7 ms·

Show HN: SessionForward – Simple user session replays and heatmaps

47 points by mahesh_rm 6y ago

mahesh_rm 6y ago
Hello HN, I started working on SessionForward a few months ago, when working on a UX/UI project for a client, and could not find an tools for Sessions Replays and Heatmaps generation, which would target developers. The project is still very much in Beta, so rough around the edges. If you decide to try it out and you have any suggestions, I am happy to hear about it! I will not charge for product usage for at least a few months, till a more polished version of it will be available.
- adamlangsner 6y ago
  What is the value one would get with your product over Hotjar or fullstory? I'm curious to learn more about what attracted you to this space and where you plan on positioning yourself in the market.
  - mahesh_rm 6y ago
    Dear Adam, indeed, Hotjar and Fullstory are great tools, and as an avid user of both of them I can say they are, as of now, far more polished, solid, and complete UX suites than SessionForward really is. The straightforward answer to your question, is that as a developement oriented PM I was feeling like I wanted a frills free product focused on simplicity and performance, and that is 100% targeted towards tech, rather than marketing people. The 'vision' answer (i.e., why SF will be better than competition in the future) is based on automated neural networks driven actionable insights: sometimes you don't want/have time to go through 200 of your users not clicking on a button, you just want to receive an email telling you to please move your call to action button from the top left corner to the top right corner of your page!
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- stephen123 6y ago
  Congrats it looks nice. I currently use hot jar. Looking at your site im left with one big question. How do I install it on my site?
  - mahesh_rm 6y ago
    Hello Stephen, thank you for the nice words! You are completely right, I left this basic piece of info out of landing. As for hotjar and fullstory, when you sign up you are prompted with a <script> snippet, which you can paste before the closing </head> tag of the pages you would like to track.
satvikpendem 6y ago
Is this open source as well? I was thinking about self hosting it when you mentioned it last time in some other threads.
- XCSme 6y ago
  If you are interested, I am also building a similar product, which can only be self-hosted: https://usertrack.net https://usertrack.net From OP I see their only self-hosted version is the $499 one.
  - satvikpendem 6y ago
    Is your product open source?
    - XCSme 6y ago
      I wouldn't clasify it as open-source as it's not free (you pay to get the product/source-code). But you can view the server-side source-code.
      - satvikpendem 6y ago
        I see, thanks.
- mahesh_rm 6y ago
  Hey there! SessionForward is made up of two main pieces, a "client" library which you "require" on your page by pasting a <script> snippet, and a server, which actually collects sessions. The client side is based on MIT libraries, and I plan to open source it as soon as it will be more solid/readable. The server part of it is not opensource as of now (not sure about the future though!) And it is deployed on SessionForward servers for "non-enterprise" plans. I do want to explore the possibility offer to self host backend on-premises, even to non enterprise users, do reach out (email is on my profile) and we can talk this further!
sefrost 6y ago
It looks really cool and useful, but is it ethical? I find it a bit creepy that someone could watch me use a site.
- jedberg 6y ago
  I'm curious as to why you think it is unethical? How do you feel about physical stores that use video cameras? That seems like the most equivalent thing in the real world to me.
  - gruez 6y ago
    There's no expectation of privacy because you're in public. Also, the security cameras are visible and there are possibly signs informing you of this. I have yet to see a "your actions are being recorded for product improvement purposes" warning on a website. Or maybe I did, but I tuned it out because it got buried in the standard cookie warnings.
    - XCSme 6y ago
      Cameras are usually pretty well hidden. And isn't a website you don't own a public place? Do you expect Google not to track what you do on their site?
      - gruez 6y ago
        >Cameras are usually pretty well hidden. Can you link to some examples of some "well hidden" cameras at a major retailer? Most retailers don't bother to hide their cameras, so they're just kinda lying out there. They're not overtly obvious, but if you know where to look (eg. ceilings), you can find them. >And isn't a website you don't own a public place? Not really, it's public in the sense that anyone can access it, but it's also private in the sense that all your activities are instanced and not visible to anyone else. >Do you expect Google not to track what you do on their site? Facebook got flak a few years back when it was revealed that they were surreptitiously recording everything you typed when you were creating a post, even before you hit submit[1]. Clearly the average person doesn't expect that their activities to be recorded 24/7. [1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2525227/Facebook-tracks-type-DONT-post-update-comment.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2525227/Face...
madjam002 6y ago
This looks like it uses rrweb which is open source and can be self hosted. https://www.rrweb.io/ https://www.rrweb.io/ https://github.com/rrweb-io/rrweb https://github.com/rrweb-io/rrweb Nonetheless nice work and it's good to see alternatives emerge.
- cpursley 6y ago
  Neat, this should be added to: https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted
  - mahesh_rm 6y ago
    Hello and sorry for delay! Yes, absolutely, under the hood it is powered by rrweb, I am working on a fork of it, which integrates with heatmap.js, and fingerprint.js, and I plan to opensource it as soon as it will be a little bit more solid!
- yz-yu 6y ago
  rrweb's author here. Very happy to see people building commercial products on top of rrweb. Also paid a lot of time in the last several months to design and implement some new features to help the rrweb scale in production, such as the storage size. Hope it will keep helping people make more interesting stuff in this area.
httgp 6y ago
I love the idea of an instant replay of my own session! Unfortunately, the replay doesn’t work for me on Safari on iOS.
devmunchies 6y ago
I get how these things record the mouse coordinates, but how do they accurately render the entire page in the replay without taking a video? For example, I was resizing the browser and in the replay it was showing the sizes of buttons change correctly.
- jessaustin 6y ago
  It might be observing the resize event? https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/resize_event https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/resi...
- katsura 6y ago
  They just render the whole page inside a frame. If there was a resize on the page, the frame itself is resized as well, so you should see pretty much the same thing as the visitor. Note that this doesn't handle browser inconsistencies though. So something like that wouldn't be reflected in the "recording".
  - tantalor 6y ago
    What about the user's cookie?
- XCSme 6y ago
  In this case, if it uses rrweb, it just stores all the HTML and all DOM mutations that happen. This is a pretty accurate method (even though still doesn't record all events, for example text selection, and if you watch an mp4 video for example, it won't save the entire video, only the URL to it), but it uses a lot of data. In my case, I created a more simple solution for userTrack.net, where I just store the URL, record all events that happen and replay them by loading the iframe at the same URL and re-triggering all the events. It's not as accurate as storing HTML and mutations, but it uses a lot less data.
  - helloiloveyou 6y ago
    I don't understand something. If you replay the events on an iframe of the real URL, each time I play the video you are hitting the site's real API? Like, if I watch the video where the user adds an item to it's cart, will the same item get added twice because I watched the video?
_up 6y ago
Yandex metrica offers this for free.
atian 6y ago
MutationObserver cannot be trusted.
- andrethegiant 6y ago
  Why is that?
- cj 6y ago
  I've spent the last 6 years building a company with a core product that relies on MutationObserver. I've personally spent many hundreds of hours working with it. I have never encountered an issue with MutationObserver that made me doubt its accuracy.
redm 6y ago
Congrats on the launch. This is finally a reasonable alternative to Fullstory and Hotjar. (we don't want to self host) Fullstory changed pricing last year to focus on extracting large amounts of money from big customers, thus leaving small statups out effectively. So we moved to Hotjar, which requires us to constantly start a sample. We haven't been using either. This is just what we were waiting for. Reasonable pricing for a strait forward simple service. We'll be signing up today!
- XCSme 6y ago
  What is your main push-back against self-hosting? Setup time? Maintenence? Because self-hosting usually costs a fraction of the price of hosted services. I assume you wouldn't be interested in my Hotjar alternative (https://usertrack.net https://usertrack.net) as it's only self-hosted.
- mahesh_rm 6y ago
  Trust me, your words sound overwhelmingly warm, and I am very happy that this effort looks compelling to you. Also, they create some pressure, since despite being functional, the tool is still at its MVP stage, and there are MANY things that I want there, which are simply not there yet. I will personally reach out to each person that signed up across the next few days, with a clear description of product functionality along with a brief roadmap, of what features you can expect in the next 1 to 6 months!
agustif 6y ago
I use logrocket for this.
rosstex 6y ago
1. This is beautifully executed. 2. It's a beautiful reminder that any number of websites may be tracking us this way. A fun security course assignment would be to have students use this website and discuss the ethics surrounding it.
- chance_state 6y ago
  JS off by default mitigates this and a whole host of other creepy behaviors.
XCSme 6y ago
Nice product! I feel that it looks a bit unpolished (but I assume it's an MVP). You might also want to check the similar product I'm working on: https://www.usertrack.net https://www.usertrack.net I also started with session replays and heatmaps, but ended up adding a lot more analytics features. I personally only provide a self-hosted version as I really beleive self-hosting improves user privacy by a lot, and I don't feel comfortable storing all this possibly sensitive data (session recordings especially) on my servers.
- mahesh_rm 6y ago
  Hey there, I checked out usertrack and it looks great! Yes indeed, I just released SessionForward publicly a few days ago and it is curently in its validation stage. Specifically, I want to test if there is a segment of tech oriented PMs, which want one tool in this space, which does one thing only and one thing very well (replays and Heatmaps), rather than dealing with a full extensive but heavy suite of UX/UI functionalities, such as Hotjar and FullStory!
gukov 6y ago
What a great way to demo the product, right off the bat.

47 points by mahesh_rm 6y ago

Hello HN, I started working on SessionForward a few months ago, when working on a UX/UI project for a client, and could not find an tools for Sessions Replays and Heatmaps generation, which would target developers. The project is still very much in Beta, so rough around the edges. If you decide to try it out and you have any suggestions, I am happy to hear about it! I will not charge for product usage for at least a few months, till a more polished version of it will be available.

adamlangsner 6y ago
What is the value one would get with your product over Hotjar or fullstory? I'm curious to learn more about what attracted you to this space and where you plan on positioning yourself in the market.
- mahesh_rm 6y ago
  Dear Adam, indeed, Hotjar and Fullstory are great tools, and as an avid user of both of them I can say they are, as of now, far more polished, solid, and complete UX suites than SessionForward really is. The straightforward answer to your question, is that as a developement oriented PM I was feeling like I wanted a frills free product focused on simplicity and performance, and that is 100% targeted towards tech, rather than marketing people. The 'vision' answer (i.e., why SF will be better than competition in the future) is based on automated neural networks driven actionable insights: sometimes you don't want/have time to go through 200 of your users not clicking on a button, you just want to receive an email telling you to please move your call to action button from the top left corner to the top right corner of your page!
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
stephen123 6y ago
Congrats it looks nice. I currently use hot jar. Looking at your site im left with one big question. How do I install it on my site?
- mahesh_rm 6y ago
  Hello Stephen, thank you for the nice words! You are completely right, I left this basic piece of info out of landing. As for hotjar and fullstory, when you sign up you are prompted with a <script> snippet, which you can paste before the closing </head> tag of the pages you would like to track.

satvikpendem 6y ago

Is this open source as well? I was thinking about self hosting it when you mentioned it last time in some other threads.

XCSme 6y ago
If you are interested, I am also building a similar product, which can only be self-hosted: https://usertrack.net https://usertrack.net From OP I see their only self-hosted version is the $499 one.
- satvikpendem 6y ago
  Is your product open source?
  - XCSme 6y ago
    I wouldn't clasify it as open-source as it's not free (you pay to get the product/source-code). But you can view the server-side source-code.
    - satvikpendem 6y ago
      I see, thanks.
mahesh_rm 6y ago
Hey there! SessionForward is made up of two main pieces, a "client" library which you "require" on your page by pasting a <script> snippet, and a server, which actually collects sessions. The client side is based on MIT libraries, and I plan to open source it as soon as it will be more solid/readable. The server part of it is not opensource as of now (not sure about the future though!) And it is deployed on SessionForward servers for "non-enterprise" plans. I do want to explore the possibility offer to self host backend on-premises, even to non enterprise users, do reach out (email is on my profile) and we can talk this further!

sefrost 6y ago

It looks really cool and useful, but is it ethical? I find it a bit creepy that someone could watch me use a site.

jedberg 6y ago
I'm curious as to why you think it is unethical? How do you feel about physical stores that use video cameras? That seems like the most equivalent thing in the real world to me.
- gruez 6y ago
  There's no expectation of privacy because you're in public. Also, the security cameras are visible and there are possibly signs informing you of this. I have yet to see a "your actions are being recorded for product improvement purposes" warning on a website. Or maybe I did, but I tuned it out because it got buried in the standard cookie warnings.
  - XCSme 6y ago
    Cameras are usually pretty well hidden. And isn't a website you don't own a public place? Do you expect Google not to track what you do on their site?
    - gruez 6y ago
      >Cameras are usually pretty well hidden. Can you link to some examples of some "well hidden" cameras at a major retailer? Most retailers don't bother to hide their cameras, so they're just kinda lying out there. They're not overtly obvious, but if you know where to look (eg. ceilings), you can find them. >And isn't a website you don't own a public place? Not really, it's public in the sense that anyone can access it, but it's also private in the sense that all your activities are instanced and not visible to anyone else. >Do you expect Google not to track what you do on their site? Facebook got flak a few years back when it was revealed that they were surreptitiously recording everything you typed when you were creating a post, even before you hit submit[1]. Clearly the average person doesn't expect that their activities to be recorded 24/7. [1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2525227/Facebook-tracks-type-DONT-post-update-comment.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2525227/Face...

madjam002 6y ago

This looks like it uses rrweb which is open source and can be self hosted. https://www.rrweb.io/ https://www.rrweb.io/ https://github.com/rrweb-io/rrweb https://github.com/rrweb-io/rrweb Nonetheless nice work and it's good to see alternatives emerge.

cpursley 6y ago
Neat, this should be added to: https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted
- mahesh_rm 6y ago
  Hello and sorry for delay! Yes, absolutely, under the hood it is powered by rrweb, I am working on a fork of it, which integrates with heatmap.js, and fingerprint.js, and I plan to opensource it as soon as it will be a little bit more solid!
yz-yu 6y ago
rrweb's author here. Very happy to see people building commercial products on top of rrweb. Also paid a lot of time in the last several months to design and implement some new features to help the rrweb scale in production, such as the storage size. Hope it will keep helping people make more interesting stuff in this area.

httgp 6y ago

I love the idea of an instant replay of my own session! Unfortunately, the replay doesn’t work for me on Safari on iOS.

devmunchies 6y ago

I get how these things record the mouse coordinates, but how do they accurately render the entire page in the replay without taking a video? For example, I was resizing the browser and in the replay it was showing the sizes of buttons change correctly.

jessaustin 6y ago
It might be observing the resize event? https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/resize_event https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/resi...
katsura 6y ago
They just render the whole page inside a frame. If there was a resize on the page, the frame itself is resized as well, so you should see pretty much the same thing as the visitor. Note that this doesn't handle browser inconsistencies though. So something like that wouldn't be reflected in the "recording".
- tantalor 6y ago
  What about the user's cookie?
XCSme 6y ago
In this case, if it uses rrweb, it just stores all the HTML and all DOM mutations that happen. This is a pretty accurate method (even though still doesn't record all events, for example text selection, and if you watch an mp4 video for example, it won't save the entire video, only the URL to it), but it uses a lot of data. In my case, I created a more simple solution for userTrack.net, where I just store the URL, record all events that happen and replay them by loading the iframe at the same URL and re-triggering all the events. It's not as accurate as storing HTML and mutations, but it uses a lot less data.
- helloiloveyou 6y ago
  I don't understand something. If you replay the events on an iframe of the real URL, each time I play the video you are hitting the site's real API? Like, if I watch the video where the user adds an item to it's cart, will the same item get added twice because I watched the video?

_up 6y ago

Yandex metrica offers this for free.

atian 6y ago

MutationObserver cannot be trusted.

andrethegiant 6y ago
Why is that?
cj 6y ago
I've spent the last 6 years building a company with a core product that relies on MutationObserver. I've personally spent many hundreds of hours working with it. I have never encountered an issue with MutationObserver that made me doubt its accuracy.

redm 6y ago

Congrats on the launch. This is finally a reasonable alternative to Fullstory and Hotjar. (we don't want to self host) Fullstory changed pricing last year to focus on extracting large amounts of money from big customers, thus leaving small statups out effectively. So we moved to Hotjar, which requires us to constantly start a sample. We haven't been using either. This is just what we were waiting for. Reasonable pricing for a strait forward simple service. We'll be signing up today!

XCSme 6y ago
What is your main push-back against self-hosting? Setup time? Maintenence? Because self-hosting usually costs a fraction of the price of hosted services. I assume you wouldn't be interested in my Hotjar alternative (https://usertrack.net https://usertrack.net) as it's only self-hosted.
mahesh_rm 6y ago
Trust me, your words sound overwhelmingly warm, and I am very happy that this effort looks compelling to you. Also, they create some pressure, since despite being functional, the tool is still at its MVP stage, and there are MANY things that I want there, which are simply not there yet. I will personally reach out to each person that signed up across the next few days, with a clear description of product functionality along with a brief roadmap, of what features you can expect in the next 1 to 6 months!

agustif 6y ago

I use logrocket for this.

rosstex 6y ago

1. This is beautifully executed. 2. It's a beautiful reminder that any number of websites may be tracking us this way. A fun security course assignment would be to have students use this website and discuss the ethics surrounding it.

chance_state 6y ago
JS off by default mitigates this and a whole host of other creepy behaviors.

XCSme 6y ago

Nice product! I feel that it looks a bit unpolished (but I assume it's an MVP). You might also want to check the similar product I'm working on: https://www.usertrack.net https://www.usertrack.net I also started with session replays and heatmaps, but ended up adding a lot more analytics features. I personally only provide a self-hosted version as I really beleive self-hosting improves user privacy by a lot, and I don't feel comfortable storing all this possibly sensitive data (session recordings especially) on my servers.

mahesh_rm 6y ago
Hey there, I checked out usertrack and it looks great! Yes indeed, I just released SessionForward publicly a few days ago and it is curently in its validation stage. Specifically, I want to test if there is a segment of tech oriented PMs, which want one tool in this space, which does one thing only and one thing very well (replays and Heatmaps), rather than dealing with a full extensive but heavy suite of UX/UI functionalities, such as Hotjar and FullStory!

gukov 6y ago

What a great way to demo the product, right off the bat.