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Ask HN: Good open source alternatives to Google Analytics?

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Re: Ask HN: Good open source alternatives to Google Analytics?

#41

Post by paxcoder »

joshuaissac wrote: post #32
benhoyt wrote: post #14

I wrote two articles about this for LWN last year. Several of them are self-hostable. Summary: https://lwn.net/Articles/822568/ : lightweight options: GoatCounter and Plausible (open source), Simple Analytics and Fathom (closed) https://lwn.net/Articles/824294/ : more alternatives: Matomo and Open Web Analytics (fairly heavyweight but both open source), Countly (open core), Snowplow Analytics (open source but enterpr…

> Matomo Google may sometimes disable AdWords campaigns on sites that use Matomo. They "fix" it every once in a while when Matomo devs reach out to them, but the problem returns after a few months each time. https://forum.matomo.org/t/adwords-campaign-rejected-for-goo...

Makes me think Matomo's doing something right

Re: Ask HN: Good open source alternatives to Google Analytics?

#45

Post by ukutaht »

ggoo wrote: post #8

I use plausible for my very low traffic side project, mostly because it's easy to host yourself and free if you do so. https://github.com/plausible/analytics

Thank you!

I'm the maintainer of the project and it's so heartwarming to see it being recommended on this forum.

All the projects mentioned here are great. What I think sets Plausible apart is that we've managed to create a profitable business around a 100% AGPL-licensed codebase (i.e. no dual-license for enterprise version). This means we can keep investing into the product and adding new features without being in the 'thankless OSS maintainer' role that so often ends in burnout.

We're currently working on importing historical data from Google Analytics into Plausible[1] which should make switching even easier for many folks. Stay tuned.

1. https://github.com/plausible/analytics/pull/1466

Re: Ask HN: Good open source alternatives to Google Analytics?

#46

Post by pixelbath »

I finally made the switch from GA to Open Web Analytics. I'm already fairly experienced with PHP, which I considered a point in its favor, but I honestly haven't had to do anything with it other than copying it to a server and configuring a few basic settings.

The tracking code seems very lightweight, and I haven't found it lacking any of the features I was using in GA. I've tried a few, and OWA was the first that met all my criteria (100% free software, open source, actually works).

Re: Ask HN: Good open source alternatives to Google Analytics?

#47

Post by propogandist »

joshuaissac wrote: post #32
benhoyt wrote: post #14

I wrote two articles about this for LWN last year. Several of them are self-hostable. Summary: https://lwn.net/Articles/822568/ : lightweight options: GoatCounter and Plausible (open source), Simple Analytics and Fathom (closed) https://lwn.net/Articles/824294/ : more alternatives: Matomo and Open Web Analytics (fairly heavyweight but both open source), Countly (open core), Snowplow Analytics (open source but enterpr…

> Matomo Google may sometimes disable AdWords campaigns on sites that use Matomo. They "fix" it every once in a while when Matomo devs reach out to them, but the problem returns after a few months each time. https://forum.matomo.org/t/adwords-campaign-rejected-for-goo...

> google assistance told me that “you need to remove the Matomo javascript as it is a malware”

so Google wants Google Analytics to never be threatened for marketshare.

A great sign that the free analytics service offered by the advertising company should not be trusted.

Re: Ask HN: Good open source alternatives to Google Analytics?

#48

Post by ukutaht »

juriansluiman wrote: post #10

As stated by others already, there's Plausible (plausible.io) and Matomo (matomo.org). I have used both and stuck at Plausible. A few reasons (subjective): 1. Plausible is GDPR compliant by default, it has an effective way to measure analytics throughout the day without cookies 2. It is simple and that's key. I don't need to know much, Plausible just gives me that 3. It's fairly lightweight. Matomo is quite heavy and…

Disclaimer: Plausible Analytics founder here

I think Matomo is quite similar to Google Analytics which many people feel is bloated and confusing from the user's perspective. The idea with Plausible is to simplify web analytics and make it more understandable compared to what GA/Matomo offer.

Granted, Matomo does have more depth and features in some areas. It can be the better choice if you want to go very deep into analytics and need some power features that Plausible might not support.

We wrote a little (clearly biased) comparison with Matomo[1]. I hope we're not too harsh on it because Matomo is a great project and still a good fit for many people. But obviously we feel like a modern and simplified take on web analytics fits better for the majority of website owners.

1. https://plausible.io/vs-matomo

Re: Ask HN: Good open source alternatives to Google Analytics?

#49

Post by the_arun »

Jugurtha wrote: post #38

PostHog: https://github.com/PostHog/posthog if you want to deploy it yourself and https://posthog.com if you want the SaaS. I was using Avodocs ( https://www.avodocs.com ) to produce a privacy policy for our MLOps platform, https://iko.ai , but they didn't have PostHog in the list for the "Analytics" section, and they assumed that doing analytics implied sending user data to a third party site or something. I tweeted…

Regarding PostHog: If am a Startup & still running my beta product, $1500 per month is very expensive for managed service. They should charge it by number of API requests. Then I can start using this and naturally grow into the product. I really do not have bandwidth to self host when I am busy solving core customer problem.
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