Nexly
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Nexly vs PostHog

PostHog bundles ten plus products — analytics, session replay, feature flags, experiments, surveys, a data warehouse — into one platform for engineers. Nexly deliberately does less: one calm dashboard, cookieless by default, with Insights — an AI assistant that answers instead of another tool to learn.

Choose Nexly if

  • You want one calm dashboard you understand on day one, not a platform of ten products
  • You want Insights, an AI assistant, as the front door to your data — not another product inside a suite
  • You want no cookies by default, without configuration or project settings
  • You want one predictable meter (monthly events) instead of per-product usage bills
  • You want bot traffic classified instead of silently dropped, and visitors from ChatGPT and Perplexity tracked

Choose PostHog if

  • You need session replay, feature flags, A/B experiments, or surveys in one place
  • You want a very large free tier and are comfortable with usage-based pricing per product
  • You have engineers who will live in the tool and want SQL access to raw data

Side by side

 NexlyPostHog
FocusWeb and product analytics in one calm dashboard10+ products: analytics, replay, flags, experiments, surveys, warehouse
Learning curveOne page, useful on day onePer-product navigation and concepts: insights, HogQL, actions
Free plan10,000 events per month (pageviews + custom), every feature1M events per month, 5K replays, 1 project, 1 year retention
Pricing modelOne meter: monthly events, every feature on every planUsage-based per product after free allowances
CookiesNo cookies, optional privacy modeCookies by default; cookieless is an opt-in mode plus a project setting
AI assistantNexly Insights built in, answers with live charts and dashboard linksPostHog AI, billed in usage credits
Session replay and feature flagsNot offeredIncluded, usage billed
RetentionRaw events 24 months, aggregates up to 5 years on every plan1 year on the free plan, 7 years pay-as-you-go
Bot and AI trafficOwn dashboard section: bots vs humans, crawler coverage, AI referralsKnown bots filtered out

A dashboard versus a platform

PostHog is genuinely impressive: product analytics, web analytics, session replay, feature flags, experiments, surveys, error tracking, and a data warehouse, all wired together for product engineers. That breadth is also the cost. Each product brings its own navigation and its own concepts — notebooks, HogQL, person profiles, actions — and a real learning curve before the first useful answer. Many teams end up using a fraction of the platform while still carrying all of its complexity. Nexly bets that most teams need the ten numbers that matter on one page, with Insights for the questions that need digging, and nothing else to configure.

Where the AI lives

PostHog ships PostHog AI, an assistant billed in usage credits — useful, but it sits inside a platform you still have to learn, and its answers point back into that platform. In Nexly, Insights is the front door: the dashboard shows the essentials, and anything deeper you simply ask in plain language. The answer comes back with charts and links to the exact view, you pick the model from multiple providers, and Insights can propose ready-to-create funnels or explain a flagged anomaly with one click — the tool never asks you to become an expert in it first.

Pricing you can predict

PostHog's free allowances are generous — a million events a month before analytics costs anything — and each product then meters separately: events, recordings, flag requests, survey responses, warehouse rows. Billing limits help, but the bill has many moving parts, and autocaptured interactions count as events too. Nexly has one meter: monthly events (pageviews plus custom product events). Every feature is on every plan, so the only pricing question is volume.

Privacy by default versus privacy by configuration

PostHog stores identifiers in cookies and local storage by default; its cookieless mode exists but is opt-in, needs a project-level setting, and trades away features like aliasing. Nexly is cookieless always — identifiers live in local storage by default, and privacy mode removes device storage entirely with a daily rotating pseudonymous fingerprint. There is no privacy configuration to get wrong.

Events are not the same across tools

Nexly bills monthly events: each pageview and each custom product event counts once. Session housekeeping signals do not. Many privacy analytics tools label pricing tiers in pageviews — some bill pageviews only, others also count custom events under that label. Treat same-number volume comparisons as approximate. If you only know your pageview count, add the product events you plan to send (signups, checkouts, feature use) before picking a Nexly tier. A site that looks cheap at pageview-only volume can land on a higher plan once product analytics is in earnest.

Traffic that is not human

Most tools silently filter bot traffic out. Nexly classifies every event it receives instead — search engine crawlers, AI bots, link previews, datacenter traffic — and shows them in a dedicated section, kept out of your human metrics. It also tracks AI referrals: real visitors who arrive from ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other assistants. One honest caveat applies to every script-based tool, Nexly included: crawlers that never execute JavaScript stay invisible.

Switching from PostHog

  1. Create a free Nexly property and add the snippet or SDK next to posthog-js.
  2. Recreate the events you actually analyze as Nexly custom events with typed properties — autocaptured noise usually does not need to move.
  3. If you use feature flags, replay, or surveys, pick a dedicated home for them, then remove posthog-js once Nexly has the history you need.

Common questions

PostHog's free tier allows a million events. Why pick Nexly?
If raw free volume is the only criterion, PostHog wins. Nexly's free plan trades volume for calm: every feature included, unlimited websites and team members, 24 months of raw event history versus one year, no per-product meters, and no cookies without configuration. Teams that mostly need traffic and product answers often find the smaller allowance covers them, because Nexly does not count autocaptured interactions.
Does Nexly have session replay, feature flags, or A/B testing?
No. Nexly focuses on traffic, acquisition, funnels, custom events, and AI insights. If replay, flags, experiments, or surveys are essential in the same tool, PostHog is the better fit.
Is Nexly open source or self hostable like PostHog?
No, Nexly is a managed service. PostHog's core is MIT licensed and can be self hosted as a hobby deployment, though PostHog itself recommends its cloud for production scale.
How do Nexly events compare to pageviews?
Nexly bills monthly events: each pageview and each custom product event counts once. Session housekeeping signals do not. Many privacy analytics tools label pricing tiers in pageviews — some bill pageviews only, others also count custom events under that label. Treat same-number volume comparisons as approximate. If you only know your pageview count, add the product events you plan to send (signups, checkouts, feature use) before picking a Nexly tier. A site that looks cheap at pageview-only volume can land on a higher plan once product analytics is in earnest.
Does Nexly use cookies?
No. Nexly never uses cookies. By default identifiers live in local storage, and privacy mode removes device storage entirely with a daily rotating pseudonymous fingerprint.

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