Frequently asked questions

Journey Insight is an AI-first journey intelligence solution that provides brands analysis of customer behavior, competitive insights, and market intelligence.

Journey Insight shows you the full digital customer journey across your brand and your competitors—before visitors reach your site, while they engage with you, and after they leave. You can benchmark win-loss performance, compare journey length and position, and see which brands perform best at each stage, all without any IT setup or integrations.

Journey Insight is the only solution that combines one of the world’s largest customer behavior data sets with advanced AI to show end-to-end customer journey behavior across multiple brands, channels, and devices.

Most analytics tools only reveal what happens on your own website or list simple referral sources. Journey Insight goes further by uncovering real multistep, cross-site behavior and delivering ready-to-use comparative metrics so you can understand the bigger picture and make smarter decisions.

Journey Insight's AI analyzes behavioral data across your market to surface patterns, comparisons, and insights that would take hours to find manually.

Within the product, Ask AI lets you ask natural-language questions— like "Which competitors are winning share before visitors reach my site?" or "What does the journey look like for buyers in the 30 days before purchase?"—and receive a narrative answer with supporting metrics in seconds.

The AI works across the full dataset, not just your own traffic, so every answer reflects real market-wide behavior rather than assumptions drawn from a single brand's view. Journey Insight AI is available on all plans, with daily usage limits that scale by tier.

No. Journey Insight works out of the box—no tracking code, SDK, first-party data upload, or IT involvement required. You don't share any customer data with Alterian to use the product.

The behavioral data that powers Journey Insight is collected independently through Alterian's opt-in panel network, so you can start exploring your market the moment you sign up.

Journey Insight is built for marketing, strategy, and insights teams at mid-market and enterprise organizations that need to understand customer behavior beyond their own channels.

Journey Insight's data covers over 4,000 organizations, including 90% of major US brands.

Alterian is built for mid-market and enterprise teams across Retail, eCommerce, Telecom, Financial Services, Automotive, Healthcare, Travel, Media, and more—any industry where understanding audience behavior across competitors and channels drives strategic decisions.

A market brings together businesses that compete to meet the same customer need in a specific region. This grouping gives you a complete view of how customers move through the market, which brands they visit and why, and where market overlaps occur.

Journey Insight has 300+ defined markets ranging across major industries like technology, retail, financial services, and healthcare to niche spaces like anime & manga, DJ equipment & software, and photo printing & personalization.

Journey Insight is always growing with input from our users. If you don't see your market or are interested in a specific competitive set, send us a request here or from inside Journey Insight:

Alterian sources data from multiple opted in, anonymized behavioral panels and is 100% GDPR/CCPA compliant.

Customer journey data is collected via mobile/desktop apps and browser plugins. The data is double-blind, fully anonymized at source, and further validated before use.

With 20+ sources in the U.S. others worldwide, no single stream contributes more than 20% of the data available. This limits data bias from specific user groups, improving accuracy and reliability.

Sign up for free at insight.alterian.com—no credit card or commitment required. Journey Insight is available as a web application and works in any modern browser.

Once your account is created, you can immediately begin exploring markets, running competitor comparisons, and asking questions through Journey Insight AI without any IT setup, data upload, or integration work.

Journey Insight is a web-based application accessible from any modern desktop browser, including Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. No installation is required. Mobile access is available through your device's browser, though the full analytical experience is optimized for desktop use.

Journey Insight is also accessible by MCP connector for use in your favorite tools, like Claude and ChatGPT.

Yes! You can easily download visualizations, the supporting data, and AI answers—both images and text—to use directly in your business reports.

Yes. Audiences are defined using a Market Comparison List (MCL)—a configurable list of brand names, domains and optional URL filter keywords. You can define audiences at the level of one brand, a competitive set, a category, or a custom footprint.

Alterian Journey Insight offers a robust free plan. For access to deeper insights, additional features, higher AI usage limits, and customizations, explore our paid plans.

See our Plans & Pricing for details or contact us with any questions.

Journey Insight does not offer a time-limited free trial. Instead, the free plan is free forever—giving you ongoing access to top-level market insights, brand and domain search, and a limited Journey Insight AI allowance with no credit card required and no expiry.

If you'd like to explore paid features before committing or discuss your team's specific needs, you can book a demo with the Alterian team.

No. Journey Insight does not process, store, or have access to your customers' personal data. The behavioral data that powers Journey Insight is collected through Alterian's own opt-in panel network—it is fully anonymized at source, double-blind validated before use, and 100% GDPR and CCPA compliant. Users within the panel are identified only by an anonymized panel ID; insights represent behavioral patterns across the observed panel, never identified individuals.

There is nothing to configure from a data privacy standpoint before using Journey Insight. Alterian does not sell personal data to any third party.

For more details, see Alterian's full Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions.

The Journey Insight MCP is a connector that makes Alterian's market and competitor intelligence available directly inside AI tools like Claude and ChatGPT. Instead of switching to Journey Insight separately, you can ask questions in plain language and get structured insights without leaving the AI tool you're already using.

The connector uses MCP (Model Context Protocol), an open standard that lets AI tools connect to external data sources through a consistent, secure interface. Journey Insight's query capabilities, data, and plan-based access controls all apply when you use Journey Insight MCP—the same data and limits as in the product, available conversationally.

MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open standard that lets AI tools like Claude and ChatGPT connect to external data sources through a consistent, secure interface. It enables third-party services—like Journey Insight—to be made available inside AI conversations without requiring a custom-built connection for each tool.

The Journey Insight MCP connector uses this standard to bring Alterian's market intelligence directly into tools like Claude and ChatGPT, so you can ask questions about customer journeys and competitors without leaving the AI workflow you're already using.

In Claude, navigate to Organization Settings, then Connectors. Click "+" and select "Add custom connector." Enter the name "Journey Insight" and the MCP server URL https://mcp.journeyinsight.alterian.net/mcp, then click "Add." Click "Connect," then "Allow access," and sign in with your Journey Insight email and password.

Once connected, Journey Insight will appear as an available tool in your Claude conversations.

Follow this step-by-step guide with screenshots:

In ChatGPT, enable Developer Mode, then go to Settings and add a custom MCP connector. Enter the Journey Insight MCP server URL: https://mcp.journeyinsight.alterian.net/mcp. ChatGPT will display an "Elevated Risk" warning during setup—this is standard behavior for all third-party MCP connections and is not specific to Journey Insight. Sign in with your Journey Insight email and password to complete the connection.

Follow this step-by-step guide with screenshots:

You can ask market and competitor questions conversationally and get structured answers drawn from Alterian's behavioral data. The questions available to you depend on your plan tier.

Example prompts:

• "What are the most common drop-off points in the UK motor insurance purchase journey?"

• "How does [brand]'s customer lifecycle compare to the market average?"

• "Which referral sources are driving the highest quality acquisition journeys in US retail banking?"

• "What journey patterns precede a customer leaving a brand during the retention stage?"

Answers come back as a narrative summary with key metrics. Your plan's daily Journey Insight AI usage limits apply equally when querying through Claude or ChatGPT.

The Journey Insight MCP accesses the same behavioral data and market intelligence available in the Journey Insight platform. This includes customer journey patterns, competitor benchmarking, referral sources, lifecycle stages, and market-level behavioral insights across your active plan's markets.

The connector is read-only—it cannot modify data, create records, or take any actions inside Journey Insight on your behalf. Access is limited to the markets and features included in your plan; if a question falls outside your plan's scope, Journey Insight AI will say so rather than guess. Raw panel-level data is not accessible through the connector.

Yes. The Journey Insight MCP connector requires an active Journey Insight account. Your plan determines which markets and features are accessible through the connector—the same limits that apply in Journey Insight apply when querying through Claude or ChatGPT.

The free plan is available at no cost, so you can connect and begin querying without a paid subscription.

The Journey Insight MCP connector is optimized for conversational queries and structured insight delivery. It cannot access raw panel-level data, generate custom visualizations, or take any actions inside Journey Insight on your behalf—it is read-only.

Daily AI usage limits from your plan apply equally when querying through another tool, like Claude or ChatGPT. If a question is outside the scope of your plan's market coverage, Journey Insight AI will say so rather than guess.

For full market exploration, interactive dashboards, detailed reports, and data exports, the Journey Insight web application is the right tool.

If your brand doesn't appear in search results, it's most likely because it hasn't yet been added to one of Journey Insight's 300+ predefined markets. Journey Insight organizes data by market, and individual brands are tracked within those market definitions.

If you believe your brand should be included in an existing market, you can submit a request directly within Journey Insight using the Contact us button, or submit a request here.

Start by checking that your Journey Insight account credentials are valid and your subscription is active. Make sure the MCP server URL (https://mcp.journeyinsight.alterian.net/mcp) is copied directly from your Journey Insight account settings rather than typed manually, and that you are using a supported version of Claude or ChatGPT with MCP support enabled.

If the issue persists, contact the Alterian support team.