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An alternative to using Google Analytics on your website

plausible.io

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Re: An alternative to using Google Analytics on your website

#111

Post by lucideer »

londons_explore wrote: post #68
lucideer wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is popular, because it's free, relatively easy to implement on any website, requires no self-hosting and powerful, once running Tbh, I disagree. While a lot of the above is true, it's largely popular because it's a recognisable brand, and because the majority of frontend devs are already familiar with it and haven't felt the need to explore an alternative (network effect). While an alternative does really need t…

Photoshop is the defacto-standard in image editing, yet clones which are free and copy the photoshop UI are rapidly catching up for a segment of the userbase, eg. photopea.com If someone set up a Scroogle Analoytics which had a simple code snippet, was free, and had near-identical looking dashboard, I'd use it.

> rapidly catching up for a segment of the userbase, eg. photopea.com

How true is this? There's popularity, and there's significance in the face of Photoshop's market hold. I'd love to believe there's some significant dent being made in Adobe's market share here, but I doubt it.

Re: An alternative to using Google Analytics on your website

#112

Post by throwaway894345 »

y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #39
tachion wrote: post #18

It 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".

A free trial isn't the same as "free for low volume / hobby usage". Not sure if that's what the OP is after, but it's what I'm after.

And to head off a couple of popular distortions/digressions:

1. There's a difference between wanting a free hobby tier and believing that I'm owed a free hobby tier.

2. Just because a company should be paid for their work doesn't imply that I'm obligated to use their product.

Re: An alternative to using Google Analytics on your website

#113

Post by munk-a »

rchaud wrote: post #86
fitzn wrote: post #73

I really dislike the user experience of GA. I literally know 1% of the functionality it offers and I only _need_ 1% of what it offers. But I do like that it's free. Was planning to one day give https://simpleanalytics.com/ a shot.

GA is complete overkill for hobby websites that get ~100s of visits/day. If you have a commercial website selling stuff, or conduct A/B testing, or have marketing channels funnelling traffic to the site, then you pretty much have to use something like GA or Adobe Analytics.

I'm actually of the exact opposite opinion - for the majority of websites just shoving GA on it and calling it a day is quite sufficient... It's only if your website really lives and dies by making sure users are hitting the important components and converting into paying customers that a more feature-full analytics tool may be valuable.

Re: An alternative to using Google Analytics on your website

#114

Post by nsgi »

Etheryte wrote: post #44

The 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 tar…

With any website it's important to know how many visitors it is receiving. In the context of a blog knowing you're getting a lot of traffic can motivate you to publish more content and knowing more about your visitors can also feed into what sort of content you publish. You could look at your server logs, of course, but analytics is easier to set up and gives you higher quality data than something like AWStats. Since Google lets you opt out of sharing your data with them I don't see much argument against using it.

Re: An alternative to using Google Analytics on your website

#115

Post by clairity »

nsgi wrote: post #81
tachion wrote: post #18

It 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…

Also, unlike many smaller analytics providers, Google Analytics doesn't have glaring CSRF vulnerabilities and doesn't have creepy features that let you spy on individual users (no idea if this applies to Plausible or not).

> "[GA]...doesn't have creepy features that let you spy on individual users"

google reserves that for itself so as not to lose it's dominance of online advertising and targeting. why would they share their bread and butter with the little guys?

Re: An alternative to using Google Analytics on your website

#116

Post by ErikAugust »

benbristow wrote: post #105
lucideer wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is popular, because it's free, relatively easy to implement on any website, requires no self-hosting and powerful, once running Tbh, I disagree. While a lot of the above is true, it's largely popular because it's a recognisable brand, and because the majority of frontend devs are already familiar with it and haven't felt the need to explore an alternative (network effect). While an alternative does really need t…

GA also has support from many third party libraries because of the popularity that you can just plug-in and get started with. e.g. https://github.com/react-ga/react-ga https://github.com/angulartics/angulartics2 https://github.com/MatteoGabriele/vue-gtag

Isn't GA itself a third-party JavaScript library that you can just plug-in and get started with?

Why do you need framework specific libraries on top of that?

Re: An alternative to using Google Analytics on your website

#117

Post by danso »

lucideer wrote: post #58
tachion wrote: post #18

It 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…

> It is popular, because it's free, relatively easy to implement on any website, requires no self-hosting and powerful, once running Tbh, I disagree. While a lot of the above is true, it's largely popular because it's a recognisable brand, and because the majority of frontend devs are already familiar with it and haven't felt the need to explore an alternative (network effect). While an alternative does really need t…

So Google Analytics is largely popular because it's a recognizable brand, and not really because it's actually a easy-to-use and useful product, and you're going to claim the same for Google Docs, and for Google Buzz and GChat and GPlus and Google Wave?

Re: An alternative to using Google Analytics on your website

#118

Post by ksec »

Plausible, Fathom [1] and Simple Analytics [2] are very similar in features. While self hosting is not supported, plausible is Open Source [3] running on Elixir and Postgre. It is also the most affordable out of three, starting at $6 only.

I am not sure why HN are so negative about this post, when two years ago everyone were cheering for GA alternatives.

Although I do agree it needs to add "Pricing" in the Navigation section.

[1] https://usefathom.com

[2] https://simpleanalytics.com

[3] https://github.com/plausible-insights/plausible

Re: An alternative to using Google Analytics on your website

#119

Post by ec109685 »

lmkg wrote: post #71
zepto wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”.

Disclosure: Google Analytics consultant. Not a Google employee, but my bread is very clearly buttered on one side here. The article's use of that verbiage is deceptive. I think it's not actually a lie, but it's misleading. When you use the Google Analytics product, Google is a Processor under GDPR and a Service Provider under CCPA. They are contractually bound not to process that data beyond providing the service to…

This is a really good point. It's very disingenuous of the parent article to not mention that. Google being a Processor of data removes their ability to use this data for targeting and profiling.

Re: An alternative to using Google Analytics on your website

#120

Post by megous »

Etheryte wrote: post #44

The 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 tar…

Yeah, I removed GA from my websites years ago, when I realized that I didn't look at GA output pretty much at all for many years prior. I also started being more careful about whom I give control over my domain/websites.

0 value for my personal websites. All the value for Google.

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