

How I integrated Keen IO and Ducksboard - wetzler
http://blog.keen.io/post/35003966828/how-i-integrated-keen-io-and-ducksboard

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peteforde
How does Keen differ from MixPanel?

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mwetzler
Michelle here (OP). We consider ourselves an API company rather than an
analytics portal. We sometimes describe ourselves as a "mobile analytics
backend as a service", although that is kind of an awkward mouthful.

Our target customers are mobile developers who would otherwise need to roll
their own analytics infrastructure for their apps. Generally people build
their own analytics backends because other tools on the market don't provide
an easy way to get data back out. That makes it hard to build analytics into
custom interfaces or do data analysis across other areas of your business, for
example. We provide full export and expose analytics via API.

We are trying to make our product extremely developer-friendly and make it as
easy as possible to get data and metrics in and out of Keen IO so that people
can do whatever they want with their data. For example, you could build a tab
in your iPhone app that displays your custom event data metrics.

Hope that makes sense. We welcome any feedback you might have for our startup
:)

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justinjlynn
Very nice. I love that you're concentrating on making a solid scalable data
analytics backend instead of a flashy 'it goes ding when there's stuff'
interface. I don't know how many solutions I've hand rolled where your product
wouldn't fit in quite nicely. I've taken a look at your documentation and even
though it's young it looks pretty good. Great work.

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mwetzler
Thanks so much for the kind words. We love to get feedback from people like
you who have some experience building their own backends. It helps drive our
roadmap. If you have any feedback at all, would love to hear it:
michelle@keen.io.

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taligent
Any reason you went with Ducksboard over Geckoboard ?

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mwetzler
I didn't do a ton of comparative research, but I tried them both for about
15min each. They seemed to do about the same thing, but Ducksboard was
friendlier aesthetically and everything on their site, from the UI to the
docs, seemed simpler than Geckoboard. Seems like they both offer good
products, though.

Oh, I also met the Ducksboard guys at Gluecon, so they got the opportunity to
explain how it works to me in person. That extra exposure and personal
connection probably influenced me quite a bit too.

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taligent
I tried both and know your feeling. Geckoboard seems to support more services
but Ducksboard has a far nicer UI. Shame we can't merge the two together.

