We use Simple Analytics [https://simpleanalytics.com/] as alternative to GA and it's also privacy-friendly.
I saw Plausible appeared after Simple Analytics launched their product. I'm glad to see GA alternatives becoming popular.
An alternative to using Google Analytics on your website
41–50 of 311 posts
Re: An alternative to using Google Analytics on your website
#42Google Analytics data isn’t tied to ad targeting. Google doesn’t profile you based on data from sites you visit with GA.
According to google, it is: “Google uses the information shared by sites and apps to deliver our services, maintain and improve them, develop new services, measure the effectiveness of advertising, protect against fraud and abuse, and personalize content and ads you see on Google and on our partners’ sites and apps”.
I can't find this language in the GA terms and conditions.
Re: An alternative to using Google Analytics on your website
#43The biggest drawback to not having Google Analytics on your website is if you choose to run Google Ads for your site and you have to retarget/remarket on Google properties. Without Google Analytics you are out of luck as you can enable remarketing only in Google Analytics (and you would need Analytics linked to Google Ads). If you have a personal website or a business that grows organically without needing to use Adv…
That's incorrect. Google ads have conversion tags you can do remarketing with, no need for Google Analytics.
Re: An alternative to using Google Analytics on your website
#44The correct proposition instead would be to stop analytics on your website, period. There's many sites that benefit greatly from the insight, but I'd argue they're a minority. Your personal blog doesn't need analytics. Let's be honest, for many people, analytics is just a way to feed their ego — my ramblings reached 100 people, so you could say I'm kind of a big deal. Google is, obviously, very well aware of this target market, and tries to feed back into this loop as well. It's not without reason you get weekly summaries and more into your inbox by default. The reality, of course, is that it's serving them while hooking you, much like social media notifications driving engagement etc.
Re: An alternative to using Google Analytics on your website
#45If this is your personal website, one option to consider is dropping the analytics completely. Do you really need to know exactly (and it’s not even that exact, since people block or can’t load your analytics) how many people viewed your blog posts? Anecdotally, if you put your email at the bottom of the page you’ll get a pretty good idea just from the number of people who send you one.
You are right, you don't need to know it in a small blog or site
But metrics and statistics are the very foundation of science, and the graal of software engineering. I can't resist the temptation of knowing which browsers and the countries of the users of my website, or how many hacker news visitors come to it every other season, so many possibilities... sigh
Re: An alternative to using Google Analytics on your website
#46If this is your personal website, one option to consider is dropping the analytics completely. Do you really need to know exactly (and it’s not even that exact, since people block or can’t load your analytics) how many people viewed your blog posts? Anecdotally, if you put your email at the bottom of the page you’ll get a pretty good idea just from the number of people who send you one.
Or just do it the old fashioned way - have the server keep an access log, then use something like GoAccess (https://goaccess.io/) to produce reports from it. It’s not real-time reporting, but then you probably don’t need real-time reporting for your personal site anyway.
Re: An alternative to using Google Analytics on your website
#47It sounds like a nice product, but sadly it's not exactly why GA is so popular (being a 'nice' product, that is). It is popular, because it's free, relatively easy to implement on any website, requires no self-hosting and powerful, once running. I've checked your website for pricing, but not only there's no word about free tiers, but there isn't even anything on the pricing at all. So, when it comes to majority of GA…
There's a big blue button at the top of the page that says "Start Free Trial". Click it and you get this: - Quick and easy to set up - No credit card required - Unlimited use during the trial - From just $6/mo after the trial Looks like a flat fee? Hard to tell from that wording. They should make this more visible on the front-page and elaborate on the " from just $6/mo".
Usually I look for a 'pricing' tab. Clicking on 'start free trial' tell me they are going to ask me for my email, instead of telling me how pricing works
Re: An alternative to using Google Analytics on your website
#48Looks nice. Is the account multiuser with separation between sites? If it is, it's a service I'd consider throwing into my maintenance packages as an added value. Most clients don't need the complexity of Google Analytics and with GDPR the data is increasingly out of line with reality, given we load GA based on consent.
Re: An alternative to using Google Analytics on your website
#49Some open source alternatives: - https://ackee.electerious.com/ (Node.js based) - https://github.com/zgoat/goatcounter (Golang) (Commercial Licensed) - https://snowplowanalytics.com (Core-ware) - https://count.ly (Core-ware) https://www.visitor-analytics.io is also a great GDPR compliant alternative (Not open source).
What is crippleware? Does it mean it doesn't work?
I changed it to the more friendly "core-ware", means you get the basics - the rest is licensed.
Re: An alternative to using Google Analytics on your website
#50What are good self-hosted alternatives? Something like Webalizer, but a bit more modern.
Matomo: https://matomo.org/