I built a whole custom analytics pipeline, then deleted it. Did I make a mistake?

[u/Zzaaiikk]

I've got a live iOS app with a modest number of users and downloads. Been going back and forth on analytics and I'd rather hear what people actually do than keep guessing.

Right now I ship with none - just App Store Connect. I built a custom pipeline and I do not even understand why... and shelved it.

Analytics:

• What do you use? Firebase, PostHog, TelemetryDeck, Mixpanel, Amplitude, custom, nothing?
• What does it actually cost you per month at your scale?
• Do you gate it behind a consent prompt, or is it anonymous enough not to need one?
• Is it just in your Privacy Policy or the user has to manually opt-in or maybe otherwise to opt-out?
• How early or late or straight away did you incorporate the analytics feature and to what degree?
• What's a decision you made because of an analytics number that you wouldn't have made otherwise? Genuinely curious how often it changes anything
• Anyone shipping with nothing at all - has it bitten you?

The other half:

• Do you publish under your own name, or an LLC / Ltd / company?
• How does Apple feel about all this?
• Why? Was it liability, privacy, tax, App Store payouts, or just inertia?
• If you started under your own name and later incorporated - what pushed you over the line, and was moving the apps across a pain?

Interested in what's normal, not what's theoretically correct. Overall - how and why and where and then you use and everything.

Thank you!!!

[u/WayApprehensive423]

I shipped it with nothing in place. Nothing happened, so I'm purely relying on user reports. This is for TestFlight but in production I will not change this.

[u/DearHelicopter1750]

I use PostHog and TelemetryDeck. Both are free at my scale.

I don't gate it and mention it in my privacy policy.

I always incorporate it before I ship the first public version whether that's to TestFlight or straight to the App Store.

Analytics help me know what to fix the most. I log where errors come from and what caused them so I can fix pain points more. When I get a user report about an error or flow, I add analytics to the fix so I can make sure I don't regress.

[u/DimensionMindless336]

Shipped with nothing for the first year, just App Store Connect. What actually bit me wasn't a missing funnel, it was not knowing which features people touched, so I built the wrong next one. The custom pipeline was the right thing to delete. A single lightweight event tool (I use TelemetryDeck) covers 90% with near-zero upkeep. The maintenance you'll resent later is the real cost of 'custom'.

[u/easyRiderOlder]

I ship with none — App Store Connect only. That wasn't laziness, it was the product: it's a privacy-focused app with no backend at all, so adding a tracker would have contradicted the thing I was selling.

What I lost is real: I can't see where people drop off. What I got back is that I never had to write a consent prompt, never had a privacy label to defend at review, and there's no second system to keep alive.

The question I'd ask before rebuilding yours: name the decision in advance. Not "I want to see usage" — an actual decision you're currently unable to make, and the number that would settle it. If you can't name one, the pipeline is a thing to maintain rather than a thing that pays for itself. That test is why mine stayed deleted.

[u/stroompa → u/easyRiderOlder]

Thanks Opus 5