There were a gajillion of these things before Google Analytics. Probably the best options were those that relied on log analysis rather than having a JavaScript bug on every page.
RybbitL Open source Google Analytics replacement
61–70 of 173 posts
Re: RybbitL Open source Google Analytics replacement
#62For me, the best Google analytics replacement has been nothing. Just don’t do analytics at all. Your web site will still work without it. In fact, it will work better!
Once upon a time we did analytics and error analysis by running shell scripts executing awk, sed and grep over a apache or nginx access log or error log. What I am trying to say is that you can still do analytics, even pretty advanced stuff with some more elaborate scripting, if you want. The only thing you need is the access log. Something which has been largely forgotten ever since tools like Urchin became a thing…
However, if you do this, you will still need to comply with all relevant privacy laws.
For example, in the EU, you need user consent to use server logs that include IP addresses for analytics. You also need to provide post-consent opt-outs and privacy statements and audit logs and all off a sudden you're building another analytics tool.
Re: RybbitL Open source Google Analytics replacement
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Once upon a time we did analytics and error analysis by running shell scripts executing awk, sed and grep over a apache or nginx access log or error log. What I am trying to say is that you can still do analytics, even pretty advanced stuff with some more elaborate scripting, if you want. The only thing you need is the access log. Something which has been largely forgotten ever since tools like Urchin became a thing…
One of the greatest jobs I ever had from a technical perspective had terabytes of structured access logs hosted on prem inside of a VPN, with a few small bespoke tools to search through them (and many more pages of commands for common tasks not yet implemented in a UI). Not a single line of tracking or analytics on the front end, we just tracked everything we cared about at the server level.
And most likely a compliance and legal nightmare waiting to drop on a DPO one day.
Re: RybbitL Open source Google Analytics replacement
#64Hey I built this! I was meaning to launch Rybbit on show HN tomorrow morning but I guess you beat me to it haha.
Re: RybbitL Open source Google Analytics replacement
#65The market for Google Analytics alternatives is crowded. There's Plausible, Ahrefs web analytics, onedollarstats.com, PostHog, Matomo, Unami, Grafana, Microsoft Clarity (free at any scale), and so many others. Despite minor differences these products all compete for the same users (e.g. if someone is a PostHog customer they probably won't be using Ahref web analytics) yet most of these companies offer generous free t…
Builder of rybbit here - I will probably add a free tier in the following weeks. I didn't was because I was scared of being overloaded by an influx of free users, but that doesn't scare me anymore.
I started working on this 4 months ago and only publicly launched a few days ago.
As for monetization, I have no idea yet. I'm happy to collect stars for the time being. What do you think I should do?
Re: RybbitL Open source Google Analytics replacement
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is sharing your data with a startup or small company any better than sharing it with a big corporation?
Potentially yes, but depends very much on the privacy policy and data handling promises being made. I think the instinct to distrust big companies is at least partly because many of them have already proven not to be good stewards of data which when combined with their scale has more worrisome implications. With a smaller/newer player, at least there’s some hope that they’re not capable of the same harms at a smaller…
Hope ain't the same thing as trust, though. A small player would need to make a pretty significant effort to suggest they wouldn't abuse your usage-patterns.
Re: RybbitL Open source Google Analytics replacement
#67Well, obvious question: How does it compare to Plausible and all the other open source analytics.
Check out our demo at https://demo.rybbit.io/1. We have a lot more features than Plausible, but they're still presented in a way that is intuitive to use. You shouldn't need to read pages and pages of documentation to be able to set up funnels on rybbit, for example.
Re: RybbitL Open source Google Analytics replacement
#68The market for Google Analytics alternatives is crowded. There's Plausible, Ahrefs web analytics, onedollarstats.com, PostHog, Matomo, Unami, Grafana, Microsoft Clarity (free at any scale), and so many others. Despite minor differences these products all compete for the same users (e.g. if someone is a PostHog customer they probably won't be using Ahref web analytics) yet most of these companies offer generous free t…
Posthog is pretty good but very pushy towards using their SaaS (understandably). Self hosting is not really advertised on their main site however is buried in their gh repo as a footnote [1] with indications of vague issues past 100K events/month. Haven’t delved into how to scale it past that though and they do provide some docs that I have yet to review. Also the primary repo is not FOSS, and that "100% FOSS" repo i…
I think Posthog is incredible, and there's no way I (it's just been me building rybbit for the past few months) will be able to compete with them on their full scope of features for the foreseeable future.
I tried to self host Posthog for my other project as it far exceeded even the generous free tier. I have a Hetzner bare metal server with 64gb of ram https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/ax42/ and it was running all 16 cores at 100% and didn't end up working. So I think Posthog's stack is just way too heavy to self host effectively, and it's just not in the same category as Plausible, Umami, or Rybbit.
I'm trying to build best OSS analytics out there - and even though it's super crowded, most non-trivial websites run one so there is space for everyone to survive in.
Re: RybbitL Open source Google Analytics replacement
#69Well, obvious question: How does it compare to Plausible and all the other open source analytics.
Plausible is too needlessly expensive as one grows and it essentially punishes you for growing. And some features aren't available 1:1 with the CE version of Plausible either.
Yea, funnels are not open source for Plausible
Re: RybbitL Open source Google Analytics replacement
#70Because I like minimalist tools, onedollarstats.com looks interesting to me. I can’t find much info about their privacy posture (which prevents me from using Google Analytics). I use my own counter, but it’s got very limited features.