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Show HN: Heap is a new approach to analytics. Just capture everything

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Re: Show HN: Heap is a new approach to analytics. Just capture everything

#71

Post by mcos »

pc86 wrote: post #52
DodgyEggplant wrote: post #12

Poor man's analytics: events, client side, server side, whatever. Set up a separate DB with one big table, many columns for properties. One server call to write an event (a row), one ajax call to write from the client, throw it wherever you need. A bit of good old simple SQL for queries and reporting, and you are done.

I've often wondered about the efficacy of having a simple catch-all script that just tracks everything a user does on the site. I would think it would pound the database relentlessly under even modest load.

You could read all the responses into a Queue-type structure and then populate the database in the background.

Re: Show HN: Heap is a new approach to analytics. Just capture everything

#72

Post by soneca »

raviparikh wrote: post #34
soneca wrote: post #29

I liked it very much as a non-tech founder that is not quite sure how to define some events on KissMetrics and regret not having qualified a particular form of sign up as an event before. Comparing prices though, a question: is every visitor of my site a new "user" for you? If it so, then my monthly average events for user would be very low, then an "event based" pricing would be better for me than a "user based" pri…

This is a really good point and something we thought about when constructing the pricing model. Right now we're not a very affordable option for sites with a lot of bounced traffic or low amounts of user interaction. However we'll soon be amending our prices to better accomodate customers such as yourself.

In my case, if you just say "we don't count bouncing visitors as users", tchanananam!! you just became the perfect analytics tool for me. Even still considering that I have a lot of users that just click once and leave. Please, consider it.

PS: "tchanananam" is a brazilian expression onomatopoeia when there is a punch line revelation...

Re: Show HN: Heap is a new approach to analytics. Just capture everything

#73

Post by pc86 »

raviparikh wrote: post #59
pc86 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for explaining this. That's a huge difference that the impression of tiered pricing that I got. Any plans for either a free trial period or a very small (<50 users?) free plan?

Definitely - we offer a one month free trial of the lowest tier plan (2500 users/month).

I know you're reworking the pricing page as you said but you may want to consider doing what a lot of email service providers do and list the per-user price in tiers.

Something like

* Users 1-2,500: $0.01/user

* Users 2,501-20,000: $0.0625/user

* Users 20,001-80,000: $0.0583/user

might be a tad more intuitive, especially if you listed the top-end price along with that.

Re: Show HN: Heap is a new approach to analytics. Just capture everything

#74

Post by mchusma »

huhtenberg wrote: post #48

Welcome to the blacklist. I, for one, very much object to all my clicks and "activity" on a page being captured and streamed down some black hole for god knows what purposes. Not to worry though - you are in a good company with all other analytics services out there. The only difference is that you are far more open (and proud?) about how obscenely intrusive your service is, so you get an honorary 2nd spot, right aft…

To be clear, your on page is basically tracked regardless of whether you even use an analytics service, at least any on page activity that interacts with a webserver.

In other words, if you are object to website owners tracking you on their site, then basically you can't use the internet. And to be clear, if you object to in store tracking in physical locations, you are going to be able to shop at fewer and fewer locations (anyplace with a security camera).

If you are concerned about cross site tracking or permanent cookies, that is a different issue. Did you see any mention of that for this product? KissMetrics has definitely taken heat for this.

Re: Show HN: Heap is a new approach to analytics. Just capture everything

#75

Post by dubcanada »

rbkillea wrote: post #67
dubcanada wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like zero lol.

Are you (dare I say it) trolling? :)

IE8 doesn't support some of the javascript functions/methods they provide you. Namely Array.prototype.slice.call

So no I'm not trolling, I'm being 100% honest.

Re: Show HN: Heap is a new approach to analytics. Just capture everything

#76

Post by isalmon »

dubcanada wrote: post #36
isalmon wrote: post #23

It's ironic that on their website they don't have their own code (well, maybe it's on the backend) and use Segment.io + Mixpanel instead.

? It certainly does have their own code. Look at the second script tag in the head.

Ha they just added it!

Re: Show HN: Heap is a new approach to analytics. Just capture everything

#77

Post by mchusma »

pc86 wrote: post #62
huhtenberg wrote: post #48

Welcome to the blacklist. I, for one, very much object to all my clicks and "activity" on a page being captured and streamed down some black hole for god knows what purposes. Not to worry though - you are in a good company with all other analytics services out there. The only difference is that you are far more open (and proud?) about how obscenely intrusive your service is, so you get an honorary 2nd spot, right aft…

I don't mean this to sound as snarky or mean as it probably will. I'm truly interested in your answer. Why should you have the choice to object? What is obscenely intrusive about tracking how you use an application you (may or may not) pay for? I don't see why anyone would have any reasonable expectation of privacy when they're using a service online. Note I am only referring to analytics contained on a single domain…

Agree, was typing my thoughts prior to seeing this pop up.

Re: Show HN: Heap is a new approach to analytics. Just capture everything

#78

Post by amccloud »

uptown wrote: post #51
matm wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point. In terms of network performance, we try to batch events and minimize server requests. For link tracking, our method is similar to how other analytics products track link clicks - we delay the page navigation the min of: 1) 250ms, 2) the time it takes for our server to respond to a click event.

>we delay the page navigation the max of: 1) 250ms, 2) the time it takes for our server to respond to a click event. So if your server takes 10 seconds to respond to a click event, the user waits?

I think he meant max (timeout) is 250ms or sooner if the server responds in < 250ms.

Re: Show HN: Heap is a new approach to analytics. Just capture everything

#79

Post by matm »

TylerE wrote: post #69
raviparikh wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely - we offer a one month free trial of the lowest tier plan (2500 users/month).

I would highly advise you to rethink that. What if we're a larger site? To be honest, your pricing is way out of our ballpark anyway (We're a smallish daily newspaper, ~300k uniques/monthly), there's no way I'd ever get approval for $20k/yr for analytics, no matter how cool, and I'd never get approval to spend $1k+ just to try it. For orgs like us, your pricing seems rather brutal, as we're probably much lower in pag…

Feel free to reach us at sales@heapanalytics.com. We'd love to talk about fair pricing, and we certainly need more data points to evaluate what that fair pricing is.

Re: Show HN: Heap is a new approach to analytics. Just capture everything

#80

Post by pvnick »

DodgyEggplant wrote: post #12

Poor man's analytics: events, client side, server side, whatever. Set up a separate DB with one big table, many columns for properties. One server call to write an event (a row), one ajax call to write from the client, throw it wherever you need. A bit of good old simple SQL for queries and reporting, and you are done.

Or a table with two columns, Key and Value. Index by key. Specify keys in code with constants. No need to alter table when adding new metrics.
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