GrowthHackers vs Growth Method (and What Happened to Experiments)

GrowthHackers vs Growth Method: The Short Answer

Comparing GrowthHackers with Growth Method means untangling three different things that share one brand:

1. GrowthHackers Experiments, the original growth experiment management software founded by Sean Ellis. This product is gone. Its official URL now redirects to a domain that no longer resolves, and no software is sold anywhere on growthhackers.com.
2. The GrowthHackers community, which is alive and free to join, under new ownership since early 2024.
3. Growth OS, a new, unrelated software suite sold under the GrowthHackers brand since the 2025 GrowthRocks partnership. It is not a continuation of Experiments, and there is no migration path between them.

If you searched for this comparison, you almost certainly meant the software. So this article covers what Experiments was, why it mattered, what happened to it, and where teams who want that way of working can go today.

What Was GrowthHackers Experiments?

GrowthHackers was founded by Sean Ellis, the man who coined the term “growth hacking”, ran growth at Dropbox and LogMeIn, and co-wrote Hacking Growth. In 2018 the company launched growth acceleration software, developed with input from teams at Spotify and Mozilla, that went through several names: Canvas, Projects, NorthStar, and finally Experiments.

It was the first serious attempt to put the growth process itself into software:

• North Star Metric and objectives: A single focus metric with measurable targets and confidence levels
• Idea backlog: One place to capture ideas, prioritise tests, and share learnings
• Prioritisation frameworks: ICE and PIE scoring, plus fully custom frameworks
• Growth meetings: Run the weekly growth meeting inside the tool, from test selection to summary
• Knowledge base: A repository of past experiments anyone on the team could consult
• Integrations: Push tasks to Jira, Trello, or Asana, and pull results from tools like Mixpanel and Amplitude

The philosophy behind it still holds up. As Ellis put it in an interview with Mixpanel:

At the very least, we must hold ourselves accountable to the number of experiments we run each week so that we’re not in “paralysis by analysis.” We must actually do the things that are going to improve the results.

Sean Ellis, founder of GrowthHackers, speaking to Mixpanel

What Happened to GrowthHackers?

The decline happened in stages, mostly out of public view:

• 2019: GrowthHackers merged with Contentools, a Brazilian content marketing company, and the software’s centre of gravity moved away from Sean Ellis’s team.
• 2022 to 2023: The software was spun out under a new name, Growth Software, at growth.software. The growthhackers.com product pages became redirects.
• By mid-2025: The Growth Software site was replaced by an empty server placeholder page. Today the domain does not resolve at all.
• Early 2024: The GrowthHackers community and brand were acquired by agency investor Peter Lang. In March 2025, GrowthHackers announced a strategic partnership with the agency GrowthRocks, whose group CEO Theo Moulos joined as Chief Strategy Officer.
• Today: growthhackers.com is a free community (claiming 40,000+ members), a training arm selling certification courses, an agency acquisition vehicle, and the storefront for Growth OS, a new agency-flavoured software suite. Sean Ellis’s own site and LinkedIn make no mention of GrowthHackers.

For anyone evaluating software, the practical summary is short: the product this comparison is really about cannot be bought, and any team still running on it is on abandoned software.

What GrowthHackers Got Right

The Experiments product encoded ideas that remain the foundation of good marketing process, and Hacking Growth explains why they matter:

It wasn’t the immaculate conception of a world-changing product nor any single insight, lucky break, or stroke of genius that rocketed these companies to success. In reality, their success was driven by the methodical, rapid-fire generation and testing of new ideas for product development and marketing, and the use of data on user behavior to find the winning ideas that drove growth.

Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown, Hacking Growth

Three of its convictions are worth carrying forward:

• One metric to focus on: The North Star Metric gave every idea a single criterion to be judged against
• A learnings repository: Completed experiments became institutional knowledge, not forgotten tickets
• The weekly rhythm: A standing growth meeting with a structured agenda kept the process alive

Where Experiments Fell Short (Even Before It Disappeared)

Our in-depth GrowthHackers Experiments review covered the product in detail while it was still alive. The recurring themes:

• Built for big teams: It suited larger, established growth and product organisations, and overwhelmed smaller marketing teams
• Expensive and sales-led: No transparent pricing at the end, with demo calls and account-managed onboarding
• Constant churn: Four product names, a company rename, and two ownership changes since 2019 made it hard to trust with your team’s process
• Frozen in the pre-AI era: Integrations stopped at the 2022-era list, with nothing for the modern analytics stack and no AI-assisted workflows before it died

Growth Method: Where This Way of Working Lives On

Growth Method is the only work management platform built specifically for marketing teams, consultants, and agencies. It is the same conviction Experiments pioneered, rebuilt for how marketing teams work now, and actively developed.

One goal, one prioritised backlog

Growth Method captures every campaign idea against your goal, categorises it with AI, and prioritises it in one shared backlog. The single-criterion focus that made the North Star Metric powerful is built into the methodology.

A built-in campaign lifecycle

Campaigns move through clear stages, from planning through live to analysed and complete, with structured timeframes that keep velocity high. The weekly rhythm Experiments encouraged is the default way of working, not a module.

Integrated analytics and reporting

Growth Method connects to your analytics stack through MCP integrations: Google Analytics, Google Ads, Search Console, PostHog, Amplitude, Mixpanel and more. Campaign results are measured automatically, and built-in reporting produces professional updates covering strategy, your goal, live campaigns, and impact.

Compounding learnings

Every completed campaign is analysed and summarised into a searchable knowledge base. This was the best idea in Experiments, and it only works if the platform holding your learnings is still alive.

Built for marketing teams, not just product orgs

Where Experiments gravitated toward large product-led organisations, Growth Method is designed for marketing teams, consultants, and agencies, with fast, always-human support from the team that builds it.

Which Should You Choose?

Join the GrowthHackers community if: you want free access to a large network of growth practitioners, AMAs, and a conference. It remains worth being part of, and it costs nothing.

Look at Growth OS if: you are an agency drawn to an all-in-one suite of sprints, SEO, and ad management tools, and you are comfortable adopting a new product with a short track record.

Choose Growth Method if: you want what GrowthHackers Experiments actually promised: a structured, goal-first process for running more marketing campaigns, measuring them properly, and compounding what you learn, on a platform that is actively maintained.

Customer Success with Growth Method

We are on-track to deliver a 43% increase in inbound leads this year. There is no doubt the adoption of Growth Method is the primary driver behind these results.

Laura Perrott, Colt Technology Services

Migrating from GrowthHackers Experiments

If your team still has data in Experiments, or you built your process around it, Growth Method offers a free white glove migration service and expert onboarding, so your backlog, learnings, and way of working can be rebuilt without losing momentum.

Conclusion

GrowthHackers earned its place in marketing history. It defined the discipline, and Experiments was the first real attempt to run the growth process in software. But the software is gone, the founder has moved on, and the brand now sells something else.

Growth Method is the only work management platform built exclusively for marketers, and the natural home for teams that believe what Sean Ellis taught: growth comes from a methodical, high-tempo process, not lucky breaks. Read our full GrowthHackers Experiments review, explore GrowthHackers alternatives, or get started today.