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Connect your PostHog account to trigger email automations based on product analytics events. Send emails when users perform (or don’t perform) specific actions in your product.
Sequenzy PostHog connection dialog with callouts showing the required setup fields

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What is PostHog?

PostHog is an open-source product analytics platform that tracks user behavior, feature usage, and more. It’s popular with SaaS teams who want self-hosted analytics.

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Prerequisites

Before setting up the integration, ensure your PostHog setup includes user emails:
Events from anonymous users (without email) are automatically skipped. Only events from identified users with an email address will trigger automations in Sequenzy.

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Connecting PostHog

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Step 1: Get Your Webhook Configuration

  1. Go to Settings → Integrations in Sequenzy
  2. Find PostHog under Product Analytics
  3. Click Connect
  4. Copy the Webhook URL and Webhook Secret shown

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Step 2: Create Webhook Destination in PostHog

  1. Go to your PostHog Dashboard
  2. Navigate to Data Pipelines → Destinations
  3. Click + New → Destination
  4. Search for “Webhook” in the list and click + Create
  5. Configure the webhook:
    • Webhook URL: Paste your Sequenzy webhook URL
    • Headers: Add X-Webhook-Secret with your secret from Step 1
  6. Optionally filter which events to send (or send all - we’ll handle filtering)
  7. Click Create & Enable
PostHog webhook destination configuration

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Step 3: Complete Connection in Sequenzy

  1. Return to Sequenzy’s PostHog connection modal
  2. Optionally keep Import event history enabled and paste a personal API key (see below) - Sequenzy detects your region and project from the key
  3. Click Connect PostHog
That’s it! PostHog events will now flow into Sequenzy.

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Importing Event History

The webhook only delivers events from the moment you connect. If you want your existing PostHog data too, enable Import event history while connecting and provide a single input:
  • Personal API key: create one in PostHog under Settings → Personal API keys with both the Query Read and Project Read scopes. The key is encrypted at rest and never shown again.
Sequenzy verifies the key against PostHog Cloud US and EU, detects your region automatically, and lists the projects the key can access. If the key reaches a single project it is selected for you; if it reaches several you pick one from a list. You never need to look up your region or numeric project ID by hand. If PostHog cannot be reached while the key is being verified, the modal falls back to letting you enter your region and project ID manually so you can still connect.
A key with only Query Read still verifies and detects your region, but Sequenzy cannot list your projects - you will be asked to enter the numeric project ID, found in PostHog under Settings → Project. Add the Project Read scope to have the project selected for you. An invalid key is rejected the moment you verify it, instead of surfacing later as a failed background import.
Sequenzy then imports up to 5 years of identified events in the background. Imported events keep their original timestamps, so an event-based segment such as “performed product.signed_up in the last 30 days” is accurate immediately after connecting.

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What historical events do and do not do

Historical events count everywhere you look at data: event-based segments, campaign audiences, filters, and the contact timeline. They deliberately do not run anything: no sequences are started, no waiting steps resume, no sync rules apply, and no goal conversions are recorded. Importing years of history can never send an email. A few more rules:
  • Only identified events with a resolvable email are imported; anonymous rows are counted as skipped
  • Rows whose address cannot be used - malformed, a dead or disposable domain, or one that has already hard-bounced - are counted as skipped too. A handful of unusable addresses in an old archive never fails the import
  • Your event allowlist applies to history too. Without an allowlist, PostHog internal events (names starting with $, like $pageview and $autocapture) are excluded from the import to avoid flooding your workspace with pageview noise - add them to the allowlist explicitly if you want them
  • Historical $identify events never modify subscriber profiles; only live ones do
  • Re-running the import is safe: events are deduplicated by PostHog’s own event ID, including against events that already arrived through the webhook

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Import status and retry

The PostHog card in Settings → Integrations shows the import state: importing, the number of events imported, or a failure message with a Retry import button. A failed history import never affects the real-time webhook connection. The same status is visible from the CLI (sequenzy integrations list) and the MCP list_integrations tool. Retry is available from every surface, and they all do the same thing:
The retry restarts the import from the beginning rather than resuming, which is safe because events are deduplicated by PostHog’s own event ID - a re-run writes only what is missing. A retry is refused while an import is still reporting progress. If BullMQ exhausts retries or declares the job terminally stalled, the integration is marked failed and can be retried.

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What Gets Synced

Custom events are accepted by default. Connections created from August 2026 on also skip PostHog-internal events (names starting with $, like $pageview and $autocapture) unless you allowlist them, because that traffic usually swamps the events you actually automate on - $identify always passes so profile updates keep working. Integrations connected earlier keep receiving everything their webhook destination forwards; you can enable the same filtering from the integration’s event settings. When an event is received, Sequenzy:
  1. Checks for an email in the event properties (email, user_email, $email, or nested user.email), identify $set properties, or person.properties
  2. Skips events without email - anonymous events are silently ignored
  3. Creates or updates the subscriber with that email
  4. Records the event with the product. prefix (e.g., product.$pageview, product.feature_used)
  5. Triggers any automations listening for that event

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Which lists new contacts join

PostHog has no per-integration list targeting. An identified person who is not already a subscriber is created and joined to your workspace Default Lists — the same setting forms, imports, and Dodo Payments follow. A JSON null there means every current and future list, not “no lists”. [] joins nothing. Read and set it before you rely on list-scoped segments:
Over MCP the field is defaultSubscriberListIds on get_company / update_company. Changing it only affects later writes and repoints every other untargeted contact source too. This setting applies to live PostHog events only. Historical imports create new contacts without any list memberships and do not enroll sequences.

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Event Naming

PostHog events are prefixed with product. in Sequenzy:

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Synced Attributes

Only $identify events update subscriber attributes. Raw properties from all other events stay on the event (available to automations and event-based segments) and are never copied onto the subscriber profile: To set subscriber attributes from your product, use PostHog’s identify call. Passing $set or person properties on another event does not update the subscriber profile in Sequenzy.

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Using with Automations

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Feature Adoption Sequence

Trigger emails when users haven’t used a key feature:
  1. Go to Automations → Create New
  2. Set trigger to Event Received → product.signup_completed
  3. Add a Wait step: 3 days
  4. Add a Condition: Check if product.feature_used was NOT received
  5. Send a “Did you know about this feature?” email

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Onboarding Based on Product Usage

Send different onboarding based on what users do:

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Re-engagement for Inactive Users

Target users who stopped using the product:
  1. Create a segment: “No product. events in last 14 days”
  2. Send a re-engagement campaign to this segment

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Event Properties as Variables

Use PostHog event properties in your emails:

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Event Allowlist (Optional)

To sync only specific events:
  1. Go to Settings → Integrations
  2. Click the gear icon next to PostHog
  3. Uncheck Sync all events
  4. Pick events from the list, or add names manually
When your connection has a personal API key stored, the list shows the event names your project actually emitted in the last 90 days, sorted by volume, so you pick instead of typing. The same dialog controls whether PostHog-internal $ events are skipped.

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Troubleshooting

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Events Not Appearing

  1. Verify the webhook URL is correct in PostHog
  2. Check that the X-Webhook-Secret header matches your Sequenzy secret
  3. Most common issue: Events don’t have an email - call posthog.identify() with user email when they log in

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Subscriber Not Created

Events without email are silently skipped. Ensure:
  1. You’re calling posthog.identify(userId, { email: '...' }) when users log in
  2. The email is in one of these fields: email, user_email, $email, userEmail, user.email (nested), identify $set.email, or person.properties.email
  3. The email is a valid format

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Anonymous Events Being Skipped

This is expected behavior. Sequenzy can’t send emails to anonymous users, so we skip events without email addresses. Once a user is identified with posthog.identify(), all their subsequent events will be synced.

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Missing Subscriber Attributes

Subscriber attributes are updated only by $identify events. If an attribute isn’t appearing on the subscriber, set it via posthog.identify(userId, { ... }); $set, $set_once, and person properties attached to other event types do not update the subscriber profile in Sequenzy. PostHog internal fields (starting with $) are always excluded.

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FAQ

Both work for real-time events! The webhook destination feature is available in PostHog Cloud and self-hosted installations. History import is available for PostHog Cloud (US and EU) only.
Yes. Open the connect modal again from Settings → Integrations, enable Import event history, and reconnect with your API key. Already-imported and already-received events are never duplicated.
Retry it - from the Retry import button, sequenzy integrations sync, or POST /v1/integrations/{id}/sync. The import starts over from the beginning and events already imported are deduplicated, so the retry only fills in what is missing. Live webhook events are unaffected throughout.
No, never. Historical events populate segments, audiences, and the contact timeline, but they do not start sequences, resume waiting steps, apply sync rules, or record conversions. Only live events trigger automations.
They’re silently skipped. Sequenzy needs an email to match events to subscribers. Make sure you call posthog.identify() with the user’s email when they log in.
Yes, if you want them: add $pageview to your event allowlist (or disable “Skip PostHog-internal events” in the integration settings) and they sync like any other event, appearing as product.$pageview. New connections skip them by default because pageview volume usually drowns out the events you automate on.
Yes, you can configure event filtering in PostHog’s webhook destination settings, or use Sequenzy’s event allowlist feature in the integration settings.
Events are processed in real-time. Most events appear in Sequenzy within seconds of being sent from PostHog.
Yes, PostHog integration is included at no extra cost.