4 ms·

Show HN: Open-source SaaS analytics (Baremetrics / ProfitWell alternative)

6 points by mritchie712 5y ago

throwaway888abc 5y ago
That looks totally awesome! Thank you million times for open sourcing it. Will use for sure. Thank you! EDIT: The excitement came from self hosting and privacy, didn't wanted to handle revenue data and users to "another company" just to see those visualisations etc.etc.
mritchie712 5y ago
Hey HN - At my last SaaS company, I tried all the subscription analytics platforms out there, but they each lacked some things I wanted: 1. Drill down to customer level detail for metrics (e.g. "double click" on total MRR and see the MRR for each customer) 2. Ability to inspect the data pipeline and calculations from raw data to final metric 3. Direct SQL access to the modeled data I've been hacking on Pulse for a few months and it's now ready for beta. Pulse is: 1. Transparent - Easily drill down and see how metrics are calculated at the customer level 2. Free & Open source - It's easy to self host, but there's also a free hosted version here: https://pulse.trypaper.io/ https://pulse.trypaper.io/. 3. Extensible - Have some weird edge case you need to exclude? You can update your data model with a little SQL and you always have direct SQL access to your data. We're using dbt for the modeling layer and pull requests are welcomed! 4. Push first - Metrics can be pushed to Slack, Sheets, and email so you don't need to check yet another dashboard. The integrations work out of the box, so no janky Zapier workflows are needed. Why is this free? Good question. The app relatively cheap to run and I'm using Pulse as an acquisition channel for Paper. Also, making the app FOSS gives it a better chance of becoming the standard for SaaS metrics Links: Pulse - https://pulse.trypaper.io/ https://pulse.trypaper.io/ Github - https://github.com/mike-paper/pulse https://github.com/mike-paper/pulse Paper - https://www.trypaper.io/ https://www.trypaper.io/ [1] - Paper is a capital marketplace for SaaS companies. It's like LendingTree for SaaS funding. You can apply to dozens of capital providers in one click. Easily compare offers and select the best option for your company.
- mtmail 5y ago
  > I'm using Pulse as an acquisition channel for Paper If I ever look for the next profitable business idea I would setup a free payment analytics tools. I'd have insight into many businesses and how they're doing. Joking aside, the reason I haven't switched for one of the smaller players in the payment analytics space is that I worry by free or very cheap offering they might use my business data for something else. Here it's an acquisition channel, with profitwell upselling churn service and consulting. I like it very much that you're open about the business model, and the open source / self-hosted version of course. There isn't a real solution to my unjustified worries. Paranoid enough I shouldn't even use AWS because Amazon might see my usage and decide to launch a competitor (they won't).
  - mritchie712 5y ago
    The solution would be to self-host, right? Agreed AWS would still be a concern, but I can't help you there! If anyone is actually worried about AWS, you can also run the app locally with docker.

6 points by mritchie712 5y ago

That looks totally awesome! Thank you million times for open sourcing it. Will use for sure. Thank you! EDIT: The excitement came from self hosting and privacy, didn't wanted to handle revenue data and users to "another company" just to see those visualisations etc.etc.

mritchie712 5y ago

Hey HN - At my last SaaS company, I tried all the subscription analytics platforms out there, but they each lacked some things I wanted: 1. Drill down to customer level detail for metrics (e.g. "double click" on total MRR and see the MRR for each customer) 2. Ability to inspect the data pipeline and calculations from raw data to final metric 3. Direct SQL access to the modeled data I've been hacking on Pulse for a few months and it's now ready for beta. Pulse is: 1. Transparent - Easily drill down and see how metrics are calculated at the customer level 2. Free & Open source - It's easy to self host, but there's also a free hosted version here: https://pulse.trypaper.io/ https://pulse.trypaper.io/. 3. Extensible - Have some weird edge case you need to exclude? You can update your data model with a little SQL and you always have direct SQL access to your data. We're using dbt for the modeling layer and pull requests are welcomed! 4. Push first - Metrics can be pushed to Slack, Sheets, and email so you don't need to check yet another dashboard. The integrations work out of the box, so no janky Zapier workflows are needed. Why is this free? Good question. The app relatively cheap to run and I'm using Pulse as an acquisition channel for Paper. Also, making the app FOSS gives it a better chance of becoming the standard for SaaS metrics Links: Pulse - https://pulse.trypaper.io/ https://pulse.trypaper.io/ Github - https://github.com/mike-paper/pulse https://github.com/mike-paper/pulse Paper - https://www.trypaper.io/ https://www.trypaper.io/ [1] - Paper is a capital marketplace for SaaS companies. It's like LendingTree for SaaS funding. You can apply to dozens of capital providers in one click. Easily compare offers and select the best option for your company.

mtmail 5y ago
> I'm using Pulse as an acquisition channel for Paper If I ever look for the next profitable business idea I would setup a free payment analytics tools. I'd have insight into many businesses and how they're doing. Joking aside, the reason I haven't switched for one of the smaller players in the payment analytics space is that I worry by free or very cheap offering they might use my business data for something else. Here it's an acquisition channel, with profitwell upselling churn service and consulting. I like it very much that you're open about the business model, and the open source / self-hosted version of course. There isn't a real solution to my unjustified worries. Paranoid enough I shouldn't even use AWS because Amazon might see my usage and decide to launch a competitor (they won't).
- mritchie712 5y ago
  The solution would be to self-host, right? Agreed AWS would still be a concern, but I can't help you there! If anyone is actually worried about AWS, you can also run the app locally with docker.