Build Your Own Mixpanel-Like Analytics Platform
Everything you need to own your data and understand user behavior
Analytics platforms sound complex, but they're actually one of the most achievable indie projects you can build. Here's why:
The Real Win: Your users get privacy-first analytics. You avoid GDPR headaches. Everyone wins.
Here's what actually works at scale, minus the hype:
Use this prompt to generate your analytics platform with Claude/Cursor:
You are building a Mixpanel-like analytics platform for indie developers.
REQUIREMENTS:
- Event Ingestion API: Accept POST /api/events with {userId, eventName, properties, timestamp}
- Queue Processing: Use Redis/SQS to buffer events before storage
- Database: Store events in ClickHouse (or TimescaleDB as fallback)
- JavaScript SDK: Auto-track pageviews, clicks, form submissions, custom events
- Dashboard: Real-time analytics with charts for:
* Event counts over time (line chart)
* Top events (bar chart)
* Unique users per day (trend)
* Funnels (multi-step conversion tracking)
* Retention cohorts (day 1, day 7, day 30 retention)
* User segmentation (filter by properties)
- API: GraphQL or REST endpoints for querying analytics
- Auth: Simple API key authentication
- Data Retention: Configurable, default 90 days
TECH STACK:
- Backend: Next.js API routes or Fastify
- Queue: Upstash Redis or AWS SQS
- Database: ClickHouse (primary) or TimescaleDB (fallback)
- Frontend: React + Tremor + Recharts
- SDK: Vanilla JS, ~2-3KB minified, no dependencies
ARCHITECTURE:
1. Client sends events via lightweight JS snippet
2. Events hit the ingestion API (/api/events)
3. API validates and pushes to Redis queue
4. Background worker pulls from queue, batches events
5. Batch insert into ClickHouse
6. Dashboard queries ClickHouse for real-time analytics
7. GraphQL/REST API serves data to frontend
FEATURES TO BUILD (Priority Order):
1. **Event Ingestion**
- Accept events at high volume
- Batch writes to database
- Handle duplicate detection (idempotent)
- Track event timestamp, userId, properties
2. **JavaScript SDK**
- Auto-track pageviews (document.location)
- Auto-track clicks on data-analytics-event elements
- Custom event API: analytics.track('event_name', {prop: value})
- Auto-batch and send every 5 seconds or when buffer hits 50 events
- Persist in localStorage to handle offline
3. **Funnel Analysis**
- Define a series of steps (e.g., signup β verify_email β first_purchase)
- Track drop-off at each step
- Show conversion rate % and absolute counts
- Support date range filtering
4. **Retention Cohorts**
- Cohort by signup date or any event
- Track % of users active on day 1, 7, 14, 30
- Visualize cohort retention curves
- Compare cohorts over time
5. **User Segmentation**
- Filter users by properties (country, plan, signup_source, etc.)
- Save segments as reusable filters
- Show segment size and retention
- Analyze event patterns within segments
6. **Real-Time Dashboard**
- Event counts with sparklines
- Live user count (users seen in last 5 minutes)
- Top events happening right now
- System status (events/sec, queue depth)
FEATURES TO SKIP (for MVP):
- Predictive analytics, anomaly detection, ML models
- Custom cohort builder UI (use raw SQL)
- White-label / multi-tenant
- Advanced attribution
- Heatmaps / session recording
DATABASE SCHEMA:
```sql
CREATE TABLE events (
event_id UUID,
project_id String,
user_id String,
event_name String,
properties JSON,
timestamp DateTime,
date Date,
country String,
device String
) ENGINE = MergeTree()
ORDER BY (project_id, user_id, timestamp)
PARTITION BY date;
```
CODE STYLE:
- TypeScript everywhere
- Zod for validation
- Clear error messages
- Logging for debugging
- Unit tests for core logic
PERFORMANCE:
- Ingest 10k events/sec minimum
- Query response <500ms for 90-day range
- Dashboard load in <2 seconds
- SDK injection time <50ms
Start with the event ingestion API and SDK. Then build the storage layer. Finally, add the dashboard and analysis features.
This should take 2-3 weeks for a solid MVP.
A realistic roadmap to get from zero to a working analytics platform:
Done: Can ingest and store events at scale
Done: Fully functional analytics dashboard
Done: Full-featured analytics platform
These projects prove analytics is doable. Study them, learn from them, build your own take:
The heavyweight: full-featured product analytics platform. Massive codebase but incredible reference.
Python/Django + ClickHouse + React
Privacy-first web analytics. Clean, focused, great UX. Smaller codebase, easier to understand.
github.com/plausible/analytics
Elixir + ClickHouse + React
Simple, self-hosted web analytics. Great for learning. Node.js-based, easier to modify.
github.com/umami-software/umami
Node.js + PostgreSQL + React
Customer data platform + analytics. Shows how to build complex data pipelines.
Kotlin/Java + ClickHouse
Good news: analytics scales beautifully. Here's what to expect:
Queries stay fast (<500ms) because of column storage and partitioning.
You own the infra. No SaaS markup.
Batch processing every 5 seconds = smooth, efficient writes.
No ML, no black magic. Straightforward event β store β query β visualize pipeline. You can ship a solid MVP in 3 weeks.
Every SaaS, every indie app, every startup needs analytics. You're solving a real problem, and people will pay for privacy-first solutions.
Once you have users' data running through your platform, they're sticky. Great network effect.
ClickHouse + Redis + Fastify can handle millions of events per second. You won't outgrow your stack.
Step 1: Fork Umami or Plausible. Understand the codebase.
Step 2: Spin up a local ClickHouse instance. Ingest some fake events.
Step 3: Build your first query. Visualize it. Feel the magic.
By day 2, you'll have working analytics. By week 2, you'll have a product. By week 4, you'll have customers.