

Analytics as a service - idan
http://keen.io/

======
brianchu
From what I can gather, it's like any other analytics service, except:

1) You have to do all data analysis and visualization by yourself. 2) There
are basic data analysis components built in (exposed through their API). 3)
You can build (and embed in a website) your own analytics dashboard with
custom visualizations from a JavaScript SDK.

Something like Mixpanel will do all the data analysis and visualization for
you, and won't let you do any custom analysis or visualization (aside from
exporting your data).

~~~
dorkitude
Exactly.

We're operating at a layer below other analytics products, and we're certainly
not as useful out of the box. A good analogy might be:

MailChimp : SendGrid :: Google Analytics : Keen IO

Which is to say, Keen IO is a set of developer API's wrapping hosted
infrastructure, whereas other analytics products are end-to-end solutions.
We're an agnostic event data backend, and they are each a full product
offering with its own focus.

Hopefully that helps explain why we don't think of ourselves as competitors to
products like Mixpanel or GA or KISSmetrics -- in fact we plan to build one-
click import and export connectors from/to those services and others. We think
our position in the ecosystem will actually help them retain customers who
would otherwise churn in favor of building in-house.

~~~
suhail
We actually do this: [https://mixpanel.com/docs/api-documentation/displaying-
mixpa...](https://mixpanel.com/docs/api-documentation/displaying-mixpanel-
data-to-your-users) \- though, not widely known.

In fact, Olark.com's analytics graphs are powered by us right now for their
customers.

~~~
dorkitude
I think our target markets are different.

Our API is the only product we have, and thus it's the only way we can make
money. We think that, over time, that will incentivize us to make the best API
possible.

We really admire your product, especially the new Engage stuff, which helps
app marketers close the loop between intelligence & personal action in a way
that the market hasn't seen before (we'd even like to be customers, once our
export-to-Mixpanel feature is done!).

As I mentioned before, we see ourselves as the SendGrid to your Mailchimp.
Both play a valuable role and have different use cases.

------
Charlesmigli
I understand that they provide all the back-stuff to store your metrics data
and an easy way to plug to the data to draw charts, analytics dashboard. I
find it really cool tough I don't know if people/startuper prefer this
flexible solution as Mixpanel one wich gives you already the front end
functions. I don't know if they do but they should provide templates for
creating a funnel, a retention graphs etc.

~~~
mwetzler
Thanks! Great ideas. We do have funnels via API but not visualizations for
them yet. We're going to build them into our javascript SDK so you can easily
build them into your apps.

------
frozenport
I'm having a little trouble figuring out what you folks do differently. Can
you maybe speak to that?

~~~
dorkitude
Please check out my response to Brian Chu here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4870090>

------
mwetzler
wow! Keen IO here. Now I see where the traffic spike is coming from. Looks
like idan decided to Show HN for us :)

