rrweb's author here.
Very happy to see people building commercial products on top of rrweb.
Also paid a lot of time in the last several months to design and implement some new features to help the rrweb scale in production, such as the storage size.
Hope it will keep helping people make more interesting stuff in this area.
Hello HN, I started working on SessionForward a few months ago, when working on a UX/UI project for a client, and could not find an tools for Sessions Replays and Heatmaps generation, which would target developers. The project is still very much in Beta, so rough around the edges. If you decide to try it out and you have any suggestions, I am happy to hear about it! I will not charge for product usage for at least a few months, till a more polished version of it will be available.
What is the value one would get with your product over Hotjar or fullstory? I'm curious to learn more about what attracted you to this space and where you plan on positioning yourself in the market.
In this case, if it uses rrweb, it just stores all the HTML and all DOM mutations that happen. This is a pretty accurate method (even though still doesn't record all events, for example text selection, and if you watch an mp4 video for example, it won't save the entire video, only the URL to it), but it uses a lot of data.
In my case, I created a more simple solution for userTrack.net, where I just store the URL, record all events that happen and replay them by loading the iframe at the same URL and re-triggering all the events. It's not as accurate as storing HTML and mutations, but it uses a lot less data.
They just render the whole page inside a frame. If there was a resize on the page, the frame itself is resized as well, so you should see pretty much the same thing as the visitor.
Note that this doesn't handle browser inconsistencies though. So something like that wouldn't be reflected in the "recording".
Thank you for the feedback. As a user of Hotjar and FullStory myself, indeed I find it creepy (albeit very helpful in order to come up with a better experience) to browse through users sessions on my/my clients website. And this is indeed one of the reasons why I started working on SessionForward: as for my answer above, eventually I want neural network models to process data from Replays and Heatmaps PMs and Devs to just receive notifications with actionable insights on how to improve their pages' user experience.
It can be made ethical if we state at a visible location in the site that - "your actions are recorded for improving experience of the site" Or such message. So users know, they are being recorded. Just like we see similar messages while we are recorded in a shopping mall.
Nice product! I feel that it looks a bit unpolished (but I assume it's an MVP).
You might also want to check the similar product I'm working on: https://www.usertrack.net
I also started with session replays and heatmaps, but ended up adding a lot more analytics features. I personally only provide a self-hosted version as I really beleive self-hosting improves user privacy by a lot, and I don't feel comfortable storing all this possibly sensitive data (session recordings especially) on my servers.
Hey there, I checked out usertrack and it looks great! Yes indeed, I just released SessionForward publicly a few days ago and it is curently in its validation stage. Specifically, I want to test if there is a segment of tech oriented PMs, which want one tool in this space, which does one thing only and one thing very well (replays and Heatmaps), rather than dealing with a full extensive but heavy suite of UX/UI functionalities, such as Hotjar and FullStory!
This is finally a reasonable alternative to Fullstory and Hotjar. (we don't want to self host)
Fullstory changed pricing last year to focus on extracting large amounts of money from big customers, thus leaving small statups out effectively. So we moved to Hotjar, which requires us to constantly start a sample.
We haven't been using either. This is just what we were waiting for. Reasonable pricing for a strait forward simple service. We'll be signing up today!
Trust me, your words sound overwhelmingly warm, and I am very happy that this effort looks compelling to you. Also, they create some pressure, since despite being functional, the tool is still at its MVP stage, and there are MANY things that I want there, which are simply not there yet. I will personally reach out to each person that signed up across the next few days, with a clear description of product functionality along with a brief roadmap, of what features you can expect in the next 1 to 6 months!
What is your main push-back against self-hosting? Setup time? Maintenence? Because self-hosting usually costs a fraction of the price of hosted services. I assume you wouldn't be interested in my Hotjar alternative (https://usertrack.net) as it's only self-hosted.
Hey there! SessionForward is made up of two main pieces, a "client" library which you "require" on your page by pasting a <script> snippet, and a server, which actually collects sessions. The client side is based on MIT libraries, and I plan to open source it as soon as it will be more solid/readable. The server part of it is not opensource as of now (not sure about the future though!) And it is deployed on SessionForward servers for "non-enterprise" plans. I do want to explore the possibility offer to self host backend on-premises, even to non enterprise users, do reach out (email is on my profile) and we can talk this further!
I've spent the last 6 years building a company with a core product that relies on MutationObserver. I've personally spent many hundreds of hours working with it.
I have never encountered an issue with MutationObserver that made me doubt its accuracy.
[+] [-] madjam002|5 years ago|reply
https://www.rrweb.io/ https://github.com/rrweb-io/rrweb
Nonetheless nice work and it's good to see alternatives emerge.
[+] [-] yz-yu|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cpursley|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mahesh_rm|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adamlangsner|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stephen123|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] devmunchies|5 years ago|reply
For example, I was resizing the browser and in the replay it was showing the sizes of buttons change correctly.
[+] [-] XCSme|5 years ago|reply
In my case, I created a more simple solution for userTrack.net, where I just store the URL, record all events that happen and replay them by loading the iframe at the same URL and re-triggering all the events. It's not as accurate as storing HTML and mutations, but it uses a lot less data.
[+] [-] katsura|5 years ago|reply
Note that this doesn't handle browser inconsistencies though. So something like that wouldn't be reflected in the "recording".
[+] [-] jessaustin|5 years ago|reply
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/resi...
[+] [-] sefrost|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nerdponx|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mahesh_rm|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] the_arun|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jedberg|5 years ago|reply
How do you feel about physical stores that use video cameras? That seems like the most equivalent thing in the real world to me.
[+] [-] XCSme|5 years ago|reply
I also started with session replays and heatmaps, but ended up adding a lot more analytics features. I personally only provide a self-hosted version as I really beleive self-hosting improves user privacy by a lot, and I don't feel comfortable storing all this possibly sensitive data (session recordings especially) on my servers.
[+] [-] mahesh_rm|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] redm|5 years ago|reply
This is finally a reasonable alternative to Fullstory and Hotjar. (we don't want to self host)
Fullstory changed pricing last year to focus on extracting large amounts of money from big customers, thus leaving small statups out effectively. So we moved to Hotjar, which requires us to constantly start a sample.
We haven't been using either. This is just what we were waiting for. Reasonable pricing for a strait forward simple service. We'll be signing up today!
[+] [-] mahesh_rm|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] XCSme|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rosstex|5 years ago|reply
2. It's a beautiful reminder that any number of websites may be tracking us this way.
A fun security course assignment would be to have students use this website and discuss the ethics surrounding it.
[+] [-] chance_state|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] satvikpendem|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mahesh_rm|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] XCSme|5 years ago|reply
From OP I see their only self-hosted version is the $499 one.
[+] [-] httgp|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agustif|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gukov|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _up|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] atian|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cj|5 years ago|reply
I have never encountered an issue with MutationObserver that made me doubt its accuracy.
[+] [-] andrethegiant|5 years ago|reply