What You Need to Know About Segment Alternatives

For B2C and B2B companies alike, finding ways to access real-time data from one source has proved to be one of the most significant data integration and usage challenges. Collecting data is easy enough, but integrating it in one single location and using that data for enabling better customer experiences isn’t so easy.

This is where CDPs come into play. A CDP, or a customer data platform, is a popular tool that helps solve the problem of data accessibility for businesses. These tools help collect and integrate data in one place and then send that data to your company’s departments. These departments can then use this data to practice operational analytics and improve business.

When it comes to finding the right CDP, there are a lot of options. This guide breaks down Segment, how it works, and other CDP options so you can find the best tool for your business. Keep reading to learn everything you need to know!

What is Segment?

Segment is increasing in popularity as a CDP solution. It’s a SaaS platform that enables companies to gather and integrate data from various sources like apps, websites, and more. In addition, it simplifies the process of collecting this information and saves users time so they can create personalized experiences for customers instead.

Segment syncs various data to multiple SaaS tools and data warehouses. It sends your departments messages about specific data so your business can understand what’s going on and how to act. It also provides an API library with simple code and generates notifications based on user interaction.

Segment is mainly used by marketing and engineering departments because it helps gather data about customer profiles and behavior and helps save engineers time writing integrations as Segment has its own SaaS tools in the API library. Segment also offers a warehouse feature that can send information to data warehouses. There are many options to resell white label SaaS products that you should consider.

Why Look for an Alternative?

As with most platforms, Segment provides many benefits and advantages, but it also comes with many disadvantages. It can get the job done when it comes to moving data from your sources to one system, but there are a few reasons why using a different tool may be better for you and your company.

First, Segment doesn’t always provide a big picture view of your customer data. For example, it may collect billing information and product information concerning your customer, but it has trouble putting this data together.

In addition to this, Segment is unable to work with SQL. In other words, you can’t use the language you normally would communicate with a database. This means the data must be raw to be used, which hinders how each department receives and interprets customer information.

Another potential issue with Segment is that it only sustains one account for each user. For some businesses, this won’t work because of the volume and unique business model they use. Using Segment doesn’t allow you to have complete control over your data stack as a security advantage and instead turns it into a liability.

All in all, this tool has some disadvantages. Whether you’ve tried Segment for your business and are unhappy with the results or are considering your options, it may help to weigh some of the alternatives available. Let’s take a closer look below.

Best Segment Alternatives

Below are a few of the best Segment Alternatives.

  • mParticle: This alternative is designed for larger, enterprise companies and works as a customer data infrastructure rather than a CDP. It helps with data integration, governance, and target audience management. mParticle does an excellent job with customer support and offers more capabilities to track apps and integrate data.
  • Tealium: This alternative is geared more towards marketers rather than engineers. It’s also designed for bigger companies. This platform offers flexibility and integrates multiple platforms that other options don’t.
  • Lytics: This alternative is straightforward, streamlined, and designed for marketers rather than engineers. With excellent UI and machine learning capabilities and an API framework, Lytics updates in real-time.

These top three alternatives to using Segment are worth looking into for your company, especially if you’re looking for a platform geared towards marketers. To learn more about other Segment alternatives, check out this resource!

Using Your Data Warehouse as Your CDP

There are still many issues that arise from these alternatives mentioned above. If you’re not interested in using the other options, our team offers another solution. CDPs are designed to store customer data and only customer data.

Your data warehouse stores all of the unique data from various sources of your business, from customers to employees, to finances and more. While your marketing team can decide on marketing from customer data, your other departments will need access to other data to practice operational analytics adequately. Using reverse ETL, our tool helps take real-time data and send it to the departments that matter. This eliminates the need for Segment or a Segment alternative.

Learn more today!