If you're looking for web analytics, I love and can recommend Plausible (https://plausible.io/). It's both simple and privacy-friendly.
Inspired by Plausible, I recently launched Fugu (https://fugu.lol). Fugu is a simple and privacy-friendly product analytics tool. It offers only event-based tracking, so it's better suited for web or mobile apps and not web sites (go for Plausible for websites). Fugu doesn't track unique users or any personally identifiable information. It's pretty basic for now, but I'm working on adding conversion funnels next (I work on it in my free time).
Fugu is open-source[0] and self-hostable. I make money by providing a managed version for $9/month.
It's good, but it doesn't replace Google Analytics at all. It tracks visits and events, but not navigation and user flow. It's severely lacking in detail compared to Analytics. It's a compromise, not a drop-in replacement.
However, it's excellent as a simple tracker for average website admins. I'm very happy with it. The maintainers have been nothing short of stellar with their support and transparency.
I would not recommend Plausible (well, their commercial offering anyway). I had a bad run-in with them recently. Their site would not log data from my web site at all (their Javascript just threw an error in the console and would not execute). I filed a ticket. They brushed it off and said they'd had a brief look and couldn't figure it out, and basically tough shit, and told me to just download their open source version and install it locally.
What annoyed me was that if it's not logging on my site, how many other sites is it under-reporting for? YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW. And the fact they weren't willing to give it any serious thought at all. This is bad for an analytics company.
I tried (begrudgingly) and put Google Analytics behemoth of Javascript on my site and it worked perfectly, so I knew it was a bug in their system, not mine.
At that point I decided to try and figure it out so I fired up a proxy and sat there for a couple of hours going back and forth until I did figure it out myself. The bug is in their web server configuration really, not in the actually logging Javascript. Now, it might have been unethical of me, I don't know, but I felt since I'd spent a ton of my time to figure out a serious bug in their product it would be nice if they would throw me a year's free subscription. I felt that was fair compensation. They said no way, don't worry about, basically "I'm sure we'll figure it out ourselves in the future one day, don't call us."
So at that point I decided screw it, I can see they don't care about their customers and product, so I'm looking for alternatives that aren't GA.
That's my 2 cents. Your mileage may vary.
tl;dr: Be aware their product has a bug which causes it to not log data in certain circumstances (the script won't execute) and therefore if you are using their commercial product you might not be seeing all your visitors.
Does Fugu have a free trial period? I would need to test it actually works at all before I start paying for it. Plausible, fortunately, has a free trial on their commercial product, so I could figure out instantly that their system is broken. I would have hated to pay money only to find it had a terminal bug and they wouldn't fix it.
Basically, I'd like a couple of days grace before having to pay for it, so I could install it on my app and see if it even works.
The reason I wouldn't install Fugu locally (or Plausible locally) is that I don't want a whole different deployment channel to support. Likely your code needs a different web server or framework than the rest of my stuff, and that is a lot of setup, installation and support. But I do like that the option exists and that I can see the code.
I second Plausible but to everyone looking to self-host it, be aware: It’s AGPL licensed! From what I have seen it seems that they only want to discourage direct competitors but an APGL license is an APGL license and that’s a deal breaker for many commercial projects. Older version were licensed under the MIT license iirc so might be an option for some.
Ofc you can always support them and use their cloud hosting solution without any of these problems. I just wish they their pricing was fairer.. Their plans start at 6€ for 10k monthly page views - for that price you could run your own VPS capable of handling literally millions of requests.
I second Plausible. Have been using it close to a year now. Very happy about it. It is probably not as feature rich as GA, but who needs those features, right. On the other hand they are adding new things everyday, but they focus on what users want.
Analytics solution that support to Mobile platforms(Android, iOS) too? There is Matomo as I know, what else out there?
Aggregating things over platform is hassle when using different services for different platforms.
Somewhat FOSS. There was a story there, but I don't remember the details.
If you don't need much, plausible.io is decent but very low on details.
Cloudflare seems to offer the same amount of data as Plausible, unblockable, and with no JS to load [especially if you pay $20 for the better analytics], but I don't know what data they lose by browsers that cache dns queries etc.
We use matomo. Takes some getting used to if you are coming from GA (for instance, can take a while to generate segments) but is nice and privacy friendly.
Thanks for pointing this out. It's the first free analytics service for personal blogs, websites I've seen recently. The rest is subscription based and useful for revenue-generating businesses.
Potentially controversial opinion on HN: don't track visits to your website in any way. Or alternately track only statistics about which URLs were requested per day.
I'm currently using Cloudflare and their SDK+API to pull logs, which I then push into Loki. I then use Grafana to render the dashboards I want.
This isn't for everyone, I'm super comfortable doing this because of familiarity with all the components. But there's no out of the box dashboard for this so you have to replicate the UI parts you value. At least with Grafana once done you're in control of it and you own it.
I prefer server logs from the edge for their completeness. There are things missing... I.e. client side knowledge of screen sizes and device types. But server logs are so much more complete than client side JavaScript from third parties that are frequently adblocked.
I switched to Fathom at the start of the month and I'm really happy with it. There is a trade off when you opt for a privacy focused product but I think it's more than worth it.
Plus, I think the vast majority of companies overestimate the importance of the data they collect. Maybe there's some interesting insights buried in GA but if you aren't actually using them what difference does it make.
I respect my site's visitors so I use a monitoring system that I personally have no problem being tracked by. I block GA in Firefox so why should I subject my visitors to it?
I was running selfhosted fathom for several years. A few months ago, I decided I wanted to just defer that maintenance to a SaaS. I felt that fathom was just so expensive for any small use case… I couldn’t justify the cost. Ended up switching to a paid version of Plausible and I couldn’t be happier.
I prefer goaccess(1) over any other tool that uses client side Javascript.
It's basically a real time website log analyser which gives you enough information to know whats happening on your website but doesn't require any pesky Javascript etc to do it.
Also since it is works by analysing your log files it can never be blocked.
If you want total accuracy, then the only solution is to analyze your HTTP logs like this. You won't get much in the way of knowing your clients, except what comes through in the HTTP requests, e.g. URI, IP address, browser and platform, but you'll also know you're not missing any requests.
I use Goaccess too for simple things, but I've found that it's not really suitable if you want to compare stats of different months or years, or look into specific week.
This is because goaccess aggregates reports to single HTML file. If you give it a year of logs, it compresses whole year in one graph. It didn't seem to have interactive way to explore whole year.
Most people don't care and just generate monthly HTML report file, but that has same flaws as yearly file.
A couple of friends of mine are building Firstparty - https://firstpartyhq.com - the idea is to serve the analytics code/cookie from your own domain (hence, first party). I've been using them for some of my websites and mobile apps. The reporting is nascent at the moment, but it is being built at a fast pace.
CTO and cofounder of Firstparty here, just wanted to mention our trial comes with 1,000,000 events free so if anyone wants to kick the tires it should be free for a long time for projects that don’t do a ton of web traffic, and we would love your feedback.
I know that Mixpanel is very event focused, and it seems like the question is more on page tracking, but surprised that no one has mentioned it. Has mixpanel fallen out of favor or is the lack of mention because it's a bit out of scope for the OP?
I'm actually interesting in this as well. I've noticed watching the HTTP logs for my small site, I have traffic on it (it auto-polls my server every 60 seconds to report updated status), but none of those show up as "active" users in Google Analytics. I'm guessing uBlock Origin blocking GA by default is a likely cause.
I second Matomo. Easy to set-up and update and has an optional no-cookies (and thus no cookie banners) mode. I’m using it for my private sites, but have also used it professionally in the past.
I had a same problem, but GA is only the tip of the iceberg. A lot of apps with analytics capabilities have usability problem. In some, metrics are hidden too deep and it's hard to navigate. Others lack simple features and do not let you change things like timezone or displayed currency. But the biggest pain point for me was integration with data from other apps.
To simplify things I am building Raport[1]. Raport integrates metrics from multiple sources (GA, Search Console, Stripe, Adsense) and displays them in clear and simple to use dashboard. It is not an alternative to GA and other tools, but rather works alongside them as an additional interface, where you can view all your data. For me personally Raport saved me a lot of time I spent in GA and Search Console.
Yeah, I agree with that. A lot of these tools have usability issues. I kinda like Search Console but Google Analytics or Facebook Business gave me some terrible data analysis experiences.
I checked out your tool. Looks perfect for my needs but I need do dive a bit deeper to say more. I assume you plan to add more integrations in the future. Have you thought about adding an integration with LinkedIn? That’d be helpful for me.
[+] [-] shafyy|4 years ago|reply
Inspired by Plausible, I recently launched Fugu (https://fugu.lol). Fugu is a simple and privacy-friendly product analytics tool. It offers only event-based tracking, so it's better suited for web or mobile apps and not web sites (go for Plausible for websites). Fugu doesn't track unique users or any personally identifiable information. It's pretty basic for now, but I'm working on adding conversion funnels next (I work on it in my free time).
Fugu is open-source[0] and self-hostable. I make money by providing a managed version for $9/month.
0: https://github.com/shafy/fugu
[+] [-] nicbou|4 years ago|reply
It's good, but it doesn't replace Google Analytics at all. It tracks visits and events, but not navigation and user flow. It's severely lacking in detail compared to Analytics. It's a compromise, not a drop-in replacement.
However, it's excellent as a simple tracker for average website admins. I'm very happy with it. The maintainers have been nothing short of stellar with their support and transparency.
[+] [-] kingcharles|4 years ago|reply
What annoyed me was that if it's not logging on my site, how many other sites is it under-reporting for? YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW. And the fact they weren't willing to give it any serious thought at all. This is bad for an analytics company.
I tried (begrudgingly) and put Google Analytics behemoth of Javascript on my site and it worked perfectly, so I knew it was a bug in their system, not mine.
At that point I decided to try and figure it out so I fired up a proxy and sat there for a couple of hours going back and forth until I did figure it out myself. The bug is in their web server configuration really, not in the actually logging Javascript. Now, it might have been unethical of me, I don't know, but I felt since I'd spent a ton of my time to figure out a serious bug in their product it would be nice if they would throw me a year's free subscription. I felt that was fair compensation. They said no way, don't worry about, basically "I'm sure we'll figure it out ourselves in the future one day, don't call us."
So at that point I decided screw it, I can see they don't care about their customers and product, so I'm looking for alternatives that aren't GA.
That's my 2 cents. Your mileage may vary.
tl;dr: Be aware their product has a bug which causes it to not log data in certain circumstances (the script won't execute) and therefore if you are using their commercial product you might not be seeing all your visitors.
[+] [-] kingcharles|4 years ago|reply
Basically, I'd like a couple of days grace before having to pay for it, so I could install it on my app and see if it even works.
The reason I wouldn't install Fugu locally (or Plausible locally) is that I don't want a whole different deployment channel to support. Likely your code needs a different web server or framework than the rest of my stuff, and that is a lot of setup, installation and support. But I do like that the option exists and that I can see the code.
[+] [-] hijodelsol|4 years ago|reply
Ofc you can always support them and use their cloud hosting solution without any of these problems. I just wish they their pricing was fairer.. Their plans start at 6€ for 10k monthly page views - for that price you could run your own VPS capable of handling literally millions of requests.
[+] [-] apatheticonion|4 years ago|reply
Is that what your service Fugu aims to achieve?
EDIT: You absolutely can! https://plausible.io/self-hosted-web-analytics
[+] [-] falafelite|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rasulkireev|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nerdyadventurer|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mekster|4 years ago|reply
User journey, heatmap, filter by users that took several events?
[+] [-] sam_goody|4 years ago|reply
That's the only full featured open source competitor I am aware of, so it should be mentioned.
https://snowplowanalytics.com/
Somewhat FOSS. There was a story there, but I don't remember the details.
If you don't need much, plausible.io is decent but very low on details.
Cloudflare seems to offer the same amount of data as Plausible, unblockable, and with no JS to load [especially if you pay $20 for the better analytics], but I don't know what data they lose by browsers that cache dns queries etc.
[+] [-] sillysaurusx|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mooreds|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beauHD|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ivanech|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jaggirs|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] csbartus|4 years ago|reply
The author seems to have the same itch when went to create this product: https://www.goatcounter.com/why
[+] [-] pabs3|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zimmerx|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ocha|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jallbrit|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yla92|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] metasyn|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] buro9|4 years ago|reply
This isn't for everyone, I'm super comfortable doing this because of familiarity with all the components. But there's no out of the box dashboard for this so you have to replicate the UI parts you value. At least with Grafana once done you're in control of it and you own it.
I prefer server logs from the edge for their completeness. There are things missing... I.e. client side knowledge of screen sizes and device types. But server logs are so much more complete than client side JavaScript from third parties that are frequently adblocked.
[+] [-] nerdawson|4 years ago|reply
Plus, I think the vast majority of companies overestimate the importance of the data they collect. Maybe there's some interesting insights buried in GA but if you aren't actually using them what difference does it make.
I respect my site's visitors so I use a monitoring system that I personally have no problem being tracked by. I block GA in Firefox so why should I subject my visitors to it?
[+] [-] jmondi|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andreidd|4 years ago|reply
* it's open source
* you can self host as a docker container
* you can log from the client side or from the server side
* awesome founders with HN accounts :P
[+] [-] superasn|4 years ago|reply
It's basically a real time website log analyser which gives you enough information to know whats happening on your website but doesn't require any pesky Javascript etc to do it.
Also since it is works by analysing your log files it can never be blocked.
(1) https://rt.goaccess.io/?20210826211303
[+] [-] kingcharles|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ciantic|4 years ago|reply
This is because goaccess aggregates reports to single HTML file. If you give it a year of logs, it compresses whole year in one graph. It didn't seem to have interactive way to explore whole year.
Most people don't care and just generate monthly HTML report file, but that has same flaws as yearly file.
[+] [-] 58x14|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jazzychad|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dmor|4 years ago|reply
CTO and cofounder of Firstparty here, just wanted to mention our trial comes with 1,000,000 events free so if anyone wants to kick the tires it should be free for a long time for projects that don’t do a ton of web traffic, and we would love your feedback.
[+] [-] obmelvin|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] weinzierl|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] soperj|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kyrra|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marvinblum|4 years ago|reply
Yep, GA being blocked is a major issue. You can use server-side analytics [0] to prevent any JS from being blocked.
[0] https://docs.pirsch.io/get-started/backend-integration/ (I'm the co-founder of it)
[+] [-] jefftk|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kekebo|4 years ago|reply
Seems similar to Pirsch in terms of cookie less tracking, GDPR / DSGVO compliance, being open source, self-hostable, having a decent UI and API.
[0] https://matomo.org/matomo-on-premise/
[+] [-] x3ro|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jkbl|4 years ago|reply
To simplify things I am building Raport[1]. Raport integrates metrics from multiple sources (GA, Search Console, Stripe, Adsense) and displays them in clear and simple to use dashboard. It is not an alternative to GA and other tools, but rather works alongside them as an additional interface, where you can view all your data. For me personally Raport saved me a lot of time I spent in GA and Search Console.
[1] https://raport.pro
[+] [-] tommy_ford|4 years ago|reply
I checked out your tool. Looks perfect for my needs but I need do dive a bit deeper to say more. I assume you plan to add more integrations in the future. Have you thought about adding an integration with LinkedIn? That’d be helpful for me.
[+] [-] ianwehba|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gherkinnn|4 years ago|reply
It can track page views and events, the script is fairly small, is GDPR compliant, and gets out of your way.
https://usefathom.com
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] JackWritesCode|4 years ago|reply
A lot of companies claim to be GDPR compliant, and they’re not. We’ll be blogging more about this in the future as we don’t like folks being lied to.
[+] [-] aluciani|4 years ago|reply
I also switched from Google Analytics this year and happy I did.