14 Best Product Analytics Software Tools (2024)
- Published:
- Updated: August 21, 2024
Product analytics are at the core of any great product-led company. It helps product teams collect data to build great applications and improve the overall product experience, helps designers create accessible designs, and shows marketers which type of content converts visitors to users so they can double down on it.
Product analytics allow product teams to develop a data-driven roadmap, identify friction points in the user experience, and drive product adoption of your application.
To do this, you’ll need product analytics software to capture and aggregate product data.
What are the best product analytic software in 2024?
- Whatfix
- Amplitude Analytics
- Mixpanel
- Google Analytics
- Heap
- Pendo
- Hotjar
- FullStory
- UXCam
- Glassbox
- LogRocket
- Smartlook
- Mouseflow
- Contentsquare
What Is Product Analytics Software?
Product analytics tools empowers product managers and IT teams with a way to track end-user behavior and product usage.
Product analytics software track user clicks, page views, form fills, and any custom event, allowing non-technical team members to analyze this user data to find actionable insights to improve their user flows and overall product experience – all backed by real user data.
Product analytics platforms empowers product teams and UX researchers to:
- Observe and understand how users are interacting with your website and applications.
- Collect and aggregate data to capture trends and patterns that lead to less churn, reduced user friction, more conversions, higher adoption, and goal completions.
- Segment users by stage within your funnel or cohort type and observe their journey closer.
Features of Product Analytics Software
The following features are commonly found in most product analytics software platforms.
- Session recording captures a user’s browsing session across your website’s (or application’s) pages, including mouse movements, data entry, and idle time.
- KPI dashboards that report metrics such as churn, conversions, and technical issues.
- Funnel analytics measures how users progress through your product’s conversion stages. You can use the data it offers to determine where users encounter friction, churn, or end browsing sessions.
- User flow maps track the sequence of events users perform after they land on your website (or open your application), sign in, and start interacting with your application. Flow maps help UX teams make their most-used functionality easy to locate and remove the hoops users need to jump through to find them.
- Cohort analysis that enables product managers to compare groups of users against one another and compare journeys based on shared demographics or actions.
- Session segmentation groups sessions by user location, on-page duration, devices, etc.
- Heatmaps combine multiple user sessions and show you the parts of your website (or application) users interacted with most and least by shading them with color codes. Heatmaps track scroll depth, clicks, taps, and mouse hovering.
Benefits of Product Analytics Software
A product analytics tool observes how users interact with your applications. That data helps product teams decide which features to optimize, prioritize in the roadmap, and which ones to eliminate from your product.
- Personalize your user experience by user demographics and characteristics.
- Improve new feature discovery and adoption.
- Reduce time-to-value by helping your users achieve their “aha” moment faster.
- Reduce product friction.
- Make data-driven product roadmap decisions and ship the features your users want the most.
- Understand how users interact with your product, what they expect, why they’re churning, which features they use the most, and how quickly they start getting value out of your product.
11 Considerations to Select the Best Product Analytics Software Partner
After creating a list of requirements for your product analytics software, it’s time to evaluate the best vendors that made your shortlist. Here are eleven considerations to consider when selecting a product analytics technology partner.
1. Custom event tracking
Product analytics software allows teams to track any custom user event data in your product, website, or web app. With a product analytics tool, product and custom-facing teams can track user actions like pageviews, button clicks, form fills, swipes, mouse interactions, and more. With Whatfix Analytics, set up user actions to track with a visual editor, without the need for engineering dependance.
2. Auto-capture event data
Many product analytics tools will auto-track events and user behavior characteristics, like page URLs and user properties. Whatfix Analytics has patented element detection technology that accurately auto-captures user event details, even after making UI changes or upgrades to your product and its codebase.
With Whatfix Product Analytics, use Trend Insights to turn your user engagement-related queries like the number of users who have completed an in-app Flow, the number of users who have clicked a Pop-Up button, etc. into real, actionable insights. Create custom user event reports with your queries and visualize them in various charts and reports.
3. No-code set up
Many product analytics tools require adding just small code snippet to your application or website to start tracking end actions and events. From there, setting up custom events and actions to track depends on the platform you’re using – Whatfix Product Analytics is a completely no-code event tracking platform, allowing non-technical team members to set up new events to track by clicking on elements in your application. Whatfix’s element detection technology is unmatched.
4. Real-time analytics and retroactive data
With a product analytics tool like Whatfix, there is no lag in data collection, allowing you to analyze and understand behavior in real-time. You can also retroactively collect data and behavior from users from before you set up different user actions and events.
5. Funnels
Funnels are a core feature of product analytics software. Funnels are a series of sequential user events (like a custom user action, page view, in-app engagement, ec.) that enable you to track how your end users progress through a pre-defined path in an application. It helps you analyze which step of a process your end users are failing, experiencing friction, or dropping off the most.
6. User journeys
User journeys map how a user gets to a predetermined goal, pinpointing the engagement steps.
With User Journeys, Whatfix allows you to automatically analyze how an end user navigates through an application using custom events captured with Whatfix API and enables you to understand the different paths they take to complete a task. Using User Journey, you can track which path your users are taking on an application, whether they’re taking the right path to complete a task, and how they interact with any Whatfix content or widget that appears on the page.
Product managers can understand and analyze end-user behavior and visualize their actions in a Sankey chart. User Journey enables you to track the following actions in an app:
- The different paths taken your users
- The most commonly paths
- High and low engagement points in your paths
7. User cohorts and segmentation
User cohorts are segmented user groups based upon shared traits, actions, or demographics. It enable you to create a group of users based on a specific criteria and analyze the group to take further actions. You can compare and contrast behavior of users who have similar characteristics and draw insights with a cohort analysis.
Whatfix Product Analytics empowers you to create user cohort groups with Cohorts. Cohorts enable you to create a group of users based on specific criteria or user behavior and analyze that cohort to analyze, compare, and take further actions. Creating Cohorts based on user behavior enables you to unearth hidden patterns, validate or invalidate hypotheses, and draw insights.
8. Web or desktop application tracking
Most product analytics software allows you to analyze user behavior and events on web-baseds applications. With Whatfix Product Analytics, capture, track, and analyze user events and data across any web or desktop application. Tracking desktop application analytics and event tracking is critical for sectors with on-premise desktop applications like healthcare and financial services.
9. Third-party software integrations
Inventory all required integrations you’ll need with your product analytics software. This includes other analytics platforms, email marketing tools, CRMs, data warehouses, and more.
Whatfix Product Analytics includes integration with analytics tools like Google Analytics, Mixpanel, Heap, as well as with core enterprise applications like Salesforce CRM, SAP SuccessFactors, MS Dynamics, Oracle Siebel, and more.
Whether your tracking end-user behavior and events from customer-facing applications and websites, or on internally-build applications or enterprise software from third-party vendors, Whatfix Product Analytics has you covered.
10. AI-powered reporting
Product analytics vendors typically come with out-of-the-box reports and templates to use to get you started quickly post-implementation. With Whatfix Product Analytics, teams are empowered with a generative AI assistant, allowing you to ask conversational-based questions and Whatfix’s AI can analyze your event data and provide you with actionable insights and generate custom reports.
11. How you will take action with user insights
Whatfix enables product and IT teams with both the product analytics capabilities to capture, track, and analyze user behavior and product usage data, and with an in-app guidance platform (Whatfix Digital Adoption Platform) to create in-app user assistance based on your product usage data.
With Whatfix’s digital adoption platform (DAP), use your product and user data to make data-driven decisions to improve your product experience with a no-code content editor to create in-app Tours, Flows, Task Lists, Self Help, and more.
14 Best Product Analytics Tools in 2024
Here are the best product analytic tools, including a high-level overview of each product, pricing, and user review data to help you choose the right product analytics software.
1. Whatfix
- G2 Review Rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars
- Price: Reach out for a custom quote
Whatfix empowers enterprises and product teams to track how users interact with an application with powerful product analytics and offer no-code tools that allow them to create in-app guidance and on-demand support. Whatfix offers contextual assistance that surfaces videos, documentation, and resources designed to help your users navigate your applications and drive adoption.
Whatfix Analytics allows product teams to capture actionable data and insights on user behavior within your applications. It also tracks the engagement, helpfulness, and effectiveness of in-app help content and user flows such as your product tour, feature launches, process walkthroughs, and more. This data is captured in real-time and allows users to leave in-app feedback on your overall flows and user experience.
One of the most significant advantages of Whatfix Analytics is that it can be integrated and managed in a no-code implementation, meaning non-technical users are empowered to capture and act on real-time product data.
2. Amplitude Analytics
- G2 Review Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
- Price: Starts at $900 per month
Amplitude is a digital analytics platform that provides tools for product teams to measure and evaluate their applications. Amplitude helps predict what actions your customers will make, reduces conversion process friction, gives you visibility into your user journey and experience, and helps your product build better products with analytics.
Amplitude requires engineering support to implement the analytics tool and update any necessary tracking or event fields.
3. Mixpanel
- G2 Review Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
- Price: Limited free plan; paid tier starts at $25 per month
Mixpanel is a product analytics platform that aggregates usage data from touchpoints across your product and helps you learn how your users are interacting with your web properties, where and why users churn, and how to improve your product experience to increase retention and conversion.
You can use Mixpanel to segment users into cohorts, track drop-off rates to see where your customers are encountering friction, and connect your databases with just a few clicks. Mixpanel requires developer and engineering support to implement the platform and update any necessary tracking or event fields.
4. Google Analytics
- G2 Review Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
- Price: Limited free tier; paid tier starts at $150,000 per year
Google Analytics helps marketers track impressions, measure ROI on their paid campaigns, and figure out your major traffic channels so that you can allocate marketing and growth resources appropriately. Google Analytics is best designed for tracking data on websites, web apps, and e-commerce stores.
Google Analytics will show you:
- The number of user sessions,
- Pages visited by users per session
- Average stay time
- Bounce rates, etc —so that you get general cues on what to improve with your content and marketing.
But for all it offers, Google Analytics is severely limited when it comes to product experience use cases, and you won’t be able to segment users, observe how they’re using your product, and figure out why they’re converting or churning.
Product analytics platforms like Whatfix take it a step further with session recordings, heatmaps, and user journey tracking to help you get a clear picture of how users experience your landing pages, product features, resources, etc.
5. Heap
- G2 Review Rating: 4.3 out of 5 stars
- Price: Limited free tier; paid tier starts at $3,600 per year
Heap helps companies who want to track their customers’ journeys, measure product adoption, and observe user behavior so that you can unlock product-led growth. Heap collects behavioral and event data from your users and customers automatically, including everything from clicks, scrolls, what they’re engaging with, and more.
But unless you have a technical background, Heap can be confusing to set up, especially for marketers and business users who prefer a no-code, drag-and-drop platform.
6. Pendo
Pendo is a product analytics platform designed to help developers, product engineers, and marketers create experience users are eager to adopt through in-app guidance and advanced product analytics. With Pendo, you can:
- Create and suggest helpful content on-demand.
- Onboard users with simple nudges and cues.
- Collect feedback with surveys and polls.
- Collect user engagement data throughout your user journey.
Just like Heap, Pendo is not exactly a plug-and-play analytics platform, and you might need some technical work to get it to work or anything you need to make a change to some of your walkthrough steps.
7. Hotjar
- G2 Review Rating: 4.4
- Price: Limited free tier; complicated usage-based pricing
Hotjar is a UX design and heatmaps platform for tracking user behavior on your web properties (i.e. your websites, applications, help docs, etc.) with recordings of individual sessions, heatmaps that aggregate multiple sessions, and cohort analysis of sample groups of your users.
Hotjar is very code-heavy and will make your website load slowly. Secondly, their pricing is quite opaque, and it’s hard to know what you’re paying for at any point.
8. FullStory
- G2 Review Rating: 4.5
- Price: Starts at $199 per month; Free startup plan
FullStory is a digital experience platform for capturing user experience at scale. With FullStory, you can record individual sessions, generate user engagement heatmaps, segment users into buckets, and monitor user behavior for frustration signals like rage-clicking and pinch-to-zoom.
FullStory’s pricing is opaque, and your billing tends to jump once you upgrade or outgrow your existing plan.
9. UXCam
- G2 Review Rating: 4.7
- Price: Limited free tier; contact for pricing
UXCam tracks user behavior inside your web and mobile applications with recorded sessions, heatmaps, and issue tracking that monitors when something breaks on your application.
UXCam is an older platform, and it’s not as intuitive as you expect. UXCam also has a tricky pricing structure that strings you along with a generous free tier that quickly jumps to $3k/year once you exhaust your credits.
UXCam users also report that the platform isn’t exactly reliable, and recorded sessions routinely disappear from their accounts.
10. Glassbox
- G2 Review Rating: 4.8
- Price: Limited free tier; contact for pricing
Glassbox is a customer experience platform designed to help engineers and marketers remove friction, boost engagement, capture user sessions, record crashes, bugs, and issues, and track the product experience metrics that matter.
Glassbox tends to be slow, recorded sessions break quite often, and you may have a steep learning curve grasping Glassbox’s terminologies if you’re a non-technical user.
11. LogRocket
- G2 Review Rating: 4.7
- Price: Limited free tier; paid tier starts at $99 per month
LogRocket is a frontend monitoring and session replay platform designed for software teams building applications for web and mobile platforms.
LogRocket records user sessions, monitors your front-end for errors, network failures, and performance issues, and uses click maps and heatmaps to show how your users interact with your applications.
Recorded sessions take quite a while to render, and you need to spend around $6k/yr to access LogRocket’s core tools like heatmaps, filtering, and path analysis. LogRocket bills by usage, and at that rate, if you have an application users log into several times a day, you will quickly exhaust your plan and upgrade to a custom (and possibly pricier) plan.
12. Smartlook
- G2 Review Rating: 4.6
- Price: Limited free tier; paid tier starts at $39 per month
Smartlook is a behavioral analytics tool that helps product engineers and marketers replay user sessions, track action completions, filter sessions by events, and see which of your on-page elements users interact with the most, where they drop off the funnel, and why.
Smartlook is one of the more affordable options on the market, although their free tier is designed to squeeze you until you upgrade.
13. Mouseflow
- G2 Review Rating: 4.6
- Price: Extremely limited free tier; paid tier start at $24 per month
Mouseflow is a behavior analytics platform designed for marketers, product teams, and UX engineers. Mouseflow captures user behavior with heatmaps, session recordings, and feedback forms and breaks it down with funnel analytics, drop-off tracking, and user friction metrics.
14. Contentsquare
- G2 Review Rating: 4.6
- Price: Contact for pricing
Contentsquare is a digital experience platform that empowers product, operations, and marketing users to track user experience, measure goal completions on their web resources, and filter through sessions to find out why and how to improve user satisfaction.
For all its functionality, Contentsquare is code-heavy, and its tracking tags can slow down your website. The platform presents a steep learning curve to marketers and non-technical users who may be getting started with product research and UX analytics.
Choosing a product analytics platform is a balancing act. On one hand, you need a powerful platform to show how users navigate and interact with your product. On the other, all that functionality needs to be efficient to not degrade your application’s performance.
Your product analytics platform should be simple enough to serve as a source of truth for your product, UX, and marketing teams, both technical and non-technical alike.
Whatfix empowers you to understand how users interact with your product, the issues they’re facing, the features you should (and should not) build to unlock product-led growth, and no-code content creation tools to fix and test these experiences.
Whatfix provides the best product analytics, digital experience, and adoption tools all in one powerful product adoption and experience platform.
Get started by exploring how Whatfix Analytics empower product teams now!
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