Why is PostHog so in vogue?

A few things come to mind:

1. Posthog is the new kid on the block, so I think there is some level of belief that this newer version of what we already had will be better somehow. In line somewhat with your idea that this could be just a perception, and perhaps not a permanent shift.

2. The fact that it is built by a smaller team that doesn't need to define the product analytics category from scratch likely means product iteration will go faster, i.e. more features/fixes more often, and perhaps a more exciting roadmap. Posthog can stand on the shoulders of giants without being weighed down by all the tech debt that got the industry where it is today.

3. Posthog's pricing is much more up-front about what you'll be charged for; Amplitude & Mixpanel lean a bit more into the "contact us" flow aimed at enterprise orgs.

4. Posthog is open source, so if you wanted to, you could start with their hosted service and perhaps one day move to on-prem if your organization prefers that.

> https://mixpanel.com/releases/session-replay/

Because I need to "Request Demo" just to access session replay? PostHog gives you that for free. I don't need to fill any forms.

They are good at branding/marketing. They have a big team of awesome people (90ppl): https://posthog.com/people

They write a lot of blog posts, which usually tend to go viral on HN.

At the moment they provide a generous free tier too, so many people can get started without paying anything.

They also open-source most of their code: https://github.com/posthog

They raised a lot of money ~$39M

So, I would say that compared to other companies, they got more popular because of:

   * modern marketing tactics
   * huge funding
   * still in growing phase, so they are focused on growth more than profits (phase in which most companies are at their best, as they try to give more than they take)
   * newer product
   * good timing (a lot of people are switching away from GA, which had a huge monopoly over web analytics).

Mixpanel and Amplitude are very expensive!

Also, PostHog was originally more web analytics (google analytics) than product analytics (MixPanel), which is a subtle distinction but changes the economics.

Mixpanel user here! Actually, a few weeks ago Mixpanel updated their pricing plan and now it is way more affordable. I assume that is related to the recent success of PostHog. Nevertheless, PostHog seems to be a super attractive alternative as it offers way more features: surveys, product tours, error tracking and more.

it's all open source!! https://github.com/posthog