Comparing Amplitude Analytics vs Google Analytics

Sooooo you are looking for a great data analytics system. The best one. Digital data analytics platforms are quite complex when you take into account all of their features, price options, limits and usability.

If you looked around all mobile app analytics platforms you have definitely come around the Google Analytics vs Amplitude Analytics debate. In this article, we will cover their advantages and disadvantages, their features and system differences that will help you decide which data analytics platform – Google Analytics or Amplitude Analytics – is best for your business. 

Event-based Analytics vs Session-based Analytics

Among data analytics systems there are two main types – Session-based and Event-based. Google Analytics is a clear example of a Session-based analytics platform. Here the main focus of data analysis lays in tracking Google Analytics sessions that occur on the website, while Event-based analytics track particular actions those website users take. 

The main difference between session-based and event-based analytics is that session-based analytics platforms like Google Analytics are excellent at telling you how many sessions a certain page has, while event-based analytics platforms like Amplitude, KISSmetrics, and Mixpanel offer deeper insights on who the users who made those sessions actually are.

Event-based Analytics focuses on tracking user behaviour based on the specific clicks, scrolls and other website interactions and discovering profound insights based on those findings.   

Amplitude Analytics vs Google Analytics

To help you make an informed decision easier, we created a comparative Google Analytics vs Amplitude Analytics table you can examine below:

Amplitude Analytics Overview

Meet Amplitude – a top data analytics platform that allows various businesses to monitor visitors and their website interactions using behavioral reports to offer extensive insights. Unlike Google Analytics monitoring, Amplitude analytics tracking happens on a real-time basis. 

Amplitude’s product list split into a number of categories, including Behavioral Analytics Platform, Amplitude Engage, account-level analysis, taxonomy data governing, SQL access for custom queries, and much more. Amplitude analytics system divides into four main solution types : 

• Setting Product Strategy
• Improving User Engagement
• Conversion Rate Optimization
• Driving Retention

This digital data analytics platform helps business owners to get a full picture of a customers’ journey. Amplitude has its own growth engine which creates hypotheses by monitoring customer behaviour and generating insights that help drive profitability to a given business.

Too much info?
Exhale, contact InsightWhale and we’ll determine the best-suited analytics platform for you 😉

Google Analytics Overview

You all know or have heard something about Google Analytics. It is one of the most well-known data analytics platforms on the market today. Google Analytics system is used to monitor website performance in regards to session duration, bounce rate, traffic source etc. It organizes all your data into neat dashboards so you can assess your company’s performance more easily. 

Google Analytics features include:

• Traffic Reporting
• Conversion Tracking
• Third-party referrals
• Keyword referrals

Although Google Analytics platform is a powerful data analytics tool on its own, it’s true power comes from native connection to other Google Suite products. Having your conversion optimization data from Google Optimize, your advertisement campaign costs from Google Ads, your website tracking data from Google Analytics, and visualizing all of this data in Google Data Studio saves you tons of time and a lot of effort in synchronizing all of this information together.

Buying into Google Analytics Suite allows you to have an all-way-round view of your data and therefore – business performance, while saving all of your company information on a cloud, and easily sharing necessary reports with all parties necessary. 

Advantages & Disadvantages of Amplitude 

Meet Amplitude – one of the most popular digital analytics tools in existence. Despite its popularity, not everyone knows the full functionality this data analytics system offers, let’s look in detail: 

Advantages:

• Amplitude has three pricing plans – Growth, Enterprise and a completely Free one with up to 10 million events per month – which is quite awesome.  
• An easy implementation which requires a minimal to no background in web development 
• Simple in use. Although you can occasionally hear some usability complaints, the overall Amplitude analytics system is not overwhelmed with unnecessary technical data that might confuse you
• Extensive onboarding support –  the help articles provide everything you need to get up and running.
• You can build comprehensive behavioural cohorts and develop Buyers Personas which help you assess usage of one cohort versus others
• Stickiness, Revenue calculations, and User Lifetime Value (LTV)
• It makes it very easy for a novice data analyst to create queries, visualize data, and share information.
• A user-friendly environment which makes making data visualization charts, graphs, and diagrams faster 
• You can measure both – product and marketing metrics, which gives you a 360-degree view of everything you really need to know about your business

Disadvantages:

• If you want a paid plan – you’re going to have to spend a lot on it, with your monthly bill being in a four-figure format
• Messy data. Not a problem unique to Amplitude, but nevertheless a factor in stopping people from using it more actively 
• Extracting data in and out of Amplitude, like with most analytics tools, is quite a hassle. You’ll need to import data in order to perform a data analysis, which includes setting up events on the server and events that track actions offline.

Advantages & Disadvantages of Google Analytics  

Now that you are aware of the perks and downfalls of the Amplitude Analytics system, we will move on to Google Analytics’ advantages and disadvantages: 

Advantages:

• Just like Amplitude, Google Analytics has a free plan for as long as you need
• It’s versatile – use it for analyzing websites, mobile applications, kiosks, and more
• There is a free online resource center called Google Analytics Academy, where you can learn all you need to work extensively with the platform
• Integrations, integrations, integrations. You can seamlessly connect your Google Ads, Google Sheets, Google Data Studio, Google Tag Manager and other Google products together
• Ability to create custom goals and custom reports which simplifies monitoring your ecommerce platform
• Google Analytics enables you to calculate your website Conversion Rate (CR) of your online web store with the ability to analyze which keywords brought users to the web page.
• Google Analytics enables you to monitor your content performance and ad campaigns performance in a single platform
• Easy data and file sharing among Google products allow for smooth cooperation between applications that represent different sides of your business.

Disadvantages:

• Google Analytics Premium with comprehensive features has a high price point of $150,000 yearly
• Cookie tracking is a definite disadvantage when it comes to Google Analytics, since Google Analytics’ data is processed remotely, which is a problem when the data that has been processed is incorrect
• The usage of Google Analytics requires constant training due to new features being introduced quite frequently
• All website visits need to execute a JavaScript file, those that don’t will not get counted.

Conclusion 

There is no single answer to the Amplitude Analytics vs Google Analytics debate. Each particular case will require a specific data analytics solution, and when you need help to decide which one suits your company’s needs better – contact us 😉

Yet know that you know of Google Analytics advantages and disadvantages and Amplitude Analytics strong sides and weak spots it will be much easier to decide which solution satisfies your analytics needs perfectly.