The Journey Begins

Here at Countly, we have been dedicated to the world of analytics since 2013. It all began with mobile analytics, and soon after, we incorporated web analytics into our platform. Over the years, we've realized that product analytics is a more fitting term for understanding and enhancing user experiences across various digital applications. While it may not encompass everything we do, product analytics is the most widely understood term, so we've embraced it (at least for now).

When we first launched, we offered just one product: Countly Community Edition. This open-source, lightweight solution provided small teams and individual developers with essential product analytics tools and, most importantly, the ability to host their own analytics server, giving them complete control over their data. From there, we expanded our offerings to the other end of the spectrum by introducing Countly Enterprise – a robust solution with added features and unparalleled after-sales support for our larger clients.

After nearly a decade in the analytics business, we're embarking on an exciting and somewhat daring journey, building our third product, myCountly. In this blog series, I'll share our experiences and insights, providing you with valuable lessons that can be applied to your own product development endeavours. I'll delve into various aspects of our process, including product decisions, development, analytics strategy, pricing, marketing, positioning, and our journey towards embracing a product-led mindset. Join us as we learn together and make this journey as much about you as it is about us.

Why a new product?

We are currently in a comfortable position as a company; we're bootstrapped, enjoy strong revenue, have large clients for our Enterprise Edition, and a popular open-source offering, the Community Edition. It's difficult to convince ourselves that it's a good idea to divert a significant portion of our focus and energy from a relatively small team of around 50 people to build something new when we could spend that time and energy perfecting what we know is already working. However, as the startup spirit dictates, nothing groundbreaking emerges from the comfort zone.

Two things have become abundantly clear to us:

1. The Community Edition is self-hosted, and not everyone has the desire or technical know-how to self-host their product analytics server, regardless of how optimized and user-friendly we make the process for our users.
2. The Enterprise Edition can be either self-hosted or Countly-hosted, but to provide the necessary service for our customers (think customer success, support, and close engineering relationships with clients), we must maintain a relatively high starting price point for the product.

At present, we're unable to cater to a substantial segment of our market: organizations and individuals who want dedicated product analytics with the complete feature set of Countly but require pricing that scales reasonably with their needs and doesn't entail the added responsibility of maintaining a product analytics server.

While it's challenging to fully validate whether a new product that addresses all these concerns will succeed, the nature of the inquiries we've received from our users and prospects lately has provided enough encouragement to embark on this new journey.

So, we're setting out to bridge the gap and create a product that caters to the needs of this unexplored market segment. We believe that there's a world of untapped potential, and we're excited to dive in, learn from our customers, and iterate as we go. This endeavor will require us to be agile, innovative, and persistent – qualities that are at the heart of any successful startup.

What exactly is myCountly?

Imagine having a powerful and personalized product analytics platform at your fingertips, tailored to meet your unique needs and goals. That's exactly what myCountly offers.

The elevator pitch: myCountly is a SaaS that lets you create your dedicated product analytics servers in the region you want with the features you need, empowering you to make data-driven decisions that drive growth and success.

myCountly revolutionizes the way you experience Countly, with these standout highlights:

• Affordable and accessible: With pricing based on monthly active users and a free tier to get started, myCountly is designed to scale with your business, ensuring you only pay for what you need.

• Dedicated and secure: Each user gets their dedicated Countly server, with the option to create multiple servers as needed. This means your data is safe, secure, and under your control.

• Global reach: Choose from a wide range of server regions, including the US, Canada, Brazil, Belgium, France, England, Germany, Switzerland, Israel, India, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Australia, ensuring optimal performance and compliance with local data regulations.

• Reinforcing trust: Customize your Countly server with your domain/subdomain and SSL certificate, complete with a dedicated IP address for each server.

• Feature-rich experience: Every myCountly server comes packed with a core feature set from the Enterprise Edition, including User Profiles, Cohorts, Drill, Retention, Funnels, Flows, and more, available across all tiers, including the free tier.

• Expandable capabilities: Enhance your analytics experience with add-on features from the Enterprise Edition, such as Push Notifications, Crash and Performance Analytics, Voice of the Customer (Surveys/NPS/Ratings), Remote Config with A/B Testing, Formulas, Hooks, and the DB Viewer.

At its core, with myCountly, you're not just getting another analytics tool; you're investing in a customized, feature-rich, and scalable product analytics platform that grows with your business. Whether you're a small startup or an established enterprise, myCountly adapts to your needs, empowering you to harness the power of data to make informed decisions and unlock your full potential.

So, why this blog series?

It's simple: we want to share our unique journey with you as we evolve from a non-SaaS company to a SaaS-driven business. Our goal is to inspire and educate others by sharing the challenges, successes, and lessons learned along the way, so you can apply this knowledge to your own ventures.

We haven't been a traditional SaaS company in our 10-year history, but now we're exploring this exciting new direction with myCountly. We know there will be hurdles to overcome and new strategies to develop, but we embrace these challenges with enthusiasm and a determination to grow. By documenting our experiences, we hope to create a valuable learning resource for both our team and our readers.

This series, "The Product-Led Story," is aptly named because it represents our journey towards becoming a product-led company. We're not claiming to be experts in this area – quite the opposite. Until now, our focus has been on community-led and sales/cs-led initiatives. But we understand that a key factor in myCountly's success will be adopting a product-led mindset at the very heart of everything we do. This means prioritizing self-service, self-sufficiency, and data-driven decision-making, primarily using our own product, Countly.

What’s the plan?

As we venture into the world of product-led growth, I'll be sharing regular updates about our journey, from the earliest stages of conception to alpha testing, public launch, and beyond. With weekly posts, I'll dive deep into various aspects of our process, covering product decisions, design iterations, data-driven insights that have shaped our progress, pricing/billing strategies, marketing, positioning, and our transition into the realm of product-led growth.

myCountly has already been in development for some time, and we're excited to share our progress with you. If you're interested in becoming an alpha user and getting an exclusive first look at our latest offering, please sign up here.

This is just the beginning of "The Product-Led Story," and in future posts, I'll take you back to the very start, discussing some of the initial decisions that laid the groundwork for myCountly.

Thank you for joining us on this exhilarating adventure. Your support and engagement mean the world to us. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to learn, grow, and share our experiences in the world of product-led growth. Together, we'll discover the strategies and secrets behind building a successful, scalable, and customer-focused business. Let's rocket towards success! 🚀