Session Replay: Watch playbacks of user digital experiences

Mixpanel Session Replay provides the fastest way to gain a comprehensive understanding of your customers and make informed product decisions by combining both quantitative and qualitative insights.

While analyzing customer journeys using Mixpanel’s analytics, you can identify where customers drop off. Now, with Mixpanel Session Replay, you can quickly follow up by exploring why customers drop off.

Plan Availability

Session Replay is available for customers on Free, Growth, and Enterprise plans:

Customers must be on the latest Mixpanel plans to access free replays.

• For customers on an existing Free plan:
  • Switch your plan to the latest Free plan, which includes 1M monthly events and 10k session replays. You can make this switch directly from the pricing page.
• For customers on an existing Growth plan:
  • You’re on the latest plan if you purchased or edited your plan after April 2024. If you are not sure if your organization is using the latest plan, you confirm on the pricing page - if you see “Make the Switch” on the Growth plan, then you are on an older version.
  • You can make the switch to our latest plan directly from the pricing page.
• Enterprise customers should contact their Account Manager to determine their plan status.

Implementation

Session Replay is supported on three platforms: Web, iOS, and Android. You can use Session Replay with CDPs (e.g., Segment and mParticle) through the Web platform.

See our developer guides on implementing Session Replay for these platforms below:

Watching Replays

Replays can be viewed in three places:

1. From the User Profile page
2. From Mixpanel reports
3. On the Home page for your project

From User Profile page

In any user’s profile page, Click the “View Replays” button to watch replays from that user. From here, you will be taken to our Replay Player.

From Mixpanel reports

Click any point on a chart for Event, Funnel, and User Profile, and select “View Replays” to view replays that show that event being fired. From here, you will be taken to our Replay Player.

From the Home page

Find the Latest Replays card and click on individual replays to view them or click on “View All Replays” to see up to 100 of your latest replays.

Replay Player

The Replay Player allows you to watch replays, as well as:

• Expand the player to full-screen
• Copy a URL with or without a timestamp to share with your teammates
• Change the playback speed
• Automatically skip periods of the replay where user is inactive
• See events in the replay timeline
• Jump to different parts of the replay by clicking in the timeline

The Replay Feed on the left of the player also allows you to:

• Sort replays by recency, activity, or duration
• Search for replays by user’s name / email, replay date, user ID, or the name of an event in the replay
• See a feed of events that occurred during each replay

Heatmaps (Beta)

Heatmaps help you visualize user interactions on your web application, showing where users click the most. This feature enables teams to quickly identify areas of high engagement and friction, helping to optimize user experiences and improve conversion rates.

Our initial version of Heatmaps is a click map, which means it specifically tracks clicks on individual site elements rather than just overlaying general activity on a page. This provides more precise insights into which modals, dropdowns, or features that users engage with the most. Future versions may also include hovers, scroll depth, and other interaction types.

Enabling Heatmaps does not affect billing. They are included with the Session Replay add-on and do not generate additional billable events.

How It Works

Heatmaps are powered by Session Replay data and automatically capture click interactions when enabled. Users can generate a Heatmap for specific pages to gain deeper insights into user engagement.

To function, Heatmaps require Session Replay to be enabled, as they rely on session replay data to track and visualize user clicks.

Heatmaps only capture data during sessions with recorded replays. If a page has limited replay coverage, the Heatmap may not offer meaningful insights.

Implementation

Ensure you have Session Replay set up, and click interaction tracking enabled. Session Replays are required for Heatmaps to work.

If you currently use Autocapture to track clicks, you can leverage these clicks to populate the Heatmaps.

Using Heatmaps

1. From the Home page, find the Heatmaps section
2. Choose a URL where you want to analyze user interactions.
3. To easily navigate back to a created Heatmap, you can click the title to rename the Heatmap

FAQ

What happens when I reach my Session Replay limit?

Customers who have purchased the Session Replay add-on will be billed for replays ingested beyond the purchased amount at the ala carte rate. We will send email notifications to organization Owners and Billing Admins as your projects approaches the data allowance of your subscription plan.

Customers using Session Replay without purchasing the add-on (e.g., those using complimentary replays included with the Free, Growth, or Enterprise plans) will be unable to view replays once they reach the data allowance, unless they upgrade. We will send email notifications to organization Owners and Billing Admins as your projects approaches the data allowance of your subscription plan.

Mixpanel reserves the right to stop ingesting replays once a customer collects replays beyond their purchased/allocated amount. To minimize disruption to your team, we recommend monitoring your data usage in the organization settings and working with your Account Manager (if applicable) to ensure you have the right plan for your needs.

How soon are Replays available for viewing after a session begins?

Replays are available for viewing in Mixpanel ~1 minute after the recording is captured.

How long are replays stored?

Replays are stored for 30 days.

Why does it say the player failed to load?

To maintain a high level of security, Mixpanel runs your session replays in an isolated domain through an iframe. Occasionally, this domain may be blocked by an ad blocker or specific browser settings. We recommend disabling any ad blockers, or whitelisting the Mixpanel domain.

For extensions like uBlock, go to “My Filters” in the extension settings and add the following custom filter:

@@||mxpnl.com^$domain=mxpnl.com

Why can’t I see the “View Replays” button in the UI?

You will not see the “View Replays” button if your organization is on an older plan. You will need to update to the latest plan to use Session Replay (see here for details).

Can I use Session Replay with a CDP?

You can use Session Replay with CDPs (e.g., Segment and mParticle) for the web platform. Your app must include the Mixpanel Javascript SDK, with Session Replay enabled. Learn more in the developer guide here.

How can I estimate how many Replays I will generate?

If you already use Mixpanel, the Session Start events are a way to estimate the rough amount of replays you might expect. This is especially true if you use timeout-based query sessions. However, because our sessions are defined at query time, we cannot guarantee these metrics will be directly correlated.

When you enable Session Replay, use the above proxy metric to determine a starting sampling percentage, which will determine how many replays will be sent. You can always adjust this as you go to calibrate to the right level.

Am I able to sample our Session Replay collection rate?

Yes, you can configure the percentage of total replays that our SDK will capture as a sampling rate or manually trigger/end replay capture. See the developers guide for implementing Session Replay to learn more about sampling and manual capture.