What is Countly?
Countly is a product analytics and customer engagement platform for mobile, web, desktop, and connected-device applications. It collects first-party behavioral data through SDKs you install in your own apps, then turns that data into dashboards, funnels, and engagement campaigns.
Countly grew from an open-source project and remains known for its self-hosted and private-cloud deployment options. Teams can keep all event data inside their own infrastructure, which makes it a common choice for organizations with strict privacy, compliance, or data-residency requirements.
Key Features of Countly
Countly combines analytics with built-in tools for acting on what the data shows, all in one platform.
- Product and behavioral analytics: sessions, events, funnels, retention, user flows, and cohorts.
- Crash reporting and performance monitoring for mobile and web apps.
- Engagement tools including push notifications, in-app messaging, surveys, and A/B testing.
- SDKs for iOS, Android, JavaScript, Node.js, React, Flutter, Unity, and more.
- Self-hosted (on-premise) or private-cloud deployment with full data ownership.
- Extensible plugin architecture so teams can add or customize functionality.
Why Choose Countly?
Countly stands out for teams that want product analytics without handing user data to a third party. Because it can run on your own servers, you keep complete control over where data lives and how long it is retained, which simplifies GDPR and similar compliance work.
Bringing analytics and engagement together in one platform also reduces the number of separate tools a product team has to wire up. The same event data that powers reporting can trigger push campaigns, surveys, and A/B tests.
Who Can Benefit from Countly?
Countly fits product managers, growth teams, and engineers who need detailed behavioral insight across mobile and web while retaining ownership of their data.
It is a strong fit for enterprises in regulated sectors such as finance, healthcare, telecom, and the public sector, where data sovereignty and self-hosting matter. Smaller teams can start with the free, lighter tier and move to the enterprise edition as their analytics and engagement needs grow.
How to Get Started with Countly
Begin by choosing a deployment model: a Countly-managed private cloud or a self-hosted installation on your own infrastructure. From there, create a project in the dashboard and add the relevant SDK to each app or platform you want to track.
Once the SDK is sending events, configure the dashboards, funnels, and segments your team cares about, then layer in engagement features like push notifications or surveys. Countly's documentation and SDK guides walk through instrumentation for each supported platform.