6 ms·

Thank you, appreciate the feedback! Would you be willing to go into some more detail into how these decisions played out for you in the past?

nathan_f77 6y ago
Sure! I've mainly struggled with decisions for live chat, project management, product analytics, and bookkeeping. For live chat, I started on Drift, and then I got really tired of their buggy iOS app. I saw that you also mentioned their history of engineering issues in the handbook, and I've personally experienced a lot of these issues. I switched to Intercom, and they've been much better. However, I'm still very disappointed in the iOS app, because I can't tag any messages. This is a critical part of my workflow, because I use a new tool called Savio (http://savio.io http://savio.io) for tracking feature requests and customer feedback, and they have an integration with Intercom that relies on message tagging. Otherwise, Intercom has been great on desktop. (Except for a really annoying issue with Turbolinks, because the Intercom widget "bounces" on each page load. I've reached out to their customer support about this.) For project management, I was originally using Trello. Then I briefly tried to use Airtable, but that didn't work very well after a while. Then I had a great product management consultation with the founder of Savio (Kareem Mayan - highly recommended by the way! https://www.reemer.com/ https://www.reemer.com/). He helped me get set up on Clubhouse.io, which has been awesome. I've also really enjoyed having a "feedback triage" layer in Savio, so that I'm not just adding every idea directly into my todo list. My only issue with Clubhouse is that I wish there was an easier way to add a new task directly from each column in the kanban view, similar to Trello's "+ Add another card" button. For product analytics - This is a bit embarrassing, but the option paralysis has been so bad so that I just didn't make any decision at all. I was just using Google Analytics on every page and tracking a few events, but "Evaluate Heap vs Mixpanel vs Amplitude" has been on my roadmap forever, and I would read Quora answers and try to figure out which one I should be using, but then I would just give up. Also everything is extremely expensive! But anyway, thanks to your article, I finally set up Heap analytics! But here's one thing I couldn't find any answers for - should I be adding Heap to all of my pages (including landing page, documentation site, blog, etc.). Or should I just add it inside the application, only for signed-in users? I was thinking that it would be nice to get more visibility into how people are reading the docs, because I'm working on a developer tool where the documentation is a critical part of the onboarding process. And I definitely want to know if someone signs up after reading through the docs. But on the other hand, maybe I don't want to track all anonymous users, because if I blow past their free plan limit then $500/mo is extremely expensive. Oh, so maybe I actually want to use Amplitude! I already ran into a free plan limit with FullStory recently. I wanted to start tracking a page that was getting a lot of traffic, because there was a bug that was really hard to reproduce. I accidentally blew past the free plan limit and couldn't use them for the rest of the month, because their paid plan started at 5 figures per year. I started on Bench.co for bookkeeping, and they were great for a year, but I could start to tell that they weren't the best choice for a SaaS business. They also referred me to an accounting service that hasn't been very good. (It's been very hard to get a response from them, and I actually still have no idea if they've even filed my taxes for 2019. I think I might need to sue them soon if I don't hear anything.) So I moved to Pilot.com this year, and they've been awesome! It's so much nicer to have my books in Quickbooks Online. I'm planning to start using Flightpath Finance at some point (https://www.flightpathfinance.com https://www.flightpathfinance.com). I had an initial call with them, and they talked about all the reasons why Bench.co wasn't a great choice, I should be using accrual accounting vs cash accounting, and having my books in Quickbooks makes it much easier to work with accountants and other services, etc. I think I might even fire my current accountant and just use Pilot's tax services this year. I think that's about it for now, and would be happy to answer any questions! P.S. I searched everywhere to see if I could find Satchel on Twitter. I think Twitter would be a perfect marketing channel for Satchel, because I would definitely follow an account that regularly tweeted about this topic and shared links to your reviews.
- gorkemcetin 6y ago
  Nathan, did you check Countly? (which is at the top 10 analytics platforms on Google Play, according to Appfigures), and is not prohibitely expensive. Thought you may give it a try. (shameless plug: I am one of the cofounders).

nathan_f77 6y ago

Sure! I've mainly struggled with decisions for live chat, project management, product analytics, and bookkeeping. For live chat, I started on Drift, and then I got really tired of their buggy iOS app. I saw that you also mentioned their history of engineering issues in the handbook, and I've personally experienced a lot of these issues. I switched to Intercom, and they've been much better. However, I'm still very disappointed in the iOS app, because I can't tag any messages. This is a critical part of my workflow, because I use a new tool called Savio (http://savio.io http://savio.io) for tracking feature requests and customer feedback, and they have an integration with Intercom that relies on message tagging. Otherwise, Intercom has been great on desktop. (Except for a really annoying issue with Turbolinks, because the Intercom widget "bounces" on each page load. I've reached out to their customer support about this.) For project management, I was originally using Trello. Then I briefly tried to use Airtable, but that didn't work very well after a while. Then I had a great product management consultation with the founder of Savio (Kareem Mayan - highly recommended by the way! https://www.reemer.com/ https://www.reemer.com/). He helped me get set up on Clubhouse.io, which has been awesome. I've also really enjoyed having a "feedback triage" layer in Savio, so that I'm not just adding every idea directly into my todo list. My only issue with Clubhouse is that I wish there was an easier way to add a new task directly from each column in the kanban view, similar to Trello's "+ Add another card" button. For product analytics - This is a bit embarrassing, but the option paralysis has been so bad so that I just didn't make any decision at all. I was just using Google Analytics on every page and tracking a few events, but "Evaluate Heap vs Mixpanel vs Amplitude" has been on my roadmap forever, and I would read Quora answers and try to figure out which one I should be using, but then I would just give up. Also everything is extremely expensive! But anyway, thanks to your article, I finally set up Heap analytics! But here's one thing I couldn't find any answers for - should I be adding Heap to all of my pages (including landing page, documentation site, blog, etc.). Or should I just add it inside the application, only for signed-in users? I was thinking that it would be nice to get more visibility into how people are reading the docs, because I'm working on a developer tool where the documentation is a critical part of the onboarding process. And I definitely want to know if someone signs up after reading through the docs. But on the other hand, maybe I don't want to track all anonymous users, because if I blow past their free plan limit then $500/mo is extremely expensive. Oh, so maybe I actually want to use Amplitude! I already ran into a free plan limit with FullStory recently. I wanted to start tracking a page that was getting a lot of traffic, because there was a bug that was really hard to reproduce. I accidentally blew past the free plan limit and couldn't use them for the rest of the month, because their paid plan started at 5 figures per year. I started on Bench.co for bookkeeping, and they were great for a year, but I could start to tell that they weren't the best choice for a SaaS business. They also referred me to an accounting service that hasn't been very good. (It's been very hard to get a response from them, and I actually still have no idea if they've even filed my taxes for 2019. I think I might need to sue them soon if I don't hear anything.) So I moved to Pilot.com this year, and they've been awesome! It's so much nicer to have my books in Quickbooks Online. I'm planning to start using Flightpath Finance at some point (https://www.flightpathfinance.com https://www.flightpathfinance.com). I had an initial call with them, and they talked about all the reasons why Bench.co wasn't a great choice, I should be using accrual accounting vs cash accounting, and having my books in Quickbooks makes it much easier to work with accountants and other services, etc. I think I might even fire my current accountant and just use Pilot's tax services this year. I think that's about it for now, and would be happy to answer any questions! P.S. I searched everywhere to see if I could find Satchel on Twitter. I think Twitter would be a perfect marketing channel for Satchel, because I would definitely follow an account that regularly tweeted about this topic and shared links to your reviews.

gorkemcetin 6y ago
Nathan, did you check Countly? (which is at the top 10 analytics platforms on Google Play, according to Appfigures), and is not prohibitely expensive. Thought you may give it a try. (shameless plug: I am one of the cofounders).