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Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Google Analytics

simpleanalytics.io

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Re: Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Google Analytics

#11

Post by blondin »

AdriaanvRossum wrote: post #2

Creator here. As a developer, I install analytics for clients, but I never feel comfortable installing Google Analytics because Google creates profiles for their visitors, and uses their information for apps (like AdWords). As we all know, big corporations unnecessarily track users without their consent. I want to change that. So I built Simple Analytics. To ensure that it's fast, secure, and stable, I built it entir…

nice job! i like the direction you are taking with this project. it's still young, so we don't know X) you might get bitten too lol

anyways, wish you the best luck with your endeavor. btw you might want to fix links above.

Re: Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Google Analytics

#12

Post by gryzzly »

The idea is great, but price is way too high for a simple site. Many people are interested in anonymised data like pageviews and geographical distribution, for example, but these people pay 10€/year for domain and often 0 for hosting for static site generators. 12€/month is just really expensive at this level, but good luck and I’m sure for many people it’s totally fine price.

Re: Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Google Analytics

#13

Post by lucideer »

AdriaanvRossum wrote: post #2

Creator here. As a developer, I install analytics for clients, but I never feel comfortable installing Google Analytics because Google creates profiles for their visitors, and uses their information for apps (like AdWords). As we all know, big corporations unnecessarily track users without their consent. I want to change that. So I built Simple Analytics. To ensure that it's fast, secure, and stable, I built it entir…

This look great—have bookmarked it for future projects.

I would however a little more skeptical with tools claiming to be privacy-first than I would be with GA (who I presume are not privacy-first). On that note, some quick questions:

- Any plans to open source? I've used Piwik/Matomo in the past, and while I'm not a massive fan of the code-quality of that project, it's at least auditable (and editable).

- You say you're transparent about what you collect—IPs aren't mentioned on that page[0]. Are IPs stored in full or how are they handled? I assume you log IPs?

- How do you discern unique page-views? You seem to be dogfooding and I see no cookies or localStorage keys set.

[0] https://simpleanalytics.io/what-we-collect

Re: Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Google Analytics

#14

Post by harianus »

cutety wrote: post #4
AdriaanvRossum wrote: post #2

Creator here. As a developer, I install analytics for clients, but I never feel comfortable installing Google Analytics because Google creates profiles for their visitors, and uses their information for apps (like AdWords). As we all know, big corporations unnecessarily track users without their consent. I want to change that. So I built Simple Analytics. To ensure that it's fast, secure, and stable, I built it entir…

Just a heads up, HN comments only use a (I think) small subset of Markdown for formatting, but your link will work as is without having to wrap it in [] and adding the (). https://github.com/simpleanalytics/cdn.simpleanalytics.io/bl... https://simpleanalytics.io/what-we-collect Anyway, cool project! I've always felt the same about using GA given I actually like to pretend I have some sort of privacy these days, and a…

Thanks, I changed it. Glad you can relate!

Re: Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Google Analytics

#15

Post by harianus »

gryzzly wrote: post #12

The idea is great, but price is way too high for a simple site. Many people are interested in anonymised data like pageviews and geographical distribution, for example, but these people pay 10€/year for domain and often 0 for hosting for static site generators. 12€/month is just really expensive at this level, but good luck and I’m sure for many people it’s totally fine price.

The pricing is for unlimited websites/domains.

Re: Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Google Analytics

#16

Post by consto »

AdriaanvRossum wrote: post #2

Creator here. As a developer, I install analytics for clients, but I never feel comfortable installing Google Analytics because Google creates profiles for their visitors, and uses their information for apps (like AdWords). As we all know, big corporations unnecessarily track users without their consent. I want to change that. So I built Simple Analytics. To ensure that it's fast, secure, and stable, I built it entir…

This is pretty much exactly what I have been looking for. I recently ditched Google Analytics and all other possible third party resources (except for YouTube which I implemented a click to play system) on my blog (consto.uk).

I just have a quick question. What subset of the javascript implementation does the tracking pixel provide? If all that is missing is screen size, I might just choose that to avoid running third party code. For performance, I combine, minify, and embed all scripts and styles into each page which lets me acheive perfect scores in the Chrome Auditor.

Re: Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Google Analytics

#17

Post by sondr3 »

I've moved away from using any kind of script embedded in my webpages for tracking and instead just use Goaccess (https://goaccess.io/) to analyze my logs. Though there are obvious caveats with this, you need to install it, configure the server logging to match it and so on. But personally the benefits outweighs the cons, it all runs on the server, you are the sole owner off all the data and this tracking doesn't require any kind of JS on the webpage.

Re: Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Google Analytics

#18

Post by ronaldl93 »

gryzzly wrote: post #12

The idea is great, but price is way too high for a simple site. Many people are interested in anonymised data like pageviews and geographical distribution, for example, but these people pay 10€/year for domain and often 0 for hosting for static site generators. 12€/month is just really expensive at this level, but good luck and I’m sure for many people it’s totally fine price.

Don't worry mate, it's $12 (USD) not €12 (Eur). ;-)

Re: Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Google Analytics

#19

Post by harianus »

lucideer wrote: post #13
AdriaanvRossum wrote: post #2

Creator here. As a developer, I install analytics for clients, but I never feel comfortable installing Google Analytics because Google creates profiles for their visitors, and uses their information for apps (like AdWords). As we all know, big corporations unnecessarily track users without their consent. I want to change that. So I built Simple Analytics. To ensure that it's fast, secure, and stable, I built it entir…

This look great—have bookmarked it for future projects. I would however a little more skeptical with tools claiming to be privacy-first than I would be with GA (who I presume are not privacy-first). On that note, some quick questions: - Any plans to open source? I've used Piwik/Matomo in the past, and while I'm not a massive fan of the code-quality of that project, it's at least auditable (and editable). - You say yo…

- No plans to go open source with the backend, but I do show the code that is run in the browser. The visualisation of the data is not super important I think. - I don't save IP's, not even in the logs. - I don't have unique pageviews at the moment. I will in the future. If the referrer is the same as the current page, I will measure that as a non-unique. What do you think?

Re: Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Google Analytics

#20

Post by hashr8064 »

AdriaanvRossum wrote: post #2

Creator here. As a developer, I install analytics for clients, but I never feel comfortable installing Google Analytics because Google creates profiles for their visitors, and uses their information for apps (like AdWords). As we all know, big corporations unnecessarily track users without their consent. I want to change that. So I built Simple Analytics. To ensure that it's fast, secure, and stable, I built it entir…

Hey I like the idea but have a question.

How are you storing all the information that analytics users want to know i.e. (What devices, what languages, what geolocations, what queries, what page navigations and clicks, etc.)

After reading what you collect I'm assuming you are doing a lot of JS sniffing of browser properties to gather this information along with IP address analysis is that correct? Or what are you plans about these features if you don't have them now?

Overall though I'd say great design + sales pitch. I think if the product delivers on enough features you will have something here. Great job!

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