The Countly alternative with the analysis in the open edition
Countly is a mature analytics and engagement platform with an SDK for nearly every stack — and its open edition stops short of funnels, retention, and profiles, which live in the paid ones. Pug puts all six insight types in the single edition it has, under plain AGPL-3.0. Here’s the honest comparison, including where Countly is the better platform.
- You want funnels, retention, and profiles without a paid edition
- You want a license you can rebrand and white-label under
- You’d rather run one Go binary than Node and MongoDB
- You want crash reporting, push, and remote config in one place
- You need an SDK Pug doesn’t ship — Unity, Xamarin, native, IoT
- You want a platform with years of production deployments behind it
Pug vs Countly, feature by feature
The short version: choose Pug to own and self-host focused product analytics. Countly may be the better fit depending on what you need — the honest detail is below.
| Capability | Pug this page | Countly |
|---|---|---|
| Licensing & editions | ||
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0, modified §7 |
| Rebrand or white-label | Yes | No |
| Self-hostable | Yes | Yes |
| Managed cloud | Yes | Yes |
| All analysis in the open edition | Yes | No |
| Analysis in the open edition | ||
| Event trends & custom dashboards | Yes | Yes |
| Funnels | Yes | Paid editions |
| Retention cohorts | Yes | Paid editions |
| Segmentation on any property | Yes | Paid editions |
| User-flow Sankey | Yes | Paid editions |
| Per-person profiles | Yes | Paid editions |
| Beyond analytics | ||
| Crash reporting | Not in Pug | Yes |
| Push messaging | Not in Pug | Yes |
| Remote config | Not in Pug | Yes |
| Rating & feedback widgets | Not in Pug | Yes |
| Alerts, hooks & scheduled reports | Not in Pug | Yes |
| Practical | ||
| SDKs | Web, Flutter, Node | iOS, Android, Flutter, React Native, Unity, web, desktop, IoT |
| What you run | One Go binary | Node.js + MongoDB |
| Autocapture on web | Yes | Opt-in helpers |
| Maturity | Open beta | Mature |
Last updated August 2026. Countly capabilities reflect its publicly documented product; verify the latest on the vendor’s site.
Why look for a Countly alternative
The analysis sits behind the edition line
Countly’s open edition covers crashes, push, remote config, ratings, and dashboards — but funnels, cohorts, retention, drill-down, and flows are not part of it. Pug puts all six insight types in the one edition there is, self-hosted or cloud.
A license you can build a product on
Countly’s server is AGPL-3.0 with a modified Section 7: the logos and branding have to stay, in the source and in every screen. Pug is plain AGPL-3.0, so an embedded or white-labelled deployment is yours to shape within the license.
One binary instead of a platform
Countly is a Node.js application over MongoDB with a plugin system to learn and operate. Pug self-hosts as a single Go binary — much less to run, and much less to understand before the first event lands.
Where Countly is still the better choice
Pug is a focused tool, not a platform. If your team needs any of the following, Countly is the better fit — these don’t ship in Pug:
- SDKs for iOS, Android, Flutter, React Native, Unity, Xamarin, web, desktop, and IoT — identical across editions
- Crash reporting, push messaging, remote config, and rating widgets in the open edition
- Alerts, webhooks, and scheduled reports to automate on top of the data
- Consent and compliance tooling built into the product
- Years of production deployments, with long-term-support releases
- A managed edition if you would rather not operate MongoDB yourself
Focused product analytics, fully yours
Everything below ships today and runs the same whether you self-host or use the free cloud.
Autocapture out of the box
Page views, clicks, scrolls, form submits, plus rage and dead clicks — captured after one init(), then enriched with geo, device, and UTM on ingest.
Six insight types
Trends, Funnels, Retention cohorts, Segmentation, User-flow Sankey, and Top-K — all over raw events, filterable by any property.
Unified profiles
Anonymous events merge into one person on identify(). Traits like plan or email live on the profile and filter every insight, across devices.
Dashboards
KPI, line, area, bar, table, and Sankey tiles on one shared time window, with period-over-period comparison and threshold coloring.
Moving from Countly to Pug
Pug’s model is straightforward: events with properties, a person per user via identify(), and traits that filter every insight.
SDKs available today are Web (TypeScript), Flutter (Dart), and Node, with native Android, iOS, and React Native SDKs in active development — landing by launch while Pug is in open beta. Point your tracking calls at Pug, identify users where you already identify them in Countly, and anonymous history merges into a single profile. For setup steps and the API, see the SDKs page and the docs.
Analytics history doesn’t transfer between tools — Pug starts collecting the day you add the SDK, so most teams run it alongside Countly during cutover and switch once the dashboards they rely on are covered. There’s no rip-and-replace, and your raw events are exportable from day one.
Countly alternative — your questions
Is Pug a Countly alternative?
For product analytics, yes — and the difference is where the analysis lives. Trends, funnels, retention cohorts, segmentation, user flows, and per-person profiles are all in Pug’s single open edition, while Countly’s open edition covers events, dashboards, crashes, push, and remote config, with the deeper analysis in its paid editions.
Is Countly open source?
Its Lite edition is, with a caveat worth knowing: the license is AGPL-3.0 with a modified Section 7 that forbids removing Countly’s name and logo from the source or from any screen a user sees. That is a real restriction if you plan to embed or white-label it. Pug is plain AGPL-3.0 with no such clause.
Does Countly have funnels and retention?
Yes, in its paid editions. They are not in the open-source server: its plugins directory ships crashes, push, remote-config, star-rating, dashboards, alerts, and hooks, with no funnels, cohorts, retention, drill, or flows plugin. Check the current edition comparison before you plan around it.
Which is lighter to run?
Pug, by a wide margin. It self-hosts as one Go binary; Countly is a Node.js server on MongoDB with a plugin architecture on top. That difference matters most for a small team without someone to own the deployment.
Does Pug do crash reporting or push messaging?
No. If you want analytics, crashes, and messaging from one system, Countly does that and Pug does not — this is the clearest case on the page for staying where you are.
Can I use both?
Yes. Countly for the mobile platform features and the SDKs it covers, Pug for product analytics with identity and the six insight types. They are independent systems with independent pipelines.
Other Pug comparisons
Own your product analytics.
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