Why I ditched Google Analytics & MixPanel for PostHog
It took me until I built my second product (Reciprocal.dev) to really understand the value of analytics. I’d always landed very much on the side of such tools as being an invasion of privacy and questioned the need for front-end scripts when proper configured server logs could provide the same information.
The hammer that hit the nail on the head was reading Lean Startup and learning how customer behaviour metrics are key to performing the iterative small tweaks needed to align the product to the customer needs.
Instead of analytics being used to count page views and traffic sources they should be used to understand the points the product has to make a decision and the outcome of that decision, so that the product can be changed to remove the friction.
With that new found understanding I started looking at how we’d implemented analytics in my existing products.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics had always been my go to analytics platform when I’ve wanted insights but this was out of lack of any real knowledge of the analytics space and just seeing what others had used.
In my personal opinion Google Analytics is just a mess.
