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Segment Is Now Free for Early-Stage Startups

segment.com

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Re: Segment Is Now Free for Early-Stage Startups

#31

Post by joering2 »

elbac wrote: post #24

Data volume-based pricing is a bit out of control across most analytics/data products. My company has been moving away from volume-based pricing to a feature/value-based model. The big challenge is aligning data scale to company size/price. I suspect Segment is trying to solve for this very problem with their price increases but at the expense of smaller business. The 'startup' program is a great way for them to keep…

Your product looks great, is related to OP, and your post clearly indicates you are advertising. Good old Hacker News from circa 5-6 years ago would applaud you. Today??

Shame on all those who voted you down.

Re: Segment Is Now Free for Early-Stage Startups

#32

Post by elbac »

joering2 wrote: post #31
elbac wrote: post #24

Data volume-based pricing is a bit out of control across most analytics/data products. My company has been moving away from volume-based pricing to a feature/value-based model. The big challenge is aligning data scale to company size/price. I suspect Segment is trying to solve for this very problem with their price increases but at the expense of smaller business. The 'startup' program is a great way for them to keep…

Your product looks great, is related to OP, and your post clearly indicates you are advertising. Good old Hacker News from circa 5-6 years ago would applaud you. Today?? Shame on all those who voted you down.

:) thanks.

Re: Segment Is Now Free for Early-Stage Startups

#33

Post by rm999 »

I've used Segment at two companies in a row (in both cases they were implemented at early stages before I joined). It's a good product with broken pricing. They charge insane amounts of money for add-ons and seem to get exponentially more expensive as you grow. My recent renegotiation with them was the most painful experience with a vendor in my 12 year career.

I want to like Segment, I really do. But until they change their attitude I strongly recommend against using them. Especially for startups, because it's not easy to get off once you deeply integrate Segment into your stack.

Re: Segment Is Now Free for Early-Stage Startups

#34

Post by Zaheer »

idunno246 wrote: post #26
rexreed wrote: post #21

Can someone explain to me what Segment is and what it does? Even the website doesn't make it clear. What is it beyond analytics? Can someone clue me into why this is awesome or necessary? Am I dumb for not understanding this or a bad marketer?

its integrations. you drop one javascript snippet in there, and instrument the app with their sdk. Want google analytics? add it in their UI and its there. Mixpanel? Click a button. Trying a new ad network? Click a button. Basically, all these SaaS companies want some bits of your data and have some custom integrations.. instead of needing an engineer to implement it your marketing team can edit a UI. And you do it o…

This seems like a one-time problem during setup of someone's infrastructure. Is the one-time cost of doing these integrations really worth the monthly cost of Segment? There must be some other value they provide?

Re: Segment Is Now Free for Early-Stage Startups

#35

Post by nlh »

ivolo wrote: post #29
nlh wrote: post #27

I have to say, a few years ago I was the world’s biggest Segment evangelist. My absolutely favorite analytics service, and for any web project I worked on, installing Segment was step 1. I ran it primarily on my own company’s site (100k visitors/month, most of whom were not monetized) and I think I paid them $79/month. Worth every penny as a router to send up to GA, Heap, and others. Their data warehouse became a won…

Hey, just wanted to let you know that we're reading/listening and this is really helpful feedback. I'd love to do a phone call, and get your feedback on a few pricing/packaging changes we're working on. If you're willing, my email is ilya @segment.com

Very cool of you to be active on this Ilya! Happy to chat - I'll drop you a line.

Re: Segment Is Now Free for Early-Stage Startups

#36

Post by ivolo »

rm999 wrote: post #33

I've used Segment at two companies in a row (in both cases they were implemented at early stages before I joined). It's a good product with broken pricing. They charge insane amounts of money for add-ons and seem to get exponentially more expensive as you grow. My recent renegotiation with them was the most painful experience with a vendor in my 12 year career. I want to like Segment, I really do. But until they chan…

Thanks for your feedback, "painful" is not what I like to hear. If you're willing, will you send me an email ilya @segment.com, would love to get details.

Re: Segment Is Now Free for Early-Stage Startups

#37

Post by gnicholas »

ivolo wrote: post #7
cornflake wrote: post #2

Segment is a good concept but when they bumped their pricing up to ludicrous mode, it justified a small rewrite to reproduce their functionality in our back-end to drop them and we haven't looked back. No way i'll be going back to their service factoring that experience. Interested to see what the back-end of this 'free period' will cost for the startups who get in bed with them - $120 per month for up to 10k MAU and…

Hey, wanted to say that I really appreciate the feedback and we're releasing this program exactly to address it. This is Ilya, one of the co-founders of Segment. Re: how the program works on the backend — For new startups ( Re: value over time — we see companies of 2+ years of age use an average of 7 source types (web, mobile, crm, stripe, ..) and 8 destination types (google analytics, event analytics tool, data ware…

> For new startups (

Basically this definition works for venture-backed startups, who will fail or get big funding in 2 years. For those of us taking a slower, lower-risk path, two years is a pretty short cutoff for "startup" status.

If the entry-level, non-startup pricing were more modest, this wouldn't be much of an issue. But reading the comments about pricing here, it seems like the non-startup pricing is very high.

Re: Segment Is Now Free for Early-Stage Startups

#38

Post by meetbryce »

raleigh_user wrote: post #19
lapnitnelav wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value for pure tech players might be low -as in, you could hack something that does 90%+ of what segment does for you. But for every other biz that happens to be on the internet, ie e-commerce, not having to rely on a tech team for implementing various services has some value. If you consider that some websites can only be updated every few months or so, having a third party manage that for you is a life-saver. I…

One product worth checking out might be simpleanalytics.io. its a small company that doesn't track your data. And its cheap. Not entirely sure of your use case but ive seen a good amount of people saying screw the data collectors Ill roll my own and it seems some of what you might be looking for is available from simple (I have no affiliation, just appreciate alternatives to the huge tech companies)

this isn't even relevant. your spam strategy needs work.

Re: Segment Is Now Free for Early-Stage Startups

#39

Post by buf »

ivolo wrote: post #29
nlh wrote: post #27

I have to say, a few years ago I was the world’s biggest Segment evangelist. My absolutely favorite analytics service, and for any web project I worked on, installing Segment was step 1. I ran it primarily on my own company’s site (100k visitors/month, most of whom were not monetized) and I think I paid them $79/month. Worth every penny as a router to send up to GA, Heap, and others. Their data warehouse became a won…

Hey, just wanted to let you know that we're reading/listening and this is really helpful feedback. I'd love to do a phone call, and get your feedback on a few pricing/packaging changes we're working on. If you're willing, my email is ilya @segment.com

I'm in the same boat. I love love love segment at Reforge (and I hear Segment loves Reforge, too). I've built some pretty awesome data pipelines (Personas are my favorite feature of all time) and have armed the marketing team to the teeth.

But my side project, Casting Call Club, has 150k uniques a month, most of which are not monetized. There's just simply no way I can justify paying for Segment. Many of the ideas I think about are simply lost because it would take too much time to build out myself.

Re: Segment Is Now Free for Early-Stage Startups

#40

Post by chanfest22 »

nlh wrote: post #27

I have to say, a few years ago I was the world’s biggest Segment evangelist. My absolutely favorite analytics service, and for any web project I worked on, installing Segment was step 1. I ran it primarily on my own company’s site (100k visitors/month, most of whom were not monetized) and I think I paid them $79/month. Worth every penny as a router to send up to GA, Heap, and others. Their data warehouse became a won…

100% agree. We are working on a YC W18 company (www.cointracker.io) and loved that Segment made it easy to get up and running on a bunch of metrics platforms. Really slick product!

Unfortunately, the recent price hikes are completely out of line with the value we are getting with the product and we are being financially forced to stop using the service. Chatting with the sales team has been extremely painful and unhelpful. It has been incredibly validating to hear that everyone else here is feeling the same way.

@Ilya — I really hope you'll consider taking this feedback to heart. You have absolutely nailed the product. The pricing needs a complete overhaul.

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