Event autocapture

Event autocapture collects user actions automatically once the tracking code is installed. Every click, page view and form submission is recorded, and you decide later which ones matter. This differs from manual tracking, where a developer must add code for each action you want to measure. Heap, Mixpanel, Segment, Google Analytics, Plausible Analytics and Microsoft Clarity are among the tools that offer forms of it, though each defines it differently.

The usual problem with analytics is that the question comes after the data. A marketer wonders how many people clicked a pricing button last quarter, and it was never tracked. Autocapture keeps that history, so you can define events retroactively without waiting for a developer.

It helps small teams and early products that cannot plan every measurement. The trade-offs are volume, noisy data and privacy. Capturing everything can collect personal information by accident, and it may make costs rise.

• Which interactions are captured automatically, and which still need code?
• Can you exclude sensitive fields, such as passwords and payment details?
• Can you define a named event afterwards and see its past data?
• How does capturing everything affect your event volume and plan limits?