Orbit Analytics.
Privacy-first product analytics platform designed for indie engineers and privacy-conscious SaaS teams.
system architecture & goal.
Orbit Analytics was built to solve a critical dilemma for modern web applications: collecting actionable product metrics without compromising user privacy or violating global regulations like GDPR and CCPA. Unlike traditional bloated analytics scripts that track individual user identities across the web, Orbit aggregates telemetry server-side using anonymized cryptographic session hashes and lightweight event pipelines.
Core Architectural Highlights
Sub-10ms event ingestion pipeline with automated batch processing.
Custom SQL aggregations with PostgreSQL timescale partitions.
Zero cookie banners required — 100% compliant with privacy standards.
Real-time interactive dashboard with customizable retention funnels.
challenges & engineering solutions.
High-Throughput Ingestion Latency
Direct database writes under burst traffic caused connection pool exhaustion and increased API latency past 350ms during peak hours.
Introduced an in-memory Redis stream buffer with micro-batch worker processes that flush aggregated events into partitioned PostgreSQL tables every 500ms.
Decoupling ingestion from storage reduced write latency to under 8ms and halved database CPU utilization.
Cryptographic Anonymization Without Data Loss
Ensuring unique visitor counts remained accurate across 24-hour windows without persisting IP addresses or setting client tracking cookies.
Implemented a rolling daily salt combined with SHA-256 hashing of the user agent and IP subnet, allowing unique session deduplication while making reverse identification impossible.
Privacy compliance can be achieved mathematically at the ingestion edge without degrading analytical precision.
future improvements.
Edge worker analytics proxy to bypass aggressive ad-blockers transparently.
Automated weekly email anomaly detection powered by statistical variance models.
Self-hosted Docker Compose & Helm chart packages for enterprise deployment.
Custom funnel breakdown queries with arbitrary multi-step event triggers.