Mixpanel, and a whole host of other services, are doing startups a big favor. Complaining that $150 is "out of wack" is pretty close to trolling.

I'm running Mixpanel on a handful of my sites and its great. Any time I can outsource an important task or tool for dirt cheap, so my developers can concentrate on our core product, I feel like I'm getting it for free.

Good riddance to companies that don't post their prices and give you an 800 number to talk to a sales rep.

Could someone explain why this does not qualify as an ad?

The shadow rule is that any linkbuilding method is kosher iff no one has figured out a way to scalably achieve rankings on very competitive terms with it. For example, citations on the footers of blog templates were 150% A-OK right until people found out that was a scalable way to rank e.g. for e.g. [printer cartridges], [payday loans], etc etc. See also widgetbait, quizzes, etc etc.

And that is how it should be. To build a longterm business, you really cannot rely on catering to startups for whom $150/mo is a huge investment. I lead mixpanel adoption at startup I work for. We're ok funded and the mixpanel cost does not even make a blip on our expenses.

And yet, like you said, when I go home to test out my own ideas outside of work, mixpanel does seem like a cost I have to think hard about before paying for.

You can amuse yourself by looking at Google's pricing. They have a choice of free or $150k per year!

At my startup we would gladly pay Mixpanel's prices. Unfortunately we found the functionality to be poor, and support to be rather bizarre (every response was a bunch of platitudes).