<![CDATA[Developer Led: Teardowns]]>https://developerled.substack.com/s/teardownshttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!WuZX!,w_256,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0823c970-03ea-4e58-94d9-7c638e3d4667_1280x1280.pngDeveloper Led: Teardownshttps://developerled.substack.com/s/teardownsSubstackSat, 04 Apr 2026 03:26:50 GMT<![CDATA[PlanetScale]]>https://developerled.substack.com/p/planetscalehttps://developerled.substack.com/p/planetscaleThu, 19 Feb 2026 20:19:21 GMTI’ve wanted to write about PlanetScale for a while. What finally pushed me to do it was an X post from their CEO, Sam Lambert.

Similar note had been sitting in my content calendar notes for PlanetScale entry for weeks, phrased differently, but pointing to the same thing.

Marketing through engineering.

An Engineering-First Interface

At its core, the PlanetScale website feels like a markdown file, which it isn’t but it deliberately resembles one. And that’s the point.

From a developer marketing perspective, this is an alignment play. The content is structured like documentation. There’s no visual overflow competing with the message.

Their audience knows markdown. Many of them prefer it. LLMs parse it cleanly. Search engines love its structure. There’s almost no marketing gloss layered on top.

And yet, it stands out.

Not because it’s flashy. Because it’s simple, different.

In a market where infrastructure companies chase increasingly polished, animated, design-forward experiences, PlanetScale leans into something much more grounded.

Unapologetically plain.

Homepage

The world’s fastest and most scalable cloud databases

Hero Section

The hero copy on PlanetScale is extremely direct. It immediately highlights the core value their products - Postgres and Vitess - compete on. Performance.

If you’ve ever worked in database marketing, you know how tricky this is. Performance is both the most obvious positioning angle and the most crowded one. Everyone claims to be fast. Everyone shows numbers. And on the other side, buyers are trying to translate that performance into cost savings, but also take into account other engineering factors.

So how do you win in a category where everyone says the same thing?

You don’t say more. You prove more.

PlanetScale’s hero routes you straight into validation:

  • “We’re the fastest” → See the benchmarks

  • Hardware-level performance claims → NVMe drives

  • Curious how to try it? → Clear deployment options

It’s essentially a compressed quickstart for product exploration. There’s no elaborate narrative there. No abstract positioning language. Just a sequence of logical next steps:

Performance → Proof → Deployment

Customers

From a technical product marketing perspective, placing customer proof (aka social proof) immediately after the hero section is almost mandatory.

The psychological sequence is important. You go from technical claim through benchmark proof to eventually reach those who build with the product, which strenghtens confidence quickly.

As you scroll through the logos, you can access case studies. And here’s where it gets interesting. Most case studies in devtools are written by the vendor and hosted on the vendor’s website. That’s normal.

But some of those PlanetScale stories, from companies like Intercom, Depot and Supermemory, live on their sites instead of PlanetScale’s.

That changes the signal entirely.

It suggests that the customer didn’t just agree to be featured, they cared enough to invest their own time in explaining why the product matters to them which is a much stronger endorsement.

It’s not the case for every logo there, but when it happens, it elevates the entire proof layer from “look who uses us” to “look who is willing to publicly stand behind us”.

And not only in infrastructure, I guess that distinction matters.

Vitess, Postgres, Neki

This is where the second core element of PlanetScale’s developer marketing shows up - education.

After performance proof and social validation, the homepage transitions into product segmentation, but not in a sales-heavy way. Instead, you’re introduced to Vitess, Postgres and Neki.

Each section reads like a structured technical overview. It’s essentially a quick architecture walkthrough with clear paths to deeper documentation.

This is not feature stacking, which from a developer marketing perspective really matters.

Infrastructure products, especially databases, are never impulse decisions. They require understanding tradeoffs, deployment models, scaling behavior, operational implications and many more so the education there isn’t optional.

Performance

This section again (not sure if done on purpose) feels like an intentional expansion of what was introduced in the hero. Messaging amplification.

In the hero, performance is framed around Postgres - PlanetScale’s newer offering - with clear benchmarking links. That makes sense. New products need momentum and visibility.

Further down the page, performance appears again, this time tied to Vitess (MySQL), which predates their Postgres offering. That sequencing is simple yet interesting at the same time.

From a product perspective, it’s logical. You push the newest strategic product upfront to capture attention. But you reinforce it with the credibility of the system that’s been battle-tested and widely adopted.

New momentum built through old trust.

Instead of positioning products in isolation, PlanetScale uses performance as the unifying narrative across both Vitess and Postgres. It signals consistency regardless of the engine.

From a developer marketing standpoint it avoids fragmentation, internal competition between products and it builds a cohesive performance brand across the stack.

Uptime

When evaluating infrastructure, there are a few non-negotiables. Performance is usually first. Reliability is always second and often more important.

After establishing speed, PlanetScale shifts the conversation toward uptime. The reliability layer is built around three clear pillars:

What’s important here is not just that these elements exist, every serious database vendor has some version of them. It’s how they’re presented.

There’s no dramatic storytelling about resilience. No abstract “enterprise-grade reliability” phrasing. Instead, you get concrete mechanisms for what happens when things go wrong.

Cost

Once performance is validated and reliability is established, the final filter is almost always cost. In infrastructure, performance isn’t just about speed - it’s about efficiency. And efficiency, ultimately, is about economics.

On PlanetScale’s website, this shows up in a simple but loaded sentence:

At PlanetScale we believe cost is a unit of scale.

If they’ve truly nailed their ICP, this line should resonate immediately. What it implies at a granular level is this - as your system grows, your cost per query decreases.

It reframes cost from being a constraint to being an outcome of good engineering. Instead of optimizing purely for lower bills, the positioning suggests that scaling correctly naturally improves your cost efficiency.

Security

The last piece of the db explore-test-decide-buy food chain - security. As you move through PlanetScale’s messaging, it becomes clear they’re not only targeting small teams experimenting with side projects (using their single node instances). The positioning consistently signals large workloads and in some cases it means enterprise scrutiny (SOC2, HIPAA, etc.)

Features

There’s one more section on the homepage - features. I’m not entirely sold on this one in terms of why it’s located at the bottom of the page and not built-into the Vitess, Postgres and Neki sections under customer case studies, as that section serves as a product page intro for me.

What you want to focus on here though, are obviously the core features of the db platform, integrations it offers (as everyone wants a system that fits into their already existing ecosystem) and probably support options, all of which are backed with links to more in-depth materials.

Bottom Page Navigation

The site ends with a structured footer navigation, still consistent with the markdown-inspired minimalism. In most cases, very few users intentionally land in the footer. You only get here if:

  • You’ve scrolled deeply

  • You’re searching for something specific

  • Or the top navigation didn’t answer your question

The markdown format of this place make total sense, however there are a few sections here that confuse me from product marketing and PlanetScale’s education perspective. I’m gonna start with the second one - courses.

If you’re into databases, know what PlanetScale is (at least high-level), you know how much they’ve invested in developer education over the years, as one of their developer marketing pillars (shaped by legends like Ben Dicken, Aaron Francis).

I’m pretty sure they have their website analytics in place but I’m wondering why courses don’t live within resources in the top website navigation.

Another thing is the product section of the table. All its elements have been already mentioned in the top navigation. None of these apart from benchmark actually fits into product (rather solutions).

What’s great though, and it’s still not a common pattern in the devtools industry is events. When you love a specific product, it’s very likely that you’d like to interact with the people that build it, not only online but also IRL.

How are you supposed to make both ends meet to figure out what meetups / conferences they’ll be at if you haven’t bookmarked them each time you’ve seen them out there, dispersed all over X and Li posts sharing what events those folks plan to attend? Great option here (and it’s also in resources up there).

Platform

Let’s shift to the top navigation. The platform section is, in many ways, the most telling part of PlanetScale’s website. What’s so great about it? You gotta enjoy extremely simple yet thoughtful information architecture.

The section is organized in a simple, tree-like architecture. Each branch leads to a focused product page and each of those pages systematically answers the questions any serious database evaluation requires:

  • What is it

  • Core features (why)

  • How does it work

  • Customer stories

  • Benchmarks

  • Migration guides, quickstarts, docs

  • Support

That’s all and at the same time, it’s everything.

One interesting detail is the way use cases are presented. You see sharding among enterprise and startups and you start wondering why they’re mixing technical jargon with business related terms. The thing is sharding can be the case for both and what’s great about it here is that when you know what sharding is (at least high-level) and you know you’re in need, then you go there. In another scenario you either head to enterprise / startup intentionally and later on learn about sharding (whether you need it or not) or go straight there cause your curiosity steers you in that place.

Pricing

If you’re selling infrastructure in 2026 and you don’t have a pricing calculator, you’re making life harder for everyone, including yourself.

Database buyers are not casual consumers. They are technical, analytical, and often under pressure, especially during migrations or outage-driven evaluations. In those moments, emotion is high, but the decision still needs to be rational.

A good database pricing page needs to strike a difficult balance between simplicity and the number of config options.

Infrastructure pricing is essentially pure math. Storage. Queries. Compute. Throughput. Replication.

The people evaluating it want to understand exactly how the numbers behave, especially compared to their current setup.

Documentation

We’re in the Mintlify era. Polished documentation tooling is widely available. Search is good. Layouts are clean. AI copilots are layered on top.

Which has led many teams to believe that docs are now a solved problem. They’re not. The tooling is solved. The information architecture isn’t.

When you land in PlanetScale documentation, nothing feels revolutionary at first glance.

Docs like any other, right? Not necessarily. There are still devtools companies that treat documentation as a disconnected island and from information architecture and navigation perspective force you out of their product OS, so you can eventually (again) come back from the Google search to the initial place you were on (docs). What I’m talking here about is this:

Within the navigation plane that sits on the left hand side and on the top of the page, you can basically:

  • Browse through product-categorized docs that are neatly organized into sections

  • Log in / sign up to PlanetScale

  • Go to their website / blog / status page / benchmark page

  • Book a meeting with sales

From a developer marketing standpoint, this matters as docs are pre-purchase evaluation tools, onboarding flows, and conversion surfaces all at once.

Thoughts

Some websites stand out cause there’s a lot happening there especially graphics and motion wise and it seems like there are more and more players that go this way to stand out. There are some core components that everyone out there does, cause they need to, including PlanetScale.

However there might be a new way. Marketing heavily grounded in engineering, communicated through extremely well executed form simplicity.

Why not share it with others?

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]]><![CDATA[Buildkite: Standing out in a crowded CI market]]>https://developerled.substack.com/p/buildkite-standing-out-in-a-crowded-ci-markethttps://developerled.substack.com/p/buildkite-standing-out-in-a-crowded-ci-marketWed, 21 Jan 2026 13:01:57 GMTWhy Buildkite

Around the time I launched Teardowns, a section of this newsletter where I unpack the inner workings of leading devtools through a developer marketing and developer experience lens, I came across something that immediately caught my attention.

A post from Zachary Short, Buildkite’s Growth Marketing Manager, popped up in my LinkedIn feed. He shared that Buildkite had just gone through a major website redesign.

So I did what most developers (and dev marketers) would do: I opened the site.

And it stood out. Immediately.

Established markets and doing things differently

Whether you actively care about CI/CD or not, one thing is obvious: this is a mature market.

Most of the players are well known. Developers recognize the names, understand the trade-offs, and have likely used more than one of the tools already, at least from a technical perspective. It’s easy to look at a space like this and conclude that everything worth discovering has already been discovered.

That conclusion is almost always wrong.

From a developer marketing perspective, mature markets are often the best places to stand out. Not because you invent a new category, but because expectations are already set and breaking them thoughtfully gets noticed.

The key is how you do it.

You can do things differently, challenge conventions, and still earn attention.

but only if your marketing is grounded in engineering reality

Differentiation that isn’t anchored in how developers actually build, test, and ship software rarely survives first contact with a technical audience.

Buildkite’s Website Makeover

I’m gonna focus here entirely on the new experience and won’t be touching the classic one. Here’s what we’ll be exploring:

Upper Navigation Plane

The folks at Buildkite almost certainly have product analytics backing their decisions here. My guess is that a large share of visitors jump straight to docs or the command line–oriented parts of the site.

Still, I want to start at the very top.

The first thing that caught my attention, perhaps my developer marketing brain kicking in, was the [E] Exit to classic Buildkite option in the upper navigation.

When you design an experience like this, having an escape hatch is non-negotiable. Your audience is always a mix: new visitors, returning users, power users, and people who just want to get something done. Giving them control over how they engage is table stakes.

But this pattern immediately reminded me of Sentry’s website, where a similar idea is implemented quite differently.

On Sentry’s site, the toggle lives on the right-hand side and lets you switch between two clearly defined modes:

  • Marketing mode (the default landing experience)

  • A developer-first, interactive flow that walks you through the product via prompts and chat

Once you flip the switch, the marketing layer effectively disappears. What’s left is a guided, hands-on introduction to the product. No positioning statements, no feature grids, no fluff.

Same underlying idea. Very different execution.

How does it work for Buildkite?

When you land on Buildkite’s website, you’re introduced first to the new experience, not the classic, marketing-heavy one.

Instead, you get an interface that feels immediately familiar to DevOps engineers: command-line–centric, utilitarian, and focused on doing rather than explaining. It’s an engineering-first entry point, not a positioning narrative.

That choice matters.

Buildkite is effectively leading with an engineering-native experience rather than easing visitors in through marketing pages. That can be a dealbreaker in many categories, but if it’s intentional and backed by customer data, it’s a strong signal of confidence in both audience and product. From a developer education perspective, it’s also a meaningful move and I’ll come back to that later.

Looking at the rest of the upper navigation, the setup is clean and clearly product-led. You’re given the essentials:

  • Help

  • Docs

  • Contact

  • Sign up

  • Log in

With the exception of Help, each of these links routes users back to the classic experience.

Given that this kind of hybrid website model is still relatively new for many devtools companies, information architecture becomes critical. When everything lives in a single row, two questions matter most:

  • What deserves a place here?

  • In what order?

Starting with Help makes complete sense. If someone feels lost, this is the fastest path to unblocking them. Docs come next, naturally anchoring the experience in education and self-serve discovery. After that, Sign up and Log in give users a clear next step, whether they’re new or returning.

The one item I’d question is Contact.

Without internal context it’s hard to judge, but in devtools, “Contact” is almost universally interpreted as sales. In my experience, placing it so prominently in an engineering-first navigation rarely drives meaningful conversions. I’d consider either moving it to the very end, just before the [E] Exit to classic Buildkite or removing it from this plane entirely.

Hitting the subscribe button is not that painful, cmon!

The CLI - Copy & Animation

What you’re greeted with first is a simple, eye-catching animation. It adds just enough motion to draw attention without pulling focus away from what matters most.

From a developer marketing perspective, though, the real work happens in the copy. There are two sentences in particular that stand out and they do a lot of heavy lifting.

The first sentence is an exceptionally strong opener. Not because it’s clever or aspirational, but because it reflects the engineering mindset behind the product and the experience you’re interacting with.

Buildkite is explicitly telling you: don’t take our word for it, try it yourself.

What makes this powerful is that the environment where you’re encouraged to explore is a direct embodiment of that message. The copy doesn’t just describe the product; it’s validated immediately by the interface itself. That alignment between message and experience is hard to fake.

The second sentence that caught my attention reinforces this even further:

In developer marketing, copy usually falls into one of two camps:

  • “We know all your problems and do the heavy lifting for you.”

    • Broad, reassuring, and optimized for teams that want abstraction and speed.

  • “Here are the primitives, build exactly what you need.”

    • Specific, opinionated, and aimed at domain experts who value control and flexibility.

Buildkite clearly leans into the second approach.

If this copy is strongly informed by customer data, and it likely is, it signals a high level of maturity. It suggests confidence in the product’s engineering quality and an intentional nod toward an experienced audience that doesn’t want to be oversold or shielded from complexity.

This isn’t copy trying to convince beginners that CI is easy.

It’s copy telling experienced engineers: we trust you.

The CLI - Commands

This probably should have been the first section of the article, so let’s get into it.

Help

The command list is effectively your navigation system for the entire experience.

Commands marked with green arrows clearly indicate redirects to the classic experience. Below that, utility-style commands let you go deeper into the playground. Some customize the experience itself, while others surface additional product and company-related content:

Capabilities

Taken together, this behaves like a compressed product page. Instead of long-form explanations, you get short, direct links to the most relevant docs or classic counterparts. No fluff. Just enough context to decide where to go next.

Proof

Visually, the CLI-styled logos immediately grab attention. But the real value here is functional: externally linked resources like articles, webinars, case studies, and conference talks, all surfaced without breaking the flow.

What’s especially well done is how testimonials are handled. The copy is straightforward, product-led, and avoids the usual marketing theatrics. When you ask for more, you get substance, not slogans.

And then there’s this:

Nobody, especially experienced engineers, has ever complained about a good laugh paired with a free account to try things out. Humor here doesn’t cheapen the experience; it humanizes it.

Pricing

This one keeps it simple: you’re redirected to the pricing page. That makes sense, but it does make you wonder what a CLI-native pricing view could look like. A matrix- or table-style output feels like it would fit naturally here and still communicate value clearly.

Bottom Section

At the bottom of the experience, Buildkite surfaces a few operational metrics directly in the CLI.

You can see:

  • The number of builds run in the last 24 hours

  • The total number of builds since the platform launched

  • The number of currently active pipelines

These numbers aren’t there to impress, they’re there to anchor the experience in reality.

There’s also a shortcut to check the platform status. Initially, I expected this to redirect me to a separate status page or an external service (something along the lines of status.io).

Instead, the status is rendered directly inside the CLI.

Standing out in the website crowd

Buildkite’s website genuinely stands out in a crowded devtools landscape.

Not because the visuals are bold or the interactions are novel, though both are well executed, but because the experience is built on the right foundations. The design and marketing choices consistently defer to engineering reality rather than trying to abstract it away.

That’s the part many devtools teams get wrong.

Buildkite doesn’t try to simplify CI for everyone. Instead, it leans into the workflows, mental models, and expectations of experienced engineers and builds a marketing experience that feels native to that audience.

In an established market, that’s often the strongest form of differentiation.

The crowd is real.
Standing out rarely comes from doing more.
It comes from doing things differently without losing your developers’ trust.

Your friends would like reading it too?

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]]><![CDATA[I went everywhere on PostHog's new website so you don't have to...but you should]]>https://developerled.substack.com/p/i-went-everywhere-on-posthogs-newhttps://developerled.substack.com/p/i-went-everywhere-on-posthogs-newTue, 18 Nov 2025 12:45:37 GMTThe dust has settled. The social media oracles have spoken (apparently the new site is about to boil PostHog’s conversion). You probably didn’t play with it enough, so you’re here for the easter eggs. Which is unfortunate, because that’s absolutely not what this piece is about.

DISCLAIMER: Neither the writing style nor the tone of James Hawkins was used, and no PostHog shareholder value was harmed in the making of this post.

Before I dive in, I’d just like to acknowledge the dozens of easter eggs I’m definitely not going to find.

Motivation for this piece

This was meant to be the first post in my new sub-Substack series called X-Rays. Basically me overexposing devtools websites through dev marketing lens. One day I’ll turn it into actual (im)proper content. You choose whatever format works for your reading time.

But yeah… no new formats for now. My Substack is like four weeks old, lol.

PostHog’s Website TL;DR

Where you should head depending on who you are and whatever brought you here (no, I’m not recapping the whole site in this one paragraph):

Where am I

Ever heard of Windows Millenium? It’s an OS, bro. PostHog’s new website is like that, except it hasn’t crashed for me yet.

Cool, but what dark magic is powering this thing behind the scenes?

If you have deeper, existential “how does this thing even work” questions, go ask Cory Watilo or Eli Kinsey. They built the thing.

If you just want the basics, click the hedgehog in the upper-left corner of the website. Yes, the hedgehog. Don’t overthink it.

Yes, you can move the files. Yes, there’s a screensaver. Yadda yadda.

But let’s head in a completely different direction before I get distracted again.

How to navigate this thing?

When I first landed here, I thought: Okay… where do I even start? This place is like nothing my overstimulated brain is used to. I can barely navigate normal devtool websites, how am I supposed to survive this?

Then I had an eureka moment.

I need to find my navigation plane for this thing.

Here’s what my brain did next:

  • Desktop: folders, files, windows popping up

  • Navbar: the “formal” route

We humans are great at chunking information to stay functional. And, as I later discovered, all these components actually connect to each other, which makes total sense for something that’s basically an OS.

Want windows popping up everywhere? Sure, go wild. Prefer order? Open everything in a new browser tab like a civilized person. How? Exactly the way you’ve been doing it your entire dev career.

The desktop

Welcome home. On PostHog’s website. Feel free to settle in. Throw some bookmarks around, open too many windows, reorganize files and folders like you’re customizing an OS you actually like.

home.mdx

The most crucial bit here (developer instincts never lie): hit “Get started.”

Not the “Get started - free” option - (wait, is my data physically stored under someone’s IKEA desk?).

I mean the important button. “Install with AI”

Don’t worry, you old retro code guy. You can do it in your good ol’ terminal, or from Cursor, Replit, Bolt, whichever makes you feel the least judged.

What else do I recommend in this file (after actually going through it myself)? The 16-minute PostHog platform demo.

If you’ve heard about PostHog and started poking around, you’ll probably like the next mini-section - Explore apps. Why? Because you can browse by company stage, which is way more useful than it sounds at first (it also shows up in the Product OS tab in the navbar)

Want to see how other devs like you use PostHog? Check out Who’s using PostHog?

There are so many devtools companies out there plastering big logos everywhere to build “social proof” and convince you to trust them.

But… are those companies actually using their product? Or is it just one rogue engineer messing with it after hours?

Here, the claim actually feels legit.

Oh, what’s that button up there?

What’s a more useful way to categorize your customers than with boxes like:

  • Names you can easily mistype

  • Names with 7 letters or less

  • Everyone else (for now)

  • Companies who should do case studies

  • Real words

  • Not real words

Duuude, they got me.

Scroll a bit and you get a few lines subtly explaining what’s actually powering PostHog’s Product OS and why you probably need it (yes, you guessed it; a customer data platform, but cooler)

Next up: how much you pay for all that jazz. Usage-based, transparent, and suspiciously “let us do the heavy lifting so you don’t blow up your infra” vibes.

Then comes a quick “why don’t you use PostHog AI?” section.
Convincing, but not pushy. Early persuasion done right.

You wrap up with a short bit about the company itself (not the product): culture, philosophy, and the kind of stuff that actually matters when you’re picking a stack (I already dove into that earlier)

You think that’s all for home.mdx?
Oh no. Absolutely not. There’s still more.

For example: UI adjustment options.
Why not play with them? Your inner 2008-era desktop customizer is begging you.

And of course… the Shameless CTA.
If you’re from the late 80s or early 90s, you’ll spot the CD reference instantly.
If not, don’t worry, half this blog can’t decide what’s serious anyway, so you’re in good company.

Just kidding… thank me later. You’re probably not seeing a better devtool deal today. It’s free, and somehow you can still get a discount. Or not. Who knows.

Oh, and one last thing: PostHog’s “Talk to Sales”- ahem, Talk to human CTA.

It’s short, practical, and surprisingly not cringe. I follow some of their sales folks on LinkedIn (the job marketplace / content farm hybrid), and they’re genuinely technically strong.

So no, they won’t bore you to death.

The rest of the stuff on the desktop

I started navigating from the desktop (not the navbar), and with this old–new mashup of a UI, you truly don’t know what you’re walking into.

But it turns out most of the desktop items link back to the navbar (and vice versa).

  • home.mdx

  • Why PostHog?

  • Changelog

  • Company handbook

  • Store

  • Work here

  • Product OS

  • Pricing

  • customers.mdx

  • demo.mov

  • Docs

  • Talk to a human

  • Ask a question

  • Sign up

Okay, secret time. I know precisely how this bi-directional info architecture came to life.

The graphic designer and frontend engineer were moments from declaring victory…
when someone from PostHog C-level (want to take a guess) teleported in, pointed at random pixels, requested last-minute changes, and summoned posthog-website-finalfinal.js into existence, now with fully bi-directional navigation.

Designers, frontend devs, and shareholder value: the holy trinity of chaos.

But wait

There’s one more thing you can’t get to from the navbar: Trash.

I tried deleting a few desktop files, but apparently PostHog thinks I shouldn’t be trusted with that level of power. Rude, but fair.

Alright, fine. Let’s dive in. Bleh.

You can’t access the ones in the archive, even though the titles are ridiculously tempting. So fine, let’s play with Recently deleted instead.

  • Copy of whitepaper (2) - finalFINAL.docx.pdf

If there’s only one thing you explore on the new website… it’s this.

  • quick calls script.txt

Okay… two cool things here.

Hover over the Share button. Click it.Boom: 90s sound nostalgia. The first time I did it, it played Cher. Then I clicked Share again and something totally different happened.
I have no idea why, but I’m not questioning it.

b r i l l i a n t.

All your social channels → covered.
All your writing tones → covered.
Local fax machines → somehow also covered.

Second thing: the in-depth comparison.

And then just click whatever orange button. Trust the process.

W O W. They’ve mastered the forbidden art of explaining what typical SaaS discovery feels like.

  • employee feet pics

Not my vibe. Might be yours. Not judging.

  • spicy.mov

Haven’t enjoyed those retro sounds in a while. Thanks, PostHog!

  • Long Term Contract Template.docx

I don’t think they’re chasing the super-enterprise’y stuff. But might be wrong.

The navbar. The left side of it actually

  • Product OS

So I started with this one, and because I’m a tech guy, my brain immediately went: hmm, what’s the structure of this thing?

My dev GTM brain kicked in. There’s so much here you can use and so much shareholder value you can accidentally drive up.

Then my developer-marketer brain turned on. Wait a minute… this information architecture is actually brilliant.

First, you give your NICP (not-so-ideal-customer-profile, should trade-mark that) the option to browse all your products, because they don’t know what anything is yet.

Then, for the more aware (or already active) users, you give them search.

Then you guide them into the most popular products - the ones that probably drive most of your revenue.

After they’ve looked at those, you nudge them toward the new stuff (ka-ching).

And finally, you do a similar thing again, but this time you show your product lineup sorted by category.

Isn’t that perfect for every audience, no matter their maturity with your product?

You can also browse it like a Windows File Explorer for PostHog’s products, which honestly feels way too on-brand.

Okay, back to business.

In simple terms: think of every page and sub-page in Product OS (no matter how you got there) as a product page written in a mix of technical and non-technical language - something both you (the dev) and your boss (not necessarily a dev) can understand and get…sold (yeah, I said it - stage of the funnel, bleh.)

You’ll see an example in the next section. And to answer your next question: yes, the docs are tied to it too.

Web Analytics - the most popular product

Now we’re talking. Slidedeck energy. Shareholder value in the air.

You know what my boss (he’s half-technical, half-not) is always looking for?
“Why this and not that?”

Feature comparison table? Just scroll down.

Case studies? He loves those and yes, you can download them right there too.

Transparent pricing so he can convince the ultimate money boss in the company?
Yep. Also down there.

Not enough? Dude… click the little PDF icon in the upper-right corner and grab yourself a good ol’ slide deck.

You covered? Great. What’s next?

(Oh and don’t forget to check the comments on each slide. Pure gold)

Demos? There you go. Video-style. Perfect. Don’t forget about that cool-lookin font for the slide title!

Any product use-cases out there? Look no further!

Appetite comes with eating. Now you’ve got something for your boss and something for yourself - a tech tutorial to implement whatever your boss just decided you’re doing. Two birds, one stone.

But that’s not all. Scroll down and you’ll get all the docs you need.
(Yes, they’re clickable. Yes, they actually remembered to add the links)

You’re almost there. And no, your situation isn’t unique. Don’t even try to convince yourself. You’ll probably need other products from them too.

Which leads us to the next section of the slidedeck:

Bingo!

They even have paint.js in there (is there such a thing?!).Get creative - why not?

And there’s a command line too.

Looking for help? Reach out to them - I’m sure they’ve got you covered (not sure about taste though… check the disclaimer at the bottom of the deck)

Now you probably want to explore more, so go ahead and bookmark this one.

I’m not telling you yet where you’ll find your bookmarks later…but I will. Down the road.

How about the rest of the product pages - ehem, slidedecks?

  • What

  • Customer stories from those who love the specific product

  • Product features characteristics

  • Demos

  • FAQs

  • Pricing

  • PostHog vs (feature comparisons)

  • Docs

  • Integrations (with other PostHog products or external ones)

  • Paint.js embedded into the slidedeck

Same structure. Across the board. Every product.

Look at you, already mastering the navigation.

Did the social media oracles warn you it wouldn’t be this simple? Oops.

Just dive into the features you care about - or click literally everything like I do, lol.

Pricing

Let’s talk some business.

We start with the free tier. Dev-approved, universally loved, obviously.

Scroll down and you immediately get the two essentials: usage-based pricing and a pricing calculator (something for your dollar-approving final boss).

But dude… this is wild. You have to see this.

I maxed out their pricing, cranked every slider to the max, and found the final price.
Dude… something’s missing. WHERE is the “Contact Sales” button?!

And then the last bit: a feature comparison with everyone else.
Why is that in pricing? I have no idea, but I respect the chaos (sometimes).

Yeah, there are addons too. I’m not covering them. Go explore. Next!

Basically they’re doing tech sales, devrel, advocacy for PostHog-as-an-all-in-one-platform - for startup founders - using product pages, docs, the blog, the startup program, and yes, even the merch store. All crammed into one step-by-step journey page.

Nothing more, nothing less. PostHog’s Startup Program. The essentials are right underneath.

What’s next? Pricing philosophy, How we do “sales”, side project insurance, You’ll hate PostHog if... I covered all of those somewhere up there or below (not sure at this point). There are four more in here but Watch a demo and Talk to a human already got covered as well. So let’s focus on the final final two (yes you read that right final twice, like your finalfinal.pdf).

Every product out there has an artificially inflated price. It’s all part of the dance - you haggle, they pretend to be generous, everybody wins.

Does PostHog play that game?
Bro.
No.

They went full Extreme Discounts™ instead. Watch this. I’m sold.

What’s best, though? Here’s what you actually get discounts for:

Dude, their sales folks are absolute brainiacs. Call your Chief Sales Officer and tell them to hire these people - they’ve clearly got more jokers up their sleeves.

Man, I’m really not into those shiny enterprise’y certificates and badges.
You’ll need another human to explain what any of it actually means.

Docs

You can search them in multiple ways (PostHog AI, the search bar, etc.). But at the highest level of their info architecture, the starting point is either this or that:

So yeah - pick whatever works for you.

By the time you open the docs, you more or less know what you’re after anyway. And once you’re in the product section you wanted, you get this neat, super navigable doc with stuff like:

  • Features of the product you’re looking into

  • Getting started instructions

  • Code snippets in different languages (for some of the their products you would also have SDKs, support for different frameworks or even API references)

  • Best practices & troubleshooting

  • Tutorials, guides, FAQs

  • Integrations info

  • Glossaries of concepts and terms

  • etc.

Looks like you’ve got everything you need in one place. And look! You can even set a bazillion James Hawkinses as your background image (that’s what you came here for, right?! )

And you can do all of this without even leaving the current window (usually).
Just use the upper-left corner to jump between product docs and then teleport yourself back to wherever you were before the inevitable docs rabbit hole sucked you in.

What else lives in the docs tab?
More tutorials (for when the product docs didn’t quite hit). Dashboard templates so you or your boss don’t have to rebuild dashboards from the Stone Age. And Tracks, which is basically PostHog Academy… kind of. Early days.

Community

There are a few interesting things here. Let’s dive in.

All the inside + outside news from PostHog: anniversaries, feature requests, changelog updates, blog posts, Slack lore, forum questions. Neat. Is there a media-company editor hiding behind this? Hmm..

PostHog’s Q&A forum - developer success incarnate. You show up here when you’ve got a problem with their stack (or when you panic-google). Use the categories on the left. Thank me later.

If you’ve read all this and still don’t want one of these bad boys, you’re joking.

Got ideas? No worries, bro - toss an issue on GitHub like a civilized dev. Voila.

Also, my personal favorites: data_funnel.thing, lawnmower.thing, codebase.txt, PostHog duct tape.

A map of worldwide events where you can chat with the PostHog team (I think. Probably. Maybe.)

Thinking about working for a cool company (maybe PostHog)? This is the ultimate job board. LinkedIn Pro can’t compete.

What are you even doing here if you’re not subscribed yet?!

I know, I know. There was the newsletter, then the newspaper, and now there’s the blog. I’m too dumb for this. You figure it out yourself, okay?

Lessons learned and publicly dropped by PostHog’s product engineers? Yes, please.

It’s on the right side of the screenshot. You’ll figure it out.

Company

Hmm, looks promising. Let’s dive into it.

If I had to summarize this page: transparency everywhere. Product, business, people.
Alright, next!

A list of customers with potential case studies, notes, and the PostHog product(s) they use. If your boss loves comparing “how other companies do it,” send him this way.

We’ve already talked about that.

It’s basically the public backstage pass to how PostHog works - people, team, processes, religion, all that jazz. If you’re only going to read one thing, pick The Book of PostHog.

Easy. It’s what they’re gonna build next - straight from public pull requests + votes.
Honestly… fair enough.

The key thing here: PostHog doesn’t ship monthly or on a light-year schedule.
They ship in small, fast chunks.

Not sure they even need this. James basically covers the entire internet on his own, lol.

A bunch of graphics and tiny blurbs about everyone behind PostHog. It’s not a yearbook… but it’s basically a yearbook.

You can see what’s the size of each team with hedgehogs unit and what percentage of them think pineapple belongs on pizza. Also, almost forgot, you can check their team goals there too.

That’s basically it. ClickHouse team? My favorite. Who doesn’t love ClickHouse?!

That’s where you apply, I guess…but might be wrong…

  • Like and subscribe

Links to their socials - so smash that subscribe button, bro! That’s how the YouTubers shout it nowadays, right?

  • More

Starting from the bottom: system status. The standard “is everything on fire?” page every devtools site has. Next. Keyboard shortcuts. Let’s stop here for a minute.

Plenty of nice things here, but one you cannot skip: Open display options.

C’mon. James Hawkins as the cursor and hedgehogs in cubicles. If that doesn’t sway the guy below toward PostHog, nothing will.

Alright, next one. Sexy legal documents. I’m into it. HIPAA. SOC. DPA Generator - could be useful, doesn’t have to be. Your call. Depending what you do on a daily basis.

Okay, Privacy policy. Yes, it’s for lawyers, but if you’re not one, don’t worry, it’s still oddly enjoyable. Same deal with the Terms.

What’s that Things that spark joy folder.

Crashed the game. Totally worth it though!

Can’t play those arcade games, sorry!

It’s the wedding thing. But PostHog-style.

I wish it actually helped with taste, despite what it claims down there.

Have a kiddo? Print them one!

I know what you’re thinking: you already have more certificates on your to-do list than you have free weekends.

I’d leave this beast for later too… but watch the video, and when you finally pass the training, flex it on LinkedIn. Of course.

This one looks familiar.

It’s out of stock but you better check that out! You haven’t seen a better piece of hardware on the World Wide Web.

The sidebar. The right side of it actually

This thing is really simple. It’s your admin plane.

Think of it as the bottom-left Start button in Windows Millennium - admin-ops edition.

Here’s what you can actually do there with PostHog:

  • Create your PostHog account

  • Use the search bar to find anything PostHog-related

  • Chat with the PostHog AI chatbot

And yes, the chatbot is actually trained properly and actually useful. I asked it about a problem, and it pulled up a GitHub issue and community forum threads with similar problem.

It’s here to help, not to chit-chat. Look how fast he changed the subject in our lovely convo.

If you’re drowning in windows already, the bookmarks manager (discovered it finally) is your lifeboat. Check the cool little option down there. Trust me.

Or simply go to your account dashboard. That’s it. Sweet and simple.

What now

Exploring PostHog’s website is like playing GTA: San Andreas. You’re doing the missions but also constantly hunting for easter eggs. (Ekhm, side quests)

And I know exactly what you’re thinking at this point:

“What’s the conversion rate on this thing?”

Dude.
Are you James Hawkins or what?

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