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PostHog FOSS

github.com

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Re: PostHog FOSS

#41

Post by blueshoe »

timgl wrote: post #29
heyheyhouhou wrote: post #28

I used to like their product but now they too many modules and knobs that I find it difficult to understand and navigate. I think is a bit of product slopification.

founder here, what specifically do you use posthog for that you now find hard to find?

Couple things for me: - I missed the default dashboard being my homepage and not having to navigate to it via an extra step. I just noticed that i can change that default, but personally found that a bit annoying largely because I felt lost.

Also i don't like how "People" is not buried in data now, pretty sure this was just in the left hand bar. I can "star" it, but its still nested in a wierd UI drawer. I wish it was pinned by default, or a way I could re-pin it.

A message of some kind (You may have already done this) to accept the new defaults or keep the some of the original defaults would of been cool.

On a broader note, I loved the simplicity of what you guys made, and it feels like the product has too many moving pieces available to me. I build my own product as well and I get the rub here, you want to support so many more use cases and re-organize things to do so , but in the end it feels bloated. I love the idea of using AI and in some cases when i needed to mine my data some it was super nice, though most of the time from a founder perspective I'm looking at largely the same data/metrics over and over, and don't need to be creating new graphs every day. So the launchpad /w chatbox as the primary thing as a default feels a bit lost on me.

All that said, I still looooove your product and would still use it 1100 times over GA any day. <3

Re: PostHog FOSS

#42

Post by mips_avatar »

I recently had to turn off posthog on my app, it was collecting so much information that wasn't needed that it was making my app unusably slow. I'm sure i'm missing some knob, but the fact that after an hour long claude code session i couldn't figure out how to fix it means posthog has gotten too fiddly.

Re: PostHog FOSS

#43

Post by stronglikedan »

robbie-c wrote: post #23
gagan2020 wrote: post #20

Looks like they created mess with AI and then open sourced it. I remembered I had to shift from them to metabase because they closed sourced their deployments docker/kubernetes I guess it was 3 years back. But now AI screwed them over so they come with their own open-source spaghetti.

PostHog has always been open source. I'm not sure why this has been shared on HN at all.

Has it? This is from that repo, "PostHog FOSS is a read-only mirror of PostHog, with all proprietary code removed." Seems they have some proprietary code in the non-open-source version.

Re: PostHog FOSS

#45

Post by paularmstrong »

blueshoe wrote: post #41
timgl wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

founder here, what specifically do you use posthog for that you now find hard to find?

Couple things for me: - I missed the default dashboard being my homepage and not having to navigate to it via an extra step. I just noticed that i can change that default, but personally found that a bit annoying largely because I felt lost. Also i don't like how "People" is not buried in data now, pretty sure this was just in the left hand bar. I can "star" it, but its still nested in a wierd UI drawer. I wish it wa…

It's all the AI bloat for me. It keeps getting shoved in my face and they _really_ want me to use it. But I neither want nor need it. The product itself was so good that it doesn't need this whole guessing-machine-layer on top of it.

I also agree that the nav, structure, and defaults changing keep being un-intuitive and are making it harder to find the things that I use and that matter to me and my orgs.

Re: PostHog FOSS

#46

Post by bredren »

paularmstrong wrote: post #30
heyheyhouhou wrote: post #28

I used to like their product but now they too many modules and knobs that I find it difficult to understand and navigate. I think is a bit of product slopification.

They've been using AI to shove a lot of AI into their product and trying to force everyone to use AI. I really don't understand the why of any of it. The product was working great for what it needs to do. I don't need AI to make guesses about data for me and I especially do not want _yet another product_ trying to write features in my codebase (which is their latest push).

I used their AI chat last night and I was impressed with the product implementation. I was able to use it to make quick sense of data and even generate prompts to solve problems locally.

IDK what the prior AI behaviors have been, but for me, what they have now is an ~idealized version of AI product.

It is basically what I'd do if they didn't offer it but not as well: export data, import their docs in md., import some industry best practices in analytics into context etc.

Except its all right there. Not sure of the economics of it, as it was on a free account and some reasonably good model was powering the discussion. But it was about as engaged as I've been with an analytics tool.

Re: PostHog FOSS

#48

Post by ctxc »

lta wrote: post #33
sskates wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

How is this relevant ? We're talking about open source analytics, and this looks like a shameless plus

Yeah weird, bc I just checked and it isn't oss. Only the SDKs are OSS, which...doesn't help much

Re: PostHog FOSS

#49

Post by heyheyhouhou »

timgl wrote: post #29
heyheyhouhou wrote: post #28

I used to like their product but now they too many modules and knobs that I find it difficult to understand and navigate. I think is a bit of product slopification.

founder here, what specifically do you use posthog for that you now find hard to find?

I dont think is something in specific but I used to love the simplicity of PostHog and that's why I pushed my team moving to it from Google Analytics.

That has changed though. Last time I used PH, I found myself not finding the things I needed so ended up connecting the mcp and asking claude to change things for me.

MCP was a nice addition, so thanks for that. The problem of mcp is that it prevents product discoverability. You are adding many things lately and since I'm using the MCP for my "part of the job" I will never visit your site anymore and see what's new.

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