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

heapanalytics.com

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

#41

Post by dubcanada »

ceejayoz wrote: post #35
codegeek wrote: post #10

The demo page ( https://heapanalytics.com/dashboard/demo ) fails in IE8. Is it just me or IE8 is just not considered by web startups anymore ? Sorry to deviate a little but every time I try to look at a "Show HN" in IE8 (work computer), it fails for about 85% of the time. I could understand that some startups heavily depend on latest browsers but what about others ?

The target market for this sort of analytics solutions is going to have vanishingly small numbers of IE8 users.

More like zero lol.

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

#42

Post by web007 »

matm wrote: post #7
AaronFriel wrote: post #5

This seems really interesting, but starting at 250 users per month seems high. I notice the price/active user starts at a penny and falls 60% as the users climb to over 500,000. Would it be possible to create a price option for even smaller companies, demo sites, etc, at a higher rate? Say, what if the owner of a small blog wanted to use this to do really fine grained analysis of users actions but they average 250 hi…

Our bottom tier (which includes a 1 month free trial) lets you track 2,500 users/month. That said, pricing is really hard to get right. There's basically zero chance we nailed it on the first try.

You definitely didn't get it right. =) That's one of the joys of startup life, A/B test it until you do!

Even for a "successful" site (>1mm MAU) $2,000 a month feels insanely expensive. The performance difference between this and GA ($0) is not high enough _initially_ to offset the sticker shock.

Look at NewRelic, Tracelytics or even Mixpanel (expensive IMO) for better pricing levels. You've built the equivalent of "hosted snowplow" (https://github.com/snowplow/snowplow) with a nice GUI and tools, you should expect to charge something much closer to cost than your current approach appears to.

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

#43

Post by dubcanada »

scott_karana wrote: post #25
codegeek wrote: post #10

The demo page ( https://heapanalytics.com/dashboard/demo ) fails in IE8. Is it just me or IE8 is just not considered by web startups anymore ? Sorry to deviate a little but every time I try to look at a "Show HN" in IE8 (work computer), it fails for about 85% of the time. I could understand that some startups heavily depend on latest browsers but what about others ?

Everyone, not just web startups, is sick of IE8 and earlier. As the other commenter described, it's a lot of effort. I think when it comes to bigger organizations (such as Google not officially support IE8 anymore), it's to force laggard corporate offices to at least upgrade to IE9, if not Chrome or Firefox.

In 5 years everyone is going to be complaining that people use WebKit. And why they haven't upgraded to HerpyHouse.

Oh technology...

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

#44

Post by meritt »

Windows user here. The fonts on your site do not render well on Windows machines. I see an increasing number of sites using embedded fonts that, for whatever reason, render poorly on Windows. Please cross-platform test your sites.

http://d.pr/i/T7Wq Chrome 25

http://d.pr/i/p0AO Firefox 19

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

#46

Post by matm »

meritt wrote: post #44

Windows user here. The fonts on your site do not render well on Windows machines. I see an increasing number of sites using embedded fonts that, for whatever reason, render poorly on Windows. Please cross-platform test your sites. http://d.pr/i/T7Wq Chrome 25 http://d.pr/i/p0AO Firefox 19

Thanks for the heads-up, we'll fix this asap.

We've run into this issue before, and it seems to have something to do with the font's Unicode values being "out of range" on Windows, whatever that means.

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

#47

Post by eksith »

codegeek wrote: post #10

The demo page ( https://heapanalytics.com/dashboard/demo ) fails in IE8. Is it just me or IE8 is just not considered by web startups anymore ? Sorry to deviate a little but every time I try to look at a "Show HN" in IE8 (work computer), it fails for about 85% of the time. I could understand that some startups heavily depend on latest browsers but what about others ?

It's not your imagination.

For Heap, it would be a bit unwise to ignore IE A lot of new projects on the front page lately don't work on IE9 either. I lost count of the number of shiny new things (usually involving HTML5) that just show a plain black (/white/gray/blue etc...) screen on IE9 and I'd need to fire up Firefox or Chrome just to look at it.

To be fair, not all of these are catering to IE based browsers (and I dread to think how some of these would look on a Nokia mobile... or, heaven forbid, a BlackBerry), but they're effectively ignoring a very, very, very large percentage of users worldwide -- of not just IE -- to be first out of the gate. BlackBerry in particular is still very popular in Latin America and Southeast Asia.

That foot in the door is all important, I suppose, since the buzz will help sustain at least an initial signup for whatever it is.

The web applications in particular are exactly that. Because they're applications they're crafted to a very select set of platforms since they're executed. For better or for worse, a lot of new projects are already going in the direction of the browser as the OS.

I presume backwards compatibility will be tacked on later and maybe removed as those browsers fall further behind.

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

#48

Post by huhtenberg »

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 after KissMetrics.

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

#49

Post by lenazegher »

dubcanada wrote: post #39
mbell wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IE8 is a complete mess in comparison to modern browsers. To support IE8 you often have to go through a lot of extra work after the site works in modern browsers to get it functional even if your not doing something particularly complex. At the very least its often a whole bunch of different CSS / replacing CSS with images to get the rendering to look decent. In addition a lot of 'Show HN' posts tend to use 'cool new…

IE8 is perfectly fine, and also somewhere between 20-30% of your users. If you have an analytics software that doesn't work in IE8. You lost analytics for 20-30% of your users. And since array.prototype.slice.call is not supported in IE8, this analytics software is about 80-70% useful. And maybe even less if you have a large IE clientele. Seems strange to me that one would limit themselves that much.

>IE8 is perfectly fine, and also somewhere between 20-30% of your users.

Perhaps in some markets.

For one of the sites I write for, it's less than 5% over a large sample.

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

#50

Post by pc86 »

raviparikh wrote: post #40
kybernetyk wrote: post #32

First: The service sounds great. Something I would sign up for. But I don't really get the pricing structure: What if I have less then 2500 unique users/month? Do I pay $25? Is it free? If it's $25 what then if I have more than 2500 but less than 20000 users? Is it $150 then?

Right now the way we price is pro-rate it for people who are between tiers. For example, if you have 3000 uniques per month, then you'll pay $28.75 ($25 for the first 2500 users, and then $3.75 pro-rated for 500 additional users on the next tier). If you have below 2500 users, you just pay for the portion of that $25 that you use (a site with 1000 users would pay $10). We're updating our pricing page to clarify this.

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?

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