid-Market*

Source: G2

Simple Analytics: A simpler and affordable alternative

Simple Analytics is an easy-to-use analytics tool that gives you the insights you need while being 100% GDPR-compliant.

It was founded by Adriaan van Rossum shortly after the GDPR was approved. Since its inception, Simple Analytics has had customers of all sizes, notable ones being: Michelin, Havas Media, Nomadlist, and the UK Government.

Though Simple Analytics might sound like a simple minimal analytics tool, it does pack some powerful features that many marketers love, such as automated event collection, goal tracking, e-commerce analytics, bypassing ad-blockers (as it’s privacy-friendly), and much more.

Let's explore why it's become a preferred choice for businesses seeking reliable and affordable analytics tools.

Pros of using Simple Analytics

1. Simple UI: Most product analytics tools like Amplitude come with a complex UI which takes time to understand if you’re not a regular user. On the other hand, Simple Analytics focuses on a clean and easy-to-understand UI that even non-marketers can easily understand.
2. Affordable: Tracking website and product metrics is pretty affordable with Simple Analytics. For just $9/month, you can track 100,000 data points (pageviews + events). Additionally, you get features that you would find it much more expensive tools.
3. Privacy First: The world is moving in a direction where privacy is becoming increasingly important. Google Analytics has been declared illegal in multiple EU countries. You would rather avoid getting caught up in this mess. Take privacy or compliance with regulations into account.
4. Mini Websites: Have you ever seen “t.co” as a referrer in your web analytics? If you have, you must have broken your head trying to find the source. Simple Analytics helps you find the exact tweet that referred/mentioned to your website.
5. Lightweight: Your website is your storefront on the internet. Providing the best possible experience matters. Installing an analytics script has an impact on page speed. Choose an analytics tool that won’t slow your website down. Even Google recommends having a website that loads quickly.
6. Integration: Installing and integrating Simple Analytics is also super easy. It has 20+ integrations to select from, so you can get it added quickly.

Cons of using Simple Analytics

Due to privacy laws, Simple Analytics doesn’t store IPs and user identifiers, which makes it lack a couple of metrics, such as bounce rate, but it does have time on page to give you an idea of user stickiness.

Pricing of Simple Analytics

Simple Analytics offers one of the most affordable pricing structures in its segment. The plans start at just $9/month, which lets you track 100,000 data points.

If you need more features, such as team access, the pricing goes up to $49/month, increasing the data points limit from 100,000 to 1,000,000.

Feature comparison between Amplitude and Simple Analytics

Conclusion

There’s no doubt that Amplitude is a great product analytics tool with all the capabilities to help product teams make product decisions. However, Amplitude is a complex and costly endeavor for companies that just want basic product analytics.

The pricing of Amplitude paid plan compared to Simple Analytics is very high, plus the dashboard is a complex screen that takes a ton of time and patience to understand. Simple Analytics provides the insights you need while being 100% GDPR compliant. They believe the internet should be an independent place that is friendly to website visitors. If this resonates with you, feel free to give it a try!

FAQs: A Better Alternative to Amplitude

What can Amplitude Analytics do?

Amplitude Analytics excels at computing retention data by comparing the initial event date to the given return event date. It provides valuable insights into retention measurement by assessing when an event happened and tracking subsequent return events.

What are some Amplitude alternatives?

Simple Analytics, Mixpanel, and Foxmetrics are some alternatives to Amplitude. But Simple Analytics is a good selection if you're looking for an affordable and easy-to-use user interface.

What are the characteristics of Amplitude?

Amplitude offers multiple features to improve analytics for different companies. For instance, you can gain insights into the user experience. Also, if you need a growth engine (beta) for iterative product development, it can help.

It also generates product portfolios and offers SQL for custom queries. Amplitude's behavioral platform also allows for creating a holistic 360-degree perspective of the client journey.

How does Amplitude track its users?

Amplitude successfully tracks users using three different approaches. Device IDs, Amplitude IDs, and user IDs are used. Device IDs are received from users' devices, whereas Amplitude IDs are generated automatically by Amplitude once enough information is gathered to identify a person uniquely. Your system can assign user IDs and then integrate them with Amplitude to properly track individual users.