Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today, we're really diving into the ROI of open
source,
specifically in your marketing stack. And we're focusing pretty intently on DittoFeed.
It's this
platform that's making some big promises about ending, well, the hitting costs of
vendor lock-in
and those rising prices for customer communication. Our mission today, especially
for you, the learner
listening in, is to really pull apart how a platform like DittoFeed gives you that
crucial
escape hatch from expensive systems. We're going to break down the features,
journeys,
embedded components, all that stuff. So anyone, really, whether you're a CTO or
maybe a marketing
specialist, can get the technical benefits and just the sheer flexibility it offers.
Flexibility really is the key word, isn't it? When we talk about customer
engagement, what we mean is
the whole infrastructure that automates, well, pretty much every message between a
business
and its users. That covers the marketing side, think newsletters, those onboarding
campaigns,
and also the transactional stuff, you know, receipts, password resets, appointment
reminders,
all those critical messages. And Data Feed's goal here is quite straightforward, be
that
comprehensive omni-channel layer, so handling email, SMS, and more. And crucially,
doing it
as a genuinely developer-friendly and, well, sustainable alternative to the big
proprietary
names like, say, customer.io. Okay, before we really unpack this whole open-source
angle,
which sounds fascinating, we need to give a quick shout out to the supporter of
this deep dive,
Safe Server. Safe Server handles software hosting, and they support your digital
transformation
journey. They make sure your, you know, complex infrastructure is solid and
reliable. And they
specifically help with hosting software just like Ditto Feed. You can find out much
more about how
they can support you at www.safeserver.de. So big thanks to Safe Server for
supporting us.
Now let's get back to those core problems you mentioned, especially that threat of
vendor lock-in. For businesses may be burned by older providers, what does that
trap actually
look like day to day? Oh, it looks like paralysis really. Vendor lock-in, it
happens when the cost
and the sheer complexity of moving all your user data, your messaging setups away
from one platform
just becomes, well, prohibitive, too expensive, too risky. So you end up stuck. You're
often paying
these ever-increasing fees based on volume because the operational headache, the
risk of actually
moving is just too high. Right. And what's really interesting here is how DittoFeed
tackles this
head-on using that open source philosophy. It's not just software. It feels more
like an insurance
policy. Exactly. That's a great way to put it. They actually call it the escape
hatch. See,
DittoFeed is MIT licensed, the source code, completely open, totally free. So users
can
start with their cloud offering, which is super convenient for getting up and
running fast.
But crucially, if they ever face aggressive price hikes or maybe their compliance
needs change,
they have a clear documented way to switch to self-hosting it themselves.
And this is important. They actually provide technical support to help with that
transition.
Okay. But let's be real for a second. When you trade volume-based pricing for self-hosting,
aren't you potentially swapping one kind of headache for another? I mean, managing
infrastructure like Clickhouse and Temporal, that's not trivial, right? What's the
real trade-off?
That's a really important question. The trade-off is definitely management
complexity, yes,
but what you gain is ultimate control. And for many organizations, especially those
handling
sensitive PII, you know, personally identifiable information, or maybe those with
really solid
engineering teams, that control is absolutely worth the effort. Think about those
payroll
and HR companies mentioned in the source material. They explicitly chose DittoFeed
to hedge against
lock-in. Because for them, being trapped isn't just a cost risk, it's a security
risk too.
They much prefer owning their data, owning their infrastructure. It guarantees
price stability
and compliance basically forever. That makes a lot of sense, investing in control.
So structurally, who is this really built for? The sources seem to stress that
while it's
architected for massive scale, like millions of users, the UI is deliberately kept
simple enough
for non-technical team members to actually build and launch campaigns. So it sounds
like it's for
almost any organization needing to record messages. Exactly. And we see it being
used
really effectively in some pretty cutting edge places, specifically in DevTools
companies,
right? Their head of growth teams found DittoFeed, well, indispensable for their
product-led growth
tech stacks, their POG stacks. By automating really high quality onboarding
sequences,
they actually cited a direct improvement in time to value TTV for their new
customers.
And that's huge because it directly boosts conversion rates. It sort of bridges
that gap
between engineering power and marketing execution. Bridging the gap. Okay. That
leads us perfectly
into the low code toolkit. Section two, how this automation actually works under
the hood.
The idea seems to be once engineering hooks up the data initially, the marketing
and growth teams
can pretty much run with it, building complex sequences themselves. Yeah. And to
understand
how that automation works, especially if you're maybe newer to this, you really
just need to get
your head around three core components. Think of it like a, like a low code recipe
book that runs
itself once you set it up. So first you've got journeys. This is your main
automation canvas.
It's a visual drag and drop interface where you map out these multi-step, multi-trigger
sequences,
but it's not just a basic flow chart, you know, that's smarter than that.
It includes things like integrated branch-based analytics. So you can actually see
how tweaks
affect performance right there. And it respects local time zones, which sounds
small, but it
prevents those really embarrassing middle of the night messages going to users
across the globe,
a detail older systems often get wrong. Okay. Journeys make sense. Visual flows.
Next up is segments. This sounds like where the real targeting power comes in. For
a beginner,
maybe think of it like super advanced Excel filters, but running live against user
data.
That's a perfect analogy, actually. Segments are exactly that, the tool you use to
slice and dice
your user base. And it's based on what they do, their actions and who they are,
their properties.
So you can combine things like, say, viewed pricing page and event with identified
traits
like subscription status, trial expired. The real power comes from the unlimited
and or conditions.
It lets you get incredibly precise. You go way beyond just blasting an email to
everyone subscribed. Instead, you target like everyone who viewed feature X twice
this week,
but hasn't finished setting up their profile yet. Hyper targeted.
Got it. Journeys for the flow, segments for the who. And finally, the message
itself has to live
somewhere. That's templates, right? The content layer.
Exactly. Templates where you craft the actual message and inject that personalization
magic.
And users get flexibility here too. They can use a sort of notion-like low code
editor,
which is great for quick content. Or if they need more control, they can dive into
full HTML or
MJML for really polished designs. The key ingredient is the liquid syntax they use
for
personalization. That's pretty much the standard way to securely pull in user
details, name,
company, maybe their last login date, making sure every message feels relevant and
tailored.
Okay, before we jump into the more technical setup, let's talk reach. Because we're
not
just talking emails here anymore, are we? The sources emphasize this is truly omnichannel.
Oh, absolutely. The platform handles standard email and SMS directly, out of the
box. But
its real flexibility comes from webhooks. Webhooks act as this crucial integration
bridge. They let
you trigger a message or an action in almost any other system. We're talking mobile
push notifications
via another service, maybe messages in Slack, WhatsApp, even custom internal tools.
This means
one single automation journey can reach the user wherever is most effective,
whether that's a
welcome email or a critical password reset alert pinging their phone. That unified
approach seems
like a perfect lead-in to Section 3, which sounds like the real aha moment,
especially for product
developers. Embedded components. The source has mentioned significant savings in
engineering time
here. Huge savings. Yeah, think about building a customer engagement platform
inside your own
product from scratch. You know, complete with a decent template editor, a segmentation
engine,
a journey builder. It's a massive, massive project. Embedded components let
developers take any part
of the Ditto feed dashboard, the journey builder, the template editor, whatever,
and embed it
directly inside their own sauce application. And technically it's pretty
straightforward. They offer
either a simple iframe or an unstyled react component. So imagine if you sell, I
don't know,
a business analytics tool and your customers need to send messages based on the
insights from your
tool. Instead of building that messaging feature yourself, you can just embed Ditto
feeds components.
Instantly you offer your customers a full marketing automation suite. The source
material
mentioned building this internally could take a year or more, a whole year. For
listeners maybe not
deep in sauce development, why is replicating something like a good template editor
or segmentation
engine so time consuming? Right, it's not just the initial build effort which is
significant.
It's the ongoing maintenance, keeping up with features, dealing with all the edge
cases.
Building a resilient segmentation engine means handling potentially vast amounts of
real-time
data, complex query logic, performance tuning. Building a good visual editor means
wrestling
with UI UX, versioning, email client rendering quirks which are notoriously painful,
and keeping
APIs updated. So yeah, that year or more estimate sounds about right for getting
something robust.
Plus, like the source says, the ongoing maintenance headache. Embedded components
let you sidestep
that entire massive cost and effort. And clearly this isn't just aimed at small
startups needing
a quick fix. For larger enterprise users, Ditto Feed offers some pretty robust
control features.
It's noted as the only open source platform in this space offering programmatic
control over
multiple workspaces. That's right. And that control is absolutely essential for,
say, agencies managing
multiple clients or large companies with different brands or divisions. Programmatic
control means
you can manage these workspaces via API, ensuring complete data isolation between
each client or
brand. Plus, they offer white labeling and custom branding options. So when you
embed these components,
it looks and feels seamlessly like part of your application to the end customer.
Very professional. Okay, let's shift gears slightly and look under the hood. All
this front-end
flexibility and low-code stuff needs a solid foundation. And it sounds like this
platform
is really built with the developer, the engineer, who appreciates modern tech in
mind. Oh,
definitely. While the user experience aims for low-code simplicity, the core
infrastructure
is seriously cutting edge. It's a TypeScript application running on fast, scalable
tech.
You've got Postgres as the main database, ClickHouse, which is brilliant for
handling
high-volume event analytics really quickly, and Temporal for managing those complex,
long-running workflows reliably. This kind of architecture is vital if you're going
to handle
potentially millions of user events streaming in. And the developer focus extends
to how you
interact with it. Full REST API access for getting data in and out, plus an Admin
API,
specifically for managing workspaces, programmatically key for automating setups.
And they provide SDKs, too, for Web, Node.js, React Native,
just to make that integration work smoother for development teams.
I also noticed a focus on quality assurance and control, which sometimes gets
missed when
tools focus purely on speed. Things like branch-based Git workflows for managing
campaign changes? That sounds pretty sophisticated.
It is, and it's crucial for teams working collaboratively or needing proper version
control and rollback capabilities for their messaging campaigns, just like with
code.
And alongside that, there's a testing SDK. This is really cool. It lets developers
write
automated tests for their messaging campaigns that can run in their continuous
integration,
their CI pipeline. This means you catch errors programmatically before a broken
campaign
ever reaches a real user. It avoids that nightmare scenario of trying to manually
queue complex journeys in a live production environment. Saves time, protects users.
And obviously, tying right back to our initial points about control and security,
the ultimate developer feature. The ability to actually self-host the entire
platform,
protects sensitive PII inside your own walls. Exactly. It brings that control full
circle.
Control over the infrastructure, the data, the compliance, all the way through to
the
campaign logic and testing. Okay. Looking just briefly ahead now. The roadmap for
2025 shows
they're not standing still. What are some of the key things coming down the pipe?
Yeah. It looks
like they're moving towards more sophisticated ways of modeling users and
relationships.
For the first half of 2025, a big focus is on user grouping. This will let the
platform understand
and segment based on collections of users think like members of a specific team in
a B2B app
or users belonging to a particular club. That's really important for many business
use cases.
Then moving into Q2, they're planning identity resolution. This is super important
for stitching
together a user's journey across different devices or before and after they log in.
So connecting that anonymous browsing behavior with the identified user profile
once they sign up,
it gives you that complete unified view of the customer. And further out, any plans
mentioned
to make the low code side even faster or smarter? Yes, for Q3 2025, they're looking
at integrating
LLM's large language models. The idea seems to be using AI to help generate initial
drafts
of journeys, segments, maybe even message templates based on natural language
prompts.
So speeding up that campaign creation process even more for marketing teams,
letting them prototype faster. So if we kind of pull this all together, what does
it all mean?
I think the big takeaway is that Ditto Feed offers this knowledge hedge, perhaps.
It gives you huge
flexibility in that crucial self-hosting control to guard against rising costs and
vendor lock-in.
But it does this while also providing genuinely powerful low-code tools like
journeys and segments
that let teams move really fast. It's about maximizing power while minimizing that
proprietary
risk. Right. Considering that combination guaranteed price stability from the self-hosting
option, plus potentially saving, you know, a year of engineering time by using
embedded components.
Here's a final thought, a provocative question for you, the listener.
How would redirecting those resources, the budget saved on volume pricing,
the engineering time saved by embedding instead of building? How could that let you
genuinely
accelerate your core product development next year? What could you build if you
weren't maintaining
messaging infrastructure? That's definitely something powerful to think about reallocating
that focus. Thank you so much for joining us for this deep dive into DittoFeed and
one final thank
you to our supporter, SafeServer. They assist with software hosting and digital
transformation.
You can find out more at www.safeserver.de