Issue #5: Building micro saas products around Privacy-first analytics solutions
No fluffy content. If your goal is to build a $100m ARR business, this is not the right post. Here I am are NOT going to talk about building the next Facebook or Twitter. If your goal is to make a $1K to $10K MRR, continue reading.
This post will cover one SAAS area and talk about multiple niches in this space. This post also explains more on how to do tech implementation, do market analysis, how the current players are doing, and also ends with a cost analysis to understand the overall cost for 100 users.
‘Privacy-first analytics’ is a term that's getting a lot of traction. All the ‘free analytics’ tools charge zero dollars but come with the cost of losing privacy. Privacy started becoming an important ingredient in analytics platforms. One of the reasons why analytics companies like Google Analytics track a lot of data is to retarget those users with advertisements(ads). But most of the companies using Google Analytics doesn’t use Ads and so there is no reason to track the user details. By respecting the privacy of your end-users, you are building confidence with your users.
Some players in ‘Privacy-first’ analytics:
Plausible.io: Reached $10K MRR. Launched in 2019. (Also has Open Source model)
Fanthom Analytics: Reached $10K MRR. Launched in April, 2018.
Simple Analytics: Reached $7.8K MRR. Launched in December, 2018.
Friendly Analytics: Reached $6.2K MRR (with 2 products). Launched in March, 2020.
New players:
WithCabin : Currently beta. Launched in June, 2020.
Cloudflare : Launched ‘Privacy-first analytics’ in September, 2020.
Chiffre.io : Launched in February, 2020.
Metrical.xyz : Launched in 2020.
PanelBear : Launched in August 2020. Promising product too.
Open source Analytics:
Advantages with Privacy-first Analytics tools
No browser cookies
No banners required for cookie consent
No advertising networks
100% GDPR/CCPA compliant
Privacy by default
Lightweight
Compliance with privacy laws in various countries
Ethical reasons
Negative Nancy says: Google Analytics is already doing this for free. Who would pay for this?
Me: The world is changing now and concentrating more on the ‘Privacy first’ approach. People have been hating browser cookies and tracking more than ever.
Negative Nancy says: Customers don’t use the tool if I am not capturing visitor IPs and other related information based on browser cookies. Customers need more information about their site visitors.
Me: Respecting the end user's privacy is the best way to get the trust of your users.
Deep-dive
Let's dive deep into how a couple of players got this traffic and sales.
How Friendly is doing this differently. Friendly just used Matomo’s open-source analytics engine and started offering a paid model on top of Matomo’s open-source model.
How Plausible.io is doing this differently. Plausible built more confidence in users by open sourcing their code. This not only offers your technical audience to go through the code but also builds confidence for non-tech users.
Must-have features in current trend:
A sharable page for users to share the website stats. This concept goes hand in hand with other popular patterns like “Build in public” and “Open startups”.
Your analytics tool shouldn’t be using cookies at all.
Your analytics tool should be GDPR compliant.
You should have an extremely lightweight script that captures the analytics.
Some other thoughts before you pick up this
Will you plan to build an open-source model and also provide an add-on with a subscription plan for paid users?
Will you plan to take an existing open-source analytics engine and fine-tune it and provide a commercial version out of it?
Will you just do a normal saas version with free and paid tiers without open-sourcing the code?