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PostHog vs Simple Analytics - Comparison 2025

PostHog vs. Simple Analytics

Last updated on

Reviewed by Camin McCluskey

Stackfix Co-Founder & CTO

CM

PostHog and Simple Analytics represent opposite ends of the product analytics spectrum. PostHog is a comprehensive, feature-rich platform best suited for technology companies and development teams requiring deep product insights, offering everything from automatic event tracking to heatmaps and session recordings.

Simple Analytics, conversely, is ideal for small businesses seeking basic website analytics with a focus on simplicity and privacy compliance. The functionality gap between these tools is substantial - PostHog offers enterprise-grade capabilities with extensive customization and integration options, while Simple Analytics provides a streamlined, no-frills approach to web analytics.

PostHog Product Logo

Advantages of PostHog

PostHog is significantly more powerful at automatic event capture than Simple Analytics
While Simple Analytics offers basic auto-capture for common interactions, PostHog's automatic event capture is comprehensive and intelligent, tracking clicks, page views, and form submissions out of the box. This is particularly valuable for product teams who want immediate insights without extensive manual configuration.
PostHog offers superior heatmap functionality compared to Simple Analytics' lack thereof
Unlike Simple Analytics which has no heatmap capability, PostHog provides exceptional visual representations of user engagement through heatmaps, helping product teams instantly identify interaction hotspots and dead zones without complex analysis.
PostHog has vastly superior integration capabilities compared to Simple Analytics
While Simple Analytics offers basic API access, PostHog provides one of the widest arrays of integrations covering data warehouses, CRMs, CDPs, and customer support tools. This makes it invaluable for businesses needing to connect their analytics with their broader tech stack.
PostHog offers significantly better customer support than Simple Analytics
While Simple Analytics struggles with poorly presented documentation, PostHog provides best-in-class developer documentation and a thriving open-source developer ecosystem with forum responses typically within 24 hours.
Simple Analytics Product Logo

Advantages of Simple Analytics

Simple Analytics is easier to learn than PostHog
While PostHog can be overwhelming due to its breadth of functionality, Simple Analytics offers a more straightforward experience with most features accessible from one main dashboard, making it easier for non-technical users to master quickly.

PostHog is best for

  • Businesses with technical teams seeking a comprehensive open-source analytics platform
  • Who need comprehensive automatic event tracking without manual setup
  • And/or who need advanced visualization tools like heatmaps and session replays in one platform

Simple Analytics is best for

  • Businesses with basic web analytics needs who prioritize simplicity over advanced features
  • Who need quick setup and intuitive dashboards for tracking core metrics like pageviews and referrals
  • And/or who need GDPR-compliant analytics with robust data export capabilities

PostHog is less good for

  • Businesses with non-technical teams who need simple, non-developer focused analytics
  • Who need simplified form analytics and conversion tracking
  • And/or who need a streamlined, simplified interface without technical complexity

Simple Analytics is less good for

  • Businesses with complex analytics requirements needing advanced features like heatmaps, session replays, or user journey mapping
  • Who need extensive dashboard customization and reporting flexibility
  • And/or who need robust data warehouse integrations and third-party tool connectivity

Gallery

PostHog logoPostHog
Simple Analytics logoSimple Analytics
Simple Analytics screenshot

Pricing, features & ratings

PostHog logo

PostHog

Starting at

$0

event / month

Billed monthly

Pricing calculatorVisit Website
Simple Analytics logo

Simple Analytics

Starting at

$0

Billed monthly

Pricing calculatorVisit Website
Stackfix Verdict
Functionality
10

Functionality

10/10

<p>PostHog's functionality range is the best on the market. It excels in richness in nearly every category from automatic event capture to heatmaps to session replay recordings.</p>
3

Functionality

3/10

<p>Simple Analytics is a very lightweight web analytics product. As such it lacks many complex features you might want such as heatmaps or session replay. However, it does the basics well - page views, live visitor counts, referral source tracking etc.</p>
Ease of Use
5

Ease of Use

5/10

<p>PostHog’s web app can feel overwhelming due to the sheer number of controls and limited in-product guidance (e.g. tooltips or hints). Less experienced users often end up a bit lost. For example, on the Web Analytics tab, there are ~50 controls - most of which are undefined, and some (e.g. 'Paths' and 'Correlation Analysis') which even confused even fairly experienced users.</p><p>That said, inside specific areas - like session replays - controls and charts are much easier to use.</p>
7

Ease of Use

7/10

<p>Thanks to its relatively limited feature set - nearly all of Simple Analytics' features are accessible on one main dashboard. As such it would take an average SMB employee less than 20 mins to master its use.</p>
Look and feel
7

Look and feel

7/10

<p>PostHog's design aesthetic is warm and quirky. Given the sheer breadth of functionality, they do a good job of presenting information clearly, though we would have preferred a touch more simplicity. When tested, pages and charts were extremely fast to load (&lt;1s).</p>
5

Look and feel

5/10

<p>Simple Analytics' design aesthetic is dark and fairly developer oriented. That being said, its core dashboard will feel very familiar and its data visualizations and graphs are easy to read. Our main complaint is that we faced delays on page load of up to 4 seconds in some instances.</p>
Customisability
8

Customisability

8/10

<p>PostHog is one of the most customizable tools on the market. Everything from reports, to custom metrics to self-hosting is possible with this tool.</p>
4

Customisability

4/10

<p>Beyond custom events, Simple Analytics offers limited scope for customization. We would like to have seen more options to tweak the dashboard itself and change how data is visualized.</p>
Ease of Setup
7

Ease of Setup

7/10

<p>PostHog offers a self-serve product with a very generous free tier. Additionally, it was one of the first products to pioneer automatic event capture, meaning it's pretty simple to get value from the product after installing a simple script. That being said, the onboarding process is very developer centric so is best suited to technical team members.</p>
7

Ease of Setup

7/10

<p>Simple Analytics stays true to its name as it offers a very intuitive setup process - only requiring a simple script. We appreciated the offer of a self-serve free trial as well as a live demo to get a feel for the tool before installation.</p>
Customer Support
9

Customer Support

9/10

<p>As with the majority of tools in the space, the primary means for support will come from developer documentation. PostHog's docs are best in class. Additionally, thanks to a thriving open-source developer ecosystem, its forums are lively and a great way to get answers to technical questions in less than 24 hours.</p>
3

Customer Support

3/10

<p>Simple Analytics' developer documentation is not well presented. We specifically missed the presence of any kind of search bar at all meaning you'll need to trudge through dozens of pages if you're looking for something specific.</p>
Integratability
10

Integratability

10/10

<p>PostHog offers one of the widest arrays of integrations we've tested covering everything from data warehouses, to CRMs, to CDPs and even customer support tools. They also offer a great API through which you can interact with the product programatically.</p>
3

Integratability

3/10

<p>Simple Analytics offers a fairly robust API through which you can interact with data as well as make platform changes. However, it offers little to no integrations beyond this.</p>
Ease of Migration
9

Ease of Migration

9/10

<p>PostHog offers self-serve export functionality within its web app. It also offers a very robust and well documented API through which you can interact with data from the product directly.</p>
7

Ease of Migration

7/10

<p>Simple Analytics offers self-serve export functionality for key datapoints via its web app. Additionally, its API is robust and allows business to access datapoints programatically.</p>
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