Originally answered on Quora: What does Mixpanel do that Google Analytics is incapable of doing?

I’m answering this question from the perspective of a long time Mixpanel and Google Analytics customer. I use both of them concurrently in the development of a social game and have a fairly good understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of each tool. I’d summarize it this way: Google Analytics is the swiss army knife that can do almost anything (with some effort and a few regular expressions) while Mixpanel is a tool focused on visitor-level event engagement. As with many things in life, however, it’s not that simple. While I’ve used the API from both tools, I’m sharing an opinion based on experience with each of their web-based reporting interfaces. This is my take on what Mixpanel does that Google Analytics can’t.
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