Segment vs. mParticle feature and pricing comparison
Customers today expect personalized experiences. They expect your communication to be relevant to their particular needs and delivered at just the right moment. Companies looking to deliver on those expectations must develop a deep understanding of each customer and have the tools to turn those insights into action.
For many companies, that goal breaks down somewhere between accessing customer data and unifying it so they can turn it into action. So much of the information they have on their customers is siloed—making a comprehensive picture of each customer virtually impossible. That is, unless you have a customer data platform (CDP).
A CDP brings all your data together and delivers it to the tools you need to activate it. It empowers you to provide the personalized experiences your customers expect—when they expect them.
Segment and mParticle are two well-established CDP providers, each bringing its own approach to data access and unification. Read on for a comparison of their key features and pricing, and to learn how Customer.io’s Data Pipelines CDP measures up.
Here’s what we’ll cover:
- What is Segment?
- What is mParticle?
- Segment vs. mParticle: A deep dive on key features
- Segment vs. mParticle: A deep dive on pricing
- Customer.io: A Segment and mParticle alternative
What is Segment?
Segment offers a customer data analytics and management solution that helps you put that data to use in real time. The platform ingests data from a variety of touch points and sends it to multiple tools, providing you with a holistic view of your customers so you can take action. Built with markers in mind, Segment’s no-code functionality makes it easy to use without tapping heavily into developer resources.
Top Segment features:
- Profiles Sync, which automatically syncs customer profiles to your data warehouse
- Real-time audiences (with Twilio Engage product)
- Data capture, transfer, integrations, and masking
- Automatic data backup
- Customer tracking across channels and devices
What is mParticle?
mParticle is a CDP designed and built to simplify how you collect data using secure APIs and SDKs. Intended to accelerate business growth, mParticle captures information once, unifies it, and forwards it to multiple outputs while allowing you to filter and transform data for specific business needs. mParticle is built on top of end-to-end streaming architectures and works systematically to tag, cleanse, dedupe, and standardize data. It then maps events and moves attributes from diverse sources to a single schema.
Top mParticle features:
- Warehouse Sync API to enrich user profiles
- AI-generated user attributes
- Predictive audiences
- Identity resolution
- Customer journey analytics
Segment vs. mParticle: a deep dive on key features
Both Segment and mParticle offer a host of features that collect and unify data for easier activation, but they take different approaches in a number of ways. Let’s look at a few key features in detail.
Key feature #1: Data sources and destinations
Segment allows you to pull data from over 200 types of sources: event streams, cloud apps, and reverse ETL. And it offers a catalog of nearly 400 destinations, including tools for advertising, analytics, CRM, marketing automation, and more. You can also build custom integrations for any third-party application.
With Segment’s paid Team plan, you can capture and send data to as many sources and destinations as you like. But you can only only choose two sources and destinations on the Free plan—a limitation that hinders your ability to leverage data effectively without upgrading.
mParticle has a more limited set of platform-native integrations: 250 source and destination options in total. Data is retrieved using an mParticle SDK, and custom sources can be created with the platform’s Events API; you’ll need developer resources to set up either option. You can also create custom destinations, but only within the mobile app ecosystem. You’re limited to three sources and five destinations during the free trial, but have no limits with the paid plan.
Key feature #2: Data warehouse destinations
Both Segment and mParticle include data warehouses as destinations, but there’s nuance in what’s supported and available by plan.
Segment offers native integrations with six popular data warehouses: Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery, Snowflake, Azure SQL Data Warehouse, Postgres, and IBM Db2. You can also use Segment’s own data warehouse. But, you only get one warehouse destination on the free and Team plans. If you need more than that, you’ll have to upgrade to the most expensive Business plan. Sync frequency also varies by plan: daily on the free tier, twice per day with the Team plan, and on a customized schedule for the Business plan.
mParticle supports fewer and different data warehouse destinations, including Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery, Snowflake and Apache Kafka. With this limited selection, the differences between the free trial and paid plan are essentially indistinguishable: the free trial provides three data warehouse destinations and unlimited destinations when you upgrade to paid. Sync frequency is much more rapid than Segment; the default is every 15 minutes, but may be faster depending on which data warehouse you use.
Key feature #3: Reverse ETL
Segment Unify, the platform’s reverse ETL function, provides 500,000 reverse ETL records per month on the free plan and one million records per month on the Team plan. By using their Profiles Sync feature, you can use reverse ETL to automatically sync customer profiles from your data warehouse to any destination, as well as replay past syncs.
mParticle’s reverse ETL solution, Warehouse Sync, is built to add even more functionality to the traditional reverse ETL flow you may be familiar with. With many-to-many data streams and AI-powered predictions, this feature is designed for warehouse-centric and data-mesh architectures. It’s included in both the free trial and paid plan.
Key feature #4: User seats
Segment offers 10 user seats on the free and Team plans, which may be limiting for growth-stage companies. Upgrading to the highest-tier Business plan gives you unlimited seats.
mParticle’s paid plan provides 200 user seats across 50 separate workspaces, though you can request adjustments to those limits if needed.
Segment vs. mParticle: a deep dive on pricing
Segment pricing
Segment bases its pricing structure on monthly tracked users (MTUs)—the number of unique individuals using your website or app.
- Free: This plan covers you for up to 1,000 visitors per month and 500,000 reverse ETL records. You can use two data sources and one warehouse destination.
- Team: Upgrading to this paid tier covers you for up to 10,000 visitors and one million reverse ETL records per month. You also have access to unlimited data sources and Segment’s public API. Starting at a monthly fee of $120, this plan scales with additional charges of $10-$12 for every 1,000 monthly visitors more.
- Business: This tier offers the broadest set of features and is intended for enterprises that experience a high volume of monthly users. Pricing is tailored to your business..
With Segment, it can be a challenge to predict costs, as the pricing increases based on monthly user volume. This can lead to fluctuated billing, which might be tricky for for smaller or rapidly growing organizations. Certain features also come with add-on costs, even on the Business tier.
mParticle pricing
mParticle offers a unique “composable” pricing model in which cost is tied to how you use the platform. You estimate your data usage, pre-purchase credits, and spend them on any features and data use as you go. Notable features of this model are tiered events: you can control how different data points are processed by the platform and receive discounted credits based on lower-value event types.
- Free trial: mParticle offers a free 60-day trial that includes one million events per month, 10,000 MTUs, and three data warehouse connections. Startups can receive up to one year of free access.
- Value-based pricing: Once you upgrade from your free trial, full flexibility kicks in with mParticle’s credits-based system. Purchase the number of credits you expect to need and use them as you go on events, MTUs, data inputs, destinations, and warehouse connections, plus access to all the platform’s features. The more credits you buy at once, the lower the unit rate.
The aim of mParticle’s pricing structure is to free customers from overage fees and wasted licenses, improve flexibility and control, and to ensure you pay for only the components you use. That said, estimating the amount of credits you’ll need can be tough, especially if you’re growing rapidly or experiencing unexpected spikes in data usage. Plus, buying credits up front means you have to devote budget to your CDP before you start getting value from it.
Customer.io Data Pipelines: a Segment and mParticle alternative
Choosing the right CDP calls for careful consideration. While Segment and mParticle offer an array of features and benefits, you still might want to consider other options..
With a robust feature set and no limits on several vital criteria, Customer.io’s Data Pipelines just may be the solution you need to activate your data at scale.
Take a quick glance at how Data Pipelines compares:
| Data Pipelines Premium | Segment Team | mParticle | |
| Sources and destinations | Unlimited | Unlimited | Custom |
| Data warehouse destinations | Unlimited | 1 | Custom |
| Reverse ETL | Unlimited | 500,000 records/mo. | Custom |
| User seats | Unlimited | 10 | 200 |
| Monthly API calls | 10 million+ | Custom | Custom |
| Sync frequency | Every 15 sec. | 2x/day | Every 15 min. |
| Identity resolution | ✔️* | X | ✔️ |
| Destination filters | ✔️ | X | ✔️ |
| Single view of the customer | ✔️* | X | ✔️ |
| HIPAA compliance | ✔️ | X | X |
| Email support | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Chat support | ✔️ | X | X |
*Requires Customer.io Journeys
Now, let’s dive into a few of the key components that set Data Pipelines apart from its competitors.
Leverage all your data with unlimited sources and destinations
When it comes to moving data in and out of Data Pipelines, the sky’s the limit. With no limits on sources or destinations (including warehouses), customers on both the free and Premium plans can tap into the value of every single data point. And near-real-time syncing (every 15 seconds) ensures the intel you need is always up to date. Bonus? Customers on the Premium plan can replay historical data to any source.
Automate and sync easily with unlimited reverse ETL
Data Pipelines makes it easy to put your data to use with unlimited reverse ETL on every plan—no caps or extra charges. Automatically add or update people, objects, and relationships on whatever cadence you need. You can even trigger campaigns automatically when you sync your data.
Activate your data freely with millions of monthly API calls
With one million monthly API calls on the Data Pipelines free plan—and 10 million or more on the Premium tier—you have the freedom to activate your data without worrying about blowing your budget.
Invite your entire team with unlimited seats
Include everyone in your organization who needs to access your CDP.Data Pipelines offers unlimited user seats on every plan. You also get two workspaces on the free tier and as many as you’d like with the Premium plan.
Priced for enterprises, startups, and everything in between
Data Pipelines gives you two transparent, predictable pricing options without any unexpected add-on fees.
- Free: Access a rich menu of features built to easily centralize and activate your customer data, with one million monthly API calls, two workspaces, and unlimited sources, destinations, and user seats. Scale up with more API calls for no more than $0.0002 each.
- Premium: This tier starts at $1,000 per month and offers 10 million monthly API calls and unlimited workspaces. Built to scale, Premium provides custom pricing options based on your needs.
Flexibility and scalability are at the heart of Data Pipelines. Built to support the needs of a wide range of companies, including startups, growth-minded organizations, and large enterprises. Data Pipelines also integrates seamlessly with Customer.io’s messaging automation platform, Journeys. Together, they empower you to create the personalized, segmented experiences based on data that your customers already expect.
Ready to get more from your data with a fully-featured CDP that scales with your growth? You’re just a couple clicks away—sign up for free, no credit card necessary.