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Can anyone who has used or is using these guys share some feedback on your experiences? Also, if anyone knows of any other services that allow you send event da

by gtaylor 12y ago

Can anyone who has used or is using these guys share some feedback on your experiences? Also, if anyone knows of any other services that allow you send event data like this for later querying/analysis, I'd love to hear about them. Keen IO seems to be exactly what we're looking for, conceptually.

johns 12y ago
We use it quite extensively and it's been great. The API is really well designed and hasn't limited us at all. Being able to send arbitrary event schemas is nice too. We were able to re-use an existing JSON document format with only minor changes which means we don't have to do a lot of mapping back and forth. I highly recommend them. (Disclosure: we partner with Keen IO on some product stuff, but we pay for our account for the analytics stuff just like anyone else.)
- dkador 12y ago
  Thanks, John. Best part of this job is hearing from happy customers. :)
Asparagirl 12y ago
I use them for a side project (access logs and stats on an API I built) and they are great. Easy to set up, new features coming out every once in a while (some of them community-build hacks) and the one time they had an outage a while back they had a ridiculously detailed post-mortem. Also, I'm on the free plan, so really, can't beat that. :-)
eli 12y ago
On some level Mixpanel is a competitor. You can send it events and query/extract them later. Mixpanel is geared towards app/web analytics and marketing-type purposes. Mixpanel gives you some tools for building queries and reports and lets you export to Excel. Keen is geared towards developers. You can build charts that you can embed in other webpages (which is very cool) but building the queries kinda needs API access. If you're creating a custom analytics tool that integrates tightly with your system, Keen might be a better choice. Especially if you're going to e.g. let your customers view and analyze their own data (but not see anyone else's), Keen is a no brainer. It's got a better API and much better API security model. If you're looking for something more akin to a Google Analytics replacement but event-based instead of pageview-based, Mixpanel or similar might be better. Keen and Mixpanel both had great support, by the way. I'd encourage you to reach out to one or both if you're curious about how to integrate with it.
- gtaylor 12y ago
  We looked at Mixpanel, but Keen seems to be more in line with what we need. Thanks for the response, this is helpful.
  - eli 12y ago
    You're welcome. Last I checked, Keen was cheaper too.
  - mwetzler 12y ago
    Eli's description is spot-on! I work at Keen IO and I'd be happy to talk through your integration and help determine if we're a good fit. Data modeling sessions are my speciality and I'd be happy to do one over the phone or in person if you're in SF!
    - gault8121 12y ago
      I'm building an metrics dashboard for Quill.org, a platform for writing activities. How can I reach you?
      - mwetzler 12y ago
        Sounds cool (and right up our alley)! Reach me at michelle at keen.io!
howardr 12y ago
We use Keen a lot on our engineering team. In our case we send them a lot of a events, but only query a few dozen times a month. However those queries are done in times when we need to quickly query data. Saved our ass a few times since started using it. They have libs on all of the languages we use. There is no excuse for a frontend dev or backend dev on any team to just log as much data as they can. That's the key...the barrier is low enough where there really is no excuse AND you don't have dev ops screaming at you sending too much data. Most of our non technical people can't use the dashboard (I think this is from lack of effort rather than something wrong on Keen's side), but it is powerful and easy to use. Someone doesn't have to know SQL or Hadoop to get what they want. Anyways YMMV but we have really liked using it. EDIT: like others have posted want to also say that they have great customer service. Have had no issues but feel like they have made sure I could get in touch if I needed to
salman89 12y ago
I like Heap's (https://heapanalytics.com https://heapanalytics.com) approach - capture everything, query later. Depending on your needs (Heap is front-end UI oriented), might not be the right fit.
noinput 12y ago
Nothing but great things to say about Keen. I first found them when testing services via Segment.io and after spending a morning digesting the docs I realized it's what I needed for my company (at the time) to build a simple and scalable tracking/reporting API with. They reached out shortly after, and discussed my needs, offered help modeling the data layer with us and worked out an enterprise deal, the legal, etc. I realized early on they like working the hard challenges and helping us was fun for them. For side projects as well as my current venture, I use them for tracking near everything, and the simple charting right in their interface makes it pretty easy to make quick decisions and break down the data. I collect about 4mm events a month these days for my most successful project, and their APIs are still super fast and require zero up-keep from my end. Congrats to Ryan & Nick over there for the success!

by gtaylor 12y ago

johns 12y ago

We use it quite extensively and it's been great. The API is really well designed and hasn't limited us at all. Being able to send arbitrary event schemas is nice too. We were able to re-use an existing JSON document format with only minor changes which means we don't have to do a lot of mapping back and forth. I highly recommend them. (Disclosure: we partner with Keen IO on some product stuff, but we pay for our account for the analytics stuff just like anyone else.)

dkador 12y ago
Thanks, John. Best part of this job is hearing from happy customers. :)

Asparagirl 12y ago

I use them for a side project (access logs and stats on an API I built) and they are great. Easy to set up, new features coming out every once in a while (some of them community-build hacks) and the one time they had an outage a while back they had a ridiculously detailed post-mortem. Also, I'm on the free plan, so really, can't beat that. :-)

eli 12y ago

On some level Mixpanel is a competitor. You can send it events and query/extract them later. Mixpanel is geared towards app/web analytics and marketing-type purposes. Mixpanel gives you some tools for building queries and reports and lets you export to Excel. Keen is geared towards developers. You can build charts that you can embed in other webpages (which is very cool) but building the queries kinda needs API access. If you're creating a custom analytics tool that integrates tightly with your system, Keen might be a better choice. Especially if you're going to e.g. let your customers view and analyze their own data (but not see anyone else's), Keen is a no brainer. It's got a better API and much better API security model. If you're looking for something more akin to a Google Analytics replacement but event-based instead of pageview-based, Mixpanel or similar might be better. Keen and Mixpanel both had great support, by the way. I'd encourage you to reach out to one or both if you're curious about how to integrate with it.

gtaylor 12y ago
We looked at Mixpanel, but Keen seems to be more in line with what we need. Thanks for the response, this is helpful.
- eli 12y ago
  You're welcome. Last I checked, Keen was cheaper too.
- mwetzler 12y ago
  Eli's description is spot-on! I work at Keen IO and I'd be happy to talk through your integration and help determine if we're a good fit. Data modeling sessions are my speciality and I'd be happy to do one over the phone or in person if you're in SF!
  - gault8121 12y ago
    I'm building an metrics dashboard for Quill.org, a platform for writing activities. How can I reach you?
    - mwetzler 12y ago
      Sounds cool (and right up our alley)! Reach me at michelle at keen.io!

howardr 12y ago

We use Keen a lot on our engineering team. In our case we send them a lot of a events, but only query a few dozen times a month. However those queries are done in times when we need to quickly query data. Saved our ass a few times since started using it. They have libs on all of the languages we use. There is no excuse for a frontend dev or backend dev on any team to just log as much data as they can. That's the key...the barrier is low enough where there really is no excuse AND you don't have dev ops screaming at you sending too much data. Most of our non technical people can't use the dashboard (I think this is from lack of effort rather than something wrong on Keen's side), but it is powerful and easy to use. Someone doesn't have to know SQL or Hadoop to get what they want. Anyways YMMV but we have really liked using it. EDIT: like others have posted want to also say that they have great customer service. Have had no issues but feel like they have made sure I could get in touch if I needed to

salman89 12y ago

I like Heap's (https://heapanalytics.com https://heapanalytics.com) approach - capture everything, query later. Depending on your needs (Heap is front-end UI oriented), might not be the right fit.

noinput 12y ago

Nothing but great things to say about Keen. I first found them when testing services via Segment.io and after spending a morning digesting the docs I realized it's what I needed for my company (at the time) to build a simple and scalable tracking/reporting API with. They reached out shortly after, and discussed my needs, offered help modeling the data layer with us and worked out an enterprise deal, the legal, etc. I realized early on they like working the hard challenges and helping us was fun for them. For side projects as well as my current venture, I use them for tracking near everything, and the simple charting right in their interface makes it pretty easy to make quick decisions and break down the data. I collect about 4mm events a month these days for my most successful project, and their APIs are still super fast and require zero up-keep from my end. Congrats to Ryan & Nick over there for the success!