5 Best ChartMogul Alternatives in 2024

Introduction

Being data-driven has become one of the main themes of keynote speeches over the last decade. However, it is easier said than done. To make data-informed decisions, you need a reliable data infrastructure that can collect data, unify the data stored in different sources, and make sense of it. Without this infrastructure in place, you end up with a nonstop buildup of data in silos, which does not add value to your organization.

Harnessing the power of data can transform a business. A 2013 study by McKinsey illustrates the point. This survey of 400 executives from global companies investigated the effect being data-driven had on organizational performance and revealed these remarkable findings:

"Intensive users of customer analytics are 23 times more likely to clearly outperform their competitors in terms of new customer acquisition than non-intensive users, and nine times more likely to surpass them in customer loyalty. Our survey results also show that the likelihood of achieving above-average profitability is almost 19 times higher for customer analytics champions as for laggards. Even more impressive is their likelihood of migrating an above-average share of customers to profitable segments, at 21 times that of non-intensive users of customer analytics…"

If there is a single industry that can become data-driven, it must be the SaaS industry because this cloud-based business model accumulates data like no other industry can. SaaS companies rely on SaaS analytics to make sense of their data. Using a capable SaaS analytics platform, SaaS companies can pull in data from different sources, get reports on different metrics and KPIs defined, evaluate employee performance, and plan for the future.

One of the more popular platforms in this space is ChartMogul. We will take a close look at ChartMogul in this piece and discuss some of the viable alternatives.

What is SaaS analytics?

SaaS analytics is how SaaS companies monitor, bring together, and analyze their data to make better decisions. While traditional businesses depend on a relatively small number of one-off transactions that involve lump sum payments, SaaS businesses rely on recurring revenue from numerous customers on usually small contracts. With SaaS analytics, SaaS businesses can

• Study the nature of each of these small deals,
• Figure out the characteristics of loyal, high-value customers,
• Adjust messaging and content in a way that will appeal to the more valuable customers,
• Devise tactics to improve retention and limit churn so that the compounding effects kick in.

Serial entrepreneur, investor, and SaaS analytics expert David Skok summarizes the basic concepts of the SaaS business in this video:

Key takeaways

• SaaS analytics allow SaaS businesses to optimize resource allocation, streamline messaging and content creation, and improve the overall profitability of the business.

• ChartMogul is an exciting option in the market, with a slick dashboard and cohort analysis capability.

• ChartMogul has launched a stand-alone CRM, which it is promoting heavily. People unwilling to migrate their data from HubSpot to the new ChartMogul CRM still need a dedicated HubSpot-Stripe connector.

• Peaka stands out as a do-it-all option in the market, with advanced data integration capabilities, a smart dashboard, and ready-made connectors.

SaaS in numbers

• An enterprise with over 10,000 employees uses an average of 410 SaaS tools today.

• In 2015, there were 1,875 SaaS tools in the marketing field alone. This number increased to 8,000 in just five years.

• The average number of SaaS tools used by organizations went up from 110 in 2021 to 130 in 2022, marking an increase of 18 percent.

Why use a SaaS analytics tool?

Running a SaaS business without utilizing metrics is like flying a plane blindfolded, but without the assistance of autopilot. In an industry where sales cycles are relatively short, SaaS analytics gives you the figures and averages you can monitor to assess how well your business is performing. It makes it possible for decision-makers to identify trends that are almost impossible to discover in tabular form.

A capable SaaS analytics tool allows you to

• Better evaluate the viability of your business. Monitoring metrics like net revenue retention rate, customer lifetime value, and customer acquisition cost helps you gauge the health of your business and take necessary action before problems get acute. SaaS analytics reveal which products are living up to the expectations and which are underperforming. This allows you to streamline your product line and focus your marketing and sales resources on products that generate more value for your company.

• Forecast future revenue and cost. Knowing beforehand what your revenue and cost figures will be is integral to your budgeting activities. It also influences your hiring decisions, as you may want to grow your team when the revenue is growing fast or shrink the payroll when things are not going well.

• Perfect customer segmentation. SaaS analytics, when combined with a CRM, can be a powerful tool for understanding what kind of customers your product resonates with. When you blend your revenue data with the CRM data, you get to see how spending changes in relation to the customer’s demographic, technographic, and firmographic attributes. This enables you to identify your best-fit customers, tailor messaging and content for the needs of this specific persona, and increase revenue through targeted marketing and sales campaigns.

What is ChartMogul used for?

ChartMogul is a subscription analytics platform that imports data from different payment platforms and turns that data into metrics. By calculating crucial figures like ARR, LTV, and retention- and churn-related metrics, ChartMogul presents the results in a visually-pleasing dashboard, making it easy to notice trends.

One of the strengths of ChartMogul is its cohort analysis capability. Thanks to this feature, ChartMogul users can see their customers organized as part of groups that signed up at a particular time. These cohorts can then be analyzed in relation to the location, pricing plan selected, and discounts given. Cohort analysis is a valuable tool that can unveil patterns and cyclicality hidden in the spending habits of customer groups.

ChartMogul integrates with payment platforms like Stripe, PayPal, Chargeable, and Braintree. These integrations enable ChartMogul to generate revenue-based reports, such as MRR-by-location or MRR-by-cohort.

On the CRM front, ChartMogul integrates with Pipedrive using Zapier. That it does not offer a native connector for a popular CRM like HubSpot is a significant downside, though. Instead of providing dedicated connectors to integrate with different CRMs, ChartMogul has launched its own CRM for SaaS businesses. Users keeping their customer data on ChartMogul CRM will be able to enrich their revenue data pulled in from Stripe or PayPal with the customer attributes stored in this CRM.

5 alternatives to ChartMogul

Peaka

Data integration is Peaka’s forte. We specifically built Peaka to break data silos by pulling in data from different sources and blending that data to generate business insights for users.

Peaka provides a convenient solution for HubSpot users who wish to merge customer data with Stripe data without having to switch to another CRM such as ChartMogul. Peaka’s dedicated HubSpot-Stripe connector allows startups and SMBs lacking technical expertise or resources to merge their revenue data with customer attributes.

Having consolidated revenue and customer data, Peaka users can generate reports that offer a higher granularity than the usual MRR, ARPU, or LTV reports generated by run-of-the-mill SaaS analytics tools. With Peaka, users can further break down their data by country, industry, and company size. As a result, Peaka users can easily filter the data and identify customers in a particular industry (tech companies) based in a specific country (like Brazil) that have held IPOs among their customers, for example.

Who would need this level of granularity in reports? Marketing and sales teams feast on this kind of information, using it to improve customer segmentation. They leverage it to spot high-value customers who are a good fit for the brand, offering high lifetime value. Zeroing in on these best-fit customers, marketing and sales professionals create messaging and content that appeal to these people, scaling what works and eliminating what doesn’t. This kind of personalized outreach improves the ROI of the marketing budget and optimizes resource allocation.

ProfitWell

ProfitWell offers a comprehensive suite of reports that users can generate. These reports cover standard metrics like MRR, churn rate, customer lifetime value, and ARPU, and users can apply filters such as industry, location, or pricing plan to create more detailed reports. Additionally, ProfitWell provides a smart dashboard that enables users to transform tabular data into visually appealing charts and graphics.

ProfitWell has an API users can utilize to bring customer, subscription, and transaction data into the platform. The platform seamlessly integrates with payment gateways like Stripe, Chargify, Paddle, and Braintree. Users can specify triggers depending on the actions customers take or thresholds in the pricing plan. These triggers can later initiate automated workflows, sending emails reminding people to use certain features or renew their subscriptions.

One area where ProfitWell has a clear edge over ChartMogul is customer segmentation capability. Unlike ChartMogul, ProfitWell provides users with a HubSpot-Stripe connector, letting them blend customer data from HubSpot with the payment data extracted from Stripe. Furthermore, while ChartMogul aims to convince its users to adopt ChartMogul CRM, ProfitWell collaborates with marketing intelligence providers Fullcontact and Clearbit, allowing users to enrich data with demographic and firmographic attributes.

Baremetrics

Baremetrics is a versatile platform that manages subscriptions, provides SaaS analytics, and offers data visualization tools. It has nice features for customizing email campaigns and reminders to minimize rejected credit card payments or creating forms to gather feedback on why they left, offering valuable insights. The platform presents all of this data in a cool dashboard, making it a valuable source of information.

Baremetrics boasts a powerful Forecast Module, which is one of its key strengths. This feature enables users to make MRR, cash flow, and growth projections by controlling parameters like churn and time period. It helps reduce uncertainty and makes it easier for decision-makers to plan for the future and address any potential issues.

Baremetrics integrates with a wide range of payment platforms, including Stripe, Braintree, Recurly, and Chargebee. On the CRM front, Baremetrics offers integration with Pipedrive. When configured properly, the platform pulls in customer data from Pipedrive and merges that with the revenue data extracted from one of the aforementioned platforms. Like ChartMogul, Baremetrics lacks a dedicated HubSpot-Stripe connector, which is not-so-good news for the users of these two popular platforms.

Subscript

Specifically developed to track SaaS analytics, Subscript is a relative newcomer to the SaaS analytics stage, but it boasts an impressive suite of features potential users seek in a business intelligence solution.

Many SaaS analytics tools offer basic reports like MRR, ARR, or LTV. Yet these figures give little insight into the reasons behind the changes. For instance, a decrease in ARR does not tell you much unless you know whether that fall stems from customer churn or downgrades to a lower pricing plan. Fortunately, Subscript breaks down these metrics into their lower-level components. With Subscript, users can delve deeper into a metric like MRR and analyze how the expansion MRR, contraction MRR, or churned MRR contribute to the overall figure.

Another trick up Subscript’s sleeve is the cohort analysis capability, which reveals the NRR from groups of customers that signed up in different months. By merging this with attributes like company size, industry, and location, users can generate granular reports and take action accordingly.

Subscript isn’t without its flaws, however. It has limited integration options, being a new product. As of now, it integrates with Stripe, HubSpot CRM, QuickBooks, and Xero. Integrations with other payment platforms and CRMs through dedicated connectors will add to the versatility of Subscript, making it a strong competitor in the market.

HockeyStack

If you've already brought your data together and want to optimize your marketing and sales funnels, HockeyStack can be an excellent choice for you. It boasts a no-code user interface, making it ideal for small teams who don't have access to large technical teams.

However, despite the ease of use, HockeyStack falls behind other players in the market in two important areas. Firstly, it comes with fewer integrations than its competitors. Although it can extract data from major CRM platforms, it does not support integrations with popular payment processing platforms. Secondly, its reports lack the level of detail Peaka and Subscript can provide. Currently, HockeyStack is more suited for marketing attribution rather than SaaS analytics. While it helps users analyze the customer journey, it requires another tool that can pull in data from payment platforms and various CRMs.

HockeyStack allows users to see which parts of the marketing and sales funnels are performing well and how much they contribute to the company’s bottom line. Armed with this kind of insight, users can double down on messaging, ads, campaigns, and content types that resonate with customers and phase out the ones that don’t create value.

SaaS analytics content to consume

• Video—David Skok of Matrix Partners: Driving SaaS Success Using Key Metrics | SaaStr
• Article—Subscription Analytics 101 | What is Subscription Analytics
• Report—Five facts: How customer analytics boosts corporate performance

Conclusion

SaaS is a different ball game. Unless your SaaS company lands multiple six- or seven-figure contracts every year, you rely on recurring revenue from many smaller deals. To take advantage of the compounding effect of the recurring revenue model, you have to keep the existing customers happy, ensure that they spend more on your product, acquire new customers, and limit churn.

This requires a profound understanding of the customers, their pain points, and how they interact with your product. SaaS analytics platforms give you that. They help consolidate your data and present it in a way that makes it easy for you to draw insights from.

ChartMogul has made a name for itself among the SaaS analytics platforms for its innovative dashboard, variety of reports, and cohort analysis capability. However, the limited number of integrations it supports leaves much to be desired. This is where Peaka shines. Peaka allows users to run SQL queries in data scattered over different sources. It combines a great dashboard with granular reports and supports integrations with a variety of reports. Peaka’s dedicated HubSpot-Stripe connector is perfect for businesses looking to connect their CRM and payment processing platforms without hassle. It’s the kind of tool startups and SMBs dream of.