Tinybird Customer Story
Marc Lou gets ClickHouse® performance without ClickHouse complexity using Tinybird
“If you know you want to do analytics, and you want to plan for scale, Tinybird is a no brainer. You can get started with ClickHouse from the beginning because Tinybird eliminates all of the complexity.”
Marc LouFounder of DataFast
Marc Louvion (Marc Lou) has built a following of nearly 200,000 developers on Twitter by building startups in public. His web analytics SaaS, DataFast, helps entrepreneurs understand where their revenue comes from by connecting website visitor data with Stripe transactions.
Like many indie developers, Marc built DataFast on familiar technology - MongoDB - which he'd used successfully for six or seven years building applications. But for DataFast, this choice would eventually become a critical bottleneck.
MongoDB hit a scale ceiling
DataFast's customer base was growing, and Marc was dealing with a performance problem. The pageview and web events data that Marc was storing and querying in MongoDB kept growing, and MongoDB couldn't handle it.
What started as a manageable dataset quickly became a UX liability. DataFast's customers would get dashboard timeouts, and their filtering options were limited, simply because MongoDB's document-store data model didn't support the analytics features Marc was trying to build.
“You can add indexes to Mongo, which would make the query potentially fast. But if you want to add a filter on top of it— like let's say you want to see visitors from Hawaii using Chrome devices—it fails. You can't build indexes for every single potential query. It becomes a total mess.”
Marc LouFounder of DataFast
The performance problems weren't just about raw data volume - they emerged whenever users tried to filter or analyze their data in different ways.
Every startup founder knows that UX is king. DataFast's core value proposition - to be able to see exactly where your revenue is coming from - is immensely powerful. But a bad UX caused by slow queries and missing features kept DataFast's customers from fully achieving that benefit.
Marc wanted ClickHouse performance without complexity
Marc learned about ClickHouse, an open source columnar database, through a developer friend. They praised the database's analytics performance, but warned about its complexity, having attempted a ClickHouse migration and finding it overwhelming to manage.
“ClickHouse is super fast, but it's just super complex. There's so many things to handle. When I learned about Tinybird, I said 'This is it. This is what I want.'”
Marc LouFounder of DataFast
When Marc decided it was time to migrate DataFast's database, he initially asked his backend team to think about implementing open source ClickHouse directly. However, his backend developer recommended a better approach, a way to get ClickHouse's performance without the operational burden.
“My developer said that Tinybird is to ClickHouse what Supabase is to Postgres. I was like, this is it. This is what I want”
Marc LouFounder of DataFast
This comparison resonated immediately. Just as Supabase provides a managed Postgres experience with additional tooling and infrastructure to speed up the development flow, Tinybird would give Marc access to ClickHouse's columnar analytics performance wrapped in developer-focused tooling and a familiar workflow.
In essence, he was worried that ClickHouse would get in the way of moving fast. With Tinybird, he felt confident it wouldn't.
Migrating from MongoDB to ClickHouse with full support
Marc's approach to the migration reflected his focus on building features rather than managing infrastructure. Rather than attempt the migration himself, he worked with specialists and leveraged Tinybird's support team.
When technical challenges arose during the migration, or DataFast's team needed help changing their mindset from MongoDB's NoSQL approach to Tinybird's SQL-based structured data model, the Tinybird team stepped in to help resolve any concern and ensure a smooth transition.
“I wanted to have the best possible migration because I know if I do it myself, I might mess it up. I had paying customers, and I wanted my customers to have the best possible experience. We got in touch with Gonzalo from Tinybird, and everyone on their team started to help us with the migration, answering our questions in Slack, which was really helpful.”
Marc LouFounder of DataFast
Mind-boggling performance gains
The difference in query performance between MongoDB and Tinybird was immediately apparent - and quite dramatic. Queries that would timeout on MongoDB executed in seconds or less on Tinybird. You can see it for yourself on the public DataFast example dashboard, now running on Tinybird.
“The performance versus MongoDB is completely different. Tinybird seems to not care about how many events there are. There could be a million events. It's just as fast as if there's a thousand events. This would just time out on MongoDB. It's not even comparable.”
Marc LouFounder of DataFast
The performance improvement wasn't just about faster queries. It enabled entirely new use cases that felt impossible with MongoDB. Features that Marc had wanted to build but worried were out of reach now felt not just possible, but easy.
“We want to make predictions based on all the web data connected with your revenue data, to tell you which visitors are most likely to convert. Those baseline metrics take days to compute on MongoDB because it's so slow. This would have never scaled with the current customer base. Tinybird makes it possible without having to think much about it.”
Marc LouFounder of DataFast
Enterprise-level performance, zero operational complexity
What makes Marc's story particularly compelling is that as a solopreneur, he achieved the same level of analytics performance that companies like Vercel, Canva, and FanDuel get from Tinybird - without needing a dedicated data or infrastructure team.
The cost structure made the decision obvious. With the simple swap out, Marc cut his analytics database costs by 75% while dramatically improving performance.
“This is the kind of thing you see as a no-brainer. Tinybird reduced the cost by 75% and increased the performance by two orders of magnitude. It's amazing.”
Marc LouFounder of DataFast
For Marc, Tinybird solves a classic indie developer dilemma: getting "enterprise-grade" performance without enterprise complexity, costs, or time investment. The resources Marc freed up now get to be applied to something else - marketing, feature development, maybe even a new domain name!
“You don't expect to spend fifty percent of your software revenue for database costs. Tinybird's more reasonable costs means more money for marketing or reinvesting in the business.”
Marc LouFounder of DataFast
Marc's advice for other builders
Marc has become somewhat of an icon for other indie developers building in public. They watch his progress, see his results, and trust his advice. When it comes to analytics infrastructure, Marc recommends a pragmatic progression: start simple, plan for scale.
Marc's migration shows what's possible with Tinybird. Even individual developers and small teams can access the same powerful analytics infrastructure used by major companies without the operational overhead that typically comes with ClickHouse.
That's why Tinybird exists: so that all developers can build things with data at any scale, without thinking about infrastructure.
Want Tinybird credits for your startup?
Apply to Tinybird's Startup Program, open to bootstrapped companies with growing MRR or seed/Series A-stage startups. Get steep discounts on a Developer plan to help you scale your analytics from day one. Apply here.
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