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Ask HN: Best alternatives to Google Analytics in 2021?

192 pointsby nyellinover 3 years ago
I don&#x27;t like the new GA interface. It&#x27;s hard to do simple things like display full-urls when you serve multiple subdomains.<p>What alternatives do you like and why?

51 comments

shafyyover 3 years ago
If you&#x27;re looking for web analytics, I love and can recommend Plausible (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;plausible.io&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;plausible.io&#x2F;</a>). It&#x27;s both simple and privacy-friendly.<p>Inspired by Plausible, I recently launched Fugu (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fugu.lol" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fugu.lol</a>). Fugu is a simple and privacy-friendly product analytics tool. It offers only event-based tracking, so it&#x27;s better suited for web or mobile apps and not web sites (go for Plausible for websites). Fugu doesn&#x27;t track unique users or any personally identifiable information. It&#x27;s pretty basic for now, but I&#x27;m working on adding conversion funnels next (I work on it in my free time).<p>Fugu is open-source[0] and self-hostable. I make money by providing a managed version for $9&#x2F;month.<p>0: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;shafy&#x2F;fugu" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;shafy&#x2F;fugu</a>
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sam_goodyover 3 years ago
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;matomo.org" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;matomo.org</a><p>That&#x27;s the only full featured open source competitor I am aware of, so it should be mentioned.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;snowplowanalytics.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;snowplowanalytics.com&#x2F;</a><p>Somewhat FOSS. There was a story there, but I don&#x27;t remember the details.<p>If you don&#x27;t need much, plausible.io is decent but very low on details.<p>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&#x27;t know what data they lose by browsers that cache dns queries etc.
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beauHDover 3 years ago
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goatcounter.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goatcounter.com&#x2F;</a>
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pabs3over 3 years ago
Potentially controversial opinion on HN: don&#x27;t track visits to your website in any way. Or alternately track only statistics about which URLs were requested per day.
zimmerxover 3 years ago
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;umami.is&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;umami.is&#x2F;</a> discovered this, some of my friends use it and it&#x27;s pretty decent.
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buro9over 3 years ago
I&#x27;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.<p>This isn&#x27;t for everyone, I&#x27;m super comfortable doing this because of familiarity with all the components. But there&#x27;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&#x27;re in control of it and you own it.<p>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.
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nerdawsonover 3 years ago
I switched to Fathom at the start of the month and I&#x27;m really happy with it. There is a trade off when you opt for a privacy focused product but I think it&#x27;s more than worth it.<p>Plus, I think the vast majority of companies overestimate the importance of the data they collect. Maybe there&#x27;s some interesting insights buried in GA but if you aren&#x27;t actually using them what difference does it make.<p>I respect my site&#x27;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?
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andreiddover 3 years ago
posthog<p>* it&#x27;s open source<p>* you can self host as a docker container<p>* you can log from the client side or from the server side<p>* awesome founders with HN accounts :P
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superasnover 3 years ago
I prefer goaccess(1) over any other tool that uses client side Javascript.<p>It&#x27;s basically a real time website log analyser which gives you enough information to know whats happening on your website but doesn&#x27;t require any pesky Javascript etc to do it.<p>Also since it is works by analysing your log files it can never be blocked.<p>(1) <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;rt.goaccess.io&#x2F;?20210826211303" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;rt.goaccess.io&#x2F;?20210826211303</a>
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58x14over 3 years ago
Surprised to not see Simple Analytics here, which I always try and plug (no affiliation, just a happy user): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;simpleanalytics.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;simpleanalytics.com&#x2F;</a>
jazzychadover 3 years ago
A couple of friends of mine are building Firstparty - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;firstpartyhq.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;firstpartyhq.com</a> - the idea is to serve the analytics code&#x2F;cookie from your own domain (hence, first party). I&#x27;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.
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obmelvinover 3 years ago
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&#x27;s a bit out of scope for the OP?
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weinzierlover 3 years ago
I run my own Matomo. Boring and old-school, but serves me well.
soperjover 3 years ago
Why do it client side instead of just logging it server side? Preferably async.
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kyrraover 3 years ago
I&#x27;m actually interesting in this as well. I&#x27;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 &quot;active&quot; users in Google Analytics. I&#x27;m guessing uBlock Origin blocking GA by default is a likely cause.
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kekeboover 3 years ago
I just switched from GA to Matomo[0] and have a good impression so far.<p>Seems similar to Pirsch in terms of cookie less tracking, GDPR &#x2F; DSGVO compliance, being open source, self-hostable, having a decent UI and API.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;matomo.org&#x2F;matomo-on-premise&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;matomo.org&#x2F;matomo-on-premise&#x2F;</a>
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jkblover 3 years ago
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&#x27;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.<p>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.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;raport.pro" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;raport.pro</a>
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ianwehbaover 3 years ago
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;usefathom.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;usefathom.com&#x2F;</a>
gherkinnnover 3 years ago
Fathom is a simple analytics product.<p>It can track page views and events, the script is fairly small, is GDPR compliant, and gets out of your way.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;usefathom.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;usefathom.com</a>
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alucianiover 3 years ago
I like the simplicity of Fathom analytics <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;usefathom.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;usefathom.com</a><p>I also switched from Google Analytics this year and happy I did.
gompertzover 3 years ago
I use clicky.com, it&#x27;s ultra lite weight and has tons of features.
ncakeover 3 years ago
I use a script I wrote in an hour, which parses nginx access.log and prints last visitors to a &quot;_stats.txt&quot; file.<p>It&#x27;s 90% requests made by bots, so I didn&#x27;t bother making a UI.
ironman1over 3 years ago
We&#x27;re using Simple Analytics mainly for privacy reasons. I did a bit of research beforehand as we&#x27;re in a quite &#x27;sensitive&#x27; industry. So if you care about privacy Simple Analytics is the private one. They are the only ones that never track IP-address. Plausible and fathom do (only for a day or so, but still do). <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;simpleanalytics.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;simpleanalytics.com&#x2F;</a>
ksecover 3 years ago
Cloudflare Analytics or something on server with GoAccess.<p>SimpleAnalytics, Fathom, Pirsch and Plausible. They are all very similar from pricing, to display layout. The problem is they dont track returning visitors. Some argue that is against privacy, some think it is acceptable for 30 days period. I remember there was one Analytics from EUR that offer returning visitors stats but again.. Bookmarks on browser is practically useless. So I cant find it anymore.
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paulcoleover 3 years ago
I use the Query Explorer exclusively in place of the GA interface:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ga-dev-tools.web.app&#x2F;query-explorer&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ga-dev-tools.web.app&#x2F;query-explorer&#x2F;</a><p>Dead simple to create the queries I want and then copy&#x2F;paste into a spreadsheet.<p>You can also use the query URLs with the access token to easily get data into Jupyter Notebooks or whatever else you want to use for deeper analysis.
jdorfmanover 3 years ago
Documentation Insights by Scarf<p>* Simple dashboard<p>* Displays which:<p><pre><code> * businesses are visiting your documentation pages. * locales they are coming from (geolocation data in aggregate). * pages are most frequently visited. </code></pre> <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;about.scarf.sh&#x2F;documentation-insights" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;about.scarf.sh&#x2F;documentation-insights</a><p>Edit: formatting
aaronsdeveraover 3 years ago
One thing I am incredibly cognizant of is the balkanization of the web. Different territories and privacy regimes will dictate various compliance steps... navigating this will be difficult. As a site operator I plan on collecting analytics accordingly, with a polymorphic payload that knows whats allowed to be collected where possible...
fourseventyover 3 years ago
If you run an e-commerce store this is a list of good alternatives that are specifically focused on e-com analytics <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thoughtmetric.io&#x2F;topics&#x2F;google-analytics-alternatives-for-ecommerce" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thoughtmetric.io&#x2F;topics&#x2F;google-analytics-alternative...</a>
meksterover 3 years ago
I have hard time understanding why people mix up analytics software and counters.<p>What do you actually get out of counters like plausible compared to real analytical services?<p>I consider counters nothing but seeing how many visited and there&#x27;s pretty much no action to do based on the numbers but stare at it.
gsaover 3 years ago
Promoting my own side project: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nocookieanalytics.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nocookieanalytics.com&#x2F;</a>.<p>Cookie free, API first and open source with a focus on speed. It&#x27;s not as featured as some of the other well known projects in this area, but it&#x27;s a work in progress.
kjerzykover 3 years ago
I take you are using Google Analytics 4. You should still be able to use the older version (Universal Analytics) where you shouldn&#x27;t have any problems with displaying full URL (including hostname). It&#x27;s usually a setting&#x2F;filter that removes the hostname from the URL.
urcoilbisurcoover 3 years ago
I created <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;metrical.xyz" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;metrical.xyz</a><p>No cookies and banners to setup, custom domains, simple UI, share monitors with others, basic custom events support. Just the things that I needed, nothing more. Hope will come useful to somebody else!
encodererover 3 years ago
I’m a big fan of PanelBear.com and I recently implemented it on Crontab.guru (500k monthly visits).<p>It was painless, the ux is clean and polished, and I can see panelbear tracking 5% greater visits over the same time period as GA due likely to people who had adblocked GA.
feistypharitover 3 years ago
Always surprised more people don’t use countly. Runs nice in docker or digital ocean. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;count.ly" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;count.ly</a>. Been self hosting it for years with few issues.
barrystaesover 3 years ago
I used a self hosted Matomo (free and open source) for websites and apps, and it was simpler and (because of that) more flexible than Google Analytics.<p>Less UI clutter is nice also for colleagues.
vieclamdmptover 3 years ago
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;viclmbcninhbcgiangdmpt.fwscart.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;viclmbcninhbcgiangdmpt.fwscart.com&#x2F;</a>
terrycodyover 3 years ago
If you use Wordpress CMS(and I indeed suggest you do), KoKo analytics is free open source alternatives, quick, small, get the job done.
alexmingoiaover 3 years ago
CloudFlare free page views analytics + saving ?ref= on signup. That gets you traffic + conversion rate broken down by channel.
antidnanover 3 years ago
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;plausible.io&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;plausible.io&#x2F;</a><p>No cookies, GDPR compliant, simple interface
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Ziffityover 3 years ago
Adobe Analytics is a best alternative for google Analytics. but its available only on paid versions
immnnover 3 years ago
Try etracker: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.etracker.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.etracker.com&#x2F;</a><p>It is cookie-less, so no opt in is required in EU.<p>And off course you could have a look at goaccess. It’s parsing your access-logs and generates some nice metrics-dashboard. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;goaccess.io&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;goaccess.io&#x2F;</a>
ihucosover 3 years ago
There is also counter.dev - Free and Privacy friendly since more than a year now.
go_blue_13over 3 years ago
If you&#x27;re looking for an enterprise-grade solution, check out Rockerbox.com
tetekover 3 years ago
GA is awful, always was. I got tired of it and started using splitbee.io
raimille1over 3 years ago
I love splitbee.io, been using it for a year now in all my projects.
KingOfCodersover 3 years ago
Depending on your needs Simple Analytics or none.
anderspitmanover 3 years ago
I compared[0] a few of the popular options a while back. TLDR; GoatCounter.<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;apitman.com&#x2F;20&#x2F;#get-off-google-analytics" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;apitman.com&#x2F;20&#x2F;#get-off-google-analytics</a>
marvinblumover 3 years ago
Clearly Pirsch Analytics!<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pirsch.io&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pirsch.io&#x2F;</a><p>No cookies, open-source core, GDPR compliant, nice UI, and an extensive API.
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Tayweeover 3 years ago
My needs are pretty simple, but I just do server-side logging in a Django Middleware. I wanted to use a tracking cookie to track a user across the site, but I had a hell of a time trying to figure out whether that violated the GDPR, so I just log the user agent instead.<p>What really is the major gain to a big third party analytics platform when you really just need to know how somebody moves through your site, what the hot and cold paths are, and what influences retention and revisits?
JaumeRFover 3 years ago
At ekademy.eu we use plausible.
JackWritesCodeover 3 years ago
Woah this thread is packed. Most of these companies didn’t exist when we started Fathom back in 2018, so it’s great to see how the privacy-first analytics space is thriving.<p>I’m Jack Ellis, the cofounder of <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;usefathom.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;usefathom.com</a>. We’re a two person, self-funded company from Canada. Our software is used in projects by companies like IBM, GitHub, Tuple, Tailwind and lots of other awesome companies.<p>You shouldn’t use Fathom if you flinch at $14&#x2F;m for a highly available service. We’re self-funded, priced to be sustainable long term, and we don’t guess on privacy law.<p>Recently, we launched a feature called EU Isolation following the Schrems II ruling (where Max Schrems sued Facebook). Long story short, if you’re using analytics and are passing your EU website visitors personal data (IP &amp; User agent) to US-controlled cloud servers (even if they’re located in the EU), you’re violating the GDPR. Well with Fathom, we use both EU infrastructure and US infrastructure, but we automatically route all your EU visitors through German-owned infrastructure, and hash all personal data there, meaning your EU website visitors personal data will NEVER touch our core US infrastructure. This approach was put together with our Canadian and EU lawyers, and hasn’t been seen before in the analytics space. Lots of companies run on “EU servers”, but they’re controlled by US cloud providers and subject to FISA. This means they’re not GDPR compliant.<p>We don’t guess on legal matters, and we don’t cheap out on infrastructure. The lawyers we invest in work with some of the world’s largest companies, and they’re a big budget item for us. We run our infrastructure across multiple availability zones and invest heavily in serverless infrastructure. If you compare Fathom against most privacy-first analytics providers, you’ll see our uptime is uncontested. It costs us more, yes, but keeping our customers’ analytics reliable is of crucial importance to us. We run only on managed services, as we want experts (like some of the DevOps folk on here) maintaining it for us, and we stick to our strength (building our application).<p>With our custom domain solution (to bypass adblockers), we handle automatic SSL for you and serve your website visitors from a CDN, keeping things really fast.<p>We’ve also recently launched multi-domain, which is super powerful for holding multiple domains under a single dashboard (something the OP was speaking about). Especially since you can also then utilize our API to generate custom reports.<p>We’re going from strength to strength, and we’re the best option for folks who need GDPR compliance. We are also based in Canada, so we have adequacy ruling under the GDPR.<p>Hope this post is helpful for anyone who is already wondering about Fathom :)
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