Top 6 analytics platforms for product-led growth teams tracking activation and retention (Mixpanel, Amplitude, Google Analytics 4, and proto-funnel setup)

Product-led growth (PLG) is replacing traditional sales-led strategies in high-performing SaaS companies. In PLG organizations, analytics are the fuel that powers every product decision—from optimizing onboarding experiences to improving activation and retention metrics. As PLG teams scale, choosing the right analytics platform becomes essential for gaining meaningful insights and unlocking growth through user behavior data.

TL;DR

For product-led growth teams, having a dependable analytics platform is fundamental for driving activation and retention. Tools like Mixpanel, Amplitude, and Google Analytics 4 offer robust capabilities to analyze engagement and optimize user journeys. Proto-funnel setup is vital to structure users’ progression toward value. Use platforms that balance ease of use, scalability, and deep behavioral tracking to power growth decisions at every stage.

What Makes an Analytics Platform Right for PLG Teams?

Unlike standard web analytics, PLG analytics focuses on understanding the complete user lifecycle within the product. It’s about more than just traffic numbers—it’s about how users engage inside the product, how quickly they reach activation, and how often they return.

Key criteria for choosing a strong analytics solution for product-led growth include:

• Event-based tracking: Capturing user actions such as clicks, form submissions, and usage patterns.
• Funnel analysis: Understanding drop-off points across onboarding and key feature usage.
• Retention cohorts: Measuring how different user segments return and engage over time.
• User segmentation: Differentiating between power users and casual users for targeted experiments.
• Ease of integration: Connecting with data warehouses, CRMs, or experimentation platforms.

Top 6 Analytics Platforms for PLG Teams

1. Mixpanel

Mixpanel stands out as one of the most widely adopted product analytics platforms today. It provides comprehensive event tracking and a powerful user interface to analyze user behavior without needing data engineering support.

Key features:

• Custom events and property-based filters
• Dynamic retention and funnel reports
• Feature adoption analysis with trend breakdowns
• Easy-to-build dashboards for stakeholder reporting

One of Mixpanel’s greatest strengths is its ability to let product managers and growth marketers build insightful queries with minimal SQL experience. Funnels are intuitive to build and highly customizable, making it ideal for iterative experimentation.

Ideal for: Mid-to-large SaaS companies with high product usage and complex feature sets seeking rapid behavioral insights.

2. Amplitude

Amplitude offers a robust suite of advanced product analytics and has become a favorite for PLG teams that need more clarity into the “why” behind user actions. While it provides similar funneling, retention, and cohorting as Mixpanel, its standout feature is its Behavioral Graph—a deep tool for journey discovery.

Key features:

• Advanced segmentation based on persona, plan, and action taken
• Predictive analytics and user path discovery
• Built-in A/B testing and experimentation workflows
• Support for ingestion from raw data warehouses

Amplitude is well-suited for teams ready to dive into complex behavioral patterns and make data-driven prioritizations around product development or growth loops.

Ideal for: Advanced teams prioritizing experimentation and customer journey mapping across digital touchpoints.

3. Google Analytics 4 (GA4)

With the shift to Google Analytics 4, Google has taken steps toward supporting event-driven tracking rather than pure session-based tracking. GA4 now supports custom events, user paths, and retention segmentation, making it more applicable to PLG than previous versions.

Key features:

• Free tier with scalable cloud integration (BigQuery)
• Cross-device tracking and identity stitching
• Audience segmentation and predictive analytics for churn/engagement
• Integration with Google Ads and marketing attribution tools

Despite its advantages, GA4 still falls short compared to Mixpanel or Amplitude when it comes to product-focused metrics like in-app features usage or detailed behavioral funnels. However, for teams looking for a free or supplementary analytics tool that covers broad traffic and marketing data, GA4 is a solid baseline.

Ideal for: Startups looking for a low-cost option or teams already heavily invested in the Google ecosystem.

4. Heap

Heap introduces unique capabilities with its auto-capture approach, which automatically records every user interaction without requiring pre-defined event tagging. This is incredibly useful for teams that want to reduce reliance on developers.

Key features:

• Auto-capture and retroactive event creation
• User drop-off analysis without setup
• Data governance features to manage large event sets
• Built-in session replay options for deeper context

Heap’s strength lies in rapid iteration—especially in early-stage products where tracking everything manually might be too cumbersome. While it may not offer the same depth as Amplitude or Mixpanel in funnel analysis, its ease of implementation and retroactivity are game-changers.

Ideal for: Early-stage PLG startups or teams with limited technical resources.

5. PostHog

PostHog is a newcomer in the analytics space offering full transparency by being open-source and self-hosted. Unlike traditional SaaS tools, PostHog gives product analytics power to privacy-conscious organizations or those requiring custom hosting environments.

Key features:

• Open-source and self-hosted flexibility
• Feature flags and A/B testing
• Session recording and heatmaps included
• Pipeline to warehouses for deeper custom analysis

PostHog is built for developer-forward teams. While it offers many similarities to the top PLG analytics platforms, it shines where data infrastructure control and extensibility are crucial.

Ideal for: Privacy-focused SaaS companies or enterprise teams with a strong engineering presence.

6. Proto-Funnel Setup and Custom Dashboards

Outside of ready-made platforms, some PLG teams prefer a proto-funnel approach using their data warehouse (like Snowflake or BigQuery), visualization tools (such as Metabase or Looker), and event pipelining tools (Segment, RudderStack).

This allows full control over the data definition and tracking operation, giving you flexibility to:

• Craft custom activation metrics
• Define retention logic specific to your use case
• Combine product usage with business data (e.g., subscription plan, support tickets)
• Visualize complex lifecycle stages in a tailored way

However, the overhead is significant—requiring data engineers and analytics experts to maintain the stack. For mature teams that have unique definitions of “activation,” a proto-funnel setup may offer best-in-class accuracy and stakeholder buy-in.

Ideal for: Data-driven organizations with dedicated analytics teams and a large-volume user base.

Choosing the Right Tool for Your Stage

Selecting the right analytics platform partly depends on your company’s growth stage and available resources. Here’s a typical breakdown:

• Early-stage startups: Start with GA4 for marketing and Heap for product behavior if engineering bandwidth is tight.
• Mid-stage PLG companies: Adopt Mixpanel or Amplitude when experimenting with onboarding, activation, and retention levers.
• Data-focused enterprises: Build a custom proto-funnel stack or adopt PostHog for full data control while scaling.

Conclusion

For product-led growth teams, the ability to understand and optimize for user activation and retention is a competitive advantage. The best analytics tools—whether Mixpanel, Amplitude, GA4, or a custom setup—enable teams to craft journeys based on data, not assumptions. Choose a stack that not only tracks behavior but also helps you ask better questions—and ultimately leads to stronger product decisions.