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Ask HN: Good open source alternatives to Google Analytics?

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Re: Ask HN: Good open source alternatives to Google Analytics?

#131
post #130

Snowplow, also open source, has a comparison of a bunch of other open source analytics products for different functions: https://snowplowanalytics.com/blog/2021/01/05/the-top-14-ope...

As an FYI, Snowplow recently launched its Open Source Quick Start, a set of terraform modules, which automates the setting up & deployment of the required infrastructure & applications for an operational Snowplow open source pipeline, with just a handful of input variables required on your side. Read more at https://docs.snowplowanalytics.com/docs/open-source-quick-st... Cheers, Eddie

Thanks, that’s good to know.

Re: Ask HN: Good open source alternatives to Google Analytics?

#132
post #5

I have been building a self-hosted analytics platform[0] (note that it's not free or open-source, just partially source-available) that is focused on the ease of self-hosting. It is most similar to Matomo but with a better performance, simpler UI and with features that they only provide in their paid plans. I used simple technologies (MySQL/PHP) for performance and portability reasons and, compared to other self-host…

Looks like a great tool! Questions: I think you might be based in the Netherlands(?), how does UXWizz conform to European laws of privacy? I see that it tracks IP addresses, is that legal? How does it handle cases where people don't respond or opt out of eu cookie consent? Thanks!

> Looks like a great tool!

Thanks! I spent over 8 years working on it, I am still improving it :)

There is a page regarding privacy here: https://docs.uxwizz.com/about/personal-data-information

> I see that it tracks IP addresses, is that legal

My specific instance of UXWizz does not track IP addresses (you can disable that in the tracking settings), but only a hash of the IP+User Agent.

As for the privacy laws regarding tracking IP addresses, it's not very clear whether it requires consent or not as the law is ambiguous. The IP itself alone can not be directly considered personally identifiable information (PII) as having an IP address only, can not define which real person is the data associated with. Another thing to consider regarding IP addresses is that by default almost all services/servers/devices have an access log that does store IP addresses in plain text, so even if UXWizz does not store the IP, your OS/server/router/ISP might do.

> where people don't respond or opt out of eu cookie consent

As explained in the documentation above, UXWizz does not use any cross-session persistent storage on the user's system (not cookies nor localStorage). Also, being self-hosted, no data is shared with/sent to 3rd parties.

If you need more detailed answers or want a deeper discussion on this subject you can contact me on Twitter or via the contact form on uxwizz.com.

Re: Ask HN: Good open source alternatives to Google Analytics?

#133
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like a great tool! Questions: I think you might be based in the Netherlands(?), how does UXWizz conform to European laws of privacy? I see that it tracks IP addresses, is that legal? How does it handle cases where people don't respond or opt out of eu cookie consent? Thanks!

> Looks like a great tool! Thanks! I spent over 8 years working on it, I am still improving it :) There is a page regarding privacy here: https://docs.uxwizz.com/about/personal-data-information > I see that it tracks IP addresses, is that legal My specific instance of UXWizz does not track IP addresses (you can disable that in the tracking settings), but only a hash of the IP+User Agent. As for the privacy laws regar…

Thanks for feedback, will contact if I have more info. Again it looks great and seems to be super fast.

Re: Ask HN: Good open source alternatives to Google Analytics?

#134
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Looks like a great tool! Thanks! I spent over 8 years working on it, I am still improving it :) There is a page regarding privacy here: https://docs.uxwizz.com/about/personal-data-information > I see that it tracks IP addresses, is that legal My specific instance of UXWizz does not track IP addresses (you can disable that in the tracking settings), but only a hash of the IP+User Agent. As for the privacy laws regar…

Thanks for feedback, will contact if I have more info. Again it looks great and seems to be super fast.

> it looks great seems to be super fast

Thanks. I tried to optimize it as much as possible (mostly MySQL optimizations). All the data shown in the dashboard is generated on-the-fly in real-time (no archives/cached results). It's hosted on a cheap VPS in Germany (5EUR/month).

The performance does degrade a bit when your database reaches 20 million+ sessions tracked, but for the average website receiving <100k monthly visits it should be fast.

Re: Ask HN: Good open source alternatives to Google Analytics?

#135
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an FYI, Snowplow recently launched its Open Source Quick Start, a set of terraform modules, which automates the setting up & deployment of the required infrastructure & applications for an operational Snowplow open source pipeline, with just a handful of input variables required on your side. Read more at https://docs.snowplowanalytics.com/docs/open-source-quick-st... Cheers, Eddie

Thanks, that’s good to know.

You're welcome. Hit me up if you want any other info. Cheers, Eddie

Re: Ask HN: Good open source alternatives to Google Analytics?

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is ClickHouse and why do all projects move to it?

ClickHouse is an extremely fast SQL data warehouse that supports vectorized query execution, column storage, and efficient compression. It's also Apache 2.0 licensed and sets up on a dev laptop in about 60 seconds. The SQL is somewhat ideosyncratic (in a good way, I believe). It takes some experience to use it to its full capabilities. Not all projects move there but if you want fast analytic queries on a few billion…

ClickHouse is not good for updates and deletion, so if you want general storage of data, stick to RDBMS.

Analytics are typically append only, so ClickHouse works order of magnitude faster than RDBMS.

Re: Ask HN: Good open source alternatives to Google Analytics?

#137
post #14

I wrote two articles about this for LWN last year. Several of them are self-hostable. Summary: https://lwn.net/Articles/822568/ : lightweight options: GoatCounter and Plausible (open source), Simple Analytics and Fathom (closed) https://lwn.net/Articles/824294/ : more alternatives: Matomo and Open Web Analytics (fairly heavyweight but both open source), Countly (open core), Snowplow Analytics (open source but enterpr…

You're mixing analytics and counters.

For example, GoatCounter, Plausible and GoAccess do nothing but count and there's nothing you gain as actionable intels.

Re: Ask HN: Good open source alternatives to Google Analytics?

#138
post #50

PostHog is the gold standard here. The feature-set goes far beyond GA and essentially replaces a lot of the other tools you may end up needing (FullStory, Amplitude, etc.)

I don't think the replay capability is as well integrated as other SaaS.

Re: Ask HN: Good open source alternatives to Google Analytics?

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google analytics is only used for advertising purposes if you have that setting is enabled for that website.

Is this the case only on the site it is configured in this manner? Or are you saying that Google analytics data is not collected or used on the site with this setting disabled, but that data from the site with the setting disabled may still be used for advertising purposes on other sites? Sorry if my phrasing is strained, as I was trying to be precise but it may have impacted readability.

Maybe reading Google's support article for it will help.

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9626162?hl=en&re...

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