Product analytics tools like Amplitude and Mixpanel get very expensive at scale. How do companies replace them?

Top 2 tactics: Existing Users and Industry Influencers. First, leverage the existing user base. Incent referrals with $5 for every new free user they get to sign up and start using PT Engine for a new domain. Second, reach influencers and offer them the same deal when they tweet / post to / email their audiences. Make the offer a 60 day free trial instead of the standard 30 day so that they are providing value to the people they refer as well. This is critical - don't make them feel sleazy, make them feel (and look) like heroes to the connections they share PT Engine with. That's $9k to get 1800 users, leaving you $1k for graphics, referral tracking system, administrative costs. I assume the $10k budget does not include your time - if it does you'll have to reduce the incentive, which will definitely make it less appealing. If you want to dive deep on reaching influencers, schedule a call with me at www.clarity.fm/ryandraving

Depending on the data, you can either use one of the following. Google Spreeshet / Charts: I use this for real time analytics generated from our system to quickly visualize the information. There's a simple JSON API that lets you pull that in although their is limits on the amount of rows you can use. Geckoboard: They provide dashboard type widgets you can configure to show you real time trends and information. Highcharts.com: Simple chart generator. We use this in our Admin Dashboard to visualize all our data include cohorts and weekly KPI's. I like simple and free.

Here you can find a solution: http://www.lunametrics.com/blog/2015/03/19/eliminating-dumb-ghost-referral-traffic/

Google Analytics is the best free tool out there for this. Make sure that you are focusing your report on conversions - how many/what percentage of website visitors are taking action (filling out a form, buying a product, etc.). If you're interested in paying for help, you should check out Moz or HubSpot, but Google Analytics is your best free option for web reporting. They also provide some social reporting - which social networks are driving traffic to the site and which network referrals are leading to the most conversions. Good luck!

I've done a lot of complex analytics installations, usually cross-domain and including AdWords and manual tagging with conversion tracking of ecommerce transactions. The gclid by default will override the manual UTM values in Analytics so that is what you are looking for. If you are just grabbing the manual tags from the URL for your own purpose, this should be OK. However, if you at some point want to import conversions (say) connected to your manual tag, then you would want to enable UTM overriding the gclid: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033981?hl=en. Do you have AdWords and Analytics accounts linked? Where and how are you tracking commerce conversions, if you are? Do you feel you are getting the insights you need from your current custom reporting? Let me know if I can help with a call about those or further optimization of your analytics capture. Best - Michael