I am a solo, bootstrapped entrepreneur, who cannot afford the enterprise plan, which appears to be the only plan that supports analytics. I need to be able to understand how users interact with my application - what filters are applied, where user click, etc. etc.
I'm building an airbnb style search and discovery platform for Kids Activities, if that's helpful at all.
I'd love to get this community's perspective on options for getting event level data in my application and tracking user behaviors. What workarounds has this community explored? I'm happy to do things that don't scale, as long as I can get insight into how users engage with the application.
For any Retool admins who are reading this - I know Retool is exploring how to attract more consumer facing application builders like me. This is perhaps the most prohibitive element of Retool for this type of entrepreneur. If there are any documents that I may have missed, please point me in the right direction.
Looking to hear from other people as well. I have done something that enables me to collect very lightweight user metrics from some of the key components of the app. Basically, I am hosting postgreSQL in Supabase and I have defined some database functions that are being called from the application as a query. In these functions, I am making sure I am carrying out the operation (e.g. database table upsert) and also appending to a "log table". The log table I can query to see e.g. at which times are some components being used, who uses the app most, etc.
Clearly this is a very DIY solution and requires carefully tinkering with the database functions. Perhaps someone else has a more elegant solution. Best of luck!
Sharing a quick update: I got a reply from Retool saying that business plans (which I have) get access to audit logs. However, I'm using a publicly embedded application and the audit logs don't seem to pick up user activity for these users. Perhaps this approach will work for other folks who aren't using a publicly embedded application where users don't have to be logged in to access the application.
I have a client that wanted logs, so I log all everything wanted to a database like @ilmari suggests. They have an app just for viewing/analyzing the logs. I try to have the logging done asynchronously so it does not impact performance as much.
But, you could also create Postgres Procedures to handle your CRUD and logging at the same time to be more performant (at the cost of an extra layer.)
Retool's Audit Logs seem like more of a debug thing instead of an analytics thing anyway.
Ya, I think the above approach is probably the best way. I'm also curious if anyone has explored screen recordings? If so, what 3rd party did you use and how did you implement it?
