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Product managers and marketers use product analytics tools to understand how users interact with their products. These tools typically use event tracking, user segmentation, and data analysis to identify user behavior, such as what steps users take before purchasing a product or what marketing tactics turn website visitors into customers. By identifying such properties, product managers can decide what marketing channels to invest in and how to make the user journey easier.
What is product analytics?
Product analytics is the process of analyzing data on how users interact with a product or service. This data reveals customer engagement with a product rather than self-reported behavior. As a result, analytics product managers can improve their offerings and invest in high ROI (Return on Investment) marketing efforts.
Multiple product analytics tools are available, each with a unique set of characteristics. Amplitude and Pendo product analytics are among the tools product managers prefer. However, both have different attributes that make them suitable for different use cases. For example, Amplitude product analytics is known for real-time reporting, user segmentation, and custom event tracking among users. On the other hand, Pendo product analytics is known for its easy interface and retrospective reporting.
Best product analytics tools
Let’s further discuss why Amplitude and Pendo stand out among the best product analytics tools:
Amplitude analytics
Amplitude is the #1 ranked product analytics tool in G2 because of its in-depth product analysis, ease of use, and customer-centric approach. Key features include Amplitude feature flags, user journey tracking, cohort analysis, user segmentation, retention analysis, pathfinder, and funnel analysis. Amplitude custom dashboard creation gives control over configuring metrics, visualization, event tracking, and collaboration. Additionally, data governance is the central part of the Amplitude ecosystem, so you don’t have to worry about data loss or theft while working toward your marketing goals.
Starting at $49/ month, Amplitude analytics pricing is affordable for all business sizes, and its easy setup makes it a must-have product analytics tool.
Let's review the pros and cons of Amplitude in the table below:
Pendo analytics
Pendo Analytics is ranked the #2 product analytics tool in G2 because of its real-time product analysis and ease of use. Key Pendo features include user paths, user segmentations, funnels, and retention analysis. Pendo allows tracking Net Promoter Score (NPS) to gauge customer loyalty and satisfaction and improve customer retention.
Pendo’s free plan offers limited features, and pricing varies depending on the additional features you need. To get a Pendo price estimate, you must contact them for a quote based on your specific requirements.
Let's review the pros and cons of Pendo in the table below:
Amplitude vs. Pendo
While Amplitude and Pendo are the best analytics tools for product managers, specific attributes make them suitable for different use cases. Below is a breakdown of their distinct advantages and capabilities:
Data modeling and user identification
Amplitude offers real-time data modeling to analyze features that drive growth to your business. These features include retention, funnels, revenue, cohort, and flexible user segmentation analysis. These capabilities reveal where and how customers convert, compare metrics, and identify growth driving cross-platform behavior.
Amplitude uses three methods to identify users:
- Device IDs
- Amplitude IDs
- User IDs
It automatically generates an Amplitude ID for each user and allows product analysts (or anyone using Amplitude for product analysis) to create user IDs. For users who interact with your platform without logging in or creating an account, Amplitude assigns an anonymous ID. This ID tracks all activities under that session, and once the user is identified, the system merges the anonymous data with the user’s profile. This mechanism helps measure the effectiveness of your efforts to convert visitors into customers and identify any obstacles in the conversion process.
Pendo analytics offers in-depth product analysis using numerous features, including user paths, funnels, retention analysis, and feedback modules. Pendo uses user IDs, user attributes, and session tracking to identify users. It also tracks anonymous users using anonymous IDs.
The following table outlines the two product analytics tools comparisons in the aspect of data modeling and user identification:
Pricing
Pricing is a key factor to consider when choosing the best product analytics software for your company. Before making a decision, you should understand whether the tool has limitations on users and events based on different plans and the available integration options and customer support.
Amplitude and Pendo Analytics offer free plans to get started. Amplitude's free plan covers the essential features for small businesses and early startups.
On the other hand, Pendo's free plan doesn't offer enough features to help you understand product analytics without switching to paid plans.
In addition to everything included in the free plan, Amplitude's starting paid plan offers unlimited product analytics, custom dashboards and formulas, behavioral cohorts, custom audiences and syncs, and online support.
Pendo offers limited additional features with each plan upgrade, and getting the price estimate requires requesting a quote.
Below is a comparison of Amplitude vs. Pendo pricing:
Interface and usability
Usability and interface are key factors in ranking Amplitude and Pendo among the best product analytics tools. Here’s how they make advanced analytics simpler for product managers:
Amplitude offers a user-friendly interface with highly customizable dashboards and advanced visualizations. Beginners can also use pre-built dashboards to track their users as soon as they set up their accounts. Amplitude interface updates in real-time, allowing to track user conversions and user segmentation and highlighting future opportunities. Users can also adjust their analytical views to identify key insights quickly and collaborate with team members.
Pendo has an easy-to-navigate user interface, allowing tracking customer analytics and segmentation without a cumbersome setup. However, Pendo dashboards take time to record user behavior data, meaning you can’t track them in real-time.
Below is a comparison of Amplitude vs. Pendo usability and interface:
Features
Robust features are another important factor in ranking Amplitude and Pendo among the best product analytics tools. Below are the unique attributes of both analytics tools:
Amplitude analytics
- Behavioral analytics: Amplitude offers insights into customer behavior via personal preferences. It also helps analyze the impact of marketing efforts through user flow diagrams and retention analysis.
- User segmentation: Amplitude allows customers to be divided into smaller groups according to their characteristics, such as demographics and behavior patterns. User segmentation allows the launch of targeted campaigns and personalized interaction with customers.
- Event segmentation: Amplitude supports five default events and ten product-specific events. Event segmentation helps identify the top events, their frequency, and the user journey. A product click, ad click, and payment submission are a few examples of user events.
- Advanced analytics: Funnels, cohort analysis, feature flags, automatic user identification, customizable dashboards, and storytelling encourage data-driven decisions. Data-driven decisions drive higher conversion and revenue for your business. Amplitude dashboards also include advanced features, including bulk filters, data ranges, email reports, behavioral cohorts, comments, and the ablity to generate a public link.
- Real-time analytics: Amplitude updates its analytics as soon as your data is updated. Real-time analytics keep you updated with your performance based on up-to-the-minute user interactions.
- A/B testing: Amplitude's A/B testing feature allows you to customize the experiments by developing your hypothesis, choosing a relevant metric, and obtaining user authorization. This guide toward planning targeted tactics and identifying customer-preferred marketing efforts.
- Product paths and conversion funnels: Amplitude tracks the time required to make a purchase and highlights where users tend to leave. This allows for fine-tuning your customer journeys through data-driven decisions.
Pendo analytics
- User paths: User paths track users' actions in sequence before or after interacting with a product feature, event, or page.
- User segmentation: Pendo user segmentation allows customers to be divided into smaller groups based on their characteristics for targeted marketing.
- Feedback module: The Pendo feedback module allows for the collection and management of customer feedback within Pendo for further analysis.
Below is a summary of the comparison of features and implementation in both tools:
Implementation
Amplitude has a user-friendly setup and easy third-party integration to speed up user onboarding. Its tutorials and customer support are comprehensive and responsive, and a Slack Community of 11,000 members connects users with fellow professionals. Amplitude's user interface is also structured and offers several pre-built customizable dashboards, simplifying product analytics.
Customers believe that easy setup for advanced analytics and vast integrations are what make Amplitude the best product analytics tool:
Pendo also offers easy implementation and educational resources. However, users report buggy features and tricky interface. Below is a verified Pendo user review complaining about Pendo limitations:
Below is a summary of the comparison of implementation and user-friendliness in both tools:
Customer support
Both tools, Amplitude and Pendo, offer comprehensive documentation, tutorials, guides, and customer support. Amplitude's customer support is more patient and responsive. However, some Pendo customers report slow implementation support.
Below is a summary of the comparison of customer support in the two best product analytics software:
How to find the best analytics tools for product managers?
Amplitude and Pendo are considered the best product analytics software by their users for multiple reasons. However, since each company has unique product data analytics needs based on its business model, growth, and customer base, finding a suitable solution for your use case requires careful analysis of business needs.
Finding the best analytics tools depends on various factors, including the analytics tool's features and your specific product management analytics needs. Other factors to consider include customization options, event tracking, data diversity, scalability, integration options, data compliance, reporting, and ease of use.
Amplitude product data analytics prioritizes in-depth user behavior analysis, usability, scalability, and customization, making it suitable for businesses seeking in-depth exploration and growth opportunities. In contrast, Pendo is suitable product analytics software for businesses primarily looking for easy setup in exchange for data lag and comprehensive user behavior analysis.
FAQs:
What is the difference between Amplitude and Pendo?
Amplitude offers advanced and customizable analytics features along with flexible data tracking and extensive integration portfolio. This makes it must have product analytics tools for businesses with growing data, advanced analytics, and growth identification needs.
Pendo offers simplified event tracking and quick onboarding with limited features in the free plan.
What makes Amplitude a scalable product analytics tool?
Amplitude scales in three dimensions, i.e., data volume, price, and number of users, without compromising performance. Its pre-aggregation and lambda architecture help reduce resources and maintain real-time updates.
How do Amplitude and Pendo handle data?
Amplitude follows industry standards and complies with relevant data protection regulations such as GDPR and CCPA. It provides users control over events and properties definitions, making it a strong choice among analytics tools for business.
Pendo also prioritizes data security and protection by adhering to regulatory schemes, including GDPR and HIPAA.
Next steps: Maximize your data's impact with Amplitude
The journey doesn’t end with choosing the right product analytics tool as the insights significantly depend on its configuration. Proper setup and integrations are essential for deriving impactful decisions from your data analysis.
Therefore, to truly optimize your marketing efforts, you need the right setup and alignment with your use case. At Adasight, we help you find your product-market fit and clarify your insights with Amplitude so you can attract new customers and retain the existing ones.
If you want to maximize your data’s potential, reach out to us at Adasight, and align your marketing/product efforts with a focus towards growth.
