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Updates to our Free Starter Plan

  • 24 January 2023
  • 47 replies
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Update as of January 27: We appreciate all the feedback regarding our move to an MTU-based free plan. We recognize that for some of you, this change may not fit well with your business and has been frustrating to navigate. We are already working directly with many of you to find a solution and will provide an update soon. In the meantime, if you haven’t reached out to our account teams (https://amplitude.com/sales-contact) please do so we can explore options with you.

 

We're excited to share a few updates to our Free Starter plan. We've listened to our customers and learned that now, more than ever, it is crucial for teams to understand what levers they can pull for growth. We've updated our Starter Plan to make it easy for product, data, and marketing teams to understand what their customers are doing and use those insights to drive action and growth. Here's a summary of the updates:

 

Introducing Monthly Tracked Users

As part of today’s update, we’re moving to a monthly tracked user ( MTU ) model that allows you to track usage based on the number of users who perform a tracked event each month. Our MTU-based model means it’s now easier to estimate monthly user growth as your product grows, and you spend less time worrying about event volume overages!

 

Granting access to more advanced collaboration tools and behavioral charts We continue to believe that analytics is a team sport. Products today are built by empowered, cross-functional teams, and they should have access to the best possible collaboration tools to share their insights. 

 

New collaboration and storytelling tools added to our Starter Plan include: 

  • Share your insights with your team with public links

  • Stay on top of your insights with email reports (coming soon)

  • Collaborate with teammates and share the context behind your insights with Notebooks

  • Uncover the paths your users take on their way to conversion with Pathfinder 

  • Determine how power users navigate your product with Pathfinder Users

 

We're committed to making it easier than ever before for new users to get up and running in Amplitude. As part of this update, we will be transferring a handful of advanced features to our paid plans, allowing us to focus on providing a robust set of core features in our Starter plan. See our list of resources at the bottom of this post to learn how to use the new features. 

 

Here’s a side-by-side comparison of what is changing in our Starter Plan. To see the full list of features available in Starter, go here.

 

 

Feature

Old Starter

New Starter Plan 

Pricing

10MM events monthly

100K Monthly Tracked Users

Core Analytics

Event Segmentation

Funnel Analysis

Retention Analysis

User Timelines

User Sessions

Stickiness

Lifecycle

 

Data Tables

 

Revenue LTV

 

Advanced Behavioral Analysis

Pathfinder

 

Pathfinder Users

 

Collaboration & Storytelling

Dashboards

Team spaces

Collaboration integrations

Annotations

Starter Templates

Notebooks

 

Public Links

 

Email Reports

 

Limited

 

Starter customers will have access to the expanded Advanced Behavioral Analytics and Collaboration features starting today. The other changes discussed in this post, including Free Starter customers moving to 100K MTUs, will go into effect on May 1, 2023. 

 

Feel free to comment below with any questions and our Support team will chime in to help.

 

 

Related Academy Resources:

 

Related Help Articles:


47 replies

Wow, this looks like a really cool change! Three quick questions:

  • What was the previous MTU limit before with the 10M events free plan? 
  • Is Experiments AKA A/B testing available in the free plan? I don’t see any info on that in the table.
  • What is the pricing like to go from the free plan, to say, a similar setup but with 200K MTU? 
Userlevel 2

I’m sad to see this change because it makes Amplitude no longer an option for us. The existing event volume based model works the best for us because we have over 100K monthly unique users but each just emit a few events. I’m wondering if there’s an option to stay on the existing event volume-based model? Thank you.

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Appreciate the signal in advance of the move and that MTUs can be easily accessed already so we know what we’re in for. 

 

A little annoyed to see that Data Tables are being moved out of Starter Plan. We’ve come to rely on them and are unlikely to be able to afford the next plan up.

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Agree with @Allan - We have a large event volume count but lots of users, with cookies going away it becomes much more difficult to count the same user only ounce. Have 600K+ Users but far less Events. 

What would be our options in this case?

Userlevel 1

This is disappointing. 😞 My team had to drop to the free plan late last year because of cost reductions across the company. We’re in the same boat as others--we don’t come close to the event limit, but we go above the MTU limit. Are there no other options? 

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If we stay on the free starter plan, will our existing Data Tables and LTV charts stop working on May 1st or will we simply not be able to make additional charts?

We’re also under the event limit, but above the MTU limit on free. I’m trying to figure out our options and pricing for increased MTUs, but I can’t find anything, and my reply to the email announcement bounced. Who can I reach out to for help with this?

Userlevel 6
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Wow, this looks like a really cool change! Three quick questions:

  • What was the previous MTU limit before with the 10M events free plan? 
  • Is Experiments AKA A/B testing available in the free plan? I don’t see any info on that in the table.
  • What is the pricing like to go from the free plan, to say, a similar setup but with 200K MTU? 

Thanks for these questions. And thanks for the feedback! 😃 Here are some quick responses to guide you. For more questions about MTU pricing on our paid plans please reach out to your account team who can assist you. Plan details are available here.

We're committed to making it easier than ever before for new users to get up and running in Amplitude. As part of this update, we have transferred a handful of advanced features including Data Tables to our paid plans, allowing us to focus on providing a robust set of core features in our Starter plan. More info in our help center

Userlevel 6
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I’m sad to see this change because it makes Amplitude no longer an option for us. The existing event volume based model works the best for us because we have over 100K monthly unique users but each just emit a few events. I’m wondering if there’s an option to stay on the existing event volume-based model? Thank you.

Thanks for this feedback @Allan. The team is here to help as you navigate the change! 

We’ll alert you over email and in-product when you’re getting close to your MTU limit for the month so you can take steps to avoid exceeding it.

Amplitude offers MTU pricing with unlimited events for Growth and Enterprise Plans up to 1 million MTUs. Customers who need more than this can stay on MTU pricing with an event limit. Alternatively, customers can opt to track by event volume. If you want to switch to event-based tracking from MTU or vice versa get in touch with your account team here.

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Agree with @Allan - We have a large event volume count but lots of users, with cookies going away it becomes much more difficult to count the same user only ounce. Have 600K+ Users but far less Events. 

What would be our options in this case?

Thanks for these questions and feedback @Michael Marquez. The team is here to help! 

For more questions about MTU pricing on our paid plans please reach out to your account team who can assist you. Plan details are available here.

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This is disappointing. 😞 My team had to drop to the free plan late last year because of cost reductions across the company. We’re in the same boat as others--we don’t come close to the event limit, but we go above the MTU limit. Are there no other options? 

Thanks for this feedback @taylorsmith. The team is committed to ensuring your success with Amplitude! 

We’ll alert you over email and in-product when you’re getting close to your MTU limit for the month so you can take steps to avoid exceeding it. To get in touch with your account team, get started here.

Very disappointed with this decision. We have a large MAU, but we only used a few million events. We did not need additional features of paid plans or unlimited event tracking. Now your service costs several thousand euros per month. It was too expensive. We will switch to another service.

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If we stay on the free starter plan, will our existing Data Tables and LTV charts stop working on May 1st or will we simply not be able to make additional charts?

This is a great question @tommy. You will no longer have access to Data Tables after May 1st. 

As part of this update, we have transferred a handful of advanced features to our paid plans. This can help your users focus on the core features of Amplitude and onboard more successfully.

You can find the latest details about the changes to Data Tables and our plans in the help center

 

Userlevel 6
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We’re also under the event limit, but above the MTU limit on free. I’m trying to figure out our options and pricing for increased MTUs, but I can’t find anything, and my reply to the email announcement bounced. Who can I reach out to for help with this?

Thank you @Vicky Thomas! The team is here to help and we want to see you succeed with Amplitude. We’ll alert you over email and in-product since you’re over your MTU limit for the month and you can take steps to avoid exceeding it. If you have specific questions about MTU or event pricing, please get in touch with you account team who can assist you. To get started, details are available here.

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Very disappointed with this decision. We have a large MAU, but we only used a few million events. We did not need additional features of paid plans or unlimited event tracking. Now your service costs several thousand euros per month. It was too expensive. We will switch to another service.

This sounds challenging @victor, know that the team is committed to your success! We are continuing to optimize our pricing and packaging to provide more options and transparency for our customers. If you have specific questions about MTU or event pricing, please get in touch with you account team who can assist you. To get started, details are available here.

ugh this is frustrating. Clearly Amplitude is trying to force people to upgrade their plan by strapping the monthly user count. If you’re running amplitude on a website landing page that becomes super prohibitive and very easy to hit that value. Also getting rid of Revenue LTV sucks.

This is sad. The new Free Starter plan makes Amplitude less attractive and we will switch to another alternative like Firebase.

Very nice desicion, as for me. I have 15k monthly users and more than 10MM events every month. Thank you, Amplitude Team!

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Has anyone tried Mixpanel? I see they are offering 20M/Month. free events? 

Not sure what the catch is.

https://mixpanel.com/pricing/

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Question - if we hit our quota of events will the amplitude sdk still work and create the session and user cookie? 

Userlevel 6
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ugh this is frustrating. Clearly Amplitude is trying to force people to upgrade their plan by strapping the monthly user count. If you’re running amplitude on a website landing page that becomes super prohibitive and very easy to hit that value. Also getting rid of Revenue LTV sucks.

Thanks for this feedback @julien. We’re here to help. By introducing MTUs, we’re striving to help our customers better align their use base to their analytics journey. If you're just starting to grow your user base, our MTU model is likely the best option! But if you're growing past 100k MTUs per month, you can explore either switching to an event-based plan or moving to a more-customized MTU model. We're here to help if that's where your journey is leading. Please review our pricing page here and let us know if you'd like to be connected to your account team for more information

Userlevel 6
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This is sad. The new Free Starter plan makes Amplitude less attractive and we will switch to another alternative like Firebase.

We’re here to help @Murat and want to work with you to ensure your success! 

Userlevel 6
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Very nice desicion, as for me. I have 15k monthly users and more than 10MM events every month. Thank you, Amplitude Team!

So glad that this update is helpful @madsunrise! We can’t wait to keep in touch as you make progress! 😃

Userlevel 6
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Has anyone tried Mixpanel? I see they are offering 20M/Month. free events? 

Not sure what the catch is.

https://mixpanel.com/pricing/

Interesting find @Michael Marquez 😎 Amplitude is introducing an MTU model across our subscription plans with unlimited events. Here’s more info - link

Userlevel 6
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Question - if we hit our quota of events will the amplitude sdk still work and create the session and user cookie? 

I almost missed this @Michael Marquez and just flagged this question to the team. We’ll get back to you soon. 

Update: Yes! The Amplitude SDK will still work – we'll continue to collect data.

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