In-depth: Jetboat Analytics vs PostHog
Choose PostHog if…
- You want the widest toolbox on one platform: feature flags, experiments, surveys, a data warehouse, CDP, and error tracking, all self-serve.
- Someone on your team will own analytics day to day. PostHog's free tier (1M events, 5K recordings, 100K exceptions a month, one year of retention) rewards teams that do it themselves.
- You want usage-based pricing you can start on today without talking to anyone.
Choose Jetboat Analytics if…
- Nobody on your team wants to own the analytics stack. We run it, and you have a named human from day one.
- You want the findings turned into shipped fixes. Proposals are human-approved, and we can implement them inside your existing systems.
- You want analytics, replay, and errors on one identity spine: an error, the replay that threw it, and that user's full history in one place, with bad data quarantined before it ever lands.
Feature by feature
| Feature | Jetboat Analytics | PostHog |
|---|---|---|
| Product analytics (trends, funnels, retention, breakdowns) | ✓ | ✓ 1M events/month free |
| Session replay | ✓ masked by default; conformance-tested on every change | ✓ 5K recordings/month free; 30-day retention free, 90 days pay-as-you-go |
| Error tracking | ✓ linked to the replay that threw it | ✓ 100K exceptions/month free; links to replays |
| Error → replay → that user's full cross-session history | ✓ one identity spine across all three | Partial error → replay is there; cross-session history is a separate person view |
| Schema-validated ingestion (bad events quarantined, never stored) | ✓ | ✗ events are accepted as sent; event definitions describe, they don't enforce |
| Durability contract (durable write before the event is acknowledged) | ✓ | Not documented |
| Identity stitching across sessions | ✓ | ✓ |
| Governed SQL access to your data | ✓ | ✓ HogQL |
| MCP server for your agents | ✓ | ✓ |
| Automated diagnosis and fixes | ✓ propose-only by default; every action human-approved; we implement inside your systems | ✓ “self-driving”: diagnoses problems, fixes bugs, generates pull requests |
| A team that runs it for you, with a named human contact | ✓ from onboarding onward, every plan | ✗ community support free; official support on paid; dedicated Slack from $2k/month spend |
| Feature flags, experiments, surveys | ✗ | ✓ |
| Data warehouse (external sources) and CDP | ✗ | ✓ |
| Self-host option | ✗ managed only | Hobby deploy, officially unsupported, ~300k events/month guidance |
What PostHog is good for
PostHog is the widest toolbox in this set: product analytics, session replay, error tracking, feature flags, experiments, surveys, a data warehouse, a CDP, logs and LLM observability on one platform, with HogQL for SQL and an MCP server for your agents. The free tier covers 1M events, 5K recordings and 100K exceptions a month with a year of retention, and the install wizard gets a codebase instrumented in minutes.
It is built for teams that want to do it themselves and enjoy it. The docs and community are large, the product ships weekly, and a hobby self-host exists for tinkering (PostHog calls it unsupported and sizes it at 4 vCPU / 16 GB for around 300k events a month). Its “self-driving” features diagnose problems and generate pull requests from inside PostHog.
PostHog leaves the operating to you. Events are accepted as sent; event definitions describe and don't enforce. Replay retention is 30 days free and 90 on pay-as-you-go. Support is the community on the free tier, and a dedicated Slack channel starts at $2,000 a month in spend. The loop from finding to shipped fix is one your team runs.
Moving off PostHog
We don't import PostHog history. PostHog's batch exports send events to your warehouse or storage (1M rows a month free), so keep what you want before you switch. Recordings stay in PostHog for their retention window and don't move.
- We add our script beside the PostHog snippet. Both run, and your PostHog dashboards keep working while ours fill in.
- Your event names and properties come across as they are; we register them as schemas, so
checkout_startedstayscheckout_started. Events that fail validation are quarantined and reported. posthog.identifymaps to ours: the distinct ID becomes the user ID, and anonymous activity is stitched to the person when they sign in.- We run both for two to four weeks, reconcile the counts on the events you care about, and send you the comparison.
- You remove the PostHog snippet when you're satisfied, or keep PostHog for feature flags, experiments and surveys. Many teams do.
Pricing
PostHog is usage-based with a monthly free allowance on every product (1M events, 5K session recordings, 100K exceptions, 1M feature-flag requests), unlimited team members, one project, and one year of data retention on the free tier; usage stops at the free limits, so there are no surprise charges. Official support comes with paid usage, and a dedicated Slack channel starts at a $2,000/month minimum spend (PostHog pricing). Jetboat Analytics is one plan with everything managed, scoped to your event volume and goals on a short call (pricing). If your volume fits inside PostHog's free tier and you have someone to run it, PostHog will cost you less in cash. What you are paying us for is the team.
Frequently asked questions
Is Jetboat Analytics a PostHog alternative?
As a PostHog alternative for product analytics, session replay, and error tracking, yes — that is what we run. It does not replace PostHog's feature flags, experiments, surveys, or data warehouse. If your team leans on those, PostHog is the better fit; some teams keep PostHog for flags and use Jetboat for the analytics they want operated for them.
What does “managed” mean here?
We host and operate the whole pipeline — ingestion, storage, dashboards, replay, and error tracking — and you get a named human from onboarding onward. On top of that an operator watches your events, replays, and errors and proposes concrete product fixes; you approve them, and we can implement them inside your existing systems or hand them to your team. With PostHog you would be doing all of that yourself, on their cloud.
Can I self-host Jetboat Analytics the way I can self-host PostHog?
Jetboat Analytics is sold as a managed service, so no. If you are weighing PostHog's self-host route instead, know that PostHog describes its hobby deploy as officially unsupported, recommends it only up to around 300k events and 1k recordings a month, and sizes it at a 4 vCPU / 16 GB VM; supported usage is on PostHog Cloud.
Also compared: Amplitude, Mixpanel and LogRocket. For what a managed engagement produced for one client, read the case study.
PostHog facts verified as of 2 September 2026 against posthog.com (pricing, self-host docs, support options, replay retention, error tracking, home page). Spotted something out of date? Tell us and we'll fix it.