After spending over eight years in the SaaS world, analyzing millions of user sessions, and helping businesses scale their operations through data-driven insights, I’ve learned one hard truth: Analytics tools can either help you grow your business or waste countless hours of your time.

When Google forced us all to migrate from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4 (GA4), it raised some questions initially. Will it provide the same level of insights or will it offer more?

I bet it’s the same for every other SaaS business out there. There are many questions they probably have about GA4.

Trust me, I was there. But here’s the thing.

Now that I’ve successfully implemented GA4 across multiple SaaS platforms, I can tell the transition from UA to GA4 was not easy. After helping so many SaaS companies with GA4 implementation and turning their analytics into meaningful insights, I can tell you exactly where it shines and where it fails.

The transition wasn’t just a technical update thing – it was a complete shift in how we track and analyze user behavior.

Trust me when I am saying this isn’t just another comprehensive guide taken from Google’s extensive documentation. It’s a battle-tested playbook deal born from years of expertise, countless hours of troubleshooting, expensive mistakes, and real wins.

In this essay, we’ll dive deep into GA4, including its benefits and drawbacks and the steps to implement GA4, to help you understand what actually works and what doesn’t.

Benefits of Using Google Analytics 4 for SaaS

The migration from UA to GA4 for SaaS marks a significant leap in how business metrics are collected and analyzed. Google had been planning the release of GA4 for years before its official public announcement. After its release, GA4 became either the only choice or the most popular web analytics tool for Universal Analytics users.

Understanding its benefits is crucial for businesses looking to leverage data for strategic insights.

Free Analytics Software

The main reason GA4 became so popular among businesses is it’s completely free, which is pretty incredible considering the robust features it offers. For SaaS companies, especially startups and scaling businesses, this means a lot. Why spend tens and thousands of dollars on other paid tools when you can spend that much money rather on other critical areas of your business with GA4!

With paid options, you can expect to spend anywhere from $50 to $10,000 on your analytics budget alone, depending on your monthly event volume. GA4 eliminates the need for expensive third-party analytics solutions. This makes it an economically viable analytics solution for businesses of all sizes.

GA4 Enhanced Measurement

Gone are the days of setting up tracking for every little user interaction. With GA4’s Enhanced Measurement feature, you can collect more data out of the box. It allows you to automatically track key user behaviors and actions across your SaaS platform. With GA4, you can capture it all – from scrolls and outbound clicks to file downloads and video engagement, and everything in between.

Tracking these events would require additional setup to measure in Universal Analytics. However, GA4 captures it all with minimal setup. This automatic event-tracking feature not only saves you time but also makes sure you don’t miss out on valuable user insights that could slip through the cracks.

By properly setting up custom events in GA4, you can get meaningful insights into how users interact with your product and its features. 

Cross-Device Tracking

We live in a fast-paced world where people are constantly hopping between their laptop, smartphone, and tablet devices. GA4’s User ID parameter helps you piece together these interactions into a cohesive user story.

Unlike UA, which could track only website data, GA4 allows you to track the same users across multiple devices.

GA4’s cross-device tracking across platforms provides a holistic view of user behavior so you can finally understand how your customers actually interact with your SaaS product across devices. This way, you can perform a more accurate user behavior analysis and make informed business decisions.

GA4 Explorations

GA4 for SaaS offers robust custom reporting features called Explorations that go beyond standard reports to help you understand better about your users’ behavior. It basically turns complex data analysis into an intuitive, drag-and-drop experience. You can visualize data, apply filters, follow user journeys, and uncover key patterns and trends – your insights are just a few clicks away. 

Want to learn more about your user retention patterns? Drop in a cohort analysis. Curious how you can convert prospects to leads? Create a SaaS conversion funnel exploration. The possibilities are endless.

Machine Learning and Predictive Metrics

GA4 helps you understand your customers’ journey better by bringing Google machine learning capabilities to the fold. By analyzing your historical data and patterns, GA4 can predict the future behavior of your users. With predictive metrics, you can predict future revenue streams and potential churn risks based on data.

These metrics aren’t just fancy numbers; they are actionable insights that you can use to understand your target user’s pain points and address potential issues before they impact your bottom line.

Native BigQuery Integration

For the data enthusiasts and analysts in your team, GA4’s native BigQuery integration works like a wonder. BigQuery is considered one of the gems of the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) tailor-made for analytics workloads. This connection allows you to export raw data directly to BigQuery, which opens up a world of advanced SaaS analytics possibilities.

Whether you want to perform a complex cohort analysis, create custom machine learning models, or combine GA4 data with other data sources, the GA4 BigQuery integration assists you with an in-depth analysis of business performance and user interactions.

Refer to our article to learn how to connect GA4 to BigQuery.

GA4 & Google Ads Audiences

Let’s accept it – not every visitor of your website converts on their first visit. But the good news? You can link GA4 to Google Ads and turn these missed opportunities into conversions. Audiences in GA4 are like a group of users who share the same attributes, and you can show ads to them.

You can create highly targeted audience segments based on user behavior and needs, which you can use for your paid marketing campaigns. By linking GA4 to Google Ads, you can divert your advertising budget on the most promising prospects, whether it’s re-engaging trial users who didn’t convert or targeting power users for upselling.

To properly understand how GA4 Audiences work, refer to our article  about how to link GA4 to Google Ads.

Drawbacks of Using GA4 for SaaS

During the beta testing of GA4, many marketers and analysts were skeptical about it. After Google completely replaced Universal Analytics with GA4, we had to switch to the new product. Now that the migration is completed, we are still wondering – will GA4 be the better version compared to its predecessor?   

While there are several benefits to GA4 over Universal Analytics, there are some downsides you need to account for in your analytics practices.

Limited Data Retention

One of the drawbacks of using GA4 for SaaS is its restrictive data retention policy. The new update allows for user-level data to be retained for 2 months to 14 months, which is the default setting. After that user data like user ID and user properties will be deleted. What does it mean for us? With only 14 months of data available, you’re essentially working with a small window of insights.

The time frame is too narrow compared to Universal Analytics properties, where the data is retained for 6 months.

While you can export data to BigQuery, this will require additional setup and potentially incur extra costs.

No Complete Real-Time View

GA4’s real-time reporting is subject to change over 48 hours. It depends on a standard data processing pipeline which typically updates every 24 to 48 hours. This means you cannot access the most recent data you see in your reports and explorations. During that time, the data in your reports might change.

This delay can be a big deal when you’re monitoring critical product launches, feature releases, or troubleshooting issues that require immediate attention.

Want to know more about it? Refer to our article about how you can see real-time data in GA4.

Sampling

One of the biggest drawbacks of GA4 is data sampling because it uses sampled data to reduce loading times. Data sampling is the practice of extracting meaningful insights from a larger data set by analyzing only a subset of that data. When your data volume crosses certain thresholds, GA4 starts sampling the data. This means you make decisions based on extrapolated estimates rather than actual data.

This becomes a problem for SaaS businesses, particularly in areas like conversion optimization or feature adoption analysis where precision is the key. This sampling problem might result in skewed insights and potentially expensive strategic mistakes.

(not set) is everywhere

(not set) value in Google Analytics 4 is a placeholder that indicates missing information in a specific dimension. This can compromise data quality and analysis. If you send events into GA4 via Measurement Protocol or API, you can’t automatically provide all event information collected by GA4. This becomes a serious problem, particularly when integrating with APIs or tracking custom events.

These undefined values pollute your standard reports and make it challenging for you to draw meaningful conclusions. This can result in incomplete or misleading analytics, especially for SaaS businesses that rely heavily on custom event tracking and API integrations.

Attribution Models

GA4 has only three attribution models:

• Data-driven model
• Paid and organic last click model
• Google paid channels last click model

Learn more about these attribution models in our article here – Google Analytics 4 attribution models.

Most modern SaaS businesses often deal with lengthy, multi-touch customer journeys that would require more sophisticated attribution modeling. While attribution in GA4 is a powerful tool for modern marketers, GA4’s limited options could be overly simplistic for complex SaaS sales cycles.

With no access to diverse attribution models like first-touch, liner, or time decay, you might miss out on crucial insights about the customer acquisition process.

Mixpanel, on the other hand, offers 9 attribution models to help you attribute conversion credit to multiple touchpoints in the customer journey.

“User Explorer” report is incomplete

The User Explorer report in GA4 doesn’t show complete individual user journeys and behavioral analysis. For instance, it shows “page_view” events, but you can’t see their page URLs. It becomes challenging to understand specific user patterns and troubleshoot issues. This is not an ideal scenario for SaaS businesses that require in-depth user-level analytics.

While you can use BigQuery for this, it usually takes some getting used to because not everyone knows how it works. Mixpanel offers comprehensive user-level analytics, such as session recordings, detailed event timelines, etc.

Lack of Robust Reporting for SaaS

While GA4’s reporting framework is powerful, it’s primarily designed to cater to e-commerce and content-focused websites rather than SaaS companies. This means you’ll need external tools or complex custom configurations to track key SaaS-specific metrics like churn rate, MRR, ARR, feature adoption, user engagement, etc.

If you want to know more about e-commerce tracking in GA4 and how to enable it, we’ve got it covered.

Purpose-built SaaS analytics platforms like Baremetrics and ChartMogul provide deeper, more granular insights into the health of your business and the behavior of your customers right out of the box.

Steeper Learning Curve

The complexity of its interface and setup cannot be understated – the updated reporting and measurement functionalities in GA4 make navigating and accessing information quite difficult. It could take weeks or probably months to fully understand and effectively use all its features. Learning GA4 can be a bit challenging, considering the volume of data.

For many SaaS teams, particularly those without dedicated analytics resources, the steeper learning curve means significant investment of time and effort.

Mixpanel is quite an intuitive tool that requires less technical expertise and is relatively easy to use. Wondering if you should choose Mixpanel or GA4 for your SaaS analytics? Our detailed Mixpanel vs. GA4 article compares the two tools across several key categories to help you make an informed decision.

Still sticking with GA4, or is it time to explore other analytics platforms?

If you’ve read through the drawbacks mentioned above and are still reading, you’re probably wondering: “Should I choose GA4 for my SaaS analytics?” It’s a tough decision.

After assisting dozens of SaaS companies successfully migrate to GA4, I can tell you one thing: it’s not about whether GA4 is good or bad – it’s about whether GA4 is the right fit for your SaaS business.

I totally get it. I mean some of my clients still use GA4, mainly because it’s free and integrates well with their Google Ads campaign. For many others, it didn’t work out well and they switched to Mixpanel. They realized they’d have to spend more time getting to understand GA4 than actually getting actionable insights from it.

Before we proceed further and get into the nitty gritty details of how to implement GA4 in your SaaS analytics, let’s pause for a moment. Are you sure Google Analytics 4 is the right tool for you?

The choice is yours – shall we continue with GA4 implementation and setup, or would you rather explore what Mixpanel has to offer for your SaaS?

If you need assistance or have questions about using Mixpanel for your SaaS, feel free to contact us. Our team works with these tools every day, so we can help you unlock the full potential of your product with our expert Mixpanel implementation services.

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How to implement Google Analytics 4 for your SaaS product? GA4 Implementation Checklist

So, you’ve decided to proceed with GA4 for your SaaS business analytics? But before you can start using GA4, you need to make sure you do it right the first time.

I’ve done this so many times, helping over 60 clients with their GA4 implementation. So, if you need any kind of assistance or are having a hard time migrating to GA4, we’ve got you covered. Contact us today to supercharge your marketing with our expert GA4 consulting and implementation services.

Here are the steps to follow when implementing GA4:

Define key metrics you want to measure for your SaaS product

While GA4 is the next evolution of analytics, the biggest mistake I see SaaS companies make is trying to dig into GA4 implementation without a clear measurement strategy. The metrics in GA4 are not just numbers; they tell a lot about how users interact with your product or website.

To simplify the process, we’ve developed a GA4 implementation checklist and detailed specification document to guide you in capturing every essential detail of your setup and achieving a seamless GA4 implementation. Just submit the form below to receive these valuable freebies directly in your inbox.

The companies that strategically map out their entire customer journey are the ones that succeed. First, you need to identify the critical touchpoints you need to measure.

• Acquisition metrics are among the most important GA4 metrics that measure how people find and enter your product. This tells you how you acquire new customers. Some of the most important acquisition metrics include traffic sources, new and returning visitors, sessions, landing page effectiveness, etc.
• Activation metrics measure the rate at which your customers reach the point where they understand your product’s value. It’s the moment that matters – when a visitor turns into a potential customer. Key events to track are leads, free trials, product signups, conversions, lifetime value, and more.
• Retention metrics measure how long your customers stick around and actively interact with your product. It helps you monitor your product’s performance over a specific period of time. Key metrics to track include active users, feature usage, churn and retention rate, feature adoption rate, stickiness ratio, etc.
• Referral metrics measure which websites drive traffic to yours. It shows which visitors land on your website through links from other websites, social media, or blogs. Google tracks this data as referral data. Key referral events include referral links, refer-a-friend invites, successful referral signups, etc.
• Revenue metrics are among the key performance indicators that measure the total revenue generated from purchases, advertising, and subscriptions on your website or app. It helps you evaluate your business performance. Key events to track include trial-to-paid conversions, first time purchases, monthly/annual recurring payments, customer lifetime value (LTV), etc.

Implement GTAG on your website/product/mobile apps

The most direct method of implementing GA4 into your website is to add the Global Site Tag (gtag.js) directly to your HTML code in the <head> of every page, considering you already have an existing Google Tag Manager account and it’s all set up on your site.

If you need some help setting up GTAG and connecting it with GA4, click here to know more.

This is your foundation – get it wrong, and everything falls apart. For mobile apps data, use Firebase SDK and make sure it’s properly linked to your GA4 property.

Activate GA4 Enhanced Measurement

This is one of GA4’s most powerful features designed to provide businesses with more comprehensive measurement capabilities. However, it’s also one of its most misunderstood. While it allows automatic tracking of common user touchpoints, you can’t just expect to enable all options blindly and sit back. Toggle off the settings you don’t need to avoid unnecessary data noise.

You need to configure it properly to yield the most actionable insights. For better results, you can configure:

• Scroll tracking for key pages
• File downloads tracking
• Outbound link clicks
• Site search tracking
• Video engagement metrics

Set Up Custom Events to Track User Behavior

Events in GA4 are specific interactions that take place on your website or app. You can track these events to capture data about user interactions. Out-of-the-box tracking will only get you so far. A well-structured custom event framework is what separates insightful analytics from data chaos.

For instance, you can create a custom event to track how many views you received from a specific web page. Remember, custom events should not match those already defined by Google.

That being said, you can create custom events in GA4 using two ways: using Google Tag Manager or in the GA4 interface using direct code implementation. The latter is a convenient method because it’s relatively simpler, but this method is not as comprehensive as using Google Tag Manager to create custom events.

Here’s how you can create GA4 custom events using using Google Tag Manager: 

1. Go to your Google Tag Manager account, click “Tags” > “New” and select “Google Analytics: GA4 Event”
2. Choose your GA4 configuration tag and enter your Custom Event name
3. Select your GA4 in the settings drop-down menu and select “manually set ID” if you haven’t created one earlier
4. Add any event parameters you want to track, click “Triggering” to set when the event fires
5. Test your setup using GTM Preview mode and GA4’s DebugView to make sure it works
6. Submit your changes in GTM and wait for 24 hours to see your data in GA4 reports

Here’s how you can create GA4 custom events in the GA4 interface:

1. Go to Admin > Events page, click “Create Event” and then click “Create”
2. Enter a name for your custom event
3. Set “Matching Conditions” to tell GA4 what kind of event you’re looking for
4. Click “Parameter Configuration” if you wish to modify or add custom parameters
5. Save your event

Configure User ID tracking

How can you track your users and collect their data in GA4? User ID is one of the powerful features of GA4 that allows you to identify users who visit your website. It provides a unified, comprehensive view of user interactions across platforms and devices. Without it, you’re essentially tracking fragments of user journeys instead of complete stories.

The user ID can be assigned manually or generated automatically by GA4. There are several options available when it comes to setting up User ID tracking in GA4, such as:

• Push the User ID to the data layer
• Fetch the User ID from cookies
• Use DOM scraping
• Use JavaScript variable
• Implement User ID using Google Tag Manager

To learn more about each of these methods, read our comprehensive guide on how to set up GA4 User ID tracking.

Proceed with Subscription/Revenue Tracking

The GA4 data model is based on an events-driven approach, meaning you should focus on tracking and analyzing user behavior through events rather than relying solely on traditional web analytics metrics like sessions and page views. It’s more than that. You need to start making informed decisions to know where to spend your budget.

One of the best ways to do that is to use revenue tracking in GA4. Unlike e-commerce, SaaS revenue patterns are complex. Recurring monthly and annual payments, upgrades and downgrades, and trial conversions create a web of transactions that UA wasn’t primarily designed to handle.

If your SaaS product has an e-commerce component, GA4 can help you track purchases, revenue, and other vital metrics by implementing e-commerce events. It allows you to monitor the purchase behavior of your users, so you can make data-driven decisions which help you stay ahead of the curve.

Integrate your GA4 Property with Third-Party Tools

In today’s competitive SaaS landscape, your analytics tool needs to play nicely with your entire tech stack. One of GA4’s biggest advantages is its native integration with the Google ecosystem.

GA4 syncs seamlessly with Google Ads for conversion, Search Console for organic performance insights, BigQuery for advanced data analysis, and so on. Proper integration isn’t about connecting systems – it’s about creating a cohesive data-first ecosystem that enhances your decision-making capabilities.

Additionally, integrating GA4 with other tools such CRM systems, customer support tools, and email marketing platforms can help you get a broader picture of your business analytics. With more data, you can create targeted marketing campaigns based on user behavior and needs. Remember to test each integration thoroughly and set up proper data filters to maintain clear data flows.

Where to learn how to use Google Analytics for SaaS?

After helping several companies with GA4 implementation and setup, I can tell you one thing: it’s one thing to understand implementation instructions, but mastering GA4 is nothing less than a challenge. 

Our comprehensive GA4 implementation guide (e-book) walks you through the entire process with real-world examples and solutions to common problems. This guide is perfect for business owners and digital marketers looking to implement GA4 on their websites and grow their businesses’ bottom line.

We regularly publish detailed tutorials and case studies on our blog to offer useful insights to our readers. Contact us to schedule a consultation call with our expert team to gain personalized insights tailored to the unique needs of your SaaS business.

Wrapping Up

As technology continues to evolve, it becomes essential to stay ahead of the curve and use all the powerful tools available at your disposal. Implementing GA4 is crucial for any SaaS business and website owner looking to gain valuable insights into their online activities, user behavior, and marketing effectiveness.

GA4 offers more capabilities for SaaS companies with its advanced tracking capabilities and comprehensive data analysis features.

This detailed guide is designed to equip beginners and professionals alike with all the necessary knowledge and skills to navigate the complex landscape of Google Analytics 4. Whether you’re a business owner, digital marketer, analyst, or just curious about data analytics, this article will help you make the most of GA4. We’ve also provided best practices to make sure you have a smooth GA4 implementation.

To learn more about GA4, you can read our blogs and books to uncover actionable insights that can drive informed decision making. Additionally, you can enroll in our GA4 courses (free and paid) that are a good fit for anyone looking to test the waters of GA4.

Frequently Asked Questions