# Derek Washburn, Founder at ContractorLens — read of Solo Analytics, May 6 2026

> 8 years in product, 2 years fully solo, building a SaaS for independent HVAC contractors. Three kids, youngest is 6. I do my "Monday business review" on the train in from Hoboken.

## How I got here

Someone in the Indie Founders Slack I lurk in posted "finally dumped Plausible, moved to this." I clicked it mostly because I've been having a silent argument with myself about Plausible for three weeks. Currently paying $9/month for Plausible and using maybe 30% of it, but also still have GA4 installed "just in case" which means I have two analytics tools and look at neither with any real discipline. So yeah, this page caught me at the right moment.

## What I clicked first

The hero didn't make me roll my eyes, which is a low bar but not one every tool clears. "Know exactly what is working in your business" is generic but at least it's a promise. What actually stopped me was the line right under it: "the five numbers that actually matter." I immediately wanted to know what the five numbers are. That's a real hook because now I'm wondering if I know what those numbers are, and whether I'm tracking them. Then I scrolled past it and the page never tells me what the five numbers are. I went back up twice looking for a list. It's not there. That's a miss.

## Where I paused

The testimonial from Marcus T., founder of Promptkit: "I spent four months paralyzed by GA4 reports I could not read. Solo Analytics told me on day two that 68 percent of visitors bounced at the pricing page. I rewrote one paragraph and signups doubled that week." I read that three times. The specificity is right (68%, one paragraph, one week), and it maps to a real thing I've felt (GA4 paralysis is not an exaggeration). But Marcus T. at Promptkit is unfindable in three seconds. No link. No follower count. No tweet to verify. The testimony earns attention and then evaporates before I can trust it.

## What I distrusted

Two things. First, "each weekly digest includes one clear recommendation rather than thirty generic suggestions that require a data science background to apply." That recommendation is coming from an algorithm reading my traffic data. I've seen what those recommendations look like in other tools. They say things like "your bounce rate increased 12% this week, consider improving page load time." That's not one clear action item, that's a polite shrug. I don't trust the claim until I see an actual example of what the email looks like.

Second, "privacy-preserving hashing method that cannot be reversed to identify an individual." I believe this is probably true, and I also believe most people reading this page won't probe it. But I do a lot of reading on privacy law because my contractors handle homeowner data and I've had to think carefully about what I collect. That phrase is doing a lot of work without much support. The FAQ adds a DPA option which is a decent signal, but the technical explanation ends right there. Plausible publishes their methodology openly. I'd want to know if Solo Analytics does the same.

## What would convince me

An actual screenshot or plain-text paste of a Monday digest email. Not a mockup in the marketing section. The real one. With real numbers and the actual "one clear recommendation" they're promising. That email is the differentiator they're selling hardest and I have zero evidence of what it looks like.

Also: the demo dashboard shows a site called "Threadline." If that's a real company, link to it. If it's fake, call it "example data" so I'm not sitting here wondering whether Threadline is a real user who consented to this or a figment.

## What I'd ask in an email reply

1. Can you forward me an example Monday digest, or show me one from a real site? Even redacted numbers are fine, I just want to see the format and what the "one action item" actually looks like in practice.

2. What's the hashing methodology, and is it published anywhere? Not asking for a technical paper, just whether it's documented somewhere I can point a skeptical client or legal contact to.

3. The $9 Solo plan limits me to 3 custom goals. I have a 5-step onboarding funnel I need to track end-to-end. Is each step of a funnel a separate goal slot, or is the funnel builder a single goal that tracks all steps?

## Verdict: curious-enough-to-reply

The page communicates clearly, the pricing is honest (flat per site, no pageview gotchas), and the GA4 critique is accurate enough that I felt it personally. I'm not buying today but I'd start a trial if the Monday digest email turns out to be what it sounds like it is.

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*Memo by skeptic persona, generated 2026-05-06. Studio breaks own self-grading loop.*