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I'm interested in Beam Analytics partly because I personally find the new Google Analytics 4 user interface (especially around cohorts) to be surprisingly frust

I'm interested in Beam Analytics partly because I personally find the new Google Analytics 4 user interface (especially around cohorts) to be surprisingly frustrating to use, and I have used the previous versions of Google Analytics for 10+ years. Is it just me, or did Google Analytics 4 also just get redesigned in a strangely more frustrating way?

twelve40 4y ago
it's unusable! I'm sure someone can use it, but the old one needed almost no explanation, and this... I'm definitely shopping around now
vgeek 4y ago
I wonder if they acquired Urchin (GA, ~2005, so well before they started cornering mobile/browser markets) to start building out and improving their rankings through the data. If they have user data through Chrome, why would they want to keep footing the bill for hosting free analytics for everyone? What easier way would there be to kick everyone off than launching GA4, which seems to be universally despised? Google's liaisons have said that the data from GA was firewalled, but I'm more skeptical, since a lot of times they say things opposite of what many have actually observed.
- twelve40 4y ago
  they could have.. I dunno... maybe start charging for it instead of effectively murdering the product?
  - pooper 4y ago
    > they could have.. I dunno... maybe start charging for it instead of effectively murdering the product? Google Analytics has a paid tier but I remember someone on reddit joked like the price is probably too high because they don't even show it publicly...
    - vgeek 4y ago
      GA Premium started at $100k/yr ~10 years ago and pretty much only disabled sampling on reports and added additional custom dimensions. This was pre-360 days and was 5x what we were paying for Adobe Analytics. Once you get to those levels, Snowflake/Segment/CDP type platforms combined with your own storage and COTS BI tooling become more appealing due to flexibility and data portability.
      - stevofolife 4y ago
        What CDP type platforms do you recommend? Adobe CDP?
ankit70 4y ago
I would suggest PostHog. They do have 1 Million/month event free tier and can be self hosted. Love their offering and been using it for a year now without any problem.
- JimDabell 4y ago
  Last time I looked at PostHog, their documentation for self-hosting had the tone that you’d be an idiot to use it for anything other than a small experiment and that it would fall over for any production workloads. It actively discouraged me from going any further with PostHog.

twelve40 4y ago

it's unusable! I'm sure someone can use it, but the old one needed almost no explanation, and this... I'm definitely shopping around now

vgeek 4y ago

I wonder if they acquired Urchin (GA, ~2005, so well before they started cornering mobile/browser markets) to start building out and improving their rankings through the data. If they have user data through Chrome, why would they want to keep footing the bill for hosting free analytics for everyone? What easier way would there be to kick everyone off than launching GA4, which seems to be universally despised? Google's liaisons have said that the data from GA was firewalled, but I'm more skeptical, since a lot of times they say things opposite of what many have actually observed.

twelve40 4y ago
they could have.. I dunno... maybe start charging for it instead of effectively murdering the product?
- pooper 4y ago
  > they could have.. I dunno... maybe start charging for it instead of effectively murdering the product? Google Analytics has a paid tier but I remember someone on reddit joked like the price is probably too high because they don't even show it publicly...
  - vgeek 4y ago
    GA Premium started at $100k/yr ~10 years ago and pretty much only disabled sampling on reports and added additional custom dimensions. This was pre-360 days and was 5x what we were paying for Adobe Analytics. Once you get to those levels, Snowflake/Segment/CDP type platforms combined with your own storage and COTS BI tooling become more appealing due to flexibility and data portability.
    - stevofolife 4y ago
      What CDP type platforms do you recommend? Adobe CDP?

ankit70 4y ago

I would suggest PostHog. They do have 1 Million/month event free tier and can be self hosted. Love their offering and been using it for a year now without any problem.

JimDabell 4y ago
Last time I looked at PostHog, their documentation for self-hosting had the tone that you’d be an idiot to use it for anything other than a small experiment and that it would fall over for any production workloads. It actively discouraged me from going any further with PostHog.