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Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Google Analytics

simpleanalytics.io

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Re: Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Google Analytics

#2

Post by AdriaanvRossum »

Creator here. As a developer, I install analytics for clients, but I never feel comfortable installing Google Analytics because Google creates profiles for their visitors, and uses their information for apps (like AdWords). As we all know, big corporations unnecessarily track users without their consent. I want to change that.

So I built Simple Analytics. To ensure that it's fast, secure, and stable, I built it entirely using languages that I'm very familiar with. The backend is plain Node.js without any framework, the database is PostgreSQL, and the frontend is written in plain JavaScript.

I learned a lot while coding, like sending requests as JSON requires an extra (pre-flight) request, so in my script I use the "text/plain" content type, which does not require an extra request. The script is publicly available (https://github.com/simpleanalytics/cdn.simpleanalytics.io/bl...). It works out of the box with modern frontend frameworks by overwriting the "history.pushState"-function.

I am transparent about what I collect (https://simpleanalytics.io/what-we-collect) so please let me know if you have any questions. My analytics tool is just the start for what I want to achieve in the non-tracking movement.

We can be more valuable without exploiting user data.

Re: Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Google Analytics

#4

Post by cutety »

AdriaanvRossum wrote: post #2

Creator here. As a developer, I install analytics for clients, but I never feel comfortable installing Google Analytics because Google creates profiles for their visitors, and uses their information for apps (like AdWords). As we all know, big corporations unnecessarily track users without their consent. I want to change that. So I built Simple Analytics. To ensure that it's fast, secure, and stable, I built it entir…

Just a heads up, HN comments only use a (I think) small subset of Markdown for formatting, but your link will work as is without having to wrap it in [] and adding the ().

https://github.com/simpleanalytics/cdn.simpleanalytics.io/bl...

https://simpleanalytics.io/what-we-collect

Anyway, cool project! I've always felt the same about using GA given I actually like to pretend I have some sort of privacy these days, and always have an adblocker on, so I hated setting it up for people. Definitely will be keeping an eye on this the next time someone asks me to setup GA.

Re: Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Google Analytics

#6

Post by harianus »

teddyh wrote: post #3

Please give a comparison to Matomo¹ (formerly Piwik), the current obvious choice for doing this. 1. https://matomo.org/

There are open source alternatives that do similar things, I want to give people not the hassle of setting up servers, maintaining their versions, and having no updates if they don't. See it as non-self hosted solution like Heroku is for deployment. I believe it should be simple as installing a Google Analytics code.

Re: Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Google Analytics

#9

Post by RealDinosaur »

Few Questions: How likely is this to be blocked by uBlock Origin/Firefox private mode (easy-list etc). Do they have any rules what they consider to be 'ethical analytics'? How much overhead does this analytics package have on page load.

Have you considered a free tier for up to 1k page views a month for example?

How can this track conversions for A/B testing? This is one of the most common usages of analytics in my experience. Is there a way to have user based conversion tracking whilst still being GDPR compliant?

Re: Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Google Analytics

#10

Post by teddyh »

harianus wrote: post #6
teddyh wrote: post #3

Please give a comparison to Matomo¹ (formerly Piwik), the current obvious choice for doing this. 1. https://matomo.org/

There are open source alternatives that do similar things, I want to give people not the hassle of setting up servers, maintaining their versions, and having no updates if they don't. See it as non-self hosted solution like Heroku is for deployment. I believe it should be simple as installing a Google Analytics code.

Matomo has both “cloud-hosted” and self-hosted options. What is the advantage to using this compared to Matomo’s “cloud-hosting”?
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