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Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

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Re: Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

#261

Post by ValentineC »

ckotso wrote: post #166

Snowplow is also an option. It’s an open-source data collection solution that, unlike GA, gives you full ownership of your event-level data and the freedom to define your own data structures. Not exactly what you’d call ‘lightweight’ but quite a few Snowplow users/customers have come from GA for the level of flexibility and control they can have over their data sets. (Full disclosure: I work for Snowplow Analytics) -…

I've setup the Snowplow collector and tracker on some of my sites because that part is very straightforward (and the tutorial on the wiki is great), but I've never gotten past those steps to analyse the data collected.

Is there a highly-opinionated tutorial that shows how one can get some vanity metrics out from Snowplow?

Re: Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

#262

Post by johannes1813 »

This is super helpful! I posted an article here a few weeks about trying to build my own minimal alternative to GA, but I had no idea all of these existed and would happily have used one of these instead of doing it myself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23351323

Re: Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

#263

Post by benhoyt »

FalconSensei wrote: post #207
h4kor wrote: post #32

If you only need page views, for example for a personal blog, try goaccess ( https://goaccess.io/ ). It uses your server logs for simple analytics.

But then you can't use it on Github Pages, right?

I actually use GoAccess on my personal site, which runs on GitHub Pages. Obviously you don't get the actual web server logs (only GitHub has those), but I have a few lines of JavaScript that hits a 1x1 image on CloudFront with the page and referrer information, and then I download the CloudFront logs and use those with GoAccess. Read more here: https://benhoyt.com/writings/replacing-google-analytics/

Re: Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

#264

Post by JackWritesCode »

r3trohack3r wrote: post #257

We launched https://everytwoyears.org today. It was my first project where I felt analytics was necessary, but also a moral quandary. For personal reasons, I'm very against PII big data. For project reasons, the project is literally about stopping mass surveillance so shipping a tool like Google Analytics was firmly off the table. I went with https://app.usefathom.com which tracks _aggregate anonymized_ data. They ha…

We really appreciate people like you, thank you. And on a personal level, I respect your "BREAKING THROUGH TWO PARTY POLITICS" tagline.

Re: Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

#265

Post by FalconSensei »

benhoyt wrote: post #263
FalconSensei wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then you can't use it on Github Pages, right?

I actually use GoAccess on my personal site, which runs on GitHub Pages. Obviously you don't get the actual web server logs (only GitHub has those), but I have a few lines of JavaScript that hits a 1x1 image on CloudFront with the page and referrer information, and then I download the CloudFront logs and use those with GoAccess. Read more here: https://benhoyt.com/writings/replacing-google-analytics/

seems like... way too much work.

Ive changed to Goat Counter, but thanks

Re: Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

#266

Post by r3trohack3r »

JackWritesCode wrote: post #264
r3trohack3r wrote: post #257

We launched https://everytwoyears.org today. It was my first project where I felt analytics was necessary, but also a moral quandary. For personal reasons, I'm very against PII big data. For project reasons, the project is literally about stopping mass surveillance so shipping a tool like Google Analytics was firmly off the table. I went with https://app.usefathom.com which tracks _aggregate anonymized_ data. They ha…

We really appreciate people like you, thank you. And on a personal level, I respect your "BREAKING THROUGH TWO PARTY POLITICS" tagline.

<3

Re: Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

#267

Post by Diesel555 »

jbrooksuk wrote: post #42

I've been happily using Fathom Analytics: https://usefathom.com and I have zero complaints. No tracking. Privacy focused. Lightweight. You embed from your own domain. They even do site monitoring now!

I run fathom self hosted. I don’t love it and am looking for an alternative. But this is because they don’t update the self hosted version.

I get it that I’m asking for a free service, I just kind of wish they never offered it if they were going to ditch it. I don’t make money off my sites. I wish they had a less than X income version to self host. Oh well.

If you are making money and willing to pay I have a feeling Fathom is great.

Re: Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

#268

Post by justinclift »

jbrooksuk wrote: post #42

I've been happily using Fathom Analytics: https://usefathom.com and I have zero complaints. No tracking. Privacy focused. Lightweight. You embed from your own domain. They even do site monitoring now!

Fathom started out with much fanfare as being Open Source, but as soon as their paid service gained enough traction they went proprietary only.

Can't recommend a company which pulls crap like that. :(

Re: Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

#269

Post by eli »

jerven wrote: post #169
jwr wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> google analytics is really good in separating bots from human visits That certainly wasn't my experience. But more generally: I optimize touchpoints using automated Bernoulli bandits with multiple variants. And I track the metrics that really matter (like signups, MRR, churn, etc) very, very carefully. My point was that just adding GA doesn't bring much value, and makes the web worse. Another example of how page vi…

GA used to be good in separating the bots from the humans, but now I don't think so. I see a huge number of visitors from Dublin that seem to be AWS sourced bots (and Asburn, both have bounce rates like no other city). Millions of visits, from a place where we would expect thousands.

The bots got better and harder to detect.

You can actually set analytics to exclude traffic from a certain ISP or set of IPs on the View's Filters page. There is some legit traffic that comes from data centers, but only a tiny fraction.

Re: Lightweight Alternatives to Google Analytics

#270

Post by earthboundkid »

abelaer wrote: post #255
FalconSensei wrote: post #148

Didn't know about GoatCounter. I think its the only free hosted alternative that I saw. Having a small static blog hosted on GithubPages, GA was the only option for me. (Not going to pay for analytics while my blog has like, 10 visits a week)

I just installed goatcounter on my githubPages Jekyll page. 2 minutes of work, works great.

Similar experience. I switched my blog off of GA to Goat. I don’t think I’ll switch back. I prefer how simple Goat is.

For work though, we use GA and I can’t really imagine switching. We actually use the event stuff, so it would be hard to switch away.

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