Google Analytics 4 is free, installed on most websites, and very good at what it's for. So a common question from founders is: do we need a product analytics tool as well? It depends on the questions you ask.
What GA4 is built for
GA4 is website and marketing analytics. It shines at:
- Where visitors come from: search, ads, social, referrals.
- Which campaigns and landing pages convert.
- How content performs: page views, engagement, scroll.
- Connecting with Google Ads and Search Console.
If you run a content site, a blog or a marketing site, GA4 may be all you need.
What product analytics is built for
Product analytics tools (Spectra, Mixpanel, Amplitude) are built around users and what they do inside your product:
- Funnels: of the people who signed up, how many finished onboarding, created a project, then paid?
- Retention: do people who signed up in week 1 still use the product in week 6?
- User profiles: everything one customer did, in order, across devices.
- Cohorts: "signed up this month but never invited a teammate".
- Breakdowns by customer attributes: plan, company size, role.
These questions are hard in GA4. You can approximate some with explorations, but user-level analysis is limited, some reports apply thresholds or sampling, and it's awkward to answer "who exactly are these users?".
A simple rule
| Your question is about... | Use |
|---|---|
| Traffic, campaigns, SEO, content | Google Analytics 4 |
| Signups, activation, retention, revenue per user | Product analytics |
| Both | Both: GA4 for marketing, product analytics for the product |
Most SaaS and app teams end up with both. GA4 tells you how people arrive; product analytics tells you what they do once they're in, and whether they stay.
Choosing a product analytics tool
If you're adding product analytics, the main decisions are:
- Pricing model. Usage-based tools grow with your traffic; Spectra has fixed monthly plans in rupees with events included, so the bill is predictable.
- Ease of use. Will your founder, PMs and marketers use it without help? Spectra's Ask Spectra answers questions in plain English with a chart.
- Identity. Make sure anonymous visits join the user's profile at login, or your funnels will double-count people.
Compare options in the best Mixpanel alternatives.
Getting started
Adding product analytics alongside GA4 takes minutes:
import { spectra } from "spectra-analytics";
spectra.init("YOUR_PROJECT_TOKEN");
spectra.track("Signed up", { plan: "pro" });Page views and UTM campaigns are captured automatically, so you'll see the same campaign sources you know from GA4, connected to what those users did next. Start free with 5,000 events a month.
