Overview
Events are the core of Mixpanel's Data Model. All events have a name, a timestamp, and a user ID. Events can optionally have a set of properties, which describe the event in more detail.
- If you're familiar with databases, events are like tables and properties are like columns.
- If you're familiar with Google Analytics, events are like hits and properties are like dimensions.
Examples
- A
Page Viewed
event might have a property calledPage URL
, which is set to the URL of the page that was viewed. - A
Signed Up
event might have a property calledSignup Type
, which indicates whether the signup wasorganic
vsreferral
. - A
Song Played
event might have a property calledSong Name
, which is set to the name of the song that was played. - A
Order Completed
event might have a property calledItems
, which is a list of objects, each of which contains details about an item, like its name, category, and price.
Use cases
You can filter, breakdown, and aggregate your events by their properties to answer more questions:
- Which pages do users look at before they visit the pricing page?
- How many Signups did I get that were organic vs referral?
- Which Song Name is most popular among my users?
- How many Orders contain shoes? What is the sum total price that users paid for shoes in the last month?
Best Practices
Keep Events Generic
We recommend keeping event names generic and using properties for all context. For example:
- Instead of tracking events called
Home Page Viewed
andPricing Page Viewed
, track aPage Viewed
event with aPage Name
property set to/home
or/pricing
. - Instead of tracking
Blue Button Clicked
orCheckout Button Clicked
, trackButton Clicked
with aColor
property set toBlue
andButton Name
set toCheckout
.
Name Events and Properties Consistently
We recommend having a consistent naming convention for your events and properties. For example:
- Use camel case for your event names.
- Use the
(Object) (Verb)
format for event names. Like "Song Played" or "Page Viewed".
Avoid Creating Event or Property Names Dynamically
For example, don't create an event name like Purchase (11-01-2019)
. Instead, create an event called Purchase and have some property (eg: Return Date
) set to the dynamic value 11-01-2019
).
FAQ
What types of data can I send as properties?
Mixpanel accepts arbitrary JSON as properties, including strings, numbers, booleans, lists, and objects. See our API docs (opens in a new tab) for more details.
What are the limits of events and properties?
We don't have a limit on the total number of events you can send to Mixpanel, but it will factor into your pricing (opens in a new tab).
We have a soft limit of 2000 distinct event names in a 30 day window. If you send more event names, we'll still ingest them, but those event names will not be indexed and will not appear in our autocomplete menus.
Each event can have up to 2000 properties. Properties can be at most 255 characters in length (longer strings are truncated).