The past decade has witnessed an unprecedented rise in the use of digital analytics platforms. As businesses increasingly shift towards digital operations, the need to understand user behavior, optimize experiences, and make data-driven decisions has become more critical than ever. It’s within this context that tools like FullStory and Amplitude have emerged as leading solutions.
FullStory and Amplitude are robust platforms designed to help businesses unlock the power of their data. Both are packed with features to capture, analyze, and visualize user interactions, but they each bring a unique approach and set of capabilities to the table.
FullStory is primarily focused on providing qualitative insights through its digital experience intelligence platform. It offers tools like session replay, heat maps, and error tracking, which allow you to see exactly what your users see and experience on your website or app. This helps in understanding user frustrations, identifying areas for improvement, and ultimately delivering a seamless user experience.
On the other hand, Amplitude is a product analytics platform that excels in quantitative analysis. It helps you understand user behavior at scale with features like event tracking, funnels, and cohort analysis. Amplitude provides the data you need to understand which features are driving engagement, retention, and revenue, enabling you to build better products.
Choosing between these two analytics tools—or any digital analytics platforms, for that matter—shouldn’t be taken lightly. The choice will have a significant impact on your ability to understand user behavior, make informed product decisions, and ultimately drive business growth. Moreover, adopting a new platform represents a substantial investment of time and resources, so you want to make sure you’re choosing a tool that aligns with your business needs, goals, and technical infrastructure.
In the following sections, we’ll dive deeper into FullStory and Amplitude, comparing their features, pricing, ease of use, and more to help you make an informed decision.
Table of Contents:
- What is FullStory?
- What is Amplitude?
- FullStory vs Amplitude: Feature Comparison
- Ease of Implementation and Use
- Customer Support and Community
- Privacy and Security
- User Perspectives: FullStory vs Amplitude
- Conclusion: Which One Should You Choose?
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is FullStory?
FullStory is a digital experience platform that provides businesses with insights into their customers’ online experiences. By capturing every interaction a user has with a website or app, FullStory allows you to understand, measure, and improve your digital experience.
Key Features of FullStory
1. Session Replay: FullStory records and replays user sessions, providing a first-hand view of the user experience. You can see where users clicked, what they filled out, where they spent the most time, and where they faced frustrations.
2. Heatmaps: This feature visually represents where users click, scroll, and spend time on your site. This helps identify popular areas and elements that aren’t getting attention.
3. Error Tracking: FullStory identifies and logs errors encountered by users, providing context and detail to help your team resolve issues faster.
4. Omni-Search: FullStory’s powerful search feature lets you find specific user sessions based on any combination of events or behaviors.
5. Segmentation and Funnel Analysis: You can segment users based on behavior, geography, browser type, and more, then analyze how these segments move through defined funnels.
Unique Selling Points of FullStory
1. High-Fidelity Replay: FullStory’s session replay tool captures the most accurate and detailed view of user interactions, including dynamic elements and mobile gestures.
2. Friction Scoring (Rage Clicks, Dead Clicks, etc.): FullStory’s unique friction metrics like Rage Clicks and Dead Clicks help identify user frustrations and areas for improvement.
3. Privacy by Design: FullStory offers robust privacy controls, allowing you to automatically exclude sensitive data from being recorded.
FullStory is more than an analytics platform—it’s a tool for empathetic understanding of user experiences. By providing a deep and nuanced view of the user journey, it empowers businesses to create more effective, user-friendly digital experiences.
What is Amplitude?
Amplitude is a product analytics platform designed to help teams understand user behavior, build engaging products, and grow their business. It allows you to dive deep into your users’ journey, understand which features drive engagement, and make data-driven decisions to optimize your product.
Key Features of Amplitude
1. Behavioral Analytics: Amplitude tracks user interactions with your product, allowing you to understand how users engage with different features, where they drop off, and what drives retention.
2. Funnels and Cohort Analysis: You can create and analyze funnels to see how users move through different stages of their journey, and cohort users based on behavior or characteristics to understand patterns over time.
3. Microscope: This feature lets you drill down into data points directly from charts to understand what’s driving trends or anomalies.
4. Real-Time Data: Amplitude provides real-time insights, allowing you to react quickly to changes in user behavior or product performance.
5. Path Analysis: Amplitude’s Pathfinder feature lets you see the most common user paths, helping you understand how users navigate through your product.
Unique Selling Points of Amplitude
1. Powerful Behavioral Analytics: Amplitude’s robust behavioral analytics tools allow you to understand user behavior at a granular level, making it easier to identify opportunities for product improvement.
2. Scalability: Amplitude is built to handle large volumes of data, making it a good choice for businesses that are scaling rapidly or already operating at a large scale.
3. Predictive Analytics: Amplitude’s predictive suite uses machine learning to predict future user behavior, helping you anticipate trends and make proactive decisions.
4. Collaboration Features: Amplitude is designed for cross-functional team collaboration, with features like shared dashboards and note-taking capabilities that make it easy for teams to work together on product decisions.
Amplitude’s strength lies in its deep behavioral analytics capabilities and scalable architecture. It provides teams with a comprehensive understanding of user behavior, enabling them to build better products and drive growth. Whether you’re looking to optimize existing features or plan new ones, Amplitude offers the data and insights you need to make informed product decisions.
FullStory vs Amplitude: Feature Comparison
In the world of digital analytics, FullStory and Amplitude both offer robust capabilities. However, they have their unique strengths and cater to different aspects of user analysis and data collection. Let’s dive into a direct comparison of these two platforms across several key areas.
Data Collection Capabilities
FullStory: FullStory offers rich data collection, capturing every interaction a user has with a website or app. Its high-fidelity session replay provides a comprehensive view of user activity, capturing dynamic elements and mobile gestures. While FullStory provides real-time data, it shines more in the depth and detail of its data collection rather than speed.
Amplitude: Amplitude excels in both the depth and ease of data collection. It can handle a large volume of event data, making it ideal for businesses with heavy data needs. The platform provides real-time data, enabling you to react quickly to changes in user behavior or product performance.
User Experience Analytics
FullStory: FullStory excels in this area with its session replay and heatmaps features. It provides a visual and interactive way of understanding the user experience, highlighting areas of user struggle or success.
Amplitude: While Amplitude does not offer session replays or heatmaps, it provides granular behavioral analytics, allowing you to understand how users interact with your product and which features drive engagement and retention.
Behavioral Analytics
FullStory: FullStory provides behavioral analytics through its segmentation and funnel analysis features. You can segment users based on behavior, geography, browser type, and more, then analyze how these segments move through defined funnels.
Amplitude: Behavioral analytics is where Amplitude truly shines. Its funnels, cohort analysis, and path analysis features provide a deep understanding of user behavior at scale. With Amplitude, you can track user interactions, see how users move through different stages of their journey, and identify patterns over time.
Data Visualization
FullStory: FullStory offers an intuitive and user-friendly dashboard. Its data visualization capabilities are robust, but they mainly revolve around its unique user experience analytics features, such as heatmaps and session replays.
Amplitude: Amplitude provides powerful data visualization tools. You can create custom dashboards to track key metrics, and its microscope feature allows you to drill down directly from charts to understand what’s driving trends or anomalies.
Integration Capabilities
FullStory: FullStory offers numerous integrations with third-party tools, including support, product management, and marketing automation platforms. It also provides APIs for custom integrations.
Amplitude: Amplitude also boasts a wide array of integrations with third-party tools and services, including data warehouses and marketing platforms. Its APIs allow for custom data export and import, making it flexible for various use cases.
In summary, both FullStory and Amplitude are powerful tools, each with its unique strengths. FullStory excels in providing a granular, visual understanding of the user experience, while Amplitude shines in delivering deep behavioral analytics and scalable data handling. Your choice between the two will largely depend on your specific needs and the aspects of user behavior you wish to focus on.
Ease of Implementation and Use
The ease of implementation and user experience are important factors when choosing an analytics platform. Let’s look at how FullStory and Amplitude stack up in these areas.
FullStory
Setup Process: FullStory’s setup process is relatively straightforward. It involves adding a small piece of JavaScript code to your website or integrating it with your mobile app. Once installed, FullStory immediately starts recording sessions and collecting user data. Depending on the complexity of your site or app, you might need some additional setup to properly capture all interactions and user data you’re interested in.
Usability and User Interface: FullStory’s user interface is clean, intuitive, and user-friendly. Navigating through the different features is quite easy, and the platform provides visual tools like heatmaps and session replays that are easy to understand and use.
Learning Curve and Resources for New Users: While FullStory is relatively easy to use, getting the most out of its features requires a certain level of understanding and expertise. FullStory provides extensive resources for new users, including documentation, webinars, and a dedicated support team to ensure you can fully leverage the platform.
Amplitude
Setup Process: Similar to FullStory, Amplitude requires the integration of a JavaScript SDK for web analytics or the relevant SDK for mobile applications. The setup process is a bit more complex, as it requires defining the events and user properties you want to track. This requires careful planning and often the involvement of a developer or someone with technical expertise.
Usability and User Interface: Amplitude’s user interface is also intuitive and visually appealing, but it deals with more complex data analysis, which can make it feel a bit overwhelming for beginners. The dashboard is customizable, allowing users to tailor data views to their specific needs.
Learning Curve and Resources for New Users: Given its emphasis on deep, event-based analytics, Amplitude has a steeper learning curve than FullStory. However, Amplitude provides a wealth of resources for new users, including a comprehensive knowledge base, community forums, and training resources to help users understand and use the platform effectively.
In summary, both FullStory and Amplitude are powerful tools, but they each come with their own learning curve. FullStory is quite straightforward with its focus on visual, session-based data, while Amplitude requires a more data-centric approach. The choice between the two will largely depend on your team’s familiarity with data analysis and the specific needs of your business.
Customer Support and Community
Exceptional customer support and active community engagement are crucial aspects to consider when choosing an analytics platform. Let’s evaluate the customer support and community for both FullStory and Amplitude.
FullStory
Support Services: FullStory provides a variety of support services. Users can access email support, as well as a rich knowledge base filled with articles, tutorials, and guides. Their support team is known for being responsive and helpful.
Community Resources and Peer Support: FullStory has an active community where users can exchange ideas, ask questions, and share insights. They also host webinars and user meetups to facilitate learning and networking among their user base.
User Reviews on Support Quality: FullStory generally receives high marks for their customer support. Users often mention the helpfulness of their support staff and the comprehensiveness of their resource library.
Amplitude
Support Services: Amplitude offers email support and an extensive knowledge base with articles, guides, and tutorials. Enterprise customers also get a dedicated customer success manager for personalized support.
Community Resources and Peer Support: The Amplitude community is vibrant and active. They provide a community forum where users can ask questions and share best practices. Amplitude also hosts regular events, webinars, and training sessions for users to learn and connect with each other.
User Reviews on Support Quality: Reviews on Amplitude’s customer support are generally positive. Users appreciate the prompt and thorough responses from their support team. However, some users have mentioned that they’d appreciate more support for non-enterprise customers.
In conclusion, both FullStory and Amplitude provide comprehensive customer support and have active communities. While the quality of support seems to be high for both, FullStory’s support is often praised for its accessibility and responsiveness, while Amplitude offers more personalized support for enterprise users. The choice between the two will depend on the level of support your business needs and the value you place on community engagement and learning resources.
Privacy and Security
In an era where data breaches are increasingly common and data privacy regulations are becoming more stringent, the privacy and security measures adopted by an analytics platform are of paramount importance. Let’s examine the security practices of FullStory and Amplitude.
FullStory
Data Security Measures: FullStory takes data security seriously. They use encryption both in transit and at rest to protect your data. FullStory operates within secure data centers and employs rigorous access controls and regular security audits to ensure data integrity and protection.
Compliance with International Data Privacy Laws: FullStory is committed to compliance with major international data privacy regulations. This includes the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and other global data protection laws. They also offer robust privacy controls that allow you to automatically exclude sensitive data from being recorded.
Amplitude
Data Security Measures: Amplitude also prioritizes data security. They employ industry-standard encryption methods for data in transit and at rest. Amplitude’s infrastructure is designed with multiple layers of protection, including secure data centers, network firewalls, and rigorous access controls.
Compliance with International Data Privacy Laws: Amplitude is compliant with major data protection regulations, including GDPR and CCPA. They’re also certified under the EU-US Privacy Shield and the Swiss-US Privacy Shield. Amplitude provides features for data deletion and data export, allowing businesses to meet their data subject rights obligations.
In conclusion, both FullStory and Amplitude demonstrate a strong commitment to data security and privacy. They use robust measures to protect user data and comply with major international data privacy laws. When choosing between these two platforms, businesses can feel confident that their user data will be securely handled and that the platforms will aid in meeting compliance obligations.
User Perspectives: FullStory vs Amplitude
In the search for the best analytics platform for your needs, it’s beneficial to consider user experiences and feedback. We’ve gathered some valuable insights from a recent Reddit thread discussing FullStory, Amplitude, and other tools. Here’s what users have to say:
FullStory
User Feedback: While FullStory was praised for its unique features such as session recording and heat mapping, some users found it to be quite expensive, especially for smaller, seed-stage startups.
“Full story gets very very expensive.” – comptly
However, the richness of the data provided by FullStory’s qualitative analytics can be very valuable for teams looking to understand user behavior on a granular level.
Amplitude
User Feedback: Amplitude was praised for its depth and flexibility. It was noted that most organizations eventually end up choosing Amplitude, possibly due to its powerful event-based analytics and customizable dashboards.
“Amplitude is where most orgs end up eventually.” – comptly
Users also noted that Amplitude may be a more economical choice for startups, especially those with a high number of users who perform minimal actions.
Other Tools to Consider
The Reddit users also suggested considering other analytics tools:
- Heap: lauded for its auto-tracking feature and the ability to retroactively define metrics based on collected data.
“Heap just collects every interaction and then you can go back and define metrics for clicks etc, even using historical data from before you defined it.” – anotherhuman
- Mixpanel: recommended for its ease of use and affordability. It was mentioned that for some use-cases, Mixpanel came out to be significantly cheaper than Amplitude.
“Mixpanel is the move imo, got slightly more expensive recently but for like $400/year I can monitor my software with over 5000 users. It’s cheap and easy to use.” – Vauld150
- Browsee: suggested as a cheaper alternative to FullStory for visual analytics.
- Usermaven: recommended for its auto-capturing of all events and support for cookieless tracking mode.
In conclusion, the choice of an analytics tool greatly depends on the specific needs of your business, the volume and nature of user interactions, and budget constraints. It’s always a good idea to assess multiple platforms and consider user feedback before making a decision.
Conclusion: Which One Should You Choose?
Choosing between FullStory and Amplitude is not a simple decision, as both platforms offer powerful features to understand and optimize user behavior. The choice ultimately depends on your specific business needs and goals. Let’s recap the strengths and weaknesses of both platforms and provide some suggestions on which type of businesses may prefer one over the other.
FullStory
Strengths:
- Offers high-fidelity session replays, providing a granular view of the user experience.
- Unique friction scoring metrics like Rage Clicks and Dead Clicks.
- Intuitive and user-friendly interface.
- Strong customer support and resource library.
Weaknesses:
- Less focus on quantitative, event-based analytics compared to Amplitude.
- Custom event tracking requires additional setup.
Suggested For: FullStory is an excellent choice for businesses that prioritize understanding the qualitative aspects of the user experience. It’s particularly valuable for teams looking to identify and resolve user frustrations, improve website or app design, and enhance overall user experience.
Amplitude
Strengths:
- Provides deep, event-based analytics.
- Allows complex data segmentation and cohort analysis.
- Customizable dashboards tailored to specific needs.
- Robust resources for learning and community support.
Weaknesses:
- Steeper learning curve, especially for those new to data analysis.
- Lacks the depth of session replay found in FullStory.
Suggested For: Amplitude is ideal for businesses that need to analyze user behavior at scale and make data-driven product decisions. It’s particularly suited for product teams wanting to understand feature usage, user retention, and engagement trends.
In conclusion, both FullStory and Amplitude are powerful tools in their own right, and the choice between them largely depends on what you need from an analytics platform. By understanding your business goals and the specific insights you’re seeking, you can make an informed decision that best supports your data-driven journey.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
In this section, we’ll address some of the most common queries regarding FullStory and Amplitude.
The main difference between FullStory and Amplitude lies in their primary focus areas. FullStory specializes in providing qualitative analytics through high-fidelity session replays and heatmaps, allowing you to understand user behavior on a granular level. On the other hand, Amplitude is primarily an event-based analytics tool offering deep quantitative insights into user behavior, engagement, and retention.
Yes, many organizations use FullStory and Amplitude together to get a more comprehensive understanding of user behavior. While Amplitude provides in-depth quantitative data, FullStory can supplement this with qualitative insights, providing a holistic view of the user experience.
Both FullStory and Amplitude operate on a tiered pricing model, with costs varying depending on usage and the specific features you require. Generally, users have noted that FullStory can be more expensive, particularly for small businesses or startups. It’s best to contact the sales teams of both platforms for detailed pricing information based on your specific needs.
User interface preferences can be quite subjective and may depend on individual needs and familiarity with analytics tools. Some users appreciate FullStory’s intuitive interface, especially those focused on qualitative analytics. Conversely, users needing comprehensive quantitative analytics might prefer Amplitude’s customizable dashboards, despite a potentially steeper learning curve.
Yes, both FullStory and Amplitude comply with major international data privacy laws, including GDPR and CCPA. However, it’s crucial for organizations to use these platforms in a manner that respects user privacy, including obtaining necessary user consents for data tracking.
Remember, when choosing between FullStory and Amplitude, consider your organization’s unique needs and goals. Both platforms offer powerful features, and the right choice depends on which capabilities align best with your business objectives.