How Hotplate Transformed Their Customer Experience with Middleware
10X
Reduction in Observability Costs
75%
Faster Incident Root Cause Analysis
90%
Reduction in Latencies
Using Middleware, Hotplate optimized system performance and reduced latencies while reducing costs up to 10X.
Result
- Achieved substantial cost savings, approximately 10 times more than other observability solutions.
- Efficiently pinpointed and addressed delays by utilizing detailed traces and session recordings.
- Optimized system performance and reduced latencies across millions of monthly events.
- Enhanced customer interactions using Middleware's Real-User Monitoring (RUM) capabilities.
Founded in 2020, Hotplate is an innovative platform designed to help culinary entrepreneurs, particularly pop-up chefs, manage and grow their businesses. The company focuses on pre-order and pickup food sales, where chefs can sell their food to customers who order a few days in advance. This model has proven highly successful, with many chefs experiencing demand that far exceeds their capacity.
Navigating High-Traffic Events
As Hotplate grew in popularity, they faced significant technical challenges, especially during high-traffic events. These events created massive spikes in traffic, requiring their system to be highly available and responsive. The primary challenges included performance degradation, proactive issue detection, and ensuring scalability.
“We experienced frequent performance issues but lacked the tools to measure the extent of the degradation accurately. It was becoming increasingly harder to react to issues or, more importantly, be aware that issues were going to happen before they occurred”
Hotplate needed an observability solution that could provide detailed session recordings, application performance monitoring (APM), and cost-effectiveness. Their criteria included session recording to replay user sessions and diagnose issues along with comprehensive traces to identify bottlenecks and optimize performance.
Rangaraj also pointed out that the nature of their business meant that while they could have ten times the traffic, only a fraction of the visitors would convert into paying customers. This required a solution that wouldn't become a financial burden as they scaled.
Middleware: The Robust Yet Cost-Effective Solution
After evaluating several tools, including Datadog, Honeycomb, and Sentry, Hotplate chose Middleware for its unique blend of performance, scalability, and cost-effectiveness.
The detailed traces allowed Hotplate to gain deep insights into their system’s performance. They could identify specific actions causing delays and optimize their processes effectively. Rangaraj shared, “Having detailed traces helps us understand the specifics of each request and optimize accordingly. This has enabled us to drastically reduce latencies and improve overall performance.”
Another significant benefit was Middleware’s Real-User Monitoring (RUM) and session replays. It provided Rangaraj and his team with a comprehensive view of the end-user experience, enabling them to understand and address performance issues from the user’s perspective.
Rangaraj explained, “Having a tool like RUM is essential when dealing with unique customer behaviors. It allows us to see exactly what the users are experiencing and how they are interacting with our platform. This visibility has been crucial in diagnosing and resolving issues that would have been impossible to identify through logs alone.”
For example, Middleware’s RUM enabled the support team to diagnose issues without requiring engineering intervention. Rangaraj recounted a recent incident: “We had an issue where an order’s cart was associated with the wrong event, creating a conflict in our database. Using Middleware’s session replay, we quickly identified that an unchecked front-end component allowed users to create garbage data. This allowed us to resolve the issue quickly.”
As of today, Middleware's RUM manages over 1.5 million sessions per month for Hotplate.
True Value for Money
Rangaraj appreciated Middleware’s team responsiveness, especially in helping him build the necessary connectors to ensure smooth integration.
“The onboarding experience was quite good. Some tools worked instantly, while others required custom connectors. The Middleware team was very responsive and ensured we had what we needed. Their support and the regular updates have been invaluable”
The most impactful benefit was, of course, the cost savings. Middleware proved to be significantly more cost-effective than other solutions, allowing Hotplate to allocate resources more efficiently.
“Middleware’s pricing model incentivizes us to send more data, which means we get better results. This was very important for us because other tools would penalize us for higher data usage, leading to worse outcomes. We were looking for a solution that was cost-effective and scalable. Middleware turned out to be 10X more cost-effective than competitors, and it provided the comprehensive monitoring capabilities we needed. I really feel like I’m getting real value out of it for the dollars I spent. I’m able to actually see the use, which is not always true of a lot of these tools”
About Hotplate
Hotplate is an online food ordering platform intended to offer customers food from local chefs. The company's platform lets chefs cook food at home, create menus, handle orders, and offer delivery, enabling customers to get local food at affordable prices while ensuring that their orders are cleanly spread and chefs maximize their sales.
Get Started FreeSee Installation Docs| Products: | Real User Monitoring, Application Performance Monitoring, Distributed Tracing |
| Use Cases: | Handling High-Traffic Events Proactive Issue Detection Detailed Traces Session Recordings Enhanced Customer Interactions Resource Allocation Reduced Observability Costs |
| Industries: | IT |
| Location: | San Francisco, CA |
