What are the best analytics tools for a SaaS web applications?

Each month, over 1.7 million people use Slant to find the best products and share their knowledge. Pick the tags you’re passionate about to get a personalized feed and begin contributing your knowledge.

score 17 · Answer 1

Mixpanel

Add Video or Image

Top Pro

Updates in real time

On Mixpanel you can view live activity on the site from both streams of events or broken down into your actual users. This can be very practical for de-bugging and catching errors as they happen, especially for new, buggy products.

Top Pro

Behavioural messaging

Mixpanel allows you to send notifications based on users actions. For example, you can use it to improve customer retention by analyzing the conditions where your users decide to leave your product and then send targeted messages designed to bring them back. This is an amazingly powerful feature th...

Top Pro

Easy to use web interface

Online interface makes it simple to view events, and aggregate data. Queries can be built by selecting actions and associated properties from a drop-down, and the corresponding data will be displayed. These queries can then be bookmarked for later use. A table view and CSV export option is also av...

Top Pro

Contact users directly through the people page

Mixpanel allows you to directly contact users from the people dashboard via push notifications, sms, and email. After viewing the user history, or filtering on events and metrics, you can send an individual user, or a segment direct messages.

Top Pro

Automatic iOS event integration

Mixpanel can integrate with iOS, exposing app screen, and allowing you to set events through an online visual interface.

Top Pro

Remote configuration of events on iOS

On iOS, you can change or add events reported through the web interface so you don't have to submit a new version of the app to alter events.

Top Pro

Funnel analysis

Funnel analysis allows you to see how many people have performed certain sequence of actions. You can use this to understand what part of the sequence needs to be improved the most.

Top Pro

People analysis

Events can be grouped on a per-user basis allowing you to view each user's event history. You can use that information to see how individual users use your product.

Top Pro

Straightforward setup

It's very easy to set up.

Top Pro

Cohort analysis

Cohort analysis allows you to compare things like user retention over time, what kind of progress has been made with that retention over time, how many people perform certain actions from a set starting point over time, etc.

Top Pro

Successful companies use it

Khan Academy Hipmunk AirBnb TaskRabbit

Top Con

Expensive

The smallest plan is $150 per month, and only gets you 500k events.

Top Con

Only allows one filter per funnel step

Each funnel step can only include one filter, so you could have "browser" and "city" but not both.

Top Con

Charts are not very configurable

For instance the retention charts are pretty static. You can change dates but not a lot of definitions.

Top Con

Steep learning curve

Top Con

Revenue tracking metrics won't work for advertising businesses

Because the revenue tracking doesn't allow for fractions of dollars per visit (at least not as of 2014) any site that makes money based on advertising won't be able to leverage the revenue metric features.

Top Con

Limited public visitor and authenticated user merging

Top Con

No built-in solution for installation tracking

It's possible to enable installation tracking by using third-party services like Adjust or AppsFlyer and routing their data to Mixpanel.

See 16 more Pros & Cons See 16 more Pros & Cons

score 13 · Answer 2

KISSmetrics

Add Video or Image

Top Pro

Tracks guest-turned-user data

KISSmetrics will combine registered user data with data before registering.

Top Pro

Amazing customer support

Look at any blog post written about analytics tools and you will see the KISSmetrics team engaging with their customers. There are also stories such as this one of the KISSmetrics CEO personally reaching out to his customers immediately as they need help.

Top Pro

Event wizard

Top Pro

Cohort retention analysis

Top Pro

Funnel analysis

Funnel analysis allows you to see how many people have performed certain sequence of actions. You can use this to understand what part of the sequence needs to be improved the most.

Top Pro

People search

Top Pro

Simple integration

KISSmetrics offers the following ways to integration into your application: Language Specific APIs - Official support for Javascript, Ruby, PHP, Python and Objective C. There is also third party libraries for most of the popular languages not officially covered. CSV import Support for...

Top Pro

Support for URL parameters in the API

KISSmetrics lets you add a parameter in your URL (i.e. “http://yoursite.com/yourpage?kme=Track+This+Event”) and then automatically logs it without any additional Javascript code. This is very helpful to track clicks on links for example and is not currently support in Mixpanel.

Top Pro

Comprehensive revenue tracking

At the end of the day revenue is the key metric for SasS businesses and KISSmetrics really shines here. You can track: Total Revenue Average {Daily/Weekly/Monthly} Revenue Predictive Lifetime Value (Killer feature) Avg Customers / (Day/Week/Month) Churn. A very important metric...

Top Pro

Flexible KPI calculations

A key advantage KISSmetrics has over Mixpanel in particular is its ability to not only calculate custom formulas, but display the data in a "snapshot" view with a modifiable time period. This is a killer feature for building your companies dashboard.

Top Con

Ability to filter reports is lacking

It's only possible to have one subset and one filter active at a time.

See 9 more Pros See 9 more Pros

score 5 · Answer 3

Google Analytics

Add Video or Image

Top Pro

Free for most use cases

Google Analytics is free unless you need their premium service, which is $150,000 per year. However, it's only necessary for massively large enterprise size data sets.

Top Pro

Allows custom dashboards

Depending on the most important information to the user, the dashboard can be customized in order to put emphasis on certain metrics. This feature allows Google Analytics to satisfy users from a broad range of industries.

Top Pro

Intelligent Alerts

You can configure to be notified if certain things happen.

Top Pro

Well documented

Top Pro

Provides free training

Google provides free services that train users in each aspect of Google Analytics, especially when used in conjunction with AdWords.

Top Pro

Awesome API

The API itself, tools, documentation, and abilities of the API are very powerful.

Top Pro

Import data

Google Analytics allows users to update user information from other sources.

Top Pro

Google Play analytics

Because it's a Google product, Google Analytics can tell you how users discovered your app through Google Play.

Top Pro

Constantly releasing new features

Released more than once a week in 2014.

Top Pro

Highly customizable

Top Pro

Mobile web and Mobile app tracking possible

Top Pro

Integrates with AdMob

Since Google owns AdMob, they can provide deep integration, and allow you to respond to data with marketing campaigns.

Top Con

Heavy users get sampled reporting

If you send a lot of data Google starts sampling the data it uses for your reports.

Top Con

User-based analytics is lacking

Google Analytics tracks visitor actions, their user action tracking is still very basic. It has started supporting user ID, but in a very basic way.

Top Con

Can't handle authenticated users

See 13 more Pros & Cons See 13 more Pros & Cons

score 4 · Answer 4

Heap

Add Video or Image

Top Pro

Capture everything, organize it later

After adding a JavaScript snippet to the site, Heap captures every event that you can organize later instead of having to define events upfront. It means that if you decide to track something new you have data from the past as well.

Top Pro

User friendly

Heap does not require any coding knowledge to set up.

Top Pro

Free plan

If your site has less than 5000 monthly visitors, you can use Heap for free indefinitely.

Top Pro

Highly detailed

Since every single data point is logged you can do highly specific analysis.

Top Pro

Tracks guest-turned-user data

Heap will combine registered user data with data before registering.

Top Pro

Powerful and easy to set up cohort analytics

Cohort analysis allows you to compare things like user retention over time, what kind of progress has been made with that retention over time, how many people perform certain actions from a set starting point over time, etc.

Top Pro

Visit based pricing

Heap determines cost of service based on monthly visits instead of the more common data point based pricing that incentivises tracking less data points to save money.

Top Con

No Android integration

Heap lacks Android integration.

See 6 more Pros See 6 more Pros

score 7 · Answer 5

Smartlook

Add Video or Image

Top Pro

It's simple & easy to use

Makes it easy for you to understand your website visitor's behaviour.

Top Pro

Price is much lower than for other tools

Top Pro

Shows all visits of one visitor in a row

Add a Con

Know any negative aspects of this option?

See 2 more Pros See 2 more Pros

score 3 · Answer 6

Piwik

Add Video or Image

Top Pro

Can be self-hosted

Top Pro

Free/libre

Piwik is FOSS, so it can be freely modified & redistributed.

Add a Con

Know any negative aspects of this option?

See 1 more Pro See 1 more Pro

score 1 · Answer 7

Roguelytics

Add Video or Image

Top Pro

Real-time

Top Pro

Analytics data are embedded in your site

You can view analytics data (total users, user interactions, etc.) directly on your web site instead of signing into a separate portal/site. Note: this view is restricted and will not be displayed to regular users.

Add a Con

Know any negative aspects of this option?

See 1 more Pro See 1 more Pro

score 1 · Answer 8

Kilometer.io

Add Video or Image

Top Pro

Simple

The setup requires adding a peace of code to the site and from there the tool automatically generates a bunch of charts, metrics and dashboards.

Top Con

Limited

You can only choose from a predefined list of charts, metrics and dashboards.

Top Con

In beta

See 1 more Con See 1 more Con

score 1 · Answer 9

Keen.io

Add Video or Image

Top Pro

Great for custom, complex, large-scale analytics solutions

Keen is designed for developer to be able to build custom, complex, large-scale analytics solutions.

Top Pro

Offers a good free plan

The free plan allows for 50,000 events.

Top Pro

Allows gathering and visualizing data for your users

Top Pro

Good documentation

Top Pro

Can be easily integrated into existing projects

Top Con

Development knowledge is not optional

There's no drag and drop interface, setting up analytics requires a developer.

See 4 more Pros See 4 more Pros

score 1 · Answer 10

GoSquared

Add Video or Image

Top Pro

Emails a summary of week's events

Allows being informed without having to spend too much time following analytics.

Top Pro

Straightforward

GoSquared has 4 views - Now, Trends, E-commerce and People. "Now" is a dashboard that gives an overview of what's happening on the site in real time, "Trends" displays information like most visited content, referrals, engagement, etc over a period of time, "E-commerce&q...

Top Con

E-commerce analytics requires an expensive plan

To get e-commerce analytics, a subscription plan is required. The subscription starts at 18$/mo for 100,000 monthly datapoints.

See 1 more Pro See 1 more Pro

score 1 · Answer 11

EventHub

Add Video or Image

Top Pro

Simple deployment

Requires only downloading and executing a jar file.

Top Pro

Free and open source

Licensed under MIT.

Top Pro

A/B testing tool

Top Pro

Cohort analysis

Top Pro

Funnel analysis

Top Con

Abandoned

Hasn't been updated in over 2 years.

See 4 more Pros See 4 more Pros

score 1 · Answer 12

Madkudu

Add Video or Image

Top Pro

Attempts to predict user behaviour

Madkudu analyzes user-data and let's you know if a user is struggling and plans to leave or if a user is ready to convert needs a push in the right direction.

Top Con

Limited to trial conversion

The app is designed specifically for the purpose of increasing trial conversions. Using it as a general purpose analytics tool is not possible.

Answer 13

Intercom

Add Video or Image

Top Pro

Very responsive support

Add a Con

Know any negative aspects of this option?

score 1 · Answer 14

Countly

Top Pro

Try without signing up through an open demo

You can try it out without signing up at all by playing around with their demo.

Top Pro

Continually updating real time analytics

Countly pages are updated in real time without needing a page refresh.

Top Pro

All-in-one crash, analytics and push notifications

No need to use another SDK.

Top Pro

Very fast interface

Transitions between pages on the Countly web interface is nearly instant.

Add a Con

Know any negative aspects of this option?

See 3 more Pros See 3 more Pros

score 1 · Answer 15

FirstOfficer

Add Video or Image

Top Pro

One-click integration with Stripe

No coding necessary, fetches all the data from the charging gateway.

Top Pro

More accurate than event-based analytics

Events sometimes go missing. FirstOfficer checks data consistency against Stripe API and uses similar double-entry system than your bookkeeping to make sure that all the payments are processed.

Top Pro

Created by a finances professional

The founder has a BBA in accounting and practical experience from accounting, ensuring that the metrics are calculated right and that they are compatible to use with the numbers from bookkeeping.

Top Con

Tracks only sales-related information

The analytics tool won't track what users do on your site.

See 2 more Pros See 2 more Pros

score 1 · Answer 16

Yandex Metrica

Add Video or Image

Top Pro

Customazible reports with attribution modelling

Top Pro

No limits or sampling

Top Pro

Built-in click heatmap

Metrica can track where users click (includes non-link items) allowing you to see the most popular sections as well as items mistaken for links.

Top Pro

Offers site availability monitoring

Metrica can monitor the site for availability issues and send out an email and/or SMS notification when issues occur.

Top Pro

Shows keyword data from encrypted Yandex search queries

Yandex encrypts all search queries so they don't show up in any other analytics tool except for Metrica.

Top Pro

It's real-time

Top Pro

Includes user-path visualisations

Top Pro

Clear link map

Add a Con

Know any negative aspects of this option?

See 7 more Pros See 7 more Pros

Answer 17

Adobe Analytics

Add Video or Image

Top Pro

Can pull in data from 3rd party sources

You can pull data from third-party source sources like Salesforce or Gmail via their APIs to then associate that data with the user data from Adobe Analytics.

Top Con

Very, very expensive

The price is negotiated. Starts at $50k/year. No free plan available.

Top Con

Docs could be better

Top Con

Steep learning curve

See 2 more Cons See 2 more Cons

Answer 18

Alexa

Add Video or Image

Top Pro

Provides information about competitors

Alexa, in addition to on-site metrics, provides traffic, engagement and reputation data about other sites.

Top Con

Unknown ranking accuracy

Alexa's ranking is based on users that have installed one of their browser extensions and sites that have installed a tracking script. It's unknown what kind of users are installing the extensions and how big is the sample size (Alexa claims it to be millions).