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Umami: Self-hosted open-source alternative to Google Analytics

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Re: Umami: Self-hosted open-source alternative to Google Analytics

#151

Post by mcao »

slg wrote: post #146
lxe wrote: post #130

I've seen a bunch of these simple self-hosted log dashboards here on HN, but I don't think they directly compare with google analytics, which is just a much more powerful and much much more complicated product. Not to say this isn't a great product, but it really isn't an alternative to GA.

I wonder how many users actually use those advance features. As someone who has only ever used GA to help provide insight into developmental priorities (i.e. not for marketing), this doesn't help too much. For example, this tells you the browser but it doesn't tell you the browser version. It tells you the device being used, but it doesn't tell you the resolution of that device. It tells you the country of your visit…

Agreed, saying it's a one to one alternative to Google Analytics is probably a misnomer. I think a lot of people, myself included, used GA because there were no simpler alternatives and better overkill than nothing.

Re: Umami: Self-hosted open-source alternative to Google Analytics

#153

Post by noahth »

killerpopiller wrote: post #131
mcao wrote: post #69

Hi everyone! Author of Umami here. I totally did not expect this response so it looks like you all hugged my little server to death. The demo should be back up now. A little background. This is a side project I started 30 days ago because I was tired of how slow and complicated Google Analytics was. I just wanted something really simple and fast that I could browse quickly without diving through layers of menus. So I…

Matomo (former Piwik) is an alternative imho.

One big difference is that Matomo doesn’t support PostgreSQL and has said they don’t plan to.

Re: Umami: Self-hosted open-source alternative to Google Analytics

#154

Post by dylan604 »

mxuribe wrote: post #138
dylan604 wrote: post #90

How useful are the metrics from non-GA sources trusted when validated traffic to various groups like investors, advertisers, etc?

Quite intriguing! I have no experience pitching to investors or advertisers, (but i do have web analytics exp.) and never would have thought that this would even be a question! Curious, is this something that you encountered, or is this hypothetical?

I had heard in the past that if your numbers were not GA, then they did not put much weight into them. Since you can grant access to other people directly into GA, they can validate the data. Using awstats or other metrics were deemed less trustworthy since they required someone gathering the data (which allows for potential manipulation). Before the days of 3rd party advertising, people tried to sell local ads just like a news paper. The website with more visitors could charge more for the ad banner space. Some "little" blog would have to prove they received the amount of traffic.

Re: Umami: Self-hosted open-source alternative to Google Analytics

#155

Post by ggregoire »

lxe wrote: post #130

I've seen a bunch of these simple self-hosted log dashboards here on HN, but I don't think they directly compare with google analytics, which is just a much more powerful and much much more complicated product. Not to say this isn't a great product, but it really isn't an alternative to GA.

Do you know any good resources to learn the intricacies of Google Analytics and its related marketing concepts?

Re: Umami: Self-hosted open-source alternative to Google Analytics

#156

Post by madeofpalk »

mcao wrote: post #108
malisper wrote: post #103

One of the claims of Umami is that it's GDPR compliant: > Umami does not collect any personally identifiable information so it is GDPR and CCPA compliant. No cookie notices are needed because Umami does not use cookies. From auditing the source code, this doesn't seem to be the case. First, it claims it doesn't use cookies, but it clearly uses localStorage to store a "sessionKey"[0]. The other claim, that Umami is GD…

I am not a lawyer so I cannot say for sure what constitutes PII and what breaches GDPR. I am using the same techniques as Fathom Analytics, Plausible.io and other products. Everything is hashed into a unique session id and none of the actual data like user agent or IP address is actually stored. It is the same data that is found in server log files. In the strictest interpretation of GDPR, I don't think any analytics…

> I am not a lawyer so I cannot say for sure what constitutes PII and what breaches GDPR

If you don't feel fit to judge whether something breaches GDPR, then maybe you shouldn't say "so it is GDPR and CCPA compliant".

Re: Umami: Self-hosted open-source alternative to Google Analytics

#157

Post by busymichael »

Congrats on launching -- really impressive. One important issue that these self hosted analytics solve is ad blocking. Ad blocking by users really undermines the ability of a site or app to figure out what is working and not working. When you host your own analytics, you can get usability information for all of your users, not just those that don't block. That allows you to make a better product.

I have been working on something similar at https://argyle.cc -- we combine cloud analytics with a self-hosted analytics collector js. That gives you the best of both worlds: privacy focused, user respecting analytics, but full featured reporting in the cloud and ad-blocker resistance. It also allows event tracking to be done over js/web or in-line/server side.

Re: Umami: Self-hosted open-source alternative to Google Analytics

#158

Post by slykar »

mcao wrote: post #108
malisper wrote: post #103

One of the claims of Umami is that it's GDPR compliant: > Umami does not collect any personally identifiable information so it is GDPR and CCPA compliant. No cookie notices are needed because Umami does not use cookies. From auditing the source code, this doesn't seem to be the case. First, it claims it doesn't use cookies, but it clearly uses localStorage to store a "sessionKey"[0]. The other claim, that Umami is GD…

I am not a lawyer so I cannot say for sure what constitutes PII and what breaches GDPR. I am using the same techniques as Fathom Analytics, Plausible.io and other products. Everything is hashed into a unique session id and none of the actual data like user agent or IP address is actually stored. It is the same data that is found in server log files. In the strictest interpretation of GDPR, I don't think any analytics…

I've listened to a podcast interview with a lawyer specializing in EU privacy laws and he said that it does not matter if the personal data is hashed or encrypted. It's still personal data. This was about data stored in a database tough, but browser local storage is a database.

This was mentioned when the guest spoke about right to be forgotten. The law is really weird, because you need to delete user's data from your database, but it's OK to keep backups.

> It is the same data that is found in server log files. In the strictest interpretation of GDPR, I don't think any analytics product can exist.

It can exists as long as user agrees to be tracked. There is a category of "metrics" "cookies" user needs to agree on before you can track him for metrics. That's the whole point of the law. You need user's permission.

Re: Umami: Self-hosted open-source alternative to Google Analytics

#159

Post by gowld »

mcao wrote: post #108
malisper wrote: post #103

One of the claims of Umami is that it's GDPR compliant: > Umami does not collect any personally identifiable information so it is GDPR and CCPA compliant. No cookie notices are needed because Umami does not use cookies. From auditing the source code, this doesn't seem to be the case. First, it claims it doesn't use cookies, but it clearly uses localStorage to store a "sessionKey"[0]. The other claim, that Umami is GD…

I am not a lawyer so I cannot say for sure what constitutes PII and what breaches GDPR. I am using the same techniques as Fathom Analytics, Plausible.io and other products. Everything is hashed into a unique session id and none of the actual data like user agent or IP address is actually stored. It is the same data that is found in server log files. In the strictest interpretation of GDPR, I don't think any analytics…

If you don't want to get dragged into a lawsuit when a user gets sued on a GDPR claim, you probably shouldn't make any statements about your product's GDPR compliance. Stick to the facts about how your product works, and leave the legal speculation to the lawyers.

Re: Umami: Self-hosted open-source alternative to Google Analytics

#160

Post by gowld »

If you want to respect user privacy while collecting analytics data, I recommend using Local Differential Privacy (via Randomized Responses) when collecting information from browsers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_differential_privacy and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomized_response

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