Pug,
explained.

What it does, who uses it and how it makes money. Told through two made-up companies.

Press or click to beginScroll down to begin

Events, just now

Opened the home pageHilltop Coffee · Pune · 9:38 pm
Searched “cold brew”Hilltop Coffee · Delhi · 9:39 pm
Added Dark Roast to cartHilltop Coffee · Pune · 9:41 pm
Finished a yoga classSunrise Yoga · Mumbai · 9:42 pm
Paid ₹1,298Hilltop Coffee · Kochi · 9:44 pm
pug.sh01 / 19

The problem

A shopkeeper can watch people shop. A website owner can’t.

In a corner shop, the owner sees

  • Who walks in, and when
  • What they pick up and put back
  • Who gives up at a long queue
  • Which faces keep coming back
  • The sales at the till

On a website, the owner sees

  • Who came in, and when
  • What they looked at and skipped
  • Who gave up at checkout
  • Who came back
  • The sales at the end

Thousands of people can visit a website in a day. Without a tool like Pug, their browsing, hesitating and leaving all happen out of sight.

02 / 19

What Pug does

Pug writes down what people do. Then it turns the notes into answers.

  1. 1 · Someone shops

    They open pages, tap buttons, search and buy.

  2. 2 · Pug notes it down

    Added to cart

    What
    Dark Roast, 250 g
    Where
    Pune, India
    Device
    Android phone
    When
    Tuesday, 9:41 pm
    Who
    Visitor 4821

    Each action becomes one small note, called an event.

  3. 3 · The team gets answers

    Pug adds the notes up into charts anyone can read.

Shoppers never see Pug. It runs in the background, for the company’s own team.

03 / 19

Where Pug works

Pug works on websites, phone apps and servers. Each one gets a small add-on, called an SDK.

  • Websites

    Notes page views, clicks and scrolls by itself.

    Web

  • Phone apps

    Notes app opens, installs and screens by itself. Flutter apps run on Android and iPhone.

    AndroidFlutter

  • Servers

    Reports what only the company’s own computers know, like a payment going through.

    NodeGoRuby

SDK means software development kit: a few lines of Pug’s code that a developer adds once.

SDKs as listed on pug.sh, November 2026. Native iPhone and React Native: coming soon04 / 19

Company 1 · made up

Hilltop Coffee sells coffee beans from its own website.

  • Online shop
  • 3 people
  • Ships across India
  • 8 months old
  • AAnanyaFounder

    “Lots of people fill a cart. Why do so few pay?”

  • RRohanMarketing

    “We pay for Instagram and Google ads. Which one brings buyers?”

  • KKavyaWeb developer, freelance

    “Can I set this up without weeks of work?”

Made-up company and people05 / 19

Hilltop · Kavya, web developer

Kavya adds Pug to the website in an afternoon.

  1. She pastes a few lines of Pug’s code into the site.
  2. Pug starts noting visits, clicks and scrolls by itself.
  3. She adds the two moments Hilltop cares about most: “added to cart” and “paid”.
  4. She opens Pug’s live view and watches real visitors arrive.
Live view14 people on the site now
  • Looking at Dark Roast, 250 gPune · Android phonenow
  • Paid ₹1,298Kochi · iPhone12s
  • Searched “cold brew”Delhi · Laptop31s
  • Added Filter Blend to cartIndore · Android phone48s
  • Arrived from an Instagram adJaipur · iPhone1m
  • Opened the home pageBengaluru · Laptop1m
Made-up company, people and numbers06 / 19

Hilltop · Rohan, marketing

Instagram ads brought half the visitors and a sixth of the orders.

Pug records where every visitor came from. Rohan puts visitors and orders side by side for each source, and the gap jumps out. He moves half the Instagram budget to Google ads and the newsletter.

Where visitors came fromLast 30 days
SourceVisitorsOrdersOrders per 100 visitors Instagram ads2,000160.8 Google ads900364.0 WhatsApp shares500224.4 Newsletter400266.5
Made-up company, people and numbers07 / 19

Hilltop · Ananya, founder

Three in four shoppers quit right after seeing the delivery charge.

A funnel lines up the steps to buying and counts how many people reach each one. Ananya tries free delivery on orders over ₹799. The next month, 150 people pay instead of 100.

Funnel: checkoutLast 30 days
480100%Added to cart
39081%Entered an address
38079%Saw the ₹80 delivery charge
10021%−74% quit herePaid
After free delivery over ₹799Paid 100150+50%
Made-up company, people and numbers08 / 19

Hilltop · One month later

Orders are up 60% with the same ad budget.

Ananya pins the charts she checks most onto one page, called a dashboard. It updates by itself, so the whole team works from the same numbers.

Dashboard: weekly check-invs the month before
Visitors3,500−8%
Orders160+60%
Average order₹860+25%
Carts that become orders33%was 21%

Orders per day

Free delivery, new ad mix
8 weeks ago4 weeks agoToday
Made-up company, people and numbers09 / 19

Company 2 · made up

Sunrise Yoga makes an app for yoga classes at home.

  • Phone app for Android and iPhone
  • 25 people
  • 60,000 people use it each month
  • India, Europe and the US
  • Paid monthly after a free week
  • AArjunApp developer

    “How do we get Pug into our phone app?”

  • VVikramProduct manager

    “What do new members do right after their first class?”

  • NNehaGrowth

    “Are new members sticking around longer?”

  • PPriyaCEO

    “Can I get answers without learning another tool?”

  • FFarhanSupport

    “A member wants her data deleted. Can we do that?”

Made-up company and people10 / 19

Sunrise · Arjun, app developer

Arjun adds Pug to the phone app, much like Kavya did on the website.

  1. He adds Pug’s Flutter SDK, which covers the app on Android and iPhone at once.
  2. Pug starts noting app opens, installs and screens by itself.
  3. He adds the moments Sunrise cares about most: a class started and a class finished.
  4. Payments happen on Sunrise’s server, so it reports them with Pug’s server SDK.
Arriving in PugLena H.
  • Looked at her progressFrom the app07:22
  • Finished a class, 20 minFrom the app07:21
  • Started “Morning Flow”From the app07:01
  • Opened the appFrom the app07:00
  • Paid for the yearly planFrom Sunrise’s serverMon 21:41
Made-up company, people and numbers11 / 19

Sunrise · Vikram, product manager

After their first class, half of new members simply close the app.

A user-flow chart shows the paths people take, step by step. It shows Vikram that the daily reminder, which brings people back, is hidden in Settings, where only 1 in 7 new members find it. He moves it onto the screen that appears when a class ends.

User flow: after the first classNew members, last 30 days
  • Finished first class5,000
    • Closed the app2,500 · 50%
    • Browsed more classes1,600 · 32%
      • Started another class1,000
    • Opened Settings900 · 18%
      • Set a daily reminder700 · 1 in 7
Made-up company, people and numbers12 / 19

Sunrise · Neha, growth

Since the change, more new members are still practicing two months later.

A retention chart follows everyone who joined around the same time and shows how many keep coming back, week after week. Since Vikram’s change, 31 in 100 new members still practice after eight weeks, up from 19.

Retention: still practicingBy week since joining
Joined after the changeJoined before it
31% 19%
JoinedWeek 2Week 4Week 6Week 8
Made-up company, people and numbers13 / 19

Sunrise · Priya, CEO

Priya skips the charts and asks in plain English.

Pug plugs into AI assistants such as Claude and ChatGPT. The assistant looks up Sunrise’s real numbers in Pug and can even build a dashboard. It sees only what Priya is allowed to see.

AI assistantConnected to Pug

How many people finished a class yesterday? Is that more than last Tuesday?

Looked up “class finished” in Pug

4,812 people finished a class yesterday, 12% more than last Tuesday (4,296). Most of the rise came from members who joined this month.

Make a dashboard of this for Friday’s team meeting.

Done. It has four charts: classes finished, new members, members still practicing after 8 weeks and the top 10 classes.

Weekly practiceDashboard in Pug · 4 charts
Made-up company, people and numbers14 / 19

Sunrise · Farhan, support

A member in Berlin asks Sunrise to delete everything about her.

Pug keeps one profile per person, with everything she did on her phone and laptop in one timeline. Farhan files one delete request with Pug. Her events and profile are erased for good, and Pug confirms when it is done.

ProfileMember since March
L Lena H.Berlin, Germany · yearly plan
Android phoneLaptop, website
  • Finished “Morning Flow”
  • Opened her daily reminder
  • Switched to the yearly plan
  • Finished “Hip Opener”
Delete request doneHer events, sessions and profile are gone.
Made-up company, people and numbers15 / 19

Recap

Eight people, eight questions, one tool.

Pug’s customers are companies like these two. Their shoppers and members never see Pug.

  • KKavyaWeb developerCan I set this up quickly?Web SDK and live view
  • RRohanMarketingWhich ads bring buyers?Where visitors came from
  • AAnanyaFounderWhy don’t more people pay?Funnel and dashboard
  • AArjunApp developerHow do we get Pug into our app?Flutter and server SDKs
  • VVikramProduct managerWhat happens after the first class?User flow
  • NNehaGrowthAre new members staying longer?Retention
  • PPriyaCEOCan I just ask?AI assistant
  • FFarhanSupportCan we delete her data?Profiles and deletion
Made-up companies and people16 / 19

Why Pug

Why a company would pick Pug.

  • Open source

    Pug’s code is public. Anyone can read it, check what it does and run it on their own servers for free.

  • Private by default

    Until a visitor agrees to cookies, Pug counts them without one. Pug Cloud keeps data in the EU, and one request erases a person.

  • Everything on every plan

    The free plan has every feature the paid one has. A team can add as many people as it likes at no extra cost.

  • Robots left out

    Bots visit websites all day. Pug spots them and keeps them out of the charts, so the numbers stay honest.

17 / 19

The business

Companies pay for what they send. Small ones pay nothing.

Pug Cloud Pug runs it for them

Free up to 100,000 events a month. Past that, they pay per event, and the rate drops as they grow. There is no fee per team member.

Price per million events

$40
to 2M
$23
to 15M
$15
to 50M
$14
to 100M
$10
to 250M
$7
above
Hilltop CoffeeAbout 80,000 events a month$0
Sunrise YogaAbout 5 million events a month$146a month

How Sunrise’s bill adds up: the first 100,000 events are free, the next 1.9 million cost $76, the last 3 million cost $69, plus a $1 monthly fee.

Self-hosted the company runs it

Free, with no event limit.

Because Pug’s code is open source, a company can run all of Pug on its own servers. It pays only for those servers.

This suits companies that must keep every piece of data in-house, such as banks and hospitals.

Prices from pug.sh/pricing, November 202618 / 19

In one sentence

Pug shows companies what people do in their apps and websites, so they can fix what’s broken and do more of what works.

Pug · Overview
Pug's overview page for the demo pet shop: visitors, sessions, pageviews, bounce rate and visit time, above a chart of visitors over the last day.

The real thing: Pug’s overview page for the demo shop.

pug.sh19 / 19
01 / 19