Funnel vs. Supermetrics: A comparison guide

Supermetrics and Funnel both allow marketing teams to gather, store, and analyze data in a simple, flexible, and scalable way. Given the similar core function, choosing the right one for your business can be challenging.

In this article, we’ll compare two solutions—Supermetrics and Funnel—to help you pick the right tool for the job.

Navigate this post:

• Supermetrics overview
• Funnel overview
• Data source connectors
• Data destinations
• How does each solution scale with you?
• Data processing, storage, accuracy, and security
• Pricing
• The final verdict

Before a deeper comparison, let’s first look at a basic overview.

Supermetrics overview

Supermetrics empowers marketing teams to take complete ownership of their data. Unlike Funnel, Supermetrics offers the freedom to choose your data destination, allowing you to choose where you want to store your data  — Google Sheets, Looker Studio, data warehouses (BigQuery, Snowflake), or Supermetrics Storage — the decision is yours. Supermetrics prioritizes data security, utilizing robust encryption and never storing your data during transfers on third-party servers unless you ask us to.

Funnel overview

Even though Funnel and Supermetrics both offer the same core features, their functional model is different compared to each other. Unlike Supermetrics, Funnel uses a ‘managed data warehouse’ model. This means that Funnel stores all data transferred through its system on a third-party server. Then, once the data is on their server, they send it to the chosen destinations.

Now let’s delve deeper into the key areas of difference:

Funnel vs. Supermetrics: Data source connectors

When assessing data source connectors, there are two main questions to ask:

What platforms can I pull data from?

The platforms, or integrations, from which the user can pull in data and feed it to the destination are referred to as data source connectors.

You can find similar data source connectors from both Supermetrics and Funnel.

The connectors covered by Supermetrics can be broken down into the following groups:

• Paid media (including Facebook Ads, Google Ads, Amazon Ads and TikTok Ads)
• Web analytics (including Google Analytics, Google Analytics 4, and Adobe Analytics)
• Social media (including Facebook, Instagram, and X)
• SEO (including Google Search Console, Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business), and Ahrefs) 
• Ecommerce (including Shopify, Klaviyo, and Stripe)
• Mobile and app analytics (including Apple Public Data and Facebook Audience Network)
• Email (including Mailchimp)
• Sales (including Salesforce, Marketo, HubSpot, and CallRail)

Check out all the data sources Supermetrics integrates with. Additionally, with Supermetrics, you can submit feature or connector requests and follow the roadmap for in-progress and upcoming features.

While Funnel connects to significantly more platforms, our specialty at Supermetrics is marketing data. Rather than spreading ourselves thin, we focus on building the best connectors to different marketing platforms and ensuring you can get all the metrics and dimensions available in the platforms’ APIs.  

If you look at the connectors, many of Funnel’s connectors are categorized as ‘Custom,’ which was designed for the customer’s very specific needs and required to be configured separately. Also, it’s very important to look granularly into each connector, as many of the connectors offered by Funnel pull a limited number of metrics and dimensions—we’ll discuss more details in the next section.

What metrics and dimensions can I pull from those platforms?

The second aspect when assessing connectors is the type and quality granularity of data you can get.

At Supermetrics, we aim to deliver as much data as possible. In short, if the data is available through the API, we’ll make it available to you. You can pull various metrics and dimensions from each data source connector, allowing you to create the exact reports you need. 

Funnel pulls in fewer data points than Supermetrics. To compare the available data, let’s take three popular data sources and see what you can get with Supermetrics and Funnel.io.

Sometimes, you’ll find available fields through Supermetrics but not within a platform’s native reporting. Check out our documentation pages for a full breakdown of all the available fields for Supermetrics’ data source connectors.

No other product apart from Supermetrics gives us the level of data granularity and reporting possibilities that we need to make sure we’re efficient, spending enough time listening to our clients and keeping track of campaign progression.

Sam Caesar, Search Account Manager, Sleeping Giant Media

This means you’re more likely to set up your marketing report and dashboard with the granularity you or your clients want it to be with Supermetrics.

Funnel vs. Supermetrics: Data destinations

Now that you know what data you can get, it’s time to see where to take it. 

Where can I move my data?

Depending on your use cases, you may need different ways to access your data—on-demand or centralized. 

On-demand data for quick analysis and tactical and optimization decisions

Supermetrics helps you access on-demand data to make quick and ad-hoc decisions. For example, campaign optimization or budget pacing.

For on-demand use cases, you can bring data into:

• Spreadsheets: Google Sheets and Excel are great for quick, ad-hoc analysis.  Additionally, You can create calculations and pivot tables to visualize trends, monitor data, and gain insights.
• Data visualization: Looker Studio (Looker Studio) and Power BI are great for visualizing data. This will help you identify trends, compare performance, and effectively communicate your data story to your internal teams and clients.

For destinations like Google Sheets, Looker Studio, and Excel, we offer many pre-made reporting templates for most connectors.

With Funnel, we quickly noticed that they didn’t cover all the data sources we needed, and their pricing might also have been an issue for us.

Zach Cooper, Director of Analytics, A Cloud Guru

Centralized data storage for strategic and operational decisions

This is ideal for gaining deeper insights from historical data and complex reports for enterprises and agencies working with high data volumes.

You can also use Supermetrics to connect your data to data warehouses and data lakes like BigQuery, Snowflake, Azure, Redshift, and more. These storage solutions allow strategic decision-making with historical analysis, large-scale data exploration, and collaboration with data teams.

For data warehouses, we offer a standard schema to help you get started. Supermetrics also makes it easier to get started by enabling all of its connectors to be self-serve, which means you don’t need someone to set it up.

Build custom applications on top of Supermetrics

Additionally, we offer the Supermetrics API connector, which allows Supermetrics users to build custom transfer solutions to all BI tools, databases, and data warehouses that support JSON or CSV inputs. This means you can visualize data in a BI tool like Qlik or even power report in your own third-party applications.

Supermetrics also makes it easier to get started by enabling all of its connectors to be self-serve, which means you don’t need someone to set it up.  

Funnel also gives similar destinations except for Microsoft Excel and custom API—which can be used to connect BI tools, databases, or data warehouses that support JSON or CSV inputs.

Funnel vs. Supermetrics: How does each solution scale with you?

As your business grows, your data needs grow. Supermetrics understands this and offers solutions designed to empower your marketing data journey, no matter your team size.

For example, when you’re a small team with less complex marketing reporting needs, you can start with our self-serve products for Google Sheets, Excel, Looker Studio, and Power BI. When your analytics needs outgrow your spreadsheets, you can consider moving into a marketing data warehouse, or if you don’t have the technical expertise in-house, Supermetrics Storage is a great option. Or you want to get the best of both worlds by combining on-demand and centralized data. You can opt for Supermetrics Marketing Intelligence Cloud.

Funnel, on the other hand, stores data in its own data warehouse. This model can become restrictive if your needs outgrow its capabilities. Migrating to another platform later might be complex and time-consuming. 

In terms of customer base, Supermetrics has 15,000+ customers (and over 700k users), but Funnel only has around 2000+ customers. This large customer base helps us learn about their needs and develop them into our product. We also work with various use cases, so practically— it’s more likely with Supermetrics than Funnel that use cases similar to yours might have already been worked on before.

Funnel vs. Supermetrics: Data processing, storage, accuracy and security

How secure is my data using these platforms?

Supermetrics is committed to keeping your data secure. We don’t store your data. All we do is move it from your marketing platforms into destinations. 

On the other hand, Funnel stores all your data on its own servers and then connects and transfers it further to your destination. The transformation part in Funnel means that it cleans up, maps out, and groups your data before loading it to a reporting tool or data warehouse. 

Both Supermetrics and Funnel are SOC2 Type II and ISO certified, and they adhere to the data protection and privacy frameworks outlined in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).

We use fully encrypted caches to improve data delivery performance from certain data sources. Supermetrics does not sample your data, nor does it rename fields or change numbers. This means your data flows through as-is, meaning it should align with the numbers you see on the platform.

That’s why, with inscription and direct API connections, your data will be more secure with Supermetrics. With 750k users in 120 countries and global brands such as Dyson, Nestlé, and the BBC as our customers, you can rely on Supermetrics as your marketing data connector.

The synergy between Supermetrics and BigQuery is a powerful force. We can seamlessly access and analyze historical data alongside current data, providing a holistic view of our client’s marketing performance. This is particularly valuable during platform transitions like GA4, ensuring no valuable insights are lost during migration.

Sanjay Mayar, VP of Growth, Imajery

How will my data be processed using these platforms?

Data processing

Funnel’s data transformations follow a somewhat different logic than Supermetrics’, and data blending, in particular, can be easy to adopt as a small team with simple logic. Creating your own unique fields in the Funnel platform requires some knowledge of what you want to achieve and how to achieve it. 

When your data needs grow, you want to be able to manage your data transformations effortlessly and mix any created custom fields or blends. Also, as your data needs evolve, editing and managing any created data transformation must be as smooth as possible. With Supermetrics, the data transformation features are built for customization and to support your unique needs. 

Also, as you scale, it’s very important to decide if you want to commit to having all your core transformation logic on a third-party server that can’t be transferred even when you need to switch to any software from the Funnel. With large teams, it’s also important to consider the source and version control, as sometimes you might want to roll back to the previous version or check the source of the logic when working with data.

Supermetrics allows the users to modify, map, correct, or normalize the data extracted from data sources, and all the data transformations happen during the data transfer. Data gets only stored where you decide, whether that’s a reporting tool, data warehouse, or Supermetrics Storage.  

Data accuracy

Funnel’s managed data warehouse offers faster data refresh rates. As Funnel stores all the data on its own servers, it requires you to create data exports within its platform, specifying metrics and dimensions before pulling data into your reporting. This could be cached data from its system, potentially leading to outdated information being used for decision-making.  

Supermetrics offers a storage solution that can be toggled on or off. So you can choose which data, from which source you want to store, and which data is only transferred and encrypted to a reporting tool of your choice. This way, you have the option to rely on direct connections with privacy-sensitive data or non-aggregatable metrics such as reach but build your historical database at the same time, enabling a smooth process for reports requiring large data sets such as trend analysis or YoY reporting.   

Data storage

Funnel.io primarily stores your data within the US unless you purchase their Enterprise plan. Many countries and regions have strict data residency regulations. Supermetrics Storage, on the other hand, stores data only in the EU region, and as mentioned above, you get to decide which data gets stored, keeping you in charge. 

For instance, the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) mandates that user data from European citizens be stored within the EEA (European Economic Area). If your target audience or business operations fall under such regulations, Funnel.io’s default storage could lead to compliance violations unless you upgrade to their Enterprise plan.

Funnel vs. Supermetrics: Pricing

Funnel’s pricing plan looks attractive initially, but the price increases drastically with unexpected surges in usage and data flow.

Funnel uses a credit system called ‘FlexPoints’ as a unit of measurement. These FlexPoints are applied to packages, and if your use increases, you may need to purchase more FlexPoints to continue to use the system. This eventually becomes difficult for companies to budget their spending as you may never really know exactly how much you’re going to end up paying.

And because of their managed data warehouse, Funnel customers suffer from vendor lock-in. Once you start using Funnel, switching to any other vendor becomes hard, even if things change and you’d like to.

The managed data warehouse and data transformation logic also mean that once you start using Funnel, it becomes difficult to switch to any other tool, even if you’re looking to change.

With Supermetrics’ plans, you always know exactly how much you’ll pay and what the packages include. There are no surprise fees or price surges due to increased usage or credit systems.

Summary

We hope this comparison helps you understand whether Supermetrics or Funnel is the right product for you. 

If you’re looking for an easy way to build simple marketing reports for your clients or managers and are okay with the data stored in third-party warehouses, Funnel could be your best bet. But if you’re looking for a more comprehensive solution that offers greater detail, customization, and scale as you grow, Supermetrics will be a better fit for your needs.