Google Tag Manager vs. Mixpanel

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Google Tag Manager
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
From Google, the Google Tag Manager is a tag management application that facilitates creating, embedding, and updating tags across websites and mobile apps, thus gaining the benefits of data standardization and speed of deployment. Google touts an agency friendly system with multiple user access, and tools to improve tags performance like debugging, and rules, macros or automated tag firing. The Google Tag Manager also integrates with Google product DoubleClick. Moreover, Google Tag Manager is…N/A
Mixpanel
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Mixpanel helps companies measure what matters, make decisions fast, and build better products through data. With self-serve product analytics solution, teams can analyze how and why people engage, convert, and retain—in real-time, across devices—to improve their user experience. Mixpanel serves over 26,000 companies from different industries around the world, including Expedia, Uber, Ancestry, DocuSign, and Lemonade. Headquartered in San Francisco, Mixpanel has offices in New York,…
$0
per month
Pricing
Google Tag ManagerMixpanel
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Free
$0
per month
Growth
$17
per month
Enterprise
Contact sales
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Google Tag ManagerMixpanel
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsMixpanel uses MTU (Monthly Tracked User) pricing, which is designed to scale with your company. MTUs are roughly equivalent to the number of unique visitors on your product and each user is counted once per month, even if they use multiple devices. If Events based pricing makes more sense for your business, reach out to us and we can work with you!
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Google Tag ManagerMixpanel
Considered Both Products
Google Tag Manager
Chose Google Tag Manager
Google Tag Manager is naturally the first one to implement as I use Google Analytics. However I do use the others too as they provide functionality that GTM doesn't. But you do also have to pay for some of these functions. I use these tools for growth hacker marketing, so …
Mixpanel

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Google Tag ManagerMixpanel
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Google Tag Manager
9.8
53 Ratings
14% above category average
Mixpanel
-
Ratings
Role-based user permissions9.853 Ratings00 Ratings
Tag Management
Comparison of Tag Management features of Product A and Product B
Google Tag Manager
8.1
64 Ratings
1% above category average
Mixpanel
-
Ratings
Tag library7.859 Ratings00 Ratings
Tag variable mapping8.052 Ratings00 Ratings
Ease of writing custom tags7.563 Ratings00 Ratings
Rules-driven tag execution8.358 Ratings00 Ratings
Tag performance monitoring7.855 Ratings00 Ratings
Page load times8.346 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile app tagging8.432 Ratings00 Ratings
Library of JavaScript extensions8.735 Ratings00 Ratings
Data Management & Integrity
Comparison of Data Management & Integrity features of Product A and Product B
Google Tag Manager
9.0
64 Ratings
8% above category average
Mixpanel
-
Ratings
Event tracking9.961 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile event tracking9.844 Ratings00 Ratings
Data distribution management8.639 Ratings00 Ratings
Universal data layer8.755 Ratings00 Ratings
Automated error checking7.944 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Google Tag ManagerMixpanel
Small Businesses
Adobe Experience Platform Launch
Adobe Experience Platform Launch
Score 8.9 out of 10
Fullstory
Fullstory
Score 8.4 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Adobe Experience Platform Launch
Adobe Experience Platform Launch
Score 8.9 out of 10
Whatfix
Whatfix
Score 9.3 out of 10
Enterprises
Tealium Customer Data Hub
Tealium Customer Data Hub
Score 8.7 out of 10
Whatfix
Whatfix
Score 9.3 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Google Tag ManagerMixpanel
Likelihood to Recommend
9.7
(68 ratings)
8.2
(49 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(6 ratings)
10.0
(13 ratings)
Usability
9.3
(13 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.3
(11 ratings)
1.0
(8 ratings)
Online Training
7.3
(1 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.8
(2 ratings)
8.9
(3 ratings)
User Testimonials
Google Tag ManagerMixpanel
Likelihood to Recommend
Google
Google Tag Manager is well suited when the marketer or marketing team does not work closely with the developers. In this scenario, it means that the marketer can deploy 3rd party tools such as live chat widgets, advertising pixels, and much more themselves in a timely manner. Google Tag Manager may be less relevant in an organization where the marketer is also the developer or has a strong development background, where they can implement the 3rd party tags directly on the site when they need. But even in this instance, there's still great benefit in using Google Tag Manager.
Read full review
Mixpanel
As a worker in the sales area, I see closely how complex it can be to evaluate the commercial funnel and Mixpanel has been an indispensable guide to prioritize above all what customers expect to receive from our company, and thus be able to determine the main service we offer. Without a doubt, Mixpanel has special functions to be the one that guides the route and marks the objectives much more clearly.
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Pros
Google
  • Selecting elements on a site [object, class, cookie, etc] (to later fire an event, send some data, etc) is very easy with triggers. Want to add an event when someone clicks on a button? Super easy. It was many many DOM selectors and you can even add custom functions if you need to do something more specific
  • In general, firing events in different circumstances is very easy mixing triggers and tags. You can track almost any element of the DOM and do whatever you want with it.
  • Testing is a great functionality. Only you can see what's on the site and you can debug it easily by seeing which events or tags were triggered and all the DOM elements involved (and why they matched the trigger).
  • Working in environments (staging, production) and versioning is easy to do, deploying changes in 2 clicks.
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Mixpanel
  • Mixpanel is a daily use application for everyone in my organization; it helps us have a better flow of information and interaction between work teams.
  • The user interface of this platform is simple and has a wide variety of functions and resources to help us work in the most organized way, have better team coordination, and keep efficiency high.
  • I love that it is so easy to program our calendar to our liking, so we can prioritize our activities and know what is pending, and the best thing is that I can update the calendar if necessary.
  • The chat function is great to improve the interaction between colleagues and share work schedules and any information with third parties.
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Cons
Google
  • There are several good integrations, but there can always be more. Native tracking for call tracking solutions, analytics providers, non-Google advertisers would be top of my list.
  • Documentation is just dreadful. Luckily there are some awesome folks out there doing crowdsourced tutorials (shout out to Simo Ahava) but by and large the Google Tag Manager instructions are worth what you pay for them.
Read full review
Mixpanel
  • Mixpanel requires an explicit setting of events from your app. This means you need to be very thoughtful in the design of your events because missing one means you aren't collecting any data from it. Inserting it into the process later on then brings challenges in tracking when certain events came online.
  • A tool like Mixpanel comes packed with features that sometimes are harder to discover. It's very easy to get sucked into one part of its toolset and not be aware of other tools which may be very useful.
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Likelihood to Renew
Google
Google Tag Manager makes tracking traffic to our websites effortless, which enables our developers to focus on other tasks. Setting up a new instance takes only minutes and additional scripts can be added/modified without touching the source code of a site in production. This enables our marketing directors to coordinate tests and experiments with minimal effort.
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Mixpanel
It's not an all encompassing solution like Google Analytics tries to be, but MixPanel offers much easier to use and understandable data insights. That's valuable when juggling many responsibilities as startup life demands, so a renewal would be easily justified.
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Usability
Google
Google Tag Manager is the definition of a learning curve. At the beginning, you can barely do the minimum and it can seem questionable as to why you would use it. However, as users begin to learn its offerings and see how it can do much more, they will have a moment where GTM becomes a tool that empowers their ability to track and efficiently collect data for important business questions.
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Mixpanel
great, slick and clean interface
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Support Rating
Google
It depends wether you are seeking official support from Google itself, in which case it would be rated very low because it's not their business model, they would rather have you work with one of their Google Analytics Certified Partner (GACP). In terms of self-served support, Google offer extensive documentation at https://developers.google.com/tag-manager/, recently revamped training (https://analyticsacademy.withgoogle.com/course05/preview), has active forums and user community (https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/104865292981489764063) which can typically answer even the most advanced questions.
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Mixpanel
We have only ever had to use their support once, when we were setting up the account, but their responses were prompt and the solutions were well documented. The people who solved our issues were helpful, even to non-tech people.
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Online Training
Google
I thought there was a little bit too much emphasis on AdWords stuff, not enough on the generic application of GTM.
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Mixpanel
Mixpanel has a great resource about their product, with videos on how to use it and real world examples from other companies on how they integrate Mixpanel into their business processes.
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Implementation Rating
Google
Planning and communication will help greatly with an in-house implementation. If there are large teams, try to limit the number of people involved to 1-2 developers (back-end dev may be necessary depending on your platform), one analytics marketer and one project manager.
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Mixpanel
Again, somewhat annoying to be charged based on data points when many other analytics providers have one flat fee. Implementation was good, but I might have tracked a few more detailed points if I had the option.
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Alternatives Considered
Google
We moved to GTM from a standard Google Analytics implementation. GTM is much more flexible and easier to make changes, especially as the changes relate to multiple sites and environments. While there is a learning curve when figuring out how to use GTM, I believe the change has been worth it because it helps us understand at a more fundamental level how our tracking works and gives us a lot more control over what we track and how.
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Mixpanel
  • There was not really any other competitors for this specific use case that had a chance
  • We used Google Analytics for some things but obviously, GA is anonymous data so not useful for product teams with users
  • Other solutions out there seemed to be too expensive and this was the most recommended
  • Heap seemed to be the best OTHER option but didn't take the time to evaluate
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Return on Investment
Google
  • GTM is very useful to determine if a particular element on the site is useful (i.e. is it being watched, is it being clicked, does it help customers navigate through more pages). As an SEO person, I can use this information to decide what to optimize for but also to track progress and see improvements in engagement.
  • With the use of Google Tag Manager, I was able to easily inject an A/B testing tool which lead to several improvements in lead generation.
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Mixpanel
  • We've been able to increase the funnel conversions of one of our new product funnels from a 1% conversion rate to a 5% conversion rate.
  • We've been able to increase the CTR on another of our main product pages from ~3% to ~10% (so far)
  • We've been able to segment out how users from different traffic sources behave, allowing us to eliminate thousands of dollars of wasteful spending on advertising campaigns that weren't working.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Mixpanel Screenshots

Screenshot of Mixpanel's Insights report enables you to see how often users perform meaningful actions, monitor growth of key user cohorts, like power users, and slice and dice trends by any attribute.Screenshot of Mixpanel's powerful Flows report enables you to identify top user paths to see where people get stuck, and discover actions users take before, after, or between key events.Screenshot of Mixpanel's Retention report helps you understand how often users return and visualize feature stickiness. You can also slice and dice retention data to identify user groups that retain best and to find out what causes churn.