PostHog

PostHog gives you product analytics, session recordings, feature flags, A/B testing, and surveys in one platform. Self-host it or use their cloud. Basically, Mixpanel + Hotjar + LaunchDarkly combined, but open source. The free cloud tier is generous: 1 million events/month, 5K session recordings, unlimited feature flags. That covers most startups well past launch.

Self-hosting is free with no feature restrictions (it's the same codebase). Docker Compose or Kubernetes. The catch with self-hosting: PostHog runs on ClickHouse for analytics, which needs real infrastructure. Minimum production setup is 8GB RAM, and it grows with your event volume.

Cloud pricing scales with usage: events beyond 1M are ~$0.00031 each, recordings beyond 5K are ~$0.005 each. A mid-size app doing 5M events/month pays roughly $125/mo. That's significantly cheaper than Mixpanel or Amplitude at the same scale. Solo to small teams: free cloud tier. You'll hit 1M events/month faster than you think if you instrument everything, so be selective about what you track. Medium teams: cloud paid tier, math works out well. Large orgs: self-host for data sovereignty or use cloud enterprise.

The catch: doing everything means nothing is best-in-class. The session recordings are solid but not Hotjar-level. The feature flags work but LaunchDarkly has deeper targeting. The analytics are good but not Amplitude-deep. PostHog wins on breadth and value, not depth in any single feature.