Table of Contents
Introduction
Welcome to Amplitude! We are invested in your success and wrote this guide to help you set up Amplitude in the quickest and most optimal manner. This Quick Start Guide will walk through the data structure and what data you should send to Amplitude. Specifically, it will cover:
- Instrumentation Pre-Work: what you should think about before deciding what data to send
- Identifying Users: what is required to properly track unique users for your product
- Event Data: what events or user actions you should track
- User Properties & Event Properties: what attributes you should send to upscale your analytics
- Cross Platform Instrumentation vs. Separate Platform Instrumentation: when you should do either way of instrumentation
- Using the Amplitude Platform: helpful definitions
If you are a developer or product manager who will be responsible for instrumenting Amplitude, then you should also read our Getting Started Guide for Developers as well.
Getting Started
1. Create an Amplitude Account. Go to https://amplitude.com and sign up for an account. You will be directed to the following web page, where you should enter the email you wish to associate with your Amplitude account:
2. Verify your email. You will receive an email from Amplitude to verify your email address.
3. Create an Organization. You will then be directed to our demo organization. If you wish to just explore the demo, then click the "Start Exploring" option. If you want to create an organization, then click the "I'm Ready" button. This will allow you to create a new organization and within each organization, you will be able to create multiple projects. Your company should have one organization in Amplitude but can have multiple projects within that organization, so the name of your organization should be the name of your company.
4. Create a Project. Once you have created an organization, you will be directed to the Projects page. Here, you can create your projects. Each project in Amplitude will have its own separate API Key. For example, you can have one iOS project and one Android project within your organization and have your iOS app and your Android app send data to the respective API Key. IMPORTANT NOTE: We highly recommend creating a test project or a dev environment for each production project in order to test your instrumentation. Click the "Create Project" button to create your first project. You will immediately receive an API Key, which you can find directly on the new project's setup page.
5. Send Data to Project. Now, you are ready to begin sending data to Amplitude. Data can be sent to Amplitude in four ways:
- Amplitude SDKs: Find our list of SDKs here.
- Amplitude HTTP API: Use our HTTP API to send server-side event data; limit is 10 events per device/user per second. Batch API can also be used to send server-side data; limit is 1000 events per device/user per second.
- Segment.io: See Segment / Amplitude Integration for more information.
- mParticle: See mParticle / Amplitude Integration for more information.
After instrumenting Amplitude successfully, you should see data show up immediately in the platform once events have been sent. Note that you have to instrument and log events in order for data to be sent to Amplitude. Here are some resources you may find useful during this step:
- Data Taxonomy Playbook: Check out our Data Taxonomy Playbook for detailed documentation on how to approach your event taxonomy.
- Getting Started: See our Getting Started guide for developers.
- Instrumentation Training Seminars: Register for one of our instrumentation training seminars here!
6. Create More Projects, not Organizations. Creating a new project and sending data to a new API Key does not require creating a new organization. For example, if you now wanted to instrument your Android app in Amplitude after instrumenting your iOS app, then you should go to the Settings page and create a new project from there. You should not create an entirely separate organization for your Android app.
7. That's it! Now you are ready to go data crunching. For documentation on all of our features, check out our Learning Center. You can also sign up for one of our New User Training seminars here.