6 ms·

Show HN: Got rejected by Hotjar, decided to build my own

37 points by Chris86 5y ago

wingerlang 5y ago
I've recently been working on screen recordings for iOS (it says app on the home page so I assume you support this too). Do you mind giving a quick overview on how you solved it? - Are you using pixel buffers manually? - I assume you can not use ReplayKit since it requires user interaction? - How do you solve user private information? I know that other dedicated recording tools HAD issues with this. I'm no longer working on my recording tool, but I'm very curious.
- Chris86 5y ago
  Hi wingerlang, sorry about that, it should have said web app on the homepage - I've updated it now! I've tried to say web app all the time in the app but forgot on the homepage, where it's arguably most important :( Mobile session capture is technically possible using the approach we're using i.e. not screen recording but just tracking events and DOM changes and they rebuilding that. We looked into it but it was out of scope for now as we're just a two person team. Fullstory already solve for mobile, as do a few other competitors, perhaps you can find out a little from googling their approach? In terms of privacy, for the web we can mask form inputs by default, and otherwise you can just add tags to elements you don't want to track and then the script ignores them client-side.
  - wingerlang 5y ago
    Oh I see, no worries. And I think it's good to update to be more specific.
    - Chris86 5y ago
      yes, it says web app now :)
mattcrail 5y ago
Looks interesting. What differentiates this from Hotjar or Full Story?
- Chris86 5y ago
  One of the things we've really focused on is not using IP and offering cookieless tracking, so the tool is really great for people who are concerned about protecting their users privacy (there's other features to support that too, like custom masking of html elements, though that's powered by a library we're using). Otherwise, at the moment I'd say Fullstory and Hotjar are both definitely more feature-packed, having been around a lot longer. Squeaky is faster and, though it's subjective, the UX is considerably better imho :) We've got big plans going on in the background to offer predictive analytics too, but that's very much a work in progress!
yeldarb 5y ago
Curious how it will be priced. Can it be dynamically inserted for specific sessions only? Is there an API to grab a link to the current session’s recording? Can you watch a session “live” like with FullStory?
- Chris86 5y ago
  Pricing-wise, currently it's free, and we'll make sure there's a full-featured free tier if/when we introduce paid plans. The current plan is the have usage-based pricing i.e. a certain amount of sessions per month, but we'll be surveying our users to set appropriate tiers and price points :) We experimented with live sessions but weren't happy it was real-time enough to be more meaningful than after a short time delay, it's in our backlog to revisit when we can spend time on performance though! At the moment it's not set to be triggered for specific sessions, none of our early users have requested that but it would be pretty easy for us to implement :) At the moment we're letting our most engaged users take a very active role in determining what comes next e.g. we rolled out IP screening (all happens client-side) and email/domain name screening yesterday as per a request we received yesterday morning. If you sign up we could get triggered recordings in for you super fast ;) No open API access, we have discussed it though. Recording link sharing with private, or public links, and mp4 and gif (snippets) export is next up. Sounds like you're a FullStory user at the moment, which features do you currently get the most value from?
  - XCSme 5y ago
    > we rolled out IP screening (all happens client-side) How can you detect the IP client-side only without sending any request to any server?
    - Chris86 5y ago
      Sorry, client-side was not in fact accurate: We check the incoming IP address against a list of blacklisted IP addresses stored for a site before upgrading the WebSocket connection
tendencydriven 5y ago
We just moved from Hotjar to Microsoft Clarity but we'll definitely take a look at Squeaky. Your features page currently has the same description for "Anonymous by default" as it does for "Form masking".
- Chris86 5y ago
  oh haha, nice catch, I've updated it with the correct copy now! No idea how I didn't spot that :( If you would like a demo of Squeaky then let me know, there's a demo booking page on the website - I'd also be really interested to learn about Microsoft Clarity from you too :)
leros 5y ago
What do you mean by "rejected by HotJar"?
- Chris86 5y ago
  They invited me for a job interview for a Principle Designer role out of the blue (i.e. I didn't apply). I was really excited cause I loved the company and had lots of ideas how it could be improved. Anyway, ultimately they felt there were 'more data driven candidates'. I respect that, they know their business better than I do, but I still was really excited about some of the opportunities in the user analytics space and I learned some really valuable stuff in the interview that gave me the motivation (along with the rejection) to go and solve the problem for people :) I have actually written a short blog post about it if you're interested I can share a link.
  - quickthrower2 5y ago
    Wishing you Whatsapp level success!
  - 1cvmask 5y ago
    Could you share it please? And good luck! It takes an HN village to help get your startup off the ground.
    - Chris86 5y ago
      Sure, no problem, it's on IH here https://www.indiehackers.com/post/turning-a-loss-into-a-launch-f8e84ac08c https://www.indiehackers.com/post/turning-a-loss-into-a-laun...
giza182 5y ago
This looks good. Will give a try. I know this is also more analytics/product focused. But one feature that I absolutely loved from another company in this space (https://www.fullstory.com/ https://www.fullstory.com/) is the ability to see the log of network requests and console logs. It was fantastic for debugging. Just thought I'd mention in case its a useful data point.
- Chris86 5y ago
  yes definitely, we really liked that feature in fullstory, also noticed it in some competitors too. We have it in our roadmap, though it's not until next year some point :( It's clearly something that will be super valuable to people though!
sgallant 5y ago
Great job! Keep it up!
XCSme 5y ago
Note that going to Visitors->Install tracking code (when you have no visitors) the Install tracking code links to a 404 page: https://squeaky.ai/app/sites/123/settings?tab=code https://squeaky.ai/app/sites/123/settings?tab=code
- Chris86 5y ago
  Ah thanks, we updated all the tabs 2 days ago and some of the empty state links must have been missed! Just pushed up a fix for this now, good catch :) There's also a feedback item in the nav if you catch any other things, and do let me know if you'd like a demo or any other help getting started ( *・∀・)ノ゛

37 points by Chris86 5y ago

I've recently been working on screen recordings for iOS (it says app on the home page so I assume you support this too). Do you mind giving a quick overview on how you solved it? - Are you using pixel buffers manually? - I assume you can not use ReplayKit since it requires user interaction? - How do you solve user private information? I know that other dedicated recording tools HAD issues with this. I'm no longer working on my recording tool, but I'm very curious.

Chris86 5y ago
Hi wingerlang, sorry about that, it should have said web app on the homepage - I've updated it now! I've tried to say web app all the time in the app but forgot on the homepage, where it's arguably most important :( Mobile session capture is technically possible using the approach we're using i.e. not screen recording but just tracking events and DOM changes and they rebuilding that. We looked into it but it was out of scope for now as we're just a two person team. Fullstory already solve for mobile, as do a few other competitors, perhaps you can find out a little from googling their approach? In terms of privacy, for the web we can mask form inputs by default, and otherwise you can just add tags to elements you don't want to track and then the script ignores them client-side.
- wingerlang 5y ago
  Oh I see, no worries. And I think it's good to update to be more specific.
  - Chris86 5y ago
    yes, it says web app now :)

mattcrail 5y ago

Looks interesting. What differentiates this from Hotjar or Full Story?

Chris86 5y ago
One of the things we've really focused on is not using IP and offering cookieless tracking, so the tool is really great for people who are concerned about protecting their users privacy (there's other features to support that too, like custom masking of html elements, though that's powered by a library we're using). Otherwise, at the moment I'd say Fullstory and Hotjar are both definitely more feature-packed, having been around a lot longer. Squeaky is faster and, though it's subjective, the UX is considerably better imho :) We've got big plans going on in the background to offer predictive analytics too, but that's very much a work in progress!

yeldarb 5y ago

Curious how it will be priced. Can it be dynamically inserted for specific sessions only? Is there an API to grab a link to the current session’s recording? Can you watch a session “live” like with FullStory?

Chris86 5y ago
Pricing-wise, currently it's free, and we'll make sure there's a full-featured free tier if/when we introduce paid plans. The current plan is the have usage-based pricing i.e. a certain amount of sessions per month, but we'll be surveying our users to set appropriate tiers and price points :) We experimented with live sessions but weren't happy it was real-time enough to be more meaningful than after a short time delay, it's in our backlog to revisit when we can spend time on performance though! At the moment it's not set to be triggered for specific sessions, none of our early users have requested that but it would be pretty easy for us to implement :) At the moment we're letting our most engaged users take a very active role in determining what comes next e.g. we rolled out IP screening (all happens client-side) and email/domain name screening yesterday as per a request we received yesterday morning. If you sign up we could get triggered recordings in for you super fast ;) No open API access, we have discussed it though. Recording link sharing with private, or public links, and mp4 and gif (snippets) export is next up. Sounds like you're a FullStory user at the moment, which features do you currently get the most value from?
- XCSme 5y ago
  > we rolled out IP screening (all happens client-side) How can you detect the IP client-side only without sending any request to any server?
  - Chris86 5y ago
    Sorry, client-side was not in fact accurate: We check the incoming IP address against a list of blacklisted IP addresses stored for a site before upgrading the WebSocket connection

tendencydriven 5y ago

We just moved from Hotjar to Microsoft Clarity but we'll definitely take a look at Squeaky. Your features page currently has the same description for "Anonymous by default" as it does for "Form masking".

Chris86 5y ago
oh haha, nice catch, I've updated it with the correct copy now! No idea how I didn't spot that :( If you would like a demo of Squeaky then let me know, there's a demo booking page on the website - I'd also be really interested to learn about Microsoft Clarity from you too :)

leros 5y ago

What do you mean by "rejected by HotJar"?

Chris86 5y ago
They invited me for a job interview for a Principle Designer role out of the blue (i.e. I didn't apply). I was really excited cause I loved the company and had lots of ideas how it could be improved. Anyway, ultimately they felt there were 'more data driven candidates'. I respect that, they know their business better than I do, but I still was really excited about some of the opportunities in the user analytics space and I learned some really valuable stuff in the interview that gave me the motivation (along with the rejection) to go and solve the problem for people :) I have actually written a short blog post about it if you're interested I can share a link.
- quickthrower2 5y ago
  Wishing you Whatsapp level success!
- 1cvmask 5y ago
  Could you share it please? And good luck! It takes an HN village to help get your startup off the ground.
  - Chris86 5y ago
    Sure, no problem, it's on IH here https://www.indiehackers.com/post/turning-a-loss-into-a-launch-f8e84ac08c https://www.indiehackers.com/post/turning-a-loss-into-a-laun...

giza182 5y ago

This looks good. Will give a try. I know this is also more analytics/product focused. But one feature that I absolutely loved from another company in this space (https://www.fullstory.com/ https://www.fullstory.com/) is the ability to see the log of network requests and console logs. It was fantastic for debugging. Just thought I'd mention in case its a useful data point.

Chris86 5y ago
yes definitely, we really liked that feature in fullstory, also noticed it in some competitors too. We have it in our roadmap, though it's not until next year some point :( It's clearly something that will be super valuable to people though!

sgallant 5y ago

Great job! Keep it up!

XCSme 5y ago

Note that going to Visitors->Install tracking code (when you have no visitors) the Install tracking code links to a 404 page: https://squeaky.ai/app/sites/123/settings?tab=code https://squeaky.ai/app/sites/123/settings?tab=code

Chris86 5y ago
Ah thanks, we updated all the tabs 2 days ago and some of the empty state links must have been missed! Just pushed up a fix for this now, good catch :) There's also a feedback item in the nav if you catch any other things, and do let me know if you'd like a demo or any other help getting started ( *・∀・)ノ゛