

Why You Must Store Your Own Analytics Data - gustaf
http://blog.yesgraph.com/must-store-analytics-data/

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akramhussein
1\. Segment

I recall reading a blog post by Andreas Klinger (Product Hunt) talking about
analytics and what stuck with me was "there is no silver bullet". I've seen
this blindness by a lot of people (myself too) and its hard to swallow but
unfortunately true. Just run MixPanel, Google Analytics, Localytics etc all
side by side and they give you totally different data.

Segment is a great choice. I really didn't know much (and still don't) about
analytics so I went with it after finding GA flakey and not wanting to
sprinkle the iOS code with multiple SDKs. Support from them has been great and
timely and it hasn't cost a penny for all the major integrations I've used -
e.g. MixPanel, GA. Just the other I flicked on Localytics and it just worked.
Sounds like I work there! Anyways, you owe it to your future sanity to try it
out!

Obviously it adds an additional cost to some otherwise free services. However,
the plans are set up so when you have to start worrying it, it's probably a
good sign!

2\. "Building dashboards is a much harder engineering and design exercise than
most people appreciate."

YES! Sites like Geckoboard make it look super easy and all the tools you get
with MixPanel are great, but sometimes things just aren't quite right.
Funnelling data from MixPanel where if you have a property that can be True,
False or Undefined, it only allows you to filter by True or False in some
cases.

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fsk
Also, if you have too many pageviews, Google Analytics only gives you a sample
instead of the full data.

I like piwik. It isn't that hard to set up your own analytics with piwik or
another tool.

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ccvannorman
Having used 3rd party analytics tools including GameAnalytics for Unity, I can
attest to this. Many analytics platforms horde your data and won't give you
database access, and you're restricted to their (usually incomplete) tool set.
Much better to have the raw data yourself so you're never restricted.

