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Just Launched: Open Source Mobile Analytics Solution

I have been working on a few mobile applications for a while now and felt like I was always flying blind, not knowing how users would use the application and mostly not knowing if the applications crashed somehow.

For the web, I was using my instance of Matomo.

At first, I decided to go that route. It did not start well, as the Flutter client was using plugins. That seemed overkill for only posting events to a webserver when Dart has a good HTTP client. I ended up implementing a simple Dart client (https://pub.dev/packages/matomo/). It was suitable for a while, but web analytics is just not the same as mobile analytics.

Since I am trying to bootstrap a business, I am conscientious about which services I subscribe to. It can add up very quickly. I was, thus, looking for a cheap mobile analytics tool.

I am also conscientious about users privacy and trying to stay away from the large companies offering "free" services.

Finally, I prefer to write mobile applications in Flutter to be on both Android and iOS easily.

In summary, I was not happy with what was out there, and as an engineer, I tend to prefer building things myself.

As you might have guessed, I ended up writing a custom solution. It started as a simple library and minimalist backend, and then I decided I'd share it with the world by making it open-source.

After a few weeks of extra work, I'm announcing femtolytics, a lightweight open-source mobile analytics solution.

So far, I've only written a client library for Flutter applications in Dart (https://pub.dev/packages/femtolytics).

The protocol (https://github.com/femtolytics/django-femtolytics/blob/master/PROTOCOL.md) is straightforward, so anybody could write a Swift, Java, or Kotlin client if I don't get to it.

The backend is a Django application (https://github.com/femtolytics/django-femtolytics).

There is a sample Django project (https://github.com/femtolytics/django-femtolytics-sample) that shows how to integrate it with your project. With minimal effort, you can probably deploy it on your server.

I'm also offering a hosted solution at https://femtolytics.com.

I am keeping it cheap for unlimited usage at the moment. I'm also offering a discount for the Indie Hackers community. User Coupon Code Q51BFMGO when subscribing ($10 off for the first year, for the first 25 people)

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