[LukaAl]

Probably the biggest challenge I had in my last startup was setting up the analytics platform. Obviously building an analytics platform wasn't the top priority (probably the last).

So you put Google Analytics on your website, then you need the tracking code from Facebook for the ads. And you add Flurry because it provides different analytics (e.g: Funnels and Cohort Analysis). We also logged on the DB some actions difficult to capture on analytics. Then you need mobile ads, so you add in your app the framework to track the install. And, I forgot, you have another platform to track your mailing lists.

The final result: for every business question you have data in at least 3 different platform that gives you three different answers. Even worst, when you are still struggling with the product your "hard tech" co-founder could not understand why you push to re-implement the analytics framework (not necessarily building it in house) while your business co-founder decide to don't ask questions and doesn't understand why you want better data. If it looks like a recipe for disaster is because it is.

We really need better analytics platform, easy to use like Google Analytics and MixPanel for the beginning but with the ability to build custom analysis for the growing biz.

[jon-wood]

I'm a big fan of [Segment](https://segment.com) who do a great job of putting an abstraction layer on top of the massive selection of analytics platforms you're likely to end up using. A particularly nice touch is some of their plans having a feature where you can replay your entire event history into new analytics tools you add, allowing you to almost immediately start analysing all your data with them.

[LukaAl]

That's not quite right what I have in mind. It solve part of the issue, the maintainability of 10+ integrations, but it is not really the biggest pain point.

The biggest pinpoint is having 10 different service that gives you quite the same answer but:

1) they cover different needs and you need a patchwork to customize to what you need (and when you are small it is not even sure you know what you need so the patchwork is biggest than needed).

2) they measure things in slightly different way making comparison difficult.

3) they have vastly different interfaces, thus requiring a lot of time to learn them (I like to learn new things, but my time is valuable and better spent on product features)

4) they create a mess in your code. This is the problem segment try to solve. It is relevant but not top priority. Actually, I'm not totally sure of the effect of inserting a level of abstraction doesn't actually make more complex to solve point 1 and 2 (it is not a critic, just a real problem I faced when I tried to abstract the analytics call in the app with few functions).

[WCJohnson11]

Segment actually provides you access to the raw data so if you can layer a BI tool on top of it, then you have solved your main pain point.

[itamarwe]

We'll soon have an integration with Segment too. In fact, you can already use webhooks to send your Segment data to Alooma.

[lumpypua]

Dude, I'm experiencing exactly this right now. This is the most obnoxious tech thing ever. All I can find out there are stories of homegrown metrics systems made out of duct tape and chewing gum, or SaaS solutions that inevitably have shortcomings.