About Genially
Genially is a leading global platform for creating interactive and animated content, used by over 45 million people worldwide. Their SaaS freemium model powers educators, instructional designers, and corporate teams with tools to build interactive presentations, infographics, and gamified experiences - no coding required.
Behind the product sits a lean, centralised business intelligence team of 7. This team is responsible for the entire data lifecycle - from ingesting raw data to delivering insights that guide decisions across product, finance, sales, and executive functions. Their work isn’t just internal; they also provide analytics to large clients and resellers who need visibility into user activity.
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About Genially
Genially is a leading global platform for creating interactive and animated content, used by over 45 million people worldwide. Their SaaS freemium model powers educators, instructional designers, and corporate teams with tools to build interactive presentations, infographics, and gamified experiences - no coding required.
Behind the product sits a lean, centralised business intelligence team of 7. This team is responsible for the entire data lifecycle - from ingesting raw data to delivering insights that guide decisions across product, finance, sales, and executive functions. Their work isn’t just internal; they also provide analytics to large clients and resellers who need visibility into user activity.
The Data Landscape at Genially
In Genially’s early days, data was entirely siloed. Their “pipeline” was a set of custom scripts that ran once a month - exporting data from their main database, MongoDB, into a slow PostgreSQL instance hosted on an AWS virtual server.
After each export, the team manually populated complex spreadsheets to build reports and track growth. The result was data that was always stale by the time it reached decision-makers, prone to human error, and consuming engineering time that should have gone toward higher-value analysis.
"The data was always outdated by the time reports were ready, and it consumed a significant amount of engineering time that should have been spent on higher-value tasks. It simply wasn’t a scalable solution."
Three pressures drove the team to look for a better solution:
Eliminating human error: manual copy-paste across large spreadsheets made monthly reporting unreliable and slow.
Freeing up analytical capacity: the team needed time back for analysis, predictive models, and ad-hoc business requests - not pipeline babysitting.
Centralizing multiple data sources: as Genially grew, they needed to integrate MongoDB, Stripe, NetSuite ERP, Pipedrive, and marketing platforms into a single source of truth.
From custom scripts to a modern ELT stack
Early stage: manual exports and spreadsheets
Custom scripts ran once a month to export MongoDB data into PostgreSQL. Reports were built by hand in Google Spreadsheets. High error rate, low trust, and no scalability.
Evaluation: assessing the market
The team evaluated Fivetran, Talend, and several Google Cloud-native options. Each was powerful in its own right, but none satisfied all three non-negotiables: ease of use, native MongoDB connectors, and a transparent pricing model that fit a growing startup budget.
Today: Hevo + BigQuery + dbt + Metabase
Fully automated ELT pipelines with daily data freshness. All dashboards - executive KPIs, finance reporting, and sales targets - are updated automatically and accessible to every employee via Metabase. The team now focuses on analysis, AI initiatives, and strategic projects rather than maintenance.
Three non-negotiables - and a proof of concept that sealed the deal
When evaluating ELT tools, Genially’s team came in with clear criteria. The tool had to be plug-and-play (eliminating engineering overhead), support native connectors for MongoDB and other core sources out of the box, and offer transparent, predictable pricing that fit their budget now and as they scaled.
The decision came down to a simple proof of concept: the team set up a Hevo trial and synced a sample table from their database. It worked immediately. That instant “time-to-value” in the first session - with no struggling through setup - made the choice clear.
"It worked flawlessly right from the beginning. That immediate time-to-value, and the fact that we didn’t need to struggle with the initial setup, convinced us that Hevo was exactly what we were looking for."
From “set it and forget it” pipelines to data-backed business decisions
Engineering time saved
Manual monthly exports and endless spreadsheet management are completely gone. The team estimates that Hevo saves roughly 40 hours per month of engineering and analyst time. Pipelines run automatically with virtually zero maintenance.
Daily data freshness and organisational trust
Teams went from month-old data snapshots to reliable daily updates. Every employee can now query live dashboards in Metabase whenever they need. The shift from distrust to confidence in data was immediate and lasting.
Zero maintenance overhead
Hevo’s managed platform means pipelines simply run. There is no on-call firefighting, no surprise breakages, and no infrastructure to manage - a genuine “set it and forget it” experience.
Cost-effective scaling without added headcount
Hevo’s transparent pricing fits Genially’s startup budget from day one and scales predictably with data volume – avoiding the need to hire additional engineers just to keep pipelines alive.
Data that drives real product and commercial decisions
Reliable, daily data from Hevo directly enabled some of Genially’s most significant strategic moves:
Real-time collaboration launch: By combining quantitative usage data with qualitative research from Customer Success, the team identified a massive trend of users constantly sharing creations with one another. This data-backed insight gave leadership the confidence to develop and launch a real-time collaborative version of the platform.
Validating core differentiators: Analytics showed that templates featuring pre-built interactivity and polished designs - Genially’s main differentiators - consistently had the highest completion and success rates, giving the product team clear direction.
Global market expansion: A centralized view of global data revealed specific international markets where penetration was lower than core regions. The team used these insights to intelligently reallocate budget and increase presence in emerging markets.
Funnel optimization: Day-to-day, reliable data allows the team to immediately spot unexpected drops or deviations and quickly identify and fix bugs or localized errors in the funnel.
Looking ahead, Genially is building on this foundation with AI-driven initiatives including churn analysis, demand forecasting, and market research - work that simply wouldn’t be possible if the team were still managing scripts and spreadsheets.
Excited to see Hevo in action and understand how a modern data stack can help your business grow? Sign up for our 14-day free trial or register for a personalized demo with our product expert.
