What is Segment used for?

Segment is a customer data platform that collects events from apps and websites, unifies profiles and sends the data to marketing, analytics and warehouse tools. It is a good fit for standardizing tracking across tools, building audiences for marketing campaigns and sending customer data to a warehouse.

Yes. Segment has a free plan, and paid plans start at $120 per month. A free trial is also available.

Is Segment open source?

No. Segment is proprietary (closed-source) software and can't be self-hosted. Open-source alternatives to Segment include Jitsu, RudderStack and Trench.

What are some alternatives to Segment?

Segment competes with mParticle, Tealium and Amplitude. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source Segment alternatives.

Segment: features, pricing and alternatives

About Segment

Segment, now part of Twilio, is a customer data platform. It collects behavioral and customer data from websites, mobile apps and servers, and routes it to the downstream tools a company already uses, so teams can instrument tracking once instead of wiring up every analytics or marketing integration separately.

Beyond collection, the Twilio Segment product line covers several areas: Connections for sending data to destinations, Warehouses for syncing into a data warehouse, Protocols for governing data quality, Unify for building unified customer profiles, and Engage for audiences and journeys. Twilio describes it as a way to gather, merge and enrich customer information regardless of the app or device it originates from.

Segment is a hosted, commercial service delivered on Twilio's platform rather than a self-hosted product. It is aimed at product, data and marketing teams that need consistent customer data across analytics, advertising and engagement tools.

Key features

Event collection from web, mobile and server sources
Routing data to marketing and analytics destinations
Data warehouse syncing
Data quality governance with Protocols
Unified customer profiles with Unify
Audiences and journeys with Engage

Good fit for

→Standardizing tracking across tools
→Building audiences for marketing campaigns
→Sending customer data to a warehouse

Tags: customer-data-platform; cdp; event-tracking; analytics; data-pipeline; marketing; identity-resolution

Segment: questions and answers

What is Segment used for?: Segment is a customer data platform that collects events from apps and websites, unifies profiles and sends the data to marketing, analytics and warehouse tools. It is a good fit for standardizing tracking across tools, building audiences for marketing campaigns and sending customer data to a warehouse.
Is Segment free?: Yes. Segment has a free plan, and paid plans start at $120 per month. A free trial is also available.
Is Segment open source?: No. Segment is proprietary (closed-source) software and can't be self-hosted. Open-source alternatives to Segment include Jitsu, RudderStack and Trench.
What are some alternatives to Segment?: Segment competes with mParticle, Tealium and Amplitude. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source Segment alternatives.