An overview of my 2021 so far
A year ago I discovered a whole new world outside of Google Analytics, mainly focused on privacy and simplicity. It was at the exact moment when I had a lot of doubts regarding Google's handling of privacy, so I made it my personal goal to make Dailytics work with the main players in this field.
I wanted to be as fair as possible, so I decided to first contact the founders to ask for an "endorsement". All of these services already offer an email report (which is kind of minimal), so I wanted to make sure they would feel ok about my product.
In the end, I found all the founders to be very nice and approachable people, willing to help others, and in most cases they got back to me in less than an hour.
In terms of technology, dailytics is built with Ruby on Rails, so I also decided to start any integration with a ruby wraper gem (you can find them here: https://github.com/dailytics).
The first provider was Plausible Analytics, I exchanged some emails with Marko and after 3 weeks of work, I launched the first integration (in addition to GA).
Then the guys from Fathom Analytics launched their API, so I exchanged some emails with Paul and Jack. This time another Ruby developer (thanks Andrea!) built the ruby gem faster than me, so I used that gem.
After a couple of days, I released the second integration. I posted here looking for Fathom users to test this new integration and got a particular response, from Marvin (co-founder of Pirsch Analytics), so we started talking about a possible integration as well.
Guess what? After 2 weeks of work, I launched the third integration :)
Finally, some people started talking to me about Simple Analytics. I found out that they provided a great API, so I got in touch with Adriaan (the founder) and again with another nice person willing to work together.
After 2 weeks of work, I launched the fourth integration!
That's it! I just wanted to share the behind the scenes of dailytics, and how easy it is to talk to people who build great products.
You can see the final product here: https://dailytics.com
This is a great idea. Email is so underrated. Product builders don't want to be bothered with it, but product users really like truly useful updates by email.
Thanks for the post, Gustavo, great to read that the people you spoke to were approachable!
Wow, thanks Mark! To be honest it’s been super difficult to sell but once a team start getting the email report, they start needing it every day :)
That sounds awesome. Glad to hear your efforts to connect were not ignored. And it gives me hope + inspiration. I assume too often people wouldn't care to respond or even if they respond, it would be a no.
Great idea also btw. I recently set up Google Analytics and despite the redesign it's never fun having to look around to find the information I need.
Hey! Thank you for your comment. I’ve learned this year that most people actually check their emails, and indie hackers usually love what they do, so they really care about users or potential users.
Good luck with Zero Inbox!
Cheers!