Mixpanel vs Google Analytics 4 (2025): A Head to Head Comparison
Introduction
In today's data-driven landscape, analytics tools are no longer optional luxuries; they are fundamental components for informed decision-making in marketing and product strategy. The era of relying solely on intuition is over. Successful teams now harness hard data to truly understand customer behavior and optimize their strategies. Whether it's a marketing team refining ad campaigns or a product manager enhancing a mobile app, analytics platforms provide the crucial insights needed to guide strategic choices.
These tools collect and interpret vast amounts of information—ranging from website traffic statistics to intricate in-app user actions. This empowers organizations to personalize user experiences, improve conversion rates, and maintain a competitive edge. Indeed, building or improving any digital product hinges on data, and the most effective product managers and marketers are those who are genuinely data-driven.
Among the leading analytics solutions, Mixpanel and Google Analytics (specifically Google Analytics 4 or GA4) are frequently discussed. Both are powerful platforms, yet they serve distinct needs and excel in different scenarios. This deep dive will explore each tool individually, directly compare their features (including how they handle various content types), weigh their respective pros and cons, and examine practical, real-world use cases. We will also touch upon new AI-driven capabilities in both platforms and address common questions to help you navigate the crucial decision of mixpanel vs google analytics 4 for your specific requirements.
Mixpanel Overview
Mixpanel is a specialized product analytics platform focusing on tracking individual user journeys and actions within a digital product (website or app). It uses an event-driven model, recording specific user interactions like button clicks or feature usage, rather than just pageviews.
This approach allows product teams, growth marketers, and UX researchers to understand how people engage with their product, identify drop-off points in flows (like sign-up), analyze feature adoption, and measure user retention based on behavior. Its strength lies in deep, granular analysis of in-product user engagement, requiring users to define and implement tracking for the specific events they care about.
Google Analytics Overview
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is Google's comprehensive web and app analytics solution, considered an industry standard for measuring digital property performance. While using an event-based model like Mixpanel, GA4 excels at providing a broad overview of audience behavior, traffic acquisition sources, and content performance.
GA4 automatically tracks many standard web interactions (pageviews, scrolls, clicks) and integrates seamlessly with Google's advertising ecosystem (Google Ads, Search Console). It's heavily favored by digital marketers, SEO specialists, and content strategists for understanding overall site traffic, measuring marketing campaign ROI, tracking conversions, and getting demographic insights. Its focus is on the aggregated view of user behavior and marketing funnel effectiveness.
Mixpanel vs GA4 Core Feature
Comparison: Mixpanel vs Google Analytics 4
Having introduced both platforms, let's delve into a direct comparison. Examining google analytics 4 vs mixpanel across key dimensions—features, content tracking capabilities, pros and cons, pricing, and reporting focus—will clarify their distinct strengths and ideal applications. A summary table follows this section for a quick reference.
Mixpanel vs GA4 : Key Features
Mixpanel: Mixpanel strongly emphasizes event-driven analytics. Its core features revolve around flexible event tracking, where you define the user actions to monitor. It boasts powerful funnel analysis tools to visualize how users progress (or drop off) through critical multi-step processes like sign-up or checkout. Cohort analysis is another strength, allowing teams to group users based on sign-up date or specific behaviors to analyze long-term retention.
Its segmentation capabilities are highly robust, enabling deep dives into user behavior based on custom properties (e.g., plan type, campaign source). Mixpanel reports (like Insights, Funnels, Retention) often allow drilling down to individual user-level data, underscoring its focus on deep product understanding. Additional features can include A/B testing analysis support and integrations for user messaging (like in-app notifications or emails) to act directly on analytical insights. Crucially, data updates occur in near real-time, facilitating live monitoring. While Mixpanel focuses heavily on event tracking, PostHog and Matomo offer other approaches — learn more in our GA4 vs PostHog and GA4 vs Matomo articles."
Google Analytics (GA4): GA4 offers a broad suite of web and app analytics features largely out-of-the-box. Standard reports cover Acquisition (how users arrive), Engagement (what users do), Monetization (tracking revenue and purchases), and Retention (how often users return). Key features include real-time traffic overview, conversion tracking (goals and e-commerce), audience reporting with demographics and interests, and dedicated e-commerce reports to measure sales performance. GA4's event-based model allows for custom event tracking similar to Mixpanel, but its strength lies in its pre-built reports and insights, particularly for marketers.
For instance, GA4 includes predictive metrics (like purchase probability and churn probability) powered by machine learning, assuming sufficient data volume. It provides robust dashboarding and visualization options, including seamless integration with Google's Looker Studio for advanced business intelligence dashboards. Critically, GA integrates deeply with Google's advertising ecosystem (Google Ads, Search Console), enabling features like audience sharing for retargeting and sophisticated attribution modeling to understand marketing channel effectiveness. GA4 aims to provide a holistic view of digital property performance and marketing impact.
Mixpanel vs GA4 : Supported Content Types
Mixpanel: As a content-agnostic event tracker, Mixpanel can theoretically handle interactions with any type of digital content—text, video, images, audio files, interactive elements—provided you instrument an event for that specific interaction. The platform grants you complete freedom to define events for actions meaningful to your product, such as logging when a user plays an embedded video, views an image carousel, clicks a specific call-to-action button, or scrolls past a certain point in an article. This means Mixpanel can track engagement with rich media and dynamic content, but it necessitates development effort to set up these custom events; there are few built-in, content-specific trackers. The onus is on the implementation team to decide which content interactions or actions warrant measurement.
For example, tracking plays of an embedded YouTube video requires custom code implementation using Mixpanel's event tracking API. This flexibility is powerful but requires planning. Mixpanel works across websites, mobile apps, and even other digital touchpoints (like IoT devices), defining "content" broadly as any trackable interaction point. In summary, Mixpanel supports tracking interactions with all content types through a manual, highly customizable setup.
Google Analytics (GA4): GA4 supports a wide range of content interaction tracking, significantly simplified by its Enhanced Measurement features. With minimal configuration (often just a toggle switch during setup), GA4 can automatically track common user interactions on websites. These include standard page views (tracking text content), scroll depth (measuring engagement with longer articles), video engagement (plays, progress, and completion for embedded YouTube videos), file downloads (e.g., PDFs, images), and outbound link clicks. This means GA4 captures user engagement with textual content, videos, and other media out-of-the-box, reducing the need for custom coding for many standard web interactions.
While GA4's event model also allows for custom event tracking (e.g., for image zooms or interaction with specific UI elements), many frequent web content interactions are handled automatically. For mobile apps integrated via the Firebase SDK, GA4 also automatically logs essential app events (like first_open, in_app_purchase). GA excels at web content analytics, understanding pages and screens and aggregating metrics effectively (e.g., identifying top-performing blog posts based on views and engagement time). While it might not explicitly categorize reports by "text vs. video," it provides the tools and automatic tracking to measure interactions with various formats. In short, Google Analytics tracks text pages, video plays, file downloads, and more, with significant automatic tracking capabilities, a major advantage for teams seeking quick setup and standard web metrics.
Mixpanel vs GA4 : Pros
Mixpanel:
Granular User-Level Insight: Excels at dissecting individual user journeys and actions.
Powerful Behavioral Analysis: Superior tools for funnel analysis, cohort retention studies, and complex segmentation.
Real-Time Data: Enables immediate monitoring and response to user activity.
High Flexibility & Customization: Track precisely the events and properties that matter to your specific product and business logic.
Integration Capabilities: Connects well with CRM systems, data warehouses, A/B testing platforms, and messaging tools.
Modern Interface: Often considered intuitive for exploration once the core concepts are understood.
Google Analytics (GA4):
Comprehensive Overview: Provides a broad view of website/app performance, from acquisition through conversion.
Strong Marketing & Acquisition Focus: Excellent for understanding traffic sources, campaign ROI, and attribution.
Free Accessibility: The standard version is free, making powerful analytics accessible to businesses of all sizes.
Google Ecosystem Integration: Seamless connections with Google Ads, Search Console, Looker Studio, etc., are a major advantage.
Automatic Event Tracking: Enhanced Measurement captures many common interactions with minimal setup.
AI-Powered Insights: Predictive metrics and anomaly detection help surface important trends automatically.
Large Community & Resources: Extensive documentation, tutorials, and community support available.
Mixpanel vs GA4 : Cons
Mixpanel:
Steeper Learning Curve: Requires understanding event-based tracking and investment in planning/implementation.
Potential Cost: Free tier has limitations; costs scale with tracked users or event volume and can become significant for large products.
Less Out-of-the-Box Marketing Data: Not inherently focused on SEO insights, detailed traffic source attribution, or ad campaign metrics unless specifically configured.
Requires Technical Resources: Proper implementation often needs developer involvement to define and send event data.
Google Analytics (GA4):
Data Sampling Concerns: While improved in GA4 standard reports, sampling can still occur in complex explorations or with very high data volumes in the free version.
Potential Overwhelm: The sheer number of reports and metrics can be daunting for new users.
GA4 Transition Challenges: The shift from Universal Analytics to GA4 involved significant changes, requiring users to relearn interfaces and concepts.
Limited Individual User Exploration: While improved, GA4 is still primarily focused on aggregated data rather than deep dives into single user paths (privacy is a factor).
Data Privacy Considerations: Relies on Google's infrastructure, which can be a concern for organizations under strict data privacy regulations (e.g., GDPR in the EU).
Less Flexible Behavioral Analysis: While GA4 Explorations offer custom funnels/paths, they may not match the depth and flexibility of Mixpanel's dedicated behavioral reports for some use cases.
Mixpanel vs GA4 : Pricing
Mixpanel: Operates on a tiered pricing model.
Starter (Free): Offers a limited number of monthly tracked users (MTUs) or events, suitable for small projects or evaluation.
Growth: Starts around $20/month (subject to change and scaling based on volume), unlocking more features and higher data limits.
Enterprise: Custom pricing, often starting around $833/month or higher, for large-scale needs with advanced features, support, and security.
Pricing is usage-based, tied primarily to MTUs or event volume. Mixpanel has promoted user-friendly policies like not charging for accidentally tracked high-volume events if promptly addressed. Overall, free to start, but costs increase with scale.
Google Analytics (GA4):
Standard GA4: Completely free to use for tracking websites and apps. There are data processing limits (e.g., event parameter lengths) and data retention limits (default 14 months for user-level data), but no direct cost for usage. This makes it highly accessible.
Google Analytics 360: The paid, enterprise version, part of the Google Marketing Platform. Offers higher limits, unsampled reporting guarantees, longer data retention, BigQuery export enhancements, SLAs, and dedicated support. Pricing is custom, negotiated, and typically substantial (often cited in the range of $50,000 - $150,000+ per year), targeting large enterprises.
For most users, the free standard GA4 provides immense value. There are no hidden analytics fees unless integrating with paid services like Google Ads.
Mixpanel vs GA4 : Reporting Focus
Mixpanel: The reporting focus is squarely on user behavior within a digital product. It aims to answer questions about how users engage with features, why they convert or churn, and what paths they take. Reports are designed to analyze product metrics like activation rates, feature adoption, funnel drop-offs, and cohort retention over time. It treats each user as an individual journey whose actions can be analyzed in detail and then aggregated. User identification (tracking anonymous users then linking them post-login) facilitates this user-centric analysis. Mixpanel's goal is to provide insights to improve product engagement, retention, and conversion flows directly within the product experience. If your primary goal involves understanding and optimizing the in-app or logged-in user experience, Mixpanel's reporting is tailored for this.
Google Analytics (GA4): GA4's reporting focuses on the overall performance of digital properties (websites and apps) and the effectiveness of marketing initiatives. It provides a big-picture view: visitor volume, acquisition sources, popular content, and progress towards business goals (conversions, revenue). It excels at traffic analysis and marketing funnel tracking (e.g., sessions moving from landing page to purchase confirmation). GA4 is oriented around sessions and aggregated user data, although it incorporates more user-scoped analysis than its predecessor. Typical use cases involve analyzing trends segmented by acquisition channel, device, or demographic. Reports cover user acquisition, engagement, monetization, and retention broadly (these align with the main sections in the GA4 interface). It's also frequently used for content performance analysis—identifying popular articles or pages. In summary, GA4's reporting provides a top-down view of how digital properties attract, engage, and convert users, making it invaluable for understanding "the what and where" of user visits. The debate of google analytics 4 vs mixpanel often hinges on whether you need this macro view (GA4) or the micro, in-product view (Mixpanel).
Comparison Summary
| Aspect | Mixpanel (Product Analytics) | Google Analytics 4 (Web/App Analytics) |
|---|---|---|
| Primary Focus | In-depth user behavior within the product/app. | Overall website/app performance, traffic sources, marketing effectiveness. |
| Key Features | Event-based tracking, funnels, cohorts, retention analysis, segmentation, real-time data. | Acquisition reports, engagement metrics, conversion tracking, e-commerce, predictive metrics, Google ecosystem integration. |
| Data Model | Event-driven, user-centric. | Event-driven (in GA4), session-aware, aggregate-focused (though user properties exist). |
| Content Tracking | All types via custom events (requires setup). Flexible but manual. | Auto-tracks web interactions (scrolls, clicks, video plays, downloads) via Enhanced Measurement. Good out-of-the-box web coverage. |
| Pros | Granular insights, powerful behavioral analysis, real-time, flexible, good integrations. | Comprehensive overview, free, strong marketing focus, AI insights, large community, easy setup for standard metrics. |
| Cons | Steeper learning curve, potential cost at scale, less out-of-the-box marketing data, requires technical setup. | Potential data sampling, can be overwhelming, GA4 transition complexity, less individual user detail, privacy considerations (Google). |
| Pricing | Free tier (limited), Paid plans scale with usage (~$20+/mo Growth, ~$833+/mo Enterprise). | Standard GA4 is Free. GA360 (Enterprise) is paid (significant cost). |
| Reporting Focus | Product analytics: feature adoption, user journeys, retention, in-app funnels. How & Why users behave inside the product. | Web & marketing analytics: traffic sources, content performance, conversion goals, ROI. What users do & Where they come from. |
| Ideal User | Product Managers, UX Researchers, Growth Teams focused on optimizing the product experience. | Digital Marketers, SEO Specialists, Content Strategists, Business Owners needing overall site/app performance view. |
| Setup Effort | Higher (requires event planning & implementation). | Lower (for standard web tracking with Enhanced Measurement). |
| AI Features | Generative AI query (Spark), Predictive Analytics (churn/conversion likelihood). | Predictive Metrics (churn/purchase probability), Anomaly Detection, Natural Language Queries (Analytics Intelligence). |
Use Cases
Understanding the theoretical differences is one thing; seeing how Mixpanel and Google Analytics 4 are applied in practice truly highlights their respective values. Here are some illustrative use cases:
Mixpanel Use Cases
Optimizing SaaS User Onboarding: A SaaS company aims to improve its trial-to-paid conversion rate by smoothing out the user onboarding flow.
Action: Using Mixpanel, the product team defines events for each key onboarding step (e.g., SignUp, EmailVerified, ProfileCompleted, CreatedFirstProject, InvitedTeammate). They build a funnel report visualizing progression through these steps.
Insight: The funnel reveals a significant 70% drop-off between ProfileCompleted and CreatedFirstProject. Further segmentation shows this drop-off is higher for users who signed up via a specific marketing campaign.
Outcome: The team hypothesizes the value proposition isn't clear post-profile completion or the "create project" UI is confusing. They run an A/B test (analyzed in Mixpanel) with a new in-app guide prompting project creation. Mixpanel shows the variant with the guide improves progression to the next step by 15%, leading to a permanent change and improved activation. GA4 might show overall signups, but Mixpanel pinpoints the exact friction point in the critical user journey.
Analyzing Mobile Game Feature Engagement & Retention: A mobile game developer releases a new 'Guild' feature. They want to know if it increases player engagement and retention.
Action: They implement Mixpanel events like JoinedGuild, CompletedGuildQuest, ChatMessageSentInGuild, alongside core gameplay events (LevelCompleted, PurchaseMade).
Insight: Using cohort analysis, they compare the 7-day and 30-day retention rates of players who joined a guild versus those who didn't. They find that guild members have a 25% higher Day-7 retention rate. Segmentation reveals players completing at least one guild quest per week are the most retained segment.
Outcome: The team concludes the Guild feature is driving engagement. They prioritize adding more guild content and use Mixpanel data to run targeted in-app messages encouraging non-guild members to join, further boosting retention. This deep dive into feature-specific impact on retention is a core Mixpanel strength.
Reducing Churn with Behavioral Cohorts: An e-learning platform wants to proactively identify and re-engage users at risk of cancelling their subscription.
Action: The growth team uses Mixpanel to track key engagement events (CourseStarted, LessonCompleted, QuizAttempted, LoggedIn). They define an "at-risk" cohort: users who haven't completed a lesson in the last 14 days despite being subscribed for over a month.
Insight: Mixpanel's retention reports confirm this cohort has a significantly higher churn rate in the following month compared to active users.
Outcome: The team integrates Mixpanel with their marketing automation tool. They set up automated personalized email campaigns triggered for users entering the "at-risk" cohort, suggesting relevant new courses or offering help. They continue to monitor this cohort's engagement and churn rate in Mixpanel to measure the effectiveness of the intervention.
Google Analytics 4 Use Cases
Measuring Marketing Campaign Performance and ROI: An e-commerce business runs advertising campaigns across Google Ads, Facebook, and email marketing.
Action: They ensure GA4 is correctly set up with e-commerce tracking and UTM parameters on all campaign URLs. They use GA4's Acquisition reports (specifically Traffic acquisition and User acquisition) and Advertising workspace reports.
Insight: GA4 shows that Google Ads campaigns drive the highest volume of traffic and revenue, but email marketing has a significantly better conversion rate and higher average order value. Facebook ads drive awareness (many first interactions) but lower direct conversions according to the default last-click model. GA4's attribution modeling reports help them understand the assisting role of Facebook.
Outcome: The marketing team reallocates budget, increasing spend on email marketing and refining Google Ads targeting based on high-performing keywords identified in GA4. They adjust Facebook ad creatives to focus more on mid-funnel engagement rather than direct sales. GA4 serves as the central hub for evaluating cross-channel marketing effectiveness.
Improving Blog Content Strategy with Engagement Metrics: A technology company uses its blog for content marketing and lead generation.
Action: The content team monitors GA4's Engagement reports, looking at metrics like Views, Average engagement time, Scroll depth (via Enhanced Measurement), and Conversions (e.g., downloads of related whitepapers tracked as events) for each blog post.
Insight: They discover that listicle-style posts get high views but low average engagement time, while in-depth technical tutorials have fewer views but very high engagement time and correlate strongly with whitepaper downloads. GA4's integration with Search Console reveals specific long-tail keywords driving traffic to the tutorials.
Outcome: The team adjusts their content calendar to produce more in-depth tutorials targeting relevant search queries, while optimizing listicles for better engagement (e.g., adding videos or interactive elements). They use GA4 data to demonstrate the blog's contribution to lead generation. GA4 provides essential data for data-driven content strategy and SEO.
Identifying Website User Experience (UX) Issues: An online booking platform notices a decline in completed bookings.
Action: The product team uses GA4's Exploration reports (specifically Path exploration and Funnel exploration) to analyze user flows through the booking process. They also monitor page load times in the relevant GA4 reports.
Insight: The Path exploration report shows an unexpectedly high number of users navigating back and forth between the 'Select Dates' page and the 'Choose Room' page. The Funnel exploration shows a larger-than-usual drop-off at the payment step. Additionally, GA4 flags the payment page as having a slower-than-average load time on mobile devices.
Outcome: The team investigates the date/room selection usability, potentially redesigning the flow. They also work with developers to optimize the payment page's loading speed. They set up GA4 alerts to notify them of future anomalies in the booking funnel completion rate or page load times. While not a dedicated UX tool, GA4 effectively highlights friction points and performance issues on a website.
Tip: Choosing between mixpanel vs google analytics 4 doesn't have to be an either/or decision. Many organizations benefit from using both tools concurrently. They leverage Google Analytics 4 for its strengths in tracking marketing acquisition and overall website traffic patterns, while using Mixpanel to gain deep insights into user behavior after sign-up or within complex product flows. This dual approach provides a comprehensive, end-to-end view of the entire customer journey, from initial discovery to long-term engagement and retention.
New Features and AI Enhancements
The analytics landscape is constantly evolving, with both Google Analytics 4 and Mixpanel integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to deliver smarter, more automated insights. These advancements aim to democratize data analysis, making sophisticated insights accessible beyond data science teams.
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) – Predictive Insights & Automation: GA4 was fundamentally built with ML at its core.
Predictive Metrics: GA4 automatically calculates metrics like Purchase Probability, Churn Probability, and Predicted Revenue for users, enabling proactive strategies. These can be used to build Predictive Audiences for targeted advertising (e.g., "Likely 7-day purchasers") or personalized in-app experiences.
Analytics Intelligence: This feature acts as an AI assistant in GA4. It automatically surfaces Anomalies (e.g., sudden traffic drops) and Insights (e.g., a specific demographic converting higher than usual). It also allows users to ask questions in natural language ("Show me users from Canada last week") and receive answers directly, simplifying report navigation.
Data-Driven Attribution: GA4's default attribution model uses ML to assign credit more holistically across touchpoints, providing a more accurate view of marketing impact compared to simplistic last-click models. These AI features make GA4 more proactive, automatically highlighting key changes and potential opportunities or risks, saving analysts time and potentially uncovering insights they might have missed.
Mixpanel – Generative AI & Enhanced Prediction: Mixpanel is also aggressively incorporating AI to enhance usability and analytical power.
Spark AI Assistant: Introduced in 2023, Spark is a generative AI feature allowing users to query their data using natural language. You can ask complex questions like "What percentage of users who completed onboarding last month also used Feature X within 7 days?" and Spark generates the relevant report or chart. It shows its work, building trust, and handles follow-up questions for iterative analysis. This significantly lowers the barrier for non-technical users to perform sophisticated analyses.
Predictive Analytics: Mixpanel offers ML-driven predictions to identify users likely to convert, churn, or achieve certain engagement milestones. Teams can build segments based on these predictions (e.g., "Users with High Churn Likelihood") and target them with retention campaigns. This allows for proactive intervention based on behavioral patterns.
Correlation Analysis (Implicit AI): While not always explicitly labeled 'AI', Mixpanel's ability to quickly find correlations between different events and user outcomes (e.g., "Users who do X are 5x more likely to retain") leverages statistical analysis that borders on ML, helping teams discover key drivers of behavior without manual hypothesis testing. Mixpanel's AI focus enhances its core strength: deep behavioral analysis, making it easier to uncover why users behave the way they do and predict future actions.
Both platforms are clearly investing heavily in AI, transforming them from purely reactive reporting tools into more intelligent, proactive partners in data analysis. This trend benefits users by automating routine tasks, surfacing hidden insights, and making complex analysis more accessible.
Conclusion
Choosing between ga4 vs mixpanel comes down to understanding your core needs. Google Analytics 4 excels at providing a broad overview of website/app performance, marketing effectiveness, and traffic acquisition – ideal for marketers and overall business monitoring. Mixpanel specializes in deep, event-based analysis of user behavior within your product – perfect for product teams optimizing features, flows, and retention.
Neither is universally superior; they serve different primary purposes. Consider your key questions: Are you focused on how users got there (GA4) or what they do inside (Mixpanel)? Assess your goals, technical resources, and budget. Remember, using both tools in parallel is a common and powerful strategy, leveraging GA4 for acquisition insights and Mixpanel for detailed product engagement analysis. Make an informed choice based on the specific insights you need to drive growth.
FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
Key factors for choosing between Mixpanel vs Google Analytics 4?
A: Consider your primary goals: GA4 for marketing/traffic overview, Mixpanel for in-product behavior/retention. Evaluate data needs & setup: GA4 is easier for standard web tracking; Mixpanel needs custom event setup for its deep dives. Assess team resources & expertise: GA4 is widely known; Mixpanel requires learning event-based concepts. Factor in budget: GA4 is free; Mixpanel has a free tier but paid plans scale with usage. The right choice depends on these specific needs.
2. How do Mixpanel and GA4 enhance data visualization?
A: Both tools turn raw data into visual charts and dashboards for easier understanding. GA4 offers standard charts (lines, bars, pies), flow diagrams, and custom dashboards (integrating with Looker Studio). Mixpanel excels at visualizing funnels (step-by-step bars) and retention cohorts (tables/curves). Good visualization quickly reveals trends, patterns, and anomalies, making insights easier to grasp and communicate.
3. Are there budget-friendly analytics options for small businesses?
A: Yes. Google Analytics 4's standard version is free and very powerful, making it a top choice for SMBs needing web/marketing analytics. Mixpanel also offers a generous free tier, suitable for startups exploring product analytics. Beyond these, privacy-focused or open-source options exist. Cost shouldn't prevent implementing basic analytics; start free and scale investment as needed.
