B2B SaaS with Enterprise Data Residency Requirements

ANALYTICS TOOL RECOMMENDATION

Research Date: January 19, 2026

Your Profile:

• Team: 3-person B2B SaaS team with full-stack developer
• Scale: 15,000 MAU, $25K MRR (growth stage)
• Budget: $150/month for analytics
• Technical capacity: Full-stack dev available (can self-host if needed)
• Privacy requirements: Enterprise customers need data residency
• Primary needs: Feature adoption tracking + retention cohorts

RECOMMENDATION: PostHog Cloud (EU Region)

Pricing: $100-150/month estimated at your scale

Why PostHog Cloud (EU) for You:

1. Data residency solved: PostHog Cloud EU hosts all data in Frankfurt (AWS eu-central-1), enabling you to definitively answer enterprise customer questions about data location. This is your killer requirement.

2. Within budget: At 15K MAU with typical B2B event volumes (estimated 2-3M events/month), PostHog costs $100-150/month. You stay within your $150 budget while getting enterprise-grade features.

3. Built-in retention cohorts: PostHog has native retention analysis, lifecycle cohorts (new/returning/dormant/resurrected), and stickiness tracking.

4. Feature adoption tracking: Built-in funnel analysis and feature flag analytics let you track feature rollouts and adoption rates without custom implementation.

5. Technical team advantage: Your full-stack dev can implement custom events and configure dashboards. PostHog’s developer-first approach means your team won’t waste time fighting the tool.

6. No surprise pricing: Unlike Mixpanel (event-based with 40% Group Analytics surcharge), PostHog has transparent usage-based pricing with volume discounts.

7. B2B-ready: Group analytics (account-level tracking) is included in all paid tiers.

Compliance Story for Enterprise Customers:

“We use PostHog Cloud EU, which means all analytics data is stored in Frankfurt, Germany (AWS eu-central-1 region). Data never leaves the EU. We maintain full GDPR compliance and can provide data export/deletion on request within 30 days. PostHog is SOC 2 Type II certified and provides enterprise-grade security controls.”

SETUP GUIDE

Total Time: 30-45 minutes

Step 1: Sign Up for PostHog Cloud EU (5 minutes)

1. Go to posthog.com/pricing
2. Click “Get started” and select EU Cloud region (critical for data residency)
3. Create account (starts with generous free tier: 1M events, 5K recordings, 1M feature flags monthly)
4. Note your Project API Key from Settings

Step 2: Install SDK in Your Application (10 minutes)

For web application:

npm install posthog-js

Initialize in your app (frontend):

import posthog from 'posthog-js'

posthog.init('YOUR_PROJECT_KEY', {
  api_host: 'https://eu.posthog.com',  // EU region!
  autocapture: true,
  capture_pageview: true,
  capture_pageleave: true
})

For backend API (Node.js example):

npm install posthog-node

import { PostHog } from 'posthog-node'

const client = new PostHog(
  'YOUR_PROJECT_KEY',
  { host: 'https://eu.posthog.com' }
)

Step 3: Identify Users and Groups (5 minutes)

On user login, identify them:

posthog.identify(
  user.id,  // unique user ID
  {
    email: user.email,
    name: user.name,
    plan: user.subscription_plan,
    signup_date: user.created_at
  }
)

Critical for B2B: Set up group tracking (company/account level):

posthog.group('company', company.id, {
  name: company.name,
  plan: company.plan,
  mrr: company.mrr,
  employee_count: company.size,
  industry: company.industry
})

Step 4: Track Feature Usage Events (15 minutes)

// When user accesses a feature
posthog.capture('feature_accessed', {
  feature_name: 'advanced_reporting',
  feature_category: 'analytics',
  user_plan: user.plan
})

// When user completes feature activation
posthog.capture('feature_activated', {
  feature_name: 'advanced_reporting',
  time_to_activation: 120  // seconds
})

// For retention-critical actions
posthog.capture('core_action_completed', {
  action_type: 'report_generated',
  report_type: 'monthly_summary'
})

YOUR TRACKING PLAN

Auto-Captured Events (No Code Required):

• Page views
• Button clicks
• Form submissions
• Session duration

Custom Events to Implement:

Feature Adoption:

posthog.capture('feature_accessed', { feature_name: 'X' })
posthog.capture('feature_activated', { feature_name: 'X' })
posthog.capture('feature_churned', { feature_name: 'X' })  // 30 days no use

Retention Indicators:

posthog.capture('core_action_completed', { action_type: 'X' })
posthog.capture('weekly_active', {})  // trigger on first action each week
posthog.capture('power_user_action', {})  // define your power user criteria

Monetization Signals:

posthog.capture('upgrade_prompt_shown', { from_plan: 'X', to_plan: 'Y' })
posthog.capture('upgrade_completed', { from_plan: 'X', to_plan: 'Y' })
posthog.capture('feature_limit_hit', { feature: 'X', plan: 'Y' })

WHY NOT OTHER TOOLS

Mixpanel:
Pricing issue: At 15K MAU with B2B event volumes (~2-3M events/month), Mixpanel Growth plan costs ~$280-400/month. Add Group Analytics (required for B2B account-level tracking) at 40% surcharge = $392-560/month. This exceeds your budget by 2.6-3.7x.
Data residency: Mixpanel doesn’t offer EU data residency on Growth plan. Enterprise plan required (starts $20K/year).

Amplitude:
Pricing issue: Amplitude Plus starts at $49/month but only covers up to 300K MTUs with limited features. For 15K MAU with full B2B features, you’d need Growth or Enterprise tier: $500-2,000+/month.
Data residency: Enterprise-only feature.

June.so:
Pricing issue: June’s Growth tier is $499/month minimum - far beyond your $150 budget.

Self-Hosted PostHog:
Technical overhead: Requires DevOps time ($30-50/hour x 4-8 hours/month = $120-400 value) plus $50-150/month infrastructure.

Plausible / Fathom:
Feature gap: These are page-view analytics tools, not product analytics platforms. They can’t track feature adoption, retention cohorts, or account analytics.

COST PROJECTION

Current Scale (15K MAU):
Estimated events: 2-3M/month
PostHog Cost: ~$100-150/month

At 2x Scale (30K MAU):
Estimated events: 5-6M/month
Monthly total: $240-300/month

At 5x Scale (75K MAU):
Estimated events: 12-15M/month
Monthly total: $550-700/month

MIGRATION PATH

Day 1 Morning: Set up PostHog account (EU region), install SDK, deploy to staging
Day 1 Afternoon: Implement user identification and group tracking
Day 2 Morning: Add custom events for top 5 features
Day 2 Afternoon: Create retention and feature adoption dashboards
Day 3: Deploy to production, monitor data flow, iterate on events

IMPLEMENTATION CHECKLIST

Week 1: Core Setup

• Sign up for PostHog Cloud EU (verify Frankfurt region)
• Install posthog-js SDK in frontend
• Install posthog-node SDK in backend
• Implement user identification on login
• Implement group tracking (company/account level)
• Deploy to staging environment
• Verify events flowing to PostHog

Week 2: Event Instrumentation

• Add feature_accessed events for top 5 features
• Add feature_activated events for top 5 features
• Add core_action_completed events for retention tracking
• Add monetization signal events
• Deploy to production

Week 3: Dashboards & Analysis

• Create retention cohort dashboard
• Create feature adoption dashboard
• Create company health dashboard (group analytics)
• Set up funnel: Signup -> Activation -> Retained User
• Configure Slack alerts for at-risk accounts

FINAL RECOMMENDATION

Primary choice: PostHog Cloud (EU) at $100-150/month

Why: Hits every requirement - data residency, retention cohorts, feature adoption tracking, B2B group analytics, within budget. Your full-stack dev can implement in <1 week. Enterprise customers get a clear, defensible answer on data location.