Open Source Review Series #2 — Countly
The open-source review series aims to give you a deep-dive into various open-source platforms. review they can do and why you may want to use them.
Previously reviews: BookStack — Document Management Platform
Countly — Product Analytics Platform
As an application analytics platform, Countly provides a wide range of features that let you track things like custom events, internal errors, and user actions. I think of it as being like server-side google analytics. Being on the server instead of client also means that extensions such as ad-block or ghostery will not be effective to block user data giving you a more complete picture of your application’s users.
Project Overview — As of 12/6/2017
Github Description
This is the home for Countly Mobile & Web Analytics and Marketing Platform. Countly helps you collect data and understand insights of your application. Available self-hosted or on private cloud. https://count.ly
Created By — Countly Team
First Commit — May 28, 2012
Latest Commit — December 4, 2017
Number of Stars — 2,501 (Click and ⭐️ this!)
Number of Commits — 3,557
Open-source Installation
Method 1 — Manual Install : Follow these instructions
Method 2 — Automated Install: Deploy Countly on ServiceShop without a credit card
Main Features
User Analytics
\From Countly Website
Countly lets you track everything about your users. Browser based analytic systems usually struggle with this aspect because there is data that you don’t want to expose to the client which you may want in your analytics platform such as financial data or private internal flags.
From Countly Website
Countly opens up possibilities to fully track who is doing what when and lets you paint a much more accurate picture, especially if used in conjunction with traditional browser-based analytics like Google.
Alerts
What happens when your app crashes? Do you get an email? With Countly you can set up detailed alert definitions which can be triggered by things such as custom events, user activity, or errors in the system. When these alerts get triggered a variety of actions such as push notifications to your phone or sending an email. You also gain access to a detailed dashboard explaining when alerts happen and what apps triggered them.
Define alerts that should happen when specific things happen in your app
Event Analytics
Create customized events that should get tracked when users take actions within your app. Countly gives you all the graphs and analytics needed to see what users are doing when and the flows they take to get there will give you actionable insights into how to improve their experience.
Plugins
Countly sports a comprehensive plugin architecture allowing developers to extend. Countly offers a rich variety of different plugins which can enhance the functionality of the base Countly offering.
Countly’s Ideal Users
Countly works best for those who are able to add code into their app. This will let you get the most out of Countly by putting into your application the hooks on different events, user data, and alerts.
If you do this you gain access to a wide ranging analytics platform which can give you deep insights into your users and the health of your application.
Conclusion
Countly is platform which unlocks your server-side event data. You can easily put in event hooks and send user data to Countly for an in-depth analysis. I would give it a try if you are interested in knowing more about your users and how your system is operating.