
Show HN: SessionForward – Simple user session replays and heatmaps - mahesh_rm
https://www.sessionforward.com/
======
madjam002
This looks like it uses rrweb which is open source and can be self hosted.

[https://www.rrweb.io/](https://www.rrweb.io/) [https://github.com/rrweb-
io/rrweb](https://github.com/rrweb-io/rrweb)

Nonetheless nice work and it's good to see alternatives emerge.

~~~
cpursley
Neat, this should be added to: [https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-
selfhosted](https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted)

~~~
mahesh_rm
Hello and sorry for delay! Yes, absolutely, under the hood it is powered by
rrweb, I am working on a fork of it, which integrates with heatmap.js, and
fingerprint.js, and I plan to opensource it as soon as it will be a little bit
more solid!

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mahesh_rm
Hello HN, I started working on SessionForward a few months ago, when working
on a UX/UI project for a client, and could not find an tools for Sessions
Replays and Heatmaps generation, which would target developers. The project is
still very much in Beta, so rough around the edges. If you decide to try it
out and you have any suggestions, I am happy to hear about it! I will not
charge for product usage for at least a few months, till a more polished
version of it will be available.

~~~
adamlangsner
What is the value one would get with your product over Hotjar or fullstory?
I'm curious to learn more about what attracted you to this space and where you
plan on positioning yourself in the market.

~~~
mahesh_rm
Dear Adam, indeed, Hotjar and Fullstory are great tools, and as an avid user
of both of them I can say they are, as of now, far more polished, solid, and
complete UX suites than SessionForward really is. The straightforward answer
to your question, is that as a developement oriented PM I was feeling like I
wanted a frills free product focused on simplicity and performance, and that
is 100% targeted towards tech, rather than marketing people. The 'vision'
answer (i.e., why SF will be better than competition in the future) is based
on automated neural networks driven actionable insights: sometimes you don't
want/have time to go through 200 of your users not clicking on a button, you
just want to receive an email telling you to please move your call to action
button from the top left corner to the top right corner of your page!

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devmunchies
I get how these things record the mouse coordinates, but how do they
accurately render the entire page in the replay without taking a video?

For example, I was resizing the browser and in the replay it was showing the
sizes of buttons change correctly.

~~~
XCSme
In this case, if it uses rrweb, it just stores all the HTML and all DOM
mutations that happen. This is a pretty accurate method (even though still
doesn't record all events, for example text selection, and if you watch an mp4
video for example, it won't save the entire video, only the URL to it), but it
uses a lot of data.

In my case, I created a more simple solution for userTrack.net, where I just
store the URL, record all events that happen and replay them by loading the
iframe at the same URL and re-triggering all the events. It's not as accurate
as storing HTML and mutations, but it uses a lot less data.

~~~
helloiloveyou
I don't understand something. If you replay the events on an iframe of the
real URL, each time I play the video you are hitting the site's real API?
Like, if I watch the video where the user adds an item to it's cart, will the
same item get added twice because I watched the video?

~~~
XCSme
Yes, that is true and one of the biggest limitations of the system currently,
this is why it's mostly suited for sites that don't load dynamic data (eg.
landing pages, news sites, blogs, etc.)

Currently to avoid executing events twice, you can disable action replay on a
specific button (it will show the click event but not replay the action).

I have always considered implementing or using something like rrweb but the
performance and privacy implications are huge. Still a lot of customers would
prefer that, mostly for the ecommerce cases you mentioned.

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sefrost
It looks really cool and useful, but is it ethical? I find it a bit creepy
that someone could watch me use a site.

~~~
jedberg
I'm curious as to why you think it is unethical?

How do you feel about physical stores that use video cameras? That seems like
the most equivalent thing in the real world to me.

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gruez
There's no expectation of privacy because you're in public. Also, the security
cameras are visible and there are possibly signs informing you of this. I have
yet to see a "your actions are being recorded for product improvement
purposes" warning on a website. Or maybe I did, but I tuned it out because it
got buried in the standard cookie warnings.

~~~
XCSme
Cameras are usually pretty well hidden. And isn't a website you don't own a
public place? Do you expect Google not to track what you do on their site?

~~~
gruez
>Cameras are usually pretty well hidden.

Can you link to some examples of some "well hidden" cameras at a major
retailer? Most retailers don't bother to hide their cameras, so they're just
kinda lying out there. They're not overtly obvious, but if you know where to
look (eg. ceilings), you can find them.

>And isn't a website you don't own a public place?

Not really, it's public in the sense that anyone can access it, but it's also
private in the sense that all your activities are instanced and not visible to
anyone else.

>Do you expect Google not to track what you do on their site?

Facebook got flak a few years back when it was revealed that they were
surreptitiously recording everything you typed when you were creating a post,
even before you hit submit[1]. Clearly the average person doesn't _expect_
that their activities to be recorded 24/7.

[1]
[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2525227/Face...](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2525227/Facebook-
tracks-type-DONT-post-update-comment.html)

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XCSme
Nice product! I feel that it looks a bit unpolished (but I assume it's an
MVP). You might also want to check the similar product I'm working on:
[https://www.usertrack.net](https://www.usertrack.net)

I also started with session replays and heatmaps, but ended up adding a lot
more analytics features. I personally only provide a self-hosted version as I
really beleive self-hosting improves user privacy by a lot, and I don't feel
comfortable storing all this possibly sensitive data (session recordings
especially) on my servers.

~~~
mahesh_rm
Hey there, I checked out usertrack and it looks great! Yes indeed, I just
released SessionForward publicly a few days ago and it is curently in its
validation stage. Specifically, I want to test if there is a segment of tech
oriented PMs, which want one tool in this space, which does one thing only and
one thing very well (replays and Heatmaps), rather than dealing with a full
extensive but heavy suite of UX/UI functionalities, such as Hotjar and
FullStory!

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redm
Congrats on the launch.

This is finally a reasonable alternative to Fullstory and Hotjar. (we don't
want to self host)

Fullstory changed pricing last year to focus on extracting large amounts of
money from big customers, thus leaving small statups out effectively. So we
moved to Hotjar, which requires us to constantly start a sample.

We haven't been using either. This is just what we were waiting for.
Reasonable pricing for a strait forward simple service. We'll be signing up
today!

~~~
mahesh_rm
Trust me, your words sound overwhelmingly warm, and I am very happy that this
effort looks compelling to you. Also, they create some pressure, since despite
being functional, the tool is still at its MVP stage, and there are MANY
things that I want there, which are simply not there yet. I will personally
reach out to each person that signed up across the next few days, with a clear
description of product functionality along with a brief roadmap, of what
features you can expect in the next 1 to 6 months!

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rosstex
1\. This is beautifully executed.

2\. It's a beautiful reminder that any number of websites may be tracking us
this way.

A fun security course assignment would be to have students use this website
and discuss the ethics surrounding it.

~~~
chance_state
JS off by default mitigates this and a whole host of other creepy behaviors.

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satvikpendem
Is this open source as well? I was thinking about self hosting it when you
mentioned it last time in some other threads.

~~~
XCSme
If you are interested, I am also building a similar product, which can only be
self-hosted: [https://usertrack.net](https://usertrack.net)

From OP I see their only self-hosted version is the $499 one.

~~~
satvikpendem
Is your product open source?

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XCSme
I wouldn't clasify it as open-source as it's not free (you pay to get the
product/source-code). But you can view the server-side source-code.

~~~
satvikpendem
I see, thanks.

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httgp
I love the idea of an instant replay of my own session! Unfortunately, the
replay doesn’t work for me on Safari on iOS.

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agustif
I use logrocket for this.

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gukov
What a great way to demo the product, right off the bat.

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_up
Yandex metrica offers this for free.

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atian
MutationObserver cannot be trusted.

~~~
cj
I've spent the last 6 years building a company with a core product that relies
on MutationObserver. I've personally spent many hundreds of hours working with
it.

I have never encountered an issue with MutationObserver that made me doubt its
accuracy.

