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  • Home
  • CEO diaries
    • After the HN launch
    • Remote companies can be too asynchronous
    • The time before YC
    • Winning from the back - late mover advantage
    • Optimize for not breaking up with your co-founder
    • Cancer and revenue - the latest board meeting
    • "How come your website is so nice?"
    • Things I learned last year
    • Our new objective: Nail Self Serve
    • How we found our Ideal Customer Profile
    • Tell me about features, not benefits
    • The magic of a Hacker News Pre-Mortem
    • How to run a transparent startup
    • How we justified quitting our jobs and financing PostHog early on
    • How we made something people want
    • Moving to San Francisco
    • Pivot to PostHog
    • Counterintuitive lessons about our pricing
    • I used to think you don't need product people. I was wrong.
    • How we raised $3M for an open source project
    • A story about pivots
    • The YC Interview
    • Raising money is less stressful than bootstrapping
    • What motivates me as a CEO
    • The really important job interview questions engineers should ask (but don't)
    • Writing for developers
    • Reflecting on YC, 2 years on
  • Company & culture
    • How we do meetings at PostHog
  • Comparisons
    • PostHog vs Matomo
    • PostHog vs Amplitude
    • Why I ditched Google Analytics and Mixpanel for PostHog
  • Engineering
    • Enabling zero downtime data migrations for self-hosted users
    • Automating a software company with GitHub Actions
    • How to speed up ClickHouse queries using materialized columns
    • In-depth: ClickHouse vs PostgreSQL
    • Setting up super fast Cypress tests on GitHub Actions
    • How I learned to love feedback loops (and make better products)
    • Frontend filters & backend SQL - A chat with Eric Duong, Sam Winslow, James Greenhill, and Buddy Williams
    • PostHog Joins Hacktoberfest 2020
    • How PostHog built an app server (from MVP to billions of events)
    • How we’re making PostHog deployments easier
    • Solving the mystery of PostHog’s missing session recordings
    • I used to think you don't need product people. I was wrong.
    • The secrets of PostHog query performance
    • Benchmarking the impact of session recording on performance
    • The state of plugins on PostHog
    • We ship whenever
  • General
    • Setting up super fast Cypress tests on GitHub Actions
    • How we designed the PostHog mascot
    • Why you may not need a sales team
    • A story about pivots
  • Guides
    • Introduction to self-service analytics
    • Building an AARRR pirate funnel (how and why)
    • 5 essential tips for Customer Success teams on PostHog
    • 5 analytics ideas for marketing teams using PostHog
    • Automating a software company with GitHub Actions
    • The most useful B2B SaaS product metrics
    • The 7 best GDPR-compliant analytics tools
    • The best HIPAA-compliant A/B testing tools
    • The 5 best free and open-source A/B testing tools
    • The 4 best HIPAA-compliant analytics tools
    • The best open-source analytics and data tools
    • Open source (and self-hosted) alternatives to Hotjar & FullStory
    • The two ways to estimate your monthly event usage
    • How to speed up ClickHouse queries using materialized columns
    • In-depth: ClickHouse vs PostgreSQL
    • Google is about to make it a lot harder to track website and app users without third-party cookies
    • Setting up super fast Cypress tests on GitHub Actions
    • 5 essential PostHog apps for new users
    • 5 events all teams should track with PostHog
    • What launching Experimentation taught us about running effective A/B tests
    • How to get the first 10 paying customers for your devtool company (and other customer acquisition tips)
    • The best GA4 alternatives for apps and websites
    • How to harness the awesome power of growth loops
    • What is user segmentation?
    • How to measure product engagement
    • How to achieve B2B product market fit
    • How to work out what your users really need
    • How we do hiring & HR at PostHog
    • How we turned ClickHouse into our event mansion
    • An introduction to customer retention
    • Is Google Analytics HIPAA compliant?
    • Finding your North Star metric and why it matters
    • How we monetized our open source devtool
    • Building an open source data stack
    • How to plan a killer company offsite in just 8 weeks
    • Permissions and projects in PostHog, explained
    • How (and why) our marketing team uses PostHog
    • PostHog vs Matomo
    • PostHog vs Amplitude
    • Product engineer vs software engineer: what's the difference?
    • Don’t bother securing your trademarks in the beginning
    • How to seed, grow, and scale Developer Relations (and how we're doing it at PostHog)
    • The ops toolkit for early-stage startups
    • How (and why) to track your website with PostHog
    • 22 ways PostHog makes it easier to build great products
    • What is a product engineer (and why they're awesome)
    • A simple guide to personal data and PII
    • An introduction to product analytics and how it works
    • What is SSO and why you should enable it for PostHog
    • The 3 critical reasons companies choose self-hosted analytics
  • HogMail
    • HogMail #14
    • HogMail #15
    • HogMail #16
    • HogMail #17: The personal traits that can't be taught
    • HogMail #18: What can SaaS learn from the New York Times?
  • Inside PostHog
    • PostHog raises $15 million Series B for open source product analytics
    • A non-coders thoughts on ‘Everybody Codes’ - Part Two
    • A non-coder's thoughts on an 'Everybody Codes' culture
    • After the HN launch
    • Remote companies can be too asynchronous
    • The time before YC
    • How PostHog uses Wren to offset carbon emissions during offsites
    • Winning from the back - late mover advantage
    • Optimize for not breaking up with your co-founder
    • Cancer and revenue - the latest board meeting
    • "How come your website is so nice?"
    • Things I learned last year
    • Our new objective: Nail Self Serve
    • How we found our Ideal Customer Profile
    • How we do customer support at our open source devtool company
    • The importance of dogfooding - Why product managers should use their product as much as their users
    • How we designed the PostHog mascot
    • Using Gatsby and Puppeteer to create dynamic Open Graph images
    • Creating an employee-friendly startup share option scheme
    • Tell me about features, not benefits
    • How I learned to love feedback loops (and make better products)
    • The magic of a Hacker News Pre-Mortem
    • HostHogs - free drinks, free pizza and frequently asked questions
    • How to run a transparent startup
    • How we do hiring & HR at PostHog
    • How PostHog built an app server (from MVP to billions of events)
    • How we turned ClickHouse into our event mansion
    • How we justified quitting our jobs and financing PostHog early on
    • Introducing Phil Leggetter, our new head of Developer Relations
    • Using Google Analytics was deemed 'illegal' in some EU countries. We built a microsite in 48 hours to capitalize on the news.
    • Introducing Joe Martin - Our first Product Marketer
    • How we made something people want
    • How we do meetings at PostHog
    • Solving the mystery of PostHog’s missing session recordings
    • Moving to San Francisco
    • How PostHog's new VP focused the company on nailing funnels in his first week
    • An engineer's guide to picking a cofounder
    • Pivot to PostHog
    • How to plan a killer company offsite in just 8 weeks
    • PostHog raises $12 million in funding led by GV and Y Combinator
    • What we learned about hiring from our first five employees
    • How (and why) our marketing team uses PostHog
    • How we rebranded PostHog in four weeks - a postmortem
    • Counterintuitive lessons about our pricing
    • I used to think you don't need product people. I was wrong.
    • What's the true role of a product team at an engineering-led organization?
    • Building an all-remote company from scratch
    • How we raised $3M for an open source project
    • All the cool things we built at our Rome hackathon
    • Content marketing strategy for devtool companies - How we do it at PostHog
    • How to seed, grow, and scale Developer Relations (and how we're doing it at PostHog)
    • Benchmarking the impact of session recording on performance
    • Speeding up PostHog builds with Depot
    • How to run finance at your startup without hiring a finance person
    • How to choose job titles in your early stage startup
    • Startups, stop treating engineers like a different species
    • The ops toolkit for early-stage startups
    • A story about pivots
    • The YC Interview
    • Why we ditched ‘talk to sales’ for transparent pricing
    • Raising money is less stressful than bootstrapping
    • What motivates me as a CEO
    • The really important job interview questions engineers should ask (but don't)
    • Why I ditched Google Analytics and Mixpanel for PostHog
    • Why infrastructure is a competitive advantage for us
    • Why we raised a $15m Series B ahead of schedule
    • Writing for developers
    • Reflecting on YC, 2 years on
    • YC adds PostHog to top valued companies for July 2021
  • Launch week
    • Introducing Collaboration for PostHog
    • Introducing Data Management for PostHog
    • What launching Experimentation taught us about running effective A/B tests
    • How we’re making PostHog deployments easier
    • PostHog Launch Week I: A Universe of New Features
    • The secrets of PostHog query performance
  • Open source
    • The Early Days of GitLab - A Chat with Sid Sijbrandij
    • The 5 best free and open-source A/B testing tools
    • The 6 best free and open-source feature flag tools
    • The best open-source analytics and data tools
    • Open source (and self-hosted) alternatives to Hotjar & FullStory
    • How we do customer support at our open source devtool company
    • How I learned to love feedback loops (and make better products)
    • PostHog Joins Hacktoberfest 2020
    • Give Back Friday with PostHog
    • Building an open source data science publishing platform - An interview with Datapane CEO, Leo Anthias
    • How we monetized our open source devtool
    • Open source is eating SaaS
    • Building an open source data stack
    • Should open source projects track you?
    • PostHog vs Amplitude
    • How we raised $3M for an open source project
    • Why open-source projects are essential for large businesses
    • Send love to open-source projects on Valentine's Day
    • Speeding up PostHog builds with Depot
    • The 3 critical reasons companies choose self-hosted analytics
  • PostHog Academy
    • What is user segmentation?
    • How to measure product engagement
    • How to achieve B2B product market fit
    • How to work out what your users really need
    • An introduction to customer retention
    • An introduction to product analytics and how it works
  • Privacy
    • The 7 best GDPR-compliant analytics tools
    • The best HIPAA-compliant A/B testing tools
    • The 4 best HIPAA-compliant analytics tools
    • Google is about to make it a lot harder to track website and app users without third-party cookies
    • A new 'Privacy Shield' won't solve big tech's GDPR problem
    • Is Google Analytics HIPAA compliant?
    • A simple guide to personal data and PII
  • Product analytics
    • Introduction to self-service analytics
    • Building an AARRR pirate funnel (how and why)
    • The two ways to estimate your monthly event usage
    • How to harness the awesome power of growth loops
    • What is user segmentation?
    • How to measure product engagement
    • How to achieve B2B product market fit
    • How to work out what your users really need
    • An introduction to customer retention
    • Is autocapture ‘still’ bad?
    • Finding your North Star metric and why it matters
    • How PostHog's new VP focused the company on nailing funnels in his first week
    • What's the true role of a product team at an engineering-led organization?
    • How to turn your engineers into product people
    • 22 ways PostHog makes it easier to build great products
    • An introduction to product analytics and how it works
  • Product updates
    • Why we're giving away 100 times more cloud usage, free
    • Enabling zero downtime data migrations for self-hosted users
    • Introducing the Avo Inspector app
    • We just made PostHog Open Source 1000x more scalable via ClickHouse
    • Introducing Collaboration for PostHog
    • Introducing Data Management for PostHog
    • What launching Experimentation taught us about running effective A/B tests
    • Group Analytics is now available in PostHog
    • You can now reverse ETL into PostHog with Hightouch
    • How we’re making PostHog deployments easier
    • PostHog Launch Week I: A Universe of New Features
    • How we’re improving performance by combining persons and events
    • PostHog teams up with Altinity
    • Introducing PostHog Cloud EU
    • Restack joins the PostHog Marketplace
    • PostHog is now available on Segment!
    • The secrets of PostHog query performance
    • Why we're removing the sessions page
    • Array 1.0.10
    • Array 1.0.11
    • Array 1.0.8
    • Array 1.0.9
    • Array 1.1.0
    • Array 1.11.0
    • Array 1.10.0
    • Array 1.12.0
    • Array 1.13.0
    • Array 1.14.0
    • Array 1.15.0
    • Array 1.16.0
    • Array 1.17.0
    • Array 1.18.0
    • Array 1.2.0
    • Array 1.19.0
    • Array 1.20.0
    • Array 1.22.0
    • Array 1.21.0
    • Array 1.23.0
    • Array 1.24.0
    • Array 1.25.0
    • Array 1.27.0
    • Array 1.28.0
    • Array 1.29.0
    • Array 1.26.0
    • Array 1.3.0
    • Array 1.30.0
    • Array 1.31.0
    • Array 1.32.0
    • Array 1.33.0
    • Array 1.34.0
    • Array 1.35.0: Introducing SAML, world map view and new plugins
    • Array 1.37.0: Cohorts 2.0 and event & property detail pages
    • Array 1.36.0: Introducing AND/OR filtering, timezone support and universal search
    • Array 1.38.0: Exports, subscriptions and session analysis
    • Array 1.39.0: Betas, persons, events and libraries
    • Array 1.4.0
    • Array 1.40.0: Interface improvements and more!
    • Array 1.42.0: Get beta features via our roadmap!
    • Array 1.5.0
    • Array 1.41.0: Improving performance by up to 400%
    • Array 1.6.0
    • Array 1.7.0
    • Array 1.8.0
    • Array 1.9.0
    • Array 1.0.0
    • The state of plugins on PostHog
  • Release notes
    • Introducing the Avo Inspector app
    • How we’re improving performance by combining persons and events
    • Array 1.0.10
    • Array 1.0.11
    • Array 1.0.8
    • Array 1.0.9
    • Array 1.1.0
    • Array 1.11.0
    • Array 1.10.0
    • Array 1.12.0
    • Array 1.13.0
    • Array 1.14.0
    • Array 1.15.0
    • Array 1.16.0
    • Array 1.17.0
    • Array 1.18.0
    • Array 1.2.0
    • Array 1.19.0
    • Array 1.20.0
    • Array 1.22.0
    • Array 1.21.0
    • Array 1.23.0
    • Array 1.24.0
    • Array 1.25.0
    • Array 1.27.0
    • Array 1.28.0
    • Array 1.29.0
    • Array 1.26.0
    • Array 1.3.0
    • Array 1.30.0
    • Array 1.31.0
    • Array 1.32.0
    • Array 1.33.0
    • Array 1.34.0
    • Array 1.35.0: Introducing SAML, world map view and new plugins
    • Array 1.37.0: Cohorts 2.0 and event & property detail pages
    • Array 1.36.0: Introducing AND/OR filtering, timezone support and universal search
    • Array 1.38.0: Exports, subscriptions and session analysis
    • Array 1.39.0: Betas, persons, events and libraries
    • Array 1.4.0
    • Array 1.40.0: Interface improvements and more!
    • Array 1.42.0: Get beta features via our roadmap!
    • Array 1.5.0
    • Array 1.41.0: Improving performance by up to 400%
    • Array 1.6.0
    • Array 1.7.0
    • Array 1.8.0
    • Array 1.9.0
    • Array 1.0.0
  • Startups
    • A non-coder's thoughts on an 'Everybody Codes' culture
    • How we found our Ideal Customer Profile
    • Creating an employee-friendly startup share option scheme
    • How to get the first 10 paying customers for your devtool company (and other customer acquisition tips)
    • How to run a transparent startup
    • Building an open source data science publishing platform - An interview with Datapane CEO, Leo Anthias
    • How we made something people want
    • How we monetized our open source devtool
    • Should open source projects track you?
    • An engineer's guide to picking a cofounder
    • How to plan a killer company offsite in just 8 weeks
    • What we learned about hiring from our first five employees
    • How we rebranded PostHog in four weeks - a postmortem
    • Product engineer vs software engineer: what's the difference?
    • What's the true role of a product team at an engineering-led organization?
    • Why you may not need a sales team
    • Don’t bother securing your trademarks in the beginning
    • Building an all-remote company from scratch
    • All the cool things we built at our Rome hackathon
    • Content marketing strategy for devtool companies - How we do it at PostHog
    • Why open-source projects are essential for large businesses
    • How to run finance at your startup without hiring a finance person
    • How to choose job titles in your early stage startup
    • Startups, stop treating engineers like a different species
    • The ops toolkit for early-stage startups
    • How to turn your engineers into product people
    • Raising money is less stressful than bootstrapping
    • What is a product engineer (and why they're awesome)
    • Writing for developers
    • Reflecting on YC, 2 years on
  • Using PostHog
    • 5 essential tips for Customer Success teams on PostHog
    • 5 analytics ideas for marketing teams using PostHog
    • 5 essential PostHog apps for new users
    • 5 events all teams should track with PostHog
    • Permissions and projects in PostHog, explained
    • How (and why) our marketing team uses PostHog
    • How (and why) to track your website with PostHog
    • What is SSO and why you should enable it for PostHog
  • Home
  • CEO diaries
    • After the HN launch
    • Remote companies can be too asynchronous
    • The time before YC
    • Winning from the back - late mover advantage
    • Optimize for not breaking up with your co-founder
    • Cancer and revenue - the latest board meeting
    • "How come your website is so nice?"
    • Things I learned last year
    • Our new objective: Nail Self Serve
    • How we found our Ideal Customer Profile
    • Tell me about features, not benefits
    • The magic of a Hacker News Pre-Mortem
    • How to run a transparent startup
    • How we justified quitting our jobs and financing PostHog early on
    • How we made something people want
    • Moving to San Francisco
    • Pivot to PostHog
    • Counterintuitive lessons about our pricing
    • I used to think you don't need product people. I was wrong.
    • How we raised $3M for an open source project
    • A story about pivots
    • The YC Interview
    • Raising money is less stressful than bootstrapping
    • What motivates me as a CEO
    • The really important job interview questions engineers should ask (but don't)
    • Writing for developers
    • Reflecting on YC, 2 years on
  • Company & culture
    • How we do meetings at PostHog
  • Comparisons
    • PostHog vs Matomo
    • PostHog vs Amplitude
    • Why I ditched Google Analytics and Mixpanel for PostHog
  • Engineering
    • Enabling zero downtime data migrations for self-hosted users
    • Automating a software company with GitHub Actions
    • How to speed up ClickHouse queries using materialized columns
    • In-depth: ClickHouse vs PostgreSQL
    • Setting up super fast Cypress tests on GitHub Actions
    • How I learned to love feedback loops (and make better products)
    • Frontend filters & backend SQL - A chat with Eric Duong, Sam Winslow, James Greenhill, and Buddy Williams
    • PostHog Joins Hacktoberfest 2020
    • How PostHog built an app server (from MVP to billions of events)
    • How we’re making PostHog deployments easier
    • Solving the mystery of PostHog’s missing session recordings
    • I used to think you don't need product people. I was wrong.
    • The secrets of PostHog query performance
    • Benchmarking the impact of session recording on performance
    • The state of plugins on PostHog
    • We ship whenever
  • General
    • Setting up super fast Cypress tests on GitHub Actions
    • How we designed the PostHog mascot
    • Why you may not need a sales team
    • A story about pivots
  • Guides
    • Introduction to self-service analytics
    • Building an AARRR pirate funnel (how and why)
    • 5 essential tips for Customer Success teams on PostHog
    • 5 analytics ideas for marketing teams using PostHog
    • Automating a software company with GitHub Actions
    • The most useful B2B SaaS product metrics
    • The 7 best GDPR-compliant analytics tools
    • The best HIPAA-compliant A/B testing tools
    • The 5 best free and open-source A/B testing tools
    • The 4 best HIPAA-compliant analytics tools
    • The best open-source analytics and data tools
    • Open source (and self-hosted) alternatives to Hotjar & FullStory
    • The two ways to estimate your monthly event usage
    • How to speed up ClickHouse queries using materialized columns
    • In-depth: ClickHouse vs PostgreSQL
    • Google is about to make it a lot harder to track website and app users without third-party cookies
    • Setting up super fast Cypress tests on GitHub Actions
    • 5 essential PostHog apps for new users
    • 5 events all teams should track with PostHog
    • What launching Experimentation taught us about running effective A/B tests
    • How to get the first 10 paying customers for your devtool company (and other customer acquisition tips)
    • The best GA4 alternatives for apps and websites
    • How to harness the awesome power of growth loops
    • What is user segmentation?
    • How to measure product engagement
    • How to achieve B2B product market fit
    • How to work out what your users really need
    • How we do hiring & HR at PostHog
    • How we turned ClickHouse into our event mansion
    • An introduction to customer retention
    • Is Google Analytics HIPAA compliant?
    • Finding your North Star metric and why it matters
    • How we monetized our open source devtool
    • Building an open source data stack
    • How to plan a killer company offsite in just 8 weeks
    • Permissions and projects in PostHog, explained
    • How (and why) our marketing team uses PostHog
    • PostHog vs Matomo
    • PostHog vs Amplitude
    • Product engineer vs software engineer: what's the difference?
    • Don’t bother securing your trademarks in the beginning
    • How to seed, grow, and scale Developer Relations (and how we're doing it at PostHog)
    • The ops toolkit for early-stage startups
    • How (and why) to track your website with PostHog
    • 22 ways PostHog makes it easier to build great products
    • What is a product engineer (and why they're awesome)
    • A simple guide to personal data and PII
    • An introduction to product analytics and how it works
    • What is SSO and why you should enable it for PostHog
    • The 3 critical reasons companies choose self-hosted analytics
  • HogMail
    • HogMail #14
    • HogMail #15
    • HogMail #16
    • HogMail #17: The personal traits that can't be taught
    • HogMail #18: What can SaaS learn from the New York Times?
  • Inside PostHog
    • PostHog raises $15 million Series B for open source product analytics
    • A non-coders thoughts on ‘Everybody Codes’ - Part Two
    • A non-coder's thoughts on an 'Everybody Codes' culture
    • After the HN launch
    • Remote companies can be too asynchronous
    • The time before YC
    • How PostHog uses Wren to offset carbon emissions during offsites
    • Winning from the back - late mover advantage
    • Optimize for not breaking up with your co-founder
    • Cancer and revenue - the latest board meeting
    • "How come your website is so nice?"
    • Things I learned last year
    • Our new objective: Nail Self Serve
    • How we found our Ideal Customer Profile
    • How we do customer support at our open source devtool company
    • The importance of dogfooding - Why product managers should use their product as much as their users
    • How we designed the PostHog mascot
    • Using Gatsby and Puppeteer to create dynamic Open Graph images
    • Creating an employee-friendly startup share option scheme
    • Tell me about features, not benefits
    • How I learned to love feedback loops (and make better products)
    • The magic of a Hacker News Pre-Mortem
    • HostHogs - free drinks, free pizza and frequently asked questions
    • How to run a transparent startup
    • How we do hiring & HR at PostHog
    • How PostHog built an app server (from MVP to billions of events)
    • How we turned ClickHouse into our event mansion
    • How we justified quitting our jobs and financing PostHog early on
    • Introducing Phil Leggetter, our new head of Developer Relations
    • Using Google Analytics was deemed 'illegal' in some EU countries. We built a microsite in 48 hours to capitalize on the news.
    • Introducing Joe Martin - Our first Product Marketer
    • How we made something people want
    • How we do meetings at PostHog
    • Solving the mystery of PostHog’s missing session recordings
    • Moving to San Francisco
    • How PostHog's new VP focused the company on nailing funnels in his first week
    • An engineer's guide to picking a cofounder
    • Pivot to PostHog
    • How to plan a killer company offsite in just 8 weeks
    • PostHog raises $12 million in funding led by GV and Y Combinator
    • What we learned about hiring from our first five employees
    • How (and why) our marketing team uses PostHog
    • How we rebranded PostHog in four weeks - a postmortem
    • Counterintuitive lessons about our pricing
    • I used to think you don't need product people. I was wrong.
    • What's the true role of a product team at an engineering-led organization?
    • Building an all-remote company from scratch
    • How we raised $3M for an open source project
    • All the cool things we built at our Rome hackathon
    • Content marketing strategy for devtool companies - How we do it at PostHog
    • How to seed, grow, and scale Developer Relations (and how we're doing it at PostHog)
    • Benchmarking the impact of session recording on performance
    • Speeding up PostHog builds with Depot
    • How to run finance at your startup without hiring a finance person
    • How to choose job titles in your early stage startup
    • Startups, stop treating engineers like a different species
    • The ops toolkit for early-stage startups
    • A story about pivots
    • The YC Interview
    • Why we ditched ‘talk to sales’ for transparent pricing
    • Raising money is less stressful than bootstrapping
    • What motivates me as a CEO
    • The really important job interview questions engineers should ask (but don't)
    • Why I ditched Google Analytics and Mixpanel for PostHog
    • Why infrastructure is a competitive advantage for us
    • Why we raised a $15m Series B ahead of schedule
    • Writing for developers
    • Reflecting on YC, 2 years on
    • YC adds PostHog to top valued companies for July 2021
  • Launch week
    • Introducing Collaboration for PostHog
    • Introducing Data Management for PostHog
    • What launching Experimentation taught us about running effective A/B tests
    • How we’re making PostHog deployments easier
    • PostHog Launch Week I: A Universe of New Features
    • The secrets of PostHog query performance
  • Open source
    • The Early Days of GitLab - A Chat with Sid Sijbrandij
    • The 5 best free and open-source A/B testing tools
    • The 6 best free and open-source feature flag tools
    • The best open-source analytics and data tools
    • Open source (and self-hosted) alternatives to Hotjar & FullStory
    • How we do customer support at our open source devtool company
    • How I learned to love feedback loops (and make better products)
    • PostHog Joins Hacktoberfest 2020
    • Give Back Friday with PostHog
    • Building an open source data science publishing platform - An interview with Datapane CEO, Leo Anthias
    • How we monetized our open source devtool
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  • Open source

The 6 best free and open-source feature flag tools

  • Hanna Crombie
    Hanna Crombie

Feature flags, aka feature toggles, turn specific functions on and off during runtime. Rather than maintaining multiple feature branches in your source code, feature flags hide code or behaviors and allow you to enable or disable features on demand and without deploying new code.

They're useful for:

  • Safely releasing features by eliminating complex branching and gradually rolling out feature access so you can react quickly if issues arise.

  • Running multivariate tests so you can understand the impact of new features and changes.

  • Controlling access to certain features based on user criteria, such as location, device type or subscription level.

In this guide, we’ll explore some of the best open source feature flag tools, all of which are either totally free or offer generous free plans.

If you want to run experiments as well, we recommend reading our guide to the best open-source A/B testing tools.

1. PostHog

PostHog

PostHog is an all-in-one product analytics platform that captures and visualizes all of the data your team needs in one place. Complete with Session Recording, Heatmaps, Path analysis, Funnels and more, it’s a great choice if you want to build a comprehensive, data-driven product strategy, fast.

As well as Feature Flags, you can take advantage of the toggles in the Experimentation suite to test hypotheses on product changes with A/B tests or define user segments for feature access. Multivariate flags allow you to test several variants of the same interchangeable content.

Who is PostHog for?

PostHog is built primarily for engineers and other product-minded teams. With all of your analytics in one place, everyone in the organization is empowered to examine and act on user data. You can also self-host PostHog, which is ideal for any company with stringent data privacy needs.

Strengths

  • All-in-one product analytics platform
  • Easy to get set up (no SQL needed)
  • A/B tests with PostHog’s experimentation suite
  • Multivariate flags for several variations per test
  • Target by user properties and percentage
  • Unlimited flags
  • Multi-environment support
  • Free third-party apps to enrich your data

How much does it cost?

Feature flags are a core feature of all editions, including the open source release. While multivariate feature flags are limited to paid plans, PostHog's paid plans are free up to 1 million events every month.

Open source license

PostHog open source is available under an MIT license. Read more about self-hosting PostHog in our docs.


Ready to find out more?

Try PostHog todaySchedule a demo

2. Flagsmith

Flagsmith

Flagsmith is a feature flag tool which makes it easy to test and deploy new functional and visual changes to users without pushing updates to code. All flags in Flagsmith are capable of being configured for cross-platform remote configuration, so you can alter an app in real-time without having to wait for app-store approval.

Flagsmith is heavily user-focused. You can use the tooling to create detailed user segments based on store traits. and roll out features based on those identifiers.

The platform doesn’t provide full analytics however, so a third-party provider will be required for visibility on any testing you want to carry out.

Who is Flagsmith for?

Flagsmith is for product-conscious front-end developers who want to be able to test new features in production and roll them out at the right time without having to modify the back-end.

Strengths

  • Cross-platform functionality
  • Out of the box 3rd party analytics integrations
  • User-focused segmentation
  • Update in real-time without back end intervention

How much does it cost?

Flagsmith is free up to 50,000 requests per month when you choose the cloud solution. If you’re looking to self-host, pricing is available on request.

Open-source license

Flagsmith is covered by a BSD 3-clause open source license. You can take a look at their GitHub to read more.

3. Harness

Harness

Harness is a Software Delivery Platform which uses AI to help development teams take their delivery pipeline to the next level. The feature flag module benefits from succinct user targeting and offers basic analytics to track the usage and impact of your features.

Harness feature flags include a significant level of control when it comes to governance with an automated policy engine powered by Open Policy Agent. You can also integrate with a number of popular workflow tools like Jira and Slack.

Who is Harness for?

Harness is a good choice for organizations who are concerned with compliance. Their policy engine enforces local and global governance standards on deployments, infrastructure and more so development teams can move very quickly while maintaining rules and standards.

Strengths

  • Easy integration into CI/CD
  • Manage governance needs with RBAC and audit logs
  • Integrate with workflows in GitOps and YAML
  • End-to-end software delivery platform

How much does it cost?

Harness’s feature flags module is free with unlimited flags and environments for up to 25,000 client monthly active users. Pricing starts at $25 per developer per month if you want to add on support, SLAs or increase client MAUs.

Open source license

Harness has several open source options depending on company size and the level of support required. A free, team-maintained edition is available to certain businesses under the Polyform Small Business License, and there are community editions under Apache 2.0 and PolyForm Sheild. Learn more on GitHub.

4. Unleash

unleash

Unleash lets you safely test and release new features with defined rules. The platform removes pressure from developers and lets them play around with features safely. The Canary release feature allows you to strategically manage gradual roll outs, identify issues and use kill switches to roll back in seconds.

Unleash is not an analytics platform, and you’ll need to connect a third-party platform to visualize analytics on experiments like A/B tests.

Who is Unleash for?

Unleash is for development teams who want freedom and creativity to test their releases in a safe environment and ensure consistent performance for all users.

Strengths

  • Super fast performance monitoring
  • Refined user segmentation
  • Rollout strategy management for gradual releases
  • Fall-back mechanisms and SDKs that keep local back-ups

How much does it cost?

Unleash is free for two environments when you self-host. A managed version is also available at cost if you want to add team members or access additional features like advanced segmentation or custom activation strategies.

Open source license

Unleash is available under an Apache license. Take a look at their GitHub to see more details.

5. GrowthBook

GrowthBook

GrowthBook is an open source feature flagging and experimentation platform built to help companies make better data-driven decisions. Its flag tool features advanced targeting, gradual rollouts and experiments. The platform is highly customisable and gives users the option to choose between a full testing platform, a plugin toggle tool or a data analysis engine.

Who is GrowthBook for?

GrowthBook is designed to be used by any data-driven team in your company, with SDKs built with developers in mind, transparency and automation for data-analysts and an accessible user-interface for product managers.

Strengths

  • Accessible for all teams
  • Advanced targeting for experiments
  • Modular, customizable platform
  • Automated experiment analysis
  • Unlimited flags

How much does it cost?

Growthbook’s open source self-hosted plan is free forever, with unlimited flags and experiments.

Open source license

Available under an MIT license. Take a look at the Growthbook GitHub to learn more.

6. DevCycle

devcycle

DevCycle is a progressive feature delivery solution focused on improving development team workflows and reporting. Its feature flag platform comes with full SDK coverage for all major languages, customized workflows which integrate with the existing PR environment and status reports which make your work transparent for all stakeholders.

Who is DevCycle for?

DevCycle is designed for developers who want strong project management tools for their feature flags in order to stay aligned with product stakeholders. Their concise release activity monitoring allows for easy reporting and keeps code clean.

Strengths

  • Feature experimentation
  • Powerful dashboard with global feature flag view for simple reporting
  • Full SDK and API coverage
  • Workflow customization

How much does it cost?

DevCycle has a 14 day free plan with up to 1,000 client-side monthly active users and 25,000 experimentation events. If you’re happy after your time is up, it’s $12 per seat per month to upgrade to pro.

Open source license

DevCycle is open source and available under an MIT license. You can find them on GitHub here.

Author

  • Hanna Crombie
    Hanna Crombie

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  • Open source

Jun 30, 2022

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