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Show HN: Counter – Simple and Free Web Analytics

counter.dev

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Re: Show HN: Counter – Simple and Free Web Analytics

#41

Post by slipper1 »

bumblewax wrote: post #20
rdm_blackhole wrote: post #13

I moved from GA to Plausible a while back. Very nice product and easy to set up. Its a paid product but I would rather keep my user's data private. This product seems interesting but its free so I fail to see how you will keep maintaining it in the future if you don't get paid. I understand that running it will cost you a few dollars a month if that at the beginning but eventually, between the time spent on maintenan…

I swapped from GA to Plausible myself recently and am loving it. Just the feeling of knowing there's no trackers on your site is worth it tbh.

A tracker is a tracker. Doesn't matter if it is privacy friendly or not. If I can block it, you bet I will.

Re: Show HN: Counter – Simple and Free Web Analytics

#42

Post by ihucos »

freitasm wrote: post #18

Do we have to worry that their Twitter account is currently suspended - "Twitter suspends accounts which violate the Twitter Rules"? https://twitter.com/DevCounter

Thanks for writing. There was absolutely no activity done on that twitter account. In any case we swapped it to one that is actually active :-) https://twitter.com/NaiveTeamHQ

Re: Show HN: Counter – Simple and Free Web Analytics

#43

Post by ihucos »

rdm_blackhole wrote: post #13

I moved from GA to Plausible a while back. Very nice product and easy to set up. Its a paid product but I would rather keep my user's data private. This product seems interesting but its free so I fail to see how you will keep maintaining it in the future if you don't get paid. I understand that running it will cost you a few dollars a month if that at the beginning but eventually, between the time spent on maintenan…

I am doing this together with my regular job. At the very moment it does cost me about the same as the Netflix account I am paying for my parents. The plan to be profitable is by mass. There was a lot of time and thought spend on making this service really really cheap to serve. Even now with this HN my redis database is two megabytes in size and before this HN post with happy and active users the CPU did not went over 1% usage - on a cheap VPS. So the bottom line is if we can get in only a small fraction of what other services have as a fee I am happy. I think we are talking about less than one cent per user per month. In any case I feel comfortable to get that with Pay as you want and one advertising banner. Don't get me wrong. It is a great product and we do expect users to actually pay for it if they are using it on a commercial project. We just have the luxury to ask for a payment instead of charging it. I also think plausible is a great product. If you are happy with it even better :-)

Re: Show HN: Counter – Simple and Free Web Analytics

#44

Post by ihucos »

YY-EN40P wrote: post #19
ihucos wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, so although it is optimized to be very cheap to operate many users there still are costs. We hope to get that via donations or as it's communicated in the website "Pay what you want". One single advertising banner is also something we are considering. So the amount we have to get from active users is really low. Currently there are 80 integrations with multiple sites on the cheapest linode VPS. The redis databas…

You can study fathom( https://usefathom.com/pricing ). As you say, the running cost of Counter is low, but your job is more valuable!

> [...] but your job is more valuable!

Well, not if I spend my free time on open source projects :-D

Re: Show HN: Counter – Simple and Free Web Analytics

#45

Post by [deleted] »

slater wrote: post #30
imkieren wrote: post #16

I wish more of these analytics platform had events. I want to see if my users are using features, button etc.

Reminds me of the best analytics software I ever saw, ca. 1998, where it'd track each individual visitor's path through the site, e.g. - [12:00 - 89.212.12.whatever] - /index.php - [12:01 - 89.212.12.whatever] - /team/bob-smith/ - [12:02 - 89.212.12.whatever] - /products/turb-encab-9001/

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Counter – Simple and Free Web Analytics

#48

Post by murermader »

I find it funny how the stats get skewed by developers or people coming from HN (83% from HN at the time of viewing).

Windows, the most used OS in the world is listed under "Other" when looking at the Platforms pie chart. Pretty funny that in the HN community Linux is more commonly used than Windows, at least from the people that clicked on the link.

Re: Show HN: Counter – Simple and Free Web Analytics

#49

Post by dkarras »

city41 wrote: post #25

Can someone versed in open source licenses chime in in what it means to use this service since it is licensed under the AGPL? I'm not an expert but as I understand it AGPL can require your own code to come under AGPL as well?

No, it should prevent someone else taking the code and starting a competing service with said code without opening its source.

If it was GPL, you'd be forced to open your source if you distributed your software to others - it does not apply to a web service where the software is always ran in the owner's computer. So I could take your GPL code, build a service running on my server (without ever distributing the actual software) and not open my source. AGPL tries to fix that loophole.

So if you are a user of this service, license has nothing to do with your own project, you are just a user of the service. But if you grab the source and create your own analytics (or something else) service from it then you have to open that source even if it runs on your own server(s).

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