Zipy vs Posthog: An in-depth comparison for 2024

If you’ve ended up on this page, I assume you’re knee-deep in research about your user behavior or at least trying to find the right tools to get you started in the right direction. If your priorities lie in understanding your users better, tracking your product performance, and improving your product offerings, you've come to the right place. In this read, we’re comparing two of the most popular user behavior platforms available in the market - Zipy vs PostHog. Comparing such tools can be time-consuming, but that's why we're here. This article is going to help you decide which platform you might want to snag tickets for. So, grab your popcorn equivalent and dim your lights, because this movie is about to roll.

Trailer: What are Zipy and PostHog?

Before delving right into the nitty-gritty, let me tell you what these two platforms are all about. They’re both really popular tools that help you improve your product with insights about user behavior and product analytics. Here’s a short version of how each of these tools helps achieve this:

Zipy

Zipy is a comprehensive platform that helps you improve your product’s digital experience. It addresses multiple aspects of product improvement and comes feature-packed with error monitoring, product performance, session replay, user journey insights and more in one. 

PostHog

PostHog is an open-source platform known for its features that help make incremental product improvements. It comes with features like product analytics, feature flags, A/B testing, session replay etc.

How does Zipy compare with PostHog?

While there are many overlaps when it comes to the capabilities of both of these solutions, Zipy’s focus is on enabling you to deliver a smooth, issue-free experience for your users. There are a few key differences to note and those are as follows:

Zipy’s focus on user experience within the product is a notable difference between the two. Its capabilities are well knit together, complementing each other to make sure your product experience is maintained at the highest of standards. It covers all aspects from identifying logical and functional issues that might be hampering your users to providing insights on user drop-offs that need to be fixed to increase adoption. 

Zipy is designed to cater to the needs of all folks involved in maintaining user experience starting from the technical folks building the product (like engineers and product managers) to customer-facing roles (like support) who can identify and resolve issues faster to maintain that optimum experience. As a bonus, with some of the neat integrations offered by Zipy with your favorite marketing tools, even marketers can use Zipy to analyze user journeys to make improvements.

Now reading: Zipy vs PostHog

Let’s take a look at a quick snapshot of Zipy vs PostHog based on their core features. If you’ve already identified the tools you need to improve your user experience, this section should help you learn which one is more equipped to handle those requirements.

Pretty stacked list of features indeed. Zipy vs PostHog is a battle for completeness. Both solutions are really comprehensive in their own way, Depending on what your need of the hour is, you could go for either option and be really happy with your choice.

So, where do they differ from each other? As mentioned before, when choosing between Zipy vs PostHog, you might want to consider the key capabilities you need. If you’re looking for quantitative product analytics with a lot of reports, graphs etc. you might want to consider PostHog. Zipy on the other hand, is an amazing choice for qualitative analysis of your user experience, issues and insights on how to better improve product experience.

Act I: Session Analysis and Heatmaps

The Zipy vs PostHog battle kicks off with a tasty head-to-head. This is the part of the solution where both platforms go blow for blow. While both platforms offer complete session replays in real-time, Zipy is known for its reliability and accuracy. This area of analytics is one of the primary focuses of the tool and that becomes evident with the way the supporting features make analysis a session breeze on Zipy. The session recordings coupled with aggregated data for heatmaps, cover pretty much all the ground when it comes to qualitative analysis of user journeys.

Here’s a quick snapshot of what you can expect from Zipy vs PostHog when it comes to session recordings and heatmap analysis:

So, what does this mean? It tells us that when comparing Zipy vs PostHog, both platforms offer a solid range of features for analyzing user behavior. However, there are some key differences that might influence your choice. For instance, if mobile app support is high on your priority list, you’ll find both platforms have got you covered. But when you start looking into the finer details, Zipy begins to pull ahead with features that can make a real difference in day-to-day operations. What are these differences, you ask? Some of them are as follows:

1. AI session summaries: One of the standout features is Zipy’s AI session summaries. This feature can save you a lot of time by automatically summarizing sessions, giving you quick insights without manually digging through the data. PostHog, while powerful, doesn’t offer this. You’d have to manually dig for those insights into user behavior data.
2. Private share: Another point to consider in the Zipy vs PostHog debate is private sharing options. It can be a game-changer for teams working on sensitive projects or for those who need to keep early-stage details under wraps before sharing them with a broader audience. PostHog sticks to public sharing, which works for some, but it’s a limitation if you need that extra layer of privacy.
3. Data retention: Zipy allows customizable data retention. This is perfect if you need to keep your data for extended periods. PostHog, on the other hand, limits data retention to up to 3 months, which might be a dealbreaker if long-term analysis is important to you.
4. Free-tier: Lastly, if you’re looking at free sessions as part of the Zipy vs PostHog comparison, Zipy gives you a bit more with 6,000 free sessions per month. In comparison, PostHog provides 5,000. Depending on your user base, this could make a significant difference in how much value you get from the free tier.

Act II: Error and Performance Monitoring

This is the part where Zipy starts to slightly pull away from PostHog in this Zipy vs PostHog head-to-head. The former has a keen focus on improving user experience through proactiveness. It specializes in proactive identification and resolution of issues directly impacting customer journeys. While PostHog does offer some network performance and console details, it doesn’t offer an in-depth analysis of what went wrong for the users. To be fair, it is not the primary purpose of a solution like PostHog so that’s kind of expected.

Here’s a quick snapshot of what you can expect from Zipy vs PostHog when it comes to error and performance monitoring:

When diving into the Zipy vs PostHog comparison, it’s clear that both platforms offer quite a bit when it comes to error monitoring capabilities. However, Zipy goes the extra mile in several key areas. Some of those key areas are as follows:

1. Stack traces: If you’re a developer or an engineer, then the mention of stack traces and release tracking features might have caught your eye. When comparing Zipy vs PostHog, Zipy stands out with its stack traces and release tracking features. These tools are invaluable for developers who need to quickly diagnose and fix issues. Stack traces help you pinpoint exactly where in the code something went wrong. Release tracking, on the other hand, allows you to monitor the performance of specific releases. PostHog currently doesn’t offer either of these features, which could make a significant difference if you’re dealing with complex applications or frequent updates.
2. API performance and diagnostics: Both platforms cover the basics like console and network errors to make sure you have visibility into the common issues that could affect your user experience. However, Zipy extends its error tracking to include API errors and API performance, which PostHog currently lacks. This means that with Zipy, you can monitor not just if your API fails, but also how well it’s performing.
3. Error digests and alerts: While both platforms provide error dashboards and alerting to keep you informed, Zipy’s additional layers of automation and detail-oriented features give it an advantage. It allows you to set up notifications for alerts and also sends a daily or weekly summary of errors in a digestible format.
4. AI issue resolution: This Zipy vs PostHog comparison highlights that while both platforms are strong contenders for error monitoring. However, Zipy goes a step further as it includes AI-driven code resolution that is absent in PostHog. This tool can save your team a lot of time by automatically suggesting fixes to critical errors.

Act III: Extended Capabilities and Integrations

This is where you have to look just beyond the Zipy vs PostHog discussion. What I mean by that is - by now you might have realized how amazing both of these solutions are. However, what makes them really strong is not just their individual capabilities as a standalone tool, but also how easily they can communicate and work with a whole host of other tools. As a business, you might already have tools in your tech stack and you might want something that doesn’t really affect them, but also works with them effectively to give you insights. That’s where both these offerings stand out as they offer easy integrations with a ton of other solutions.

Here’s a quick snapshot of what you can expect from Zipy vs PostHog when it comes to additional applications, integrations and cool plugins:

As you might have gathered from the table above, both Zipy and PostHog are incredibly strong when it comes to integrating with other apps. These integrations are designed so that you can have all the insights you need about your product performance and user experience end-to-end. So, where do they differ in this Zipy vs PostHog comparison when it comes to these integrations? The answer - mainly in the way these integrations work. Zipy’s focus is on making good use of these integrations to provide relevant information across these tools. Some examples of this are as follows:

1. Slack: While both these platforms boast seamless integration with Slack, Zipy takes it one step further. PostHog allows you to send alerts and reports to Slack. Easy to know what is going on without having to log in to your account and just check the dedicated channel. Zipy does the same but goes above and beyond to let you customize your alerts and digests. Moreover, you can also get AI summaries of critical sessions and the steps to reproduce the issues directly on the Slack channel.
2. Independent plugin: Let’s say you work in support and are helping resolve a customer issue. Now, you have the option to go check the sessions and identify what went wrong. However, beyond this, Zipy also offers a plugin that can be used to record a new session without having to integrate Zipy at all. You can simply download and use the plugin independently. Thus making the process all but easier. On top of this, it also integrates with a ton of support apps to directly link the session when a customer reports the issue. A clear time-saving advantage in this Zipy vs PostHog debate.
3. Integration with product analytics apps: While Zipy does provide much of the product analytics on their platform if you need to integrate with your existing tech stack for even more insights, that is possible. Zipy provides integrations with tons of quantitative analytics apps like Mixpanel, Google Analytics, Amplitude etc. and more.

Act IV: Zipy vs PostHog - Privacy and Compliance

It’s been an intense back-and-forth so far, some might say. Or you may have seen one clear winner - who am I to say which one’s better? But now we’re down to the nitty-gritty and let me tell you, both Zipy and PostHog ace this test. It is not much of a surprise when you consider that both solutions service all kinds of organizations starting from startups to major enterprises. So, privacy and compliance have to be sorted in order to build trust in the product. That’s exactly what we’ll be looking at in this next section of Zipy vs PostHog.

Here’s a quick snapshot of what you can expect from Zipy vs PostHog when it comes to compliance with regulations and privacy features:

As you can see, both have you covered for pretty much everything you can think of. Both have their GDPR and SOC 2 Type II compliance. Both also offer data anonymization through the form of input masking. You can mask inputs in Zipy and PostHog. In PostHog it can be done by specifying the input types you want to mask. However, in Zipy, all critical input fields like passwords are masked by default. Over and above this, if there are any parts of your applications that display personally identifiable data of your customers, Zipy also offers the ability to mask sections of your product via custom masking through a small additional implementation.

An advantage that PostHog does have is the ability to self-host. If you prefer not to have your data sent outside your organization, PostHog offers self-hosting options so that you can deploy it in your environment. Zipy, on the other hand, does not offer self-hosting (yet), but if you speak to the team, you can come up with custom implementations to maintain the data within your servers. So, it’s pretty much neck and neck when it comes to this facet of Zipy vs PostHog.

Final Act: Zipy vs PostHog Pricing

Both PostHog and Zipy have a free tier with a limited feature set. 

When comparing Zipy vs PostHog, you’ll notice that Zipy has quite the free tier with 6,000 sessions on their free plan. This comes with unlimited events and error captures so smaller teams can get started without having to worry too much. Once you grow, Zipy also offers multiple tiers of plans based on your requirements. A Startup plan costs $39/month and comes equipped with most features. We also have Growth plans for growing organizations and custom plans for requirements above 60,000 sessions per month. Zipy provides a ton of custom add-on options for features like the API performance add-on, heatmaps add-on, AI-capabilities add-on and much more that you can choose based on your needs.

While PostHog offers an allowance of 1 million free events and 5,000 free sessions each month after which users move to a more full-featured paid plan that's billed on usage, Zipy doesn’t charge you based on events. So you can capture unlimited events till your sessions/month are not exhausted. Both platforms provide an enterprise version with more features, privacy capabilities, etc., that are needed by large organizations.

Check out our other comparative articles aswell:

• Best PostHog Alternatives to Try in 2024‍

Conclusion

Now you might be thinking - a movie usually has three acts, why have you taken me through five? Well, that’s just how good both these solutions are. They’re both complete solutions in their own right and offer generous benefits in their free plan for you to test them out yourself. Zipy vs PostHog is definitely a head-to-head that’s going to continue for a long time and both products keep constantly improving their offerings. They ship at ridiculous speed. 

You can’t really go wrong choosing between Zipy vs PostHog. It all comes down to what your priorities are. If it is product analytics with additional features like A/B testing and surveys, PostHog should be your choice. However, if you’re planning on improving the product and the user experience it offers, Zipy’s error and performance monitoring coupled with session recordings make it the obvious choice. If you’re a business that only wants solutions that can be self-hosted, PostHog should be your choice for now. However, if you value time-saving and the additional capabilities that come with AI tools, Zipy is your only choice.

So, jump in and take a quick look yourself so that you can be happy with your choice down the line. To get started on Zipy, you can click here and enjoy our 14-day free trial with access to most premium features. If you like what you see, you know where to find us. We’ll be here, ready to understand your needs and serve you in the best way possible.