Ask HN: What’s your startup’s analytics setup? (2023)
16 comments
I'm using PostHog for https://printnanny.ai and love it so far!
I've previously used Google Analytics (terrible, requires a tremendous amount of custom code to do basic attribution) and more modern analytics like Segment/MixPanel (great, but expensive).
Love that I have the option to self-host if I out-grow the free tier while still figuring out product/market fit. Since I'm not venture backed, I have to be cautious about exploding costs for managed services.
I've previously used Google Analytics (terrible, requires a tremendous amount of custom code to do basic attribution) and more modern analytics like Segment/MixPanel (great, but expensive).
Love that I have the option to self-host if I out-grow the free tier while still figuring out product/market fit. Since I'm not venture backed, I have to be cautious about exploding costs for managed services.
What are you "analyzing"?
If you don't know what you're "analyzing", then your "analytics setup" doesn't make any sense.
I hate buzzword-compliant posts like this that don't even know what they're asking ... it's like the bad old days of reading some half-page "article" in the in-flight magazine and then seeing the CxO deciding to implement whatever it is they thought someone else said they kinda did
If you don't know what you're "analyzing", then your "analytics setup" doesn't make any sense.
I hate buzzword-compliant posts like this that don't even know what they're asking ... it's like the bad old days of reading some half-page "article" in the in-flight magazine and then seeing the CxO deciding to implement whatever it is they thought someone else said they kinda did
+1 for PostHog currently using for https://tripleaxle.com
Unrelated but really love the problem you're solving at TripleAxle! How have things been going so far?
I built my own self-hosted analytics platform: https://www.uxwizz.com
Also, working on a simpler WordPress specific version: https://www.wplytic.com
I think that self-hosted is the future for analytics, as it's the best way to control data flow and respect privacy laws.
Also, working on a simpler WordPress specific version: https://www.wplytic.com
I think that self-hosted is the future for analytics, as it's the best way to control data flow and respect privacy laws.
Glad I found this, thanks for posting it. Looks great.
Posthog is one of my faves, beats the crap out of GA, especially in terms of usability / reporting! Their support is fantastic too.
Ha I can make advertising for my own analytics platform: https://counter.dev
Its google analytics without google and prettier
Its google analytics without google and prettier
You could do a poll for this if you wanted - http://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll.
Had to address this for one of my clients last week. We decided to go with Google Tag Manager and Google analytics 4. The deciding factor was familiarity.
Track with GTM and Segment. Record with HotJar for more qualitative insights. Analyze with Mixpanel (and GA4 if you do marketing)
If you use Google Analytics, you can get in a lot of trouble if you don't prompt the user with the cookie policy pop up. GDPR is a MF. I feel like it's bad UX to have that pop up, and I don't want to get in trouble, so I opt to use more bare-bones analytics and do a lot of custom logging myself.
The tool I use specifically is https://pirsch.io/, which is very privacy friendly and doesn't have any of the stalky type stuff that Google Analytics has as default. Using this, you don't need to have the GDPR compliance pop-up.
The tool I use specifically is https://pirsch.io/, which is very privacy friendly and doesn't have any of the stalky type stuff that Google Analytics has as default. Using this, you don't need to have the GDPR compliance pop-up.
Matomo for web facing pieces, and OpenSearch for API.
There are many services to choose from and it's not immediately obvious how you should choose from the many offerings to get not only complete analytics coverage but also do so in a way where you can integrate them all to get a complete picture without any mismatch.
There is too much marketing speech copy on the sites of many analytics startups to properly evaluate them without wasting time and effort to signup, configure and use each one long enough to understand the value they provide.
Off the top of my head, there are services like Segment [1], Amplitude [2], Mixpanel [3], Trackingplan [4], Avo [5], Posthog [6], Freshpaint [7], etc.
So ten years later, what are the must-have analytics solutions for startups? What are the best tools for bringing in all the data from the different analytics tools? How should Engineering, Product and Data work together around analytics?
The more details you can provide the better.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4707903
[1]: https://segment.com
[2]: https://amplitude.com
[3]: https://mixpanel.com
[4]: https://www.trackingplan.com
[5]: https://www.avo.app
[6]: https://posthog.com
[7]: https://www.freshpaint.io