You do not need Google Analytics - A list of privacy-friendly Google Analytics alternatives.

If you want to get insights about the traffic happening on your website you probably came across Google Analytics. Let me tell you: it is bloated, hard to use, and scraping user data. In this blog post, I will show you a list of privacy-friendly and ethical Google Analytics alternatives.

You do not need Google Analytics - A list of privacy-friendly Google Analytics alternatives.

‌Curious to get insights about the traffic happening on your website/landing page? You do not need Google Analytics for that. There are several more ethical tools with a focus on privacy. I gathered some of them in this blog post. This blog post intends to be a constantly growing list of privacy-friendly Google Analytics alternatives.


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IMPORTANT NOTICE 16.01.2022: The Austrian Data Protection Authority has ruled that Google Analytics is illegal. If you are using Google Analytics and you have website visitors from the EU you need to make the switch to another analytics service. It is illegal to send EU Personal Data (IP & User Agent) to US-owned servers in the EU (e.g. AWS). Please take your time and read the whole ruling about Google Analytics becoming illegal here

First of all, I will constantly update this list of privacy-first analytic tools, since there are quite a lot, and more and more makers, Indie Hackers, Solodevelopers, start building products in that space. If you have any suggestions, do not hesitate and message me straight away.

Disclaimer: Some of the tools and services mentioned in this blog post claim to be „cookie-free solutions“. If the service is not collecting any personal information, it is compliant with CCPA, GDPR, and PERCe, which means there is no need to display a cookie banner in most locations. On the other hand, European laws apply to all analytics software, which means analytical software cannot read device information without dedicated permission from the user. However, since most of the tools do not collect any personal information indeed, a GDPR or CCPA banner might not be required. IMPORTANT: THIS IS NOT A LEGAL ADVICE, I strongly recommend doing your own research whether you actually need or do not need a cookie banner. Generally speaking, you are probably on the safer side if you use one to inform the user about the fact, that your website is using privacy-friendly analytics.

TL;DR: All the privacy-friendly Google Analytics alternatives mentioned in this blog post are also available in the Airtable database linked down below. If you want to suggest a tool that would fit within the list you message me on Twitter or send me an email to philipp[at]creativerly.com.


Why should I use a privacy-friendly Google Analytics alternative?

Let me phrase it super simple: If you do not pay for a product, you are the product. You probably heard that phrase a lot, but I want to take the opportunity and make it clear one last time. Google Analytics is free, although it is not. Google Analytics makes money off the personal data they collect from their customers.

Back in May 2019 Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, stated that „Google will never sell any personal information to third parties, and you get to decide how your information is used“. Google uses data to make products more helpful for everyone, but on the other hand, they also say they protect your information. Since Google grew to a multi-billion empire, there are a lot of people that are rightly concerned about how their information is used and shared.

Privacy is personal. You decide what and how much information you share with companies and others. Therefore, why would you take the risk to fuel a tech giant, that has a big catalog of different privacy concerns, instead of supporting independent businesses, built by people that do care about your data and your privacy?

You do not need Google Analytics, in fact, you do not need Google.

Let us move on to this list full of outstanding privacy-friendly Google Analytics alternatives, that do not track you, do not collect any data, and are built with a privacy-first approach.


Fathom Analytics*

„Fathom is a simple, light-weight, privacy-first alternative to Google Analytics. So, stop scrolling through pages of reports and collecting gobs of personal data about your visitors, both of which you probably don’t need. Our website stats show up on a single, blazingly fast dashboard so you can make business decisions quickly.“

Fathom Analytics is built by Paul Jarvis and Jack Ellis. It is a super simple website analytics tool, that does not store any cookies, protects the user’s privacy, and delivers a beautiful dashboard that displays all the important metrics at first sight. Fathom is trusted by thousands and is used by companies like GitHub, Buffer, and Transistor.

Fathom Analytics is compliant with GDPR, CCPA, ePrivacy, PECR, and COPPA. All their subscriptions let you use Fathom for unlimited websites. Their pricing starts at $14 per month, for 100,000 page views per month. It is simple and fair pricing.

With Fathom you are on the secure site, since their on-demand, auto-scaling servers will never slow your site down. The beautifully designed dashboard gives you all the insights into what is happening live on your website, where people are visiting, and where they are coming from.

Using Fathom is incredibly easy. You simply need to paste a tiny bit of code into the header section of your website or content management system. That’s it. You are done and the setup is finished. Fathom gives you all the features you need: the dashboard shows you all the most useful information (top content, top referrers, top actions, etc.) in one beautiful place. On top of that, you will get insights into what is happening live on your website. If you are building in public, running an open startup, or simply want to be transparent about your analytics and share it with others, you can do so with Fathom and make your dashboard public.

Anything that is happening on your dashboard within Fathom is yours and yours alone, forever. Fathom does not lock you in, whenever you want to export your data, you only have to click one button and can export it.

Great tool by two great founders.

Side Note: if you use the link provided by Creativerly to sign up to Fathom Analytics you will get a $10 discount on your first invoice.


Plausible Analytics

Plausible is a lightweight and open-source website analytics tool. No cookies and fully compliant with GDPR, CCPA and PECR. Made and hosted in the EU.

I am following the Plausible Analytics journey for quite some time now on Indie Hackers and I simply enjoy the fact, that it constantly grows as a privacy-friendly Google Analytics alternative.

Plausible is founded by Marko Saric and Uku Täht. The analytics tool launched publicly in beta back in January 2019. Since then they fully open-sourced the code of Plausible Analytics, launched annual plans, got featured in TechCrunch, scaled to 2,000 paying subscribers, and hit over $15k monthly revenue. A true success story.

Plausible Analytics is built for privacy-conscious site owners. It is an ethical, open-source, simple, lightweight, and privacy-first Google Analytics alternative. When you use Plausible you keep 100% ownership of all your website data. On top of that, you protect the privacy of your visitors. All and everything at the same time.

Since Plausible Analytics is privacy-friendly, there is no need for cookie banners or GDPR consent. All the site measurement is carried out absolutely anonymously. It is fast, super easy to integrate, offers fair pricing, a beautiful dashboard, and all the features you need to get the insights you need.

If I can not convince you to use Plausible Analytics instead of Google Analytics, take a look at this great comparison, Plausible Analytics vs Google Analytics, provided by Plausible itself.


Umami

umami is free, fast, open-source, beautiful, simple website analytics.

Umami is a super simple, self-hosted, privacy-first Google Analytics alternative built by Mike Cao. It was created with the goal in mind to provide a more ethical, friendlier, privacy-focused, free, and open-source website analytics tool, so you do not have to use Google Analytics.

Umami collects only the metrics and statistics you really want to see and fit all of them on one single page, packed in a beautiful dashboard. If you want to get a taste of the dashboard you can check out a live demo of umami here.

Since umami is a self-hosted analytics tool, you need to install it by yourself. The docs provided by umami guide you through every single step. For people with little knowledge, this could still be a little bit overwhelming, but there is always the possibility to message one of the contributors and ask for help.

Once everything is up and running, it is super easy to add your website or tracking events. If you have advanced knowledge when it comes to self-hosting tools, you can even configure Umami’s trackers, and also edit the tracker functions if you want more control over your tracking.


66analytics*

Self-hosted, friendly, all-in-one web analytics tool. Lightweight tracking, session replays, heatmaps, user journeys & more.

One of the many reasons why people are searching for privacy-friendly Google Analytics alternatives is the fact that the dashboard of Google Analytics is overloaded. 66analytics byAltumCode features a super simple, beautifully looking, and friendly dashboard, that gives you all the important information you need at first sight. You can simply glance over them and easily understand what is going on.

The whole installation process of 66analytics takes only five minutes. Everything is super easy to understand, and once everything is set up, you will see a beautiful, modern, and good-looking dashboard.

The dashboard contains all the important information you need: top pages, countries, and referrers, the evolution of the past 30 days (although you can obviously set the range yourself), goal tracking, visitor details (browsers, devices, OS, etc.). On top of that, 66analytics helps you to understand your visitors. Analyze all their past sessions, to get the insights you need.

66analytics also features Heatmaps (although currently in beta) to understand where your users click and where the cold zones of your website are.

As all the analytics tools featured in this post, 66analytics is privacy-first, which means all data is owned by you and stored on your servers, on top of that it also respect your user’s data as no IP addresses are being collected.

66analytics is available from $79 for the regular license for personal use. It includes free future updates, 6 months of support, unlimited users, unlimited tracked websites, and more. There is also an extended license available with some additional features.

Make sure to check out all the other products of AltumCode too.


Splitbee

Web Insights as Sweet as Honey. Track and optimize your online business with Splitbee. Your friendly analytics & conversion platform.

Splitbee is one of the most beautiful privacy-friendly Google Analytics alternatives out there. It is built by Tobias Lins und Timo Lins. I use it myself on creativerly.com and I am super happy with the features and the general look and feel of the dashboard. With Splitbee you can experience incoming traffic in real-time. At first glance, you will get insights into where users are coming from and what page they visited.

The so-called User Explorer of Splitbee lets you see your users in actions. Sidenote: Splitbee has a neat little website detail implemented: when you head over to their website and scroll down to the User Explorer section, the interface mockups on the left will actually show your session length, I really liked that. Page views will get automatically tracked by Splitbee, if you want to get more detailed insights you can always add custom events.

Another great Splitbee feature is Automations. With Automations you have the possibility to create flows triggered by user events, defined by you. For example, you could set up an automation to receive a notification whenever you make a sale. I have set up an automation to receive a Telegram Message whenever someone signs up to Creativerly. The implementation was streamlined, fast, and super simple.

Splitbee is based in Europe, which means your data is stored securely and will never get shared or sold to any third party. The Splitbee dashboard is blazingly fast and has an incredible beautiful UX. Splitbee also is super lightweight since it runs on a global network and only adds <4kb to your site, one line of code, and you are done.

You can use Splitbee for free up to 5,000 monthly page views, no credit card required, just sign up, add your website and you are good to go.


Simple Analytics

Simple, clean, and friendly analytics for everyone.

Simple Analytics by Adriaan Rossum is another secure, privacy-first, Europe-based, simple, and clean Google Analytics alternative. Simple Analytics does not use any cookies or collect any personal data. That means, when you use Simple Analytics, you do not have to use annoying cookie banners, therefore you do also not have to worry about GDPR, CCPA, or PECR.

Simple Analytics’ dashboard shows you all the essential data you need like page views, referrers, top pages, and screen sizes. On top of that, they also enrich this data with super useful info. For example, if you get a lot of traffic from Twitter and you want to get more insights about it, you should definitely consider Simple Analytics, since it shows you the actual Tweet where the traffic is coming from.

With Simple Analytics you will get a super clean dashboard both available in light and dark mode. If you want to get a taste of it, you can check out a live demo version of Simple Analytics’ dashboard. They also have in-depth docs that give you insights regarding events, API, all their features, integrations, and more.

Their pricing starts at €19 per month (billed monthly, if you choose yearly the Starter Plan will cost you €9 per month), which is the Starter plan. It will give you up to 100k page views, 1 user, unlimited websites, the possibility to export all your data, and Events, which are currently in Beta.

What I really like about Simple Analytics is their Public Roadmap which will give you insights on what the team is currently working on, and you can also request and suggest new features.


GoatCounter

Easy web analytics. No tracking of personal data.

GoatCounter is an open-source web analytics platform built by Martin Tournoij. GoatCounter is a great Google Analytics alternative, available as a hosted service (free for non-commercial use) or as a self-hosted app.

The main goal of GoatCounter is to offer an easy-to-use, privacy-first, and privacy-friendly web analytics tool as an alternative to Google Analytics. GoatCounter does not track users with unique identifiers, which means there is no need to use a GDPR notice (cookies).

GoatCounter was built to be lightweight and fast. All in all, GoatCounter only adds ∼3.5kb to your website. It is super easy to implement and super easy to use. A lot of people get overwhelmed with Google Analytics because there are way to many options, a confusing dashboard, and the most important information is not available at first glance. GoatCounter wants to make web analytics easy and for everyone.

As a fan of open-source software, it is great to see that GoatCounter is 100% committed to open source. You can head over to GoatCounter’s GitHub page to exactly see what the code does, make improvements, or self-host it for any purpose.

Just as other already mentioned tools, GoatCounter features a live preview of their dashboard too. To be honest, I am not a huge fan of the design of GoatCounter. Compared to the other options in this post it feels outdated and could use some design love. Other than that, GoatCounter emphasizes Accessibility, since the whole interface works well with assistive technology such as screen readers.

With GoatCounter, you completely own your data, and you can always export all of it and cancel at any time.


Ackee

Track without being tracked.

With Ackee by Tobias Reich I would like to present you with another self-hosted Google Analytics alternative, that does care about your privacy. Ackee is a Node.js web analytics tool, that runs on your own server and provides useful statistics in a minimal interface.

The beautifully designed dashboard gives you a nice and clear overview of all your websites running Ackee. Ackee will give you a nice overview of all the insights you need, views, referrers, durations, and more. The whole interface was designed with the intention in my mind to keep focus while scanning all the insights.

Ackee Analytics is safe and anonymous, cookie-free, and secure. It features a multi-step anonymization process that ensures that your user’s data stays anonymous. On top of that, Ackee is 100% open-source and self-hosted. Therefore, your data will always be in your hands and only your hands. Also, you can use Ackee with unlimited domains, it does not matter if you want to analyze the traffic of one or 10 websites. To get a taste of the look of the dashboard you can check out the live demo version of Ackee.

If you considering using Ackee for your website, Tobias provided an in-depth guide and detailed documentation to set everything up.


Beampipe

Simple. Powerful. Private. Beampipe is simple, privacy-focused web analytics, free for up to 10k monthly page views.

With Beampipe, built by Alex Sparrow, you do not have to scroll through endless reports or browse through endless pages to get the insights you need. Beampipe focuses on the metrics and insights that really matter. Beampipe’s dashboard gets updated in real-time, so you can always be sure to see the right numbers.

All the traffic that comes to your site can be filtered by source, region, or time period. Beampipe’s javascript SDK can record user interactions and metadata, which lets you better understand how your product is being used. This way, you can get all the insights to improve sales funnels or increase your conversion rates.

Beampipe’s tracking script is incredibly tiny, so you can be sure that your website will stay blazingly fast. The setup is straightforward and super easy. Since Beampipe is 100% privacy-focused, there are no cookies involved. The whole service is compliant with GDPR, PECR, and CCPA.

Beampipe has one of the best free plans. They think that privacy-friendly analytics should be available for everyone. Therefore, you can use the free plan of Beampipe for up to 10k page views per month. Also included are 5 domains and the full-featured dashboard. If you want to get a taste of the dashboard you can check out the live demo here.

If you need Beampipe on more than 5 domains or if you need a higher cap of page views per month, Beampipe’s Pro subscription will cost you $10 per month (10 domains, 100k page views per month, API access, email support, slack integration).


Kindmetrics

Privacy-Focused Website Analytics For Everyone.

Kindmetrics is a strictly privacy-focused Google Analytics alternative, built by Håkan Nylén. Kindmetrics offers a more ethical and more excellent way to get the insights of your websites you really need, without giving away your data and the data of your users to big enterprises.

Kindmetrics is EU-based and 100% focused on building a privacy-first tool. The Kindmetrics dashboard is super clean and gives a perfect overview of data like most-viewed pages, referrers, countries, devices, and more. Everything is displayed on one single page.

Besides giving you insights about countries and languages, devices and browsers, referrers, and visited pages, Kindmetrics also gives you insights about page speed. With Kindmetrics you have the ability to see what page is taking the most time to load and where users have it hard to get a good experience on your website.

On top of that, Kindmetrics also offers features like API access, email reports, the ability to share analytics, a very small tracking script, and a lot more. Kindmetrics is open-source, built fully transparent, and gets frequently code updates. If you want the full privacy-first experience, you can even self-host Kindmetrics.

Kindmetrics pricing starts with the Personal Plan which costs €7 per month (for 30,000 events).


Offen

Fair web analytics. Let your users access their data. Gain valuable insights at the same time. Open, lightweight, self hosted and free.

Offen is another simple and privacy-first and privacy-friendly Google Analytics alternative, based in the EU (Germany), that focuses on offering a lightweight, ethical, and meaningful analytics tool.

Offen is open-source, all user data is end-to-end encrypted, and it will always be free to use. Absolutely no third parties are involved, and it fully complies with GDPR. When you use Offen on your website, your users have full control over their data, since they must actively give consent to data collection.

As mentioned earlier, Offen is a self-hosted solution. So, if you are planning on using it for your website, make sure to check out the docs to get an in-depth guide on how to run Offen. After installing Offen, you simply need to integrate the code snippet into the pages you want to track.

Offen does not only have benefits for you and your website, but also for your users. They can actively decide if they want to opt into data collection or decide to not participate at all. Your users can see the data of all pages the user has visited since your Offen installation is active. If you want to get a glimpse of how that will look like, just head over to Offen’s website and scroll down to the Offen Auditorium.

Currently, Offen is localized only in English, German, and French.


Microanalytics

Free website analytics. A lightweight, privacy-focused alternative to Google Analytics.

With Microanalytics we have another EU-based, built by Indie Developers, privacy-first, user-friendly, Google Analytics alternative in our list. Microanalytics is built by a team of indie developers, and their server is hosted and located in a data center in France. Therefore, it is covered by EU privacy laws and is compliant with GDPR, PECR, and CCPA.

Microanalytics was built with simplicity in mind. Big analytics platforms are usually overloaded with information, their dashboards look cramped up, and it is hard to get the insights, that really matter. Microanalytics is analytics made easy, all the data you need gets displayed in one place.

Microanalytics is privacy-focused, they do not track you or your visitors with IP addresses, fingerprints, or cookies. You can be sure that you will keep control over everything. All your data is yours and will be yours forever.

On top of that, Microanalytics is also built by using sustainable technology, powered by green energy. When you use Microanalytics, you do not have to worry about a slow website, since their lightweight tracking code adds less than 1kb in size to your website, so you can be sure that your website always runs and loads fast.

You can use Microanalytics completely for free up to 10k monthly page views. The free plan also includes unlimited websites, API access, unlimited events, email reports, and data export.


Insights

Privacy-Focused Analytics Platform.

Insights is a privacy-focused Google Analytics alternative, that is specifically aimed at developers, built by Henrique Spotorno. It will give you the possibility to track every metric you need without invading your user's privacy.

Insights is fully compliant with GDPR, CCPA, and PECR. When using Insights on your website, you do not need to display a cookie banner, since Insights simply does not use any cookies. Since Insights was built with developers in mind, you can make it as powerful as you want it to be.

Insights does not only offer page views tracking, but also full event tracking, such as clicking on a button, leaving the page, or even scrolling on a page. If you are looking for more customization, you can use Insights.js which is a very powerful tool for customizing your website tracking.

You can use Insights for free for up to 3k events or page views. Their paid subscription plans start at $12/month for up to 100k events or page views (if you need more they are also offering Startup - $29/month up to 1m events/page views - and Business - $79/month up to 10m events/page views - plans).

If you decide to use Insights, they provided in-depth documentation that provides you with all the important information on how to set up and use their analytics tool.


Counter

Web Analytics made simple and therefore privacy friendly.

Counter is a privacy-focused Google Analytics alternative, that is completely free, created by the team from Naive. Counter does not collect any personal data, their source code is published under the AGPL-v3 license, which makes it open source, and they focus on being straight privacy-friendly, by not using any cookies, no logging, and no IP address fingerprinting.

You can get a taste of how the Counter dashboard looks like by using the live demo dashboard on their website. Their dashboard looks great and gives you all the important information at first glance. All of Counter’s metrics are based on daily unique visitors, which represents a visit at a specific date. On top of that, you will get insights about referrers, so you can see where your users are coming from.

The biggest advantage of Counter is the fact, that you do not have to choose between free or privacy-friendly. They do offer both. Counter is free to use, so everybody can enjoy privacy-focused analytics for their website, without invading their user's privacy.


Darwin

Get your best web experience.

Darwin is a super interesting Google Analytics alternative, which has personal data protection and privacy as its core values.

But, Darwin does even more than measuring everything on your website. Darwin provides tools to help you create digital experiences that grow your traffic, conversions, and sales. Out of the box, Darwin integrates with your favorite services and applications, like HubSpot, Shopify, Squarespace, or WordPress.

While most of the tools and services mentioned in this blog post are aimed at individuals and small companies that are looking for super simple and minimal analytics, Darwin is aimed at Professional Marketers. The Smart Dashboard (which is straight beautiful) will deliver you the insights you need to optimize your digital experience. Darwin’s smart dashboard lets you make complex data comparisons, view trends, measure goals, rapidly improve and iterate.

All the analytics you see within the dashboard are real-time data, so you can proactively monitor your user experience. If you want to create AB tests based on the analytics you get, Darwin got you covered with AB Analytics.

One of the most interesting features of Darwin is Session Replay, which gives you the power to visualize your user’s journey to find and identify any bumps along the way, see where users get stuck and fix problems and issues faster with better insights.

As mentioned earlier, Darwin’s core values are personal data protection and privacy, therefore Darwin is GDPR and CCPA compliant. Darwin offers a 14-day trial, after that Darwin will cost you $79 per month for 10,000 monthly user sessions (Monthly user sessions are calculated as the number of unique users with at least one interaction with your site/app in the last month). For that price, you will get powerful features like Smart Dashboard, AB Analytics, Session Replay, Live Heatmaps, Real-Time Data, Bot Flagging, Conversion Tracking, and even more. Sign up now and give it a try.


Shynet

Modern, privacy-friendly, and cookie-free web analytics.

Shynet is another privacy-friendly and cookie-free Google Analytics alternative, that needs to be hosted by yourself, so you can be sure all your data will be yours forever. It was created by Miles McCain.

Shynet is a completely cookie-free analytics solution, which means you do not need any intrusive cookie notices on your website. Shynet is open-source and it is intended to be self-hosted. Because Shynet is so small it can run as a single docker container on a single small VPS. Shynet is built using Django, a Python Web-Framework, so deploying, updating, and migrating can be done without any headaches.

With a single Shynet instance, you can use it on multiple different sites and it also supports multiple users. On top of that, Shynet is incredibly lightweight, since their tracking script weighs less than a kilobyte. Shynet’s dashboard will give you only useful metrics without being creepy. The dashboard will give insights about Hits, Sessions, Page load time, Bounce rate, Duration, Referrers, Locations, Browsers, and more. Additionally, all the necessary information will get showcased within a beautiful dashboard (built using a17t, an atomic design library).


Matomo

Take back control with Matomo – a powerful web analytics platform that gives you 100% data ownership.

Matomo is one of the (probably the) biggest Google Analytics alternatives out there. Matomo is used on over 1 million websites in over 190 countries and they can count Red Bull, United Nations, NASA, and Amnesty International as their client.

With Matomo installed on your website, you will not make any privacy sacrifices or compromise your site. You can even use it without needing to ask for consent. Matomo gives you 100% data ownership, so you have the power to protect your user’s privacy. Therefore, Matomo is also GDPR and CCPA compliant.

Matomo is fully open source, therefore you can host Matomo on your own server with no data limitation, which means you can install Matomo on unlimited websites, add unlimited team members, and create unlimited segments. If you want to host on Matomo’s servers instead, you can do so too. Their paid subscriptions start at €29 per month (annual billing) for up to 50,000 page views.

Matomo’s dashboard is easy-to-use, you can adjust it to your needs, and will get enhanced insights to get a complete picture of your users and customers. Design-wise Matomo might not be the most beautiful option compared to the other tools and services featured in this blog post, but that also might just be a personal preference.

Overall, Matomo might be one of the most solid Google Analytics alternatives out there.


Pirsch

As Easy As Analytics Gets.

Do we already have a winner for the most beautiful analytics dashboard? If not Pirsch is a super strong contender. Pirsch is a simple, privacy-friendly, open-source, cookie-free Google Analytics alternative, built and hosted in Germany, under strict privacy laws of the European Union.

Just by looking at their website I am already incredibly attracted to their product. It is a masterpiece of UI design, simply gorgeous. Their core values are to be a privacy-focused, open-source, and easy-to-integrate analytics solution. Online Marketing and ad-tech is a privacy nightmare. Google Analytics tracks you on each step you take around the web. While doing this, it collects loads of data. Pirsch was built with privacy in mind and therefore respects your visitors’ privacy.

If you use Pirsch on your website, your visitors can be sure that they will never get tracked across websites nor will any data or identifiable information get collected and sold. Therefore, Pirsch also is cookie-free which means you will not need to implement a cookie banner on your website.

Pirsch’ dashboard is incredibly powerful to suit your personal or business needs. All the necessary insights on all your website metrics, like page views, bounce rate, time on page, and more will get displayed in a beautiful way. Pirsch is also mobile-friendly which means it does not matter if you want to check your website’s insights on your desktop, tablet, or smartphone, with Pirsch you can be sure that your dashboard always looks on-point. If you want to get a taste of the dashboard you can check out the demo of Pirsch.

The pricing of Pirsch starts at $4 per month (billed annually) for up to 10,000 page views and will include unlimited websites, unlimited admins, 100% data ownership, and much more. All plans will also come with a 30-day free trial which is more than enough time to get a taste of Pirsch and to see if it is a fit for you.

Pirsch is an incredibly beautiful piece of software!


Volument

A new take on website analytics.

If you are looking for website analytics that has a focus on privacy and conversion optimization, and no need to use cookie banners, you should check out Volument, a great Google Analytics alternative.

You are probably asking yourself what exactly conversion optimization is and how it works. So, let us take a look at it. Volument’s essential value is the fact, that it is designed for conversion optimization, which means getting more contacts, sales leads, and customers. Volument aims to be the essential tool to help you along the way. Volument focuses on traction instead of measuring every little statistical detail on your website. Therefore, you will get insights into how much value you can get from a visitor.

There are two important metrics you should know about when using Volument: Low traction, which means people are leaving your site quickly, and High traction, which means they focus carefully on your content. This way, you are able to compare marketing channels, campaigns, geographical locations, devices, websites, and more.

No matter if you are a Marketer looking to discover new channels, audiences, and geographical locations, or a designer looking for engagement bottlenecks and attempt to fix them, or a developer looking to discover broken devices and screen resolutions to fix them, or a writer looking to find out what content works and what turns people away, Volument is a powerful web analytics tool that will help you with all of them.

Besides all of that, Volument does not collect any personally identifiable information. Therefore, you do not need to implement any cookie banners. But remember, according to European laws, analytical software is not allowed to read device information without dedicated permission. So, be aware to do some further investigation.

Volument is a truly maxed-out analytical tool that goes really deep into the privacy-friendly field and provides you with a simple and faster way to optimize your website. If you want to get a taste of their dashboard you can do so by checking out the demo version. Volument can be used completely for free for up to 10,000 sessions per month. Their paid subscriptions start at $25 per month for up to 50,000 sessions per month and it comes with a 30-days free trial.


Piwik PRO

Analyze the customer journey across websites and apps - an analytics suite with a focus on user privacy and data security.

Piwik PRO is an analytics suite built by AdTech and MarTech experts, that is geared towards compliance with the strictest security policies and privacy regulations around the world. This combined with features to empower organizations to analyze and streamline customer journeys makes it a superb Google Analytics alternative.

Piwik PRO not only lets you get insights about your website, but it is also a full-featured analytics platform that lets you measure, analyze and improve the user experience at each step of your customer’s relationship. Along the way, Piwik PRO ensures data privacy and security.

If you are looking to get the complete picture of the user experience and customer journey for both web and mobile, Piwik PRO is the right tool for you. But Piwik PRO can do even more for you. It helps you understand user behavior on websites and apps, from public pages to post-login areas. Piwik PRO is the analytics suite you need if you want to improve products and optimize the experience at every stage of the user lifecycle.

The most important part, Piwik PRO respects user privacy and regulations all over the world. It even lets you collect and manage consents and data requests in one place to simplify compliance. With a tool like Piwik PRO you apply the highest privacy standards to your websites and marketing tools.

There is a free forever plan available which is called Piwik PRO Core. It's free up to 500k events per month. Paid plans start at 325 EUR per month.

To get a full picture of all the awesome features Piwik PRO offers, make sure to head over to their website and request a personalized demo.


phpAnalytics

Self-hosted web analytics software, with privacy and simplicity at its core.

phpAnalytics is a self-hosted web analytics tool, that offers all the features you need to get insights into the traffic happening on your website, but it was built with privacy and simplicity at its core. You can set it up in minutes, use it as an individual or start your very own SaaS business.

I already mentioned it quite a few times in this article, Google Analytics is bloated and hard to understand if you just want to get straight-to-point information and insights about the traffic happening on your website. phpAnalytics is easy to understand. They are offering comprehensive and insightful reports, which allow the user to better understand their audience like never before.

No matter if you want to know where your users are coming from, which browsers they are using, where they spent the most time on your website, or what devices they are using, phpAnalytics provides you with all the important information and insights, in a clean and beautiful dashboard. If you want to get a taste of the dashboard you can do so by heading to the demo version of it.

phpAnalytics was built with privacy in mind, there is no IP tracking, no cookies, and no fingerprinting so you can be sure that the data of your users is safe. On top of that, it is also incredibly lightweight, by adding less than 1kb to your site if you implement the tracking code. More importantly, phpAnalytics also meets GDPR, CCPA, and PECR policies.

phpAnalytics is open-source and you can use the software through a one-time payment. If you want to use phpAnalytics as an individual it will cost you $49 (Regular License*), If you're planning to charge your users to use your website, the Extended license is required which will cost you $199*.

For more information head over to phpAnalytics documentation.


Friendly Analytics

Friendly Analytics provides you with meaningful statistics and protect the privacy of your visitors.

Friendly Analytics is an open startup working on a big goal: to make marketing software more friendly. Friendly Analytics is built by Stefan Vetter and József Keller. Together they create a privacy-first and ethical Google Analytics alternative to get insights about the traffic happening on your website.

Your data is protected through hosting in Germany and Switzerland in compliance with GDPR and FADP. Since regulation in the EU and Switzerland became stricter, you can protect yourself from lawsuits and legal actions, when using tools and services which comply with them, and Friendly Analytics is one of them.

Friendly Analytics is based on Matomo (an open-source Google Analytics alternative and one of the most popular open-source solutions for web analytics in general). Additionally, Friendly Analytics does not set cookies and does not store any personal data. That is privacy-first.

With Friendly Analytics you can get all the performance you need, track page views, the time a user spends on your website, or conversions. To get a taste of Friendly Analytics you can check out the live demo dashboard.

To get Friendly Analytics set up you can either use their ready-made WordPress Plugin or simply add a short line of code to your website, after that Friendly Analytics is up and running.

You can test and try Friendly Analytics for free for up to 14 days. Their paid subscriptions start at €9 per month (if billed monthly, save 17% if billed yearly) for up to 10.000 page views per month, 1 website, unlimited users, funnels, events, and more.


UXWizz

Get better insights and increase privacy with self-hosted web analytics.

UXWizz is another self-hosted version in our list of privacy-friendly Google Analytics alternatives. UXWizz helps you to instantly understand your users visiting your website, but also it will help you improve your website and ultimately own your data. Since UXWizz is such a feature-rich analytics service you can replace Google Analytics, Hotjar, and more services, with just one single independent platform.

As mentioned earlier, UXWizz is a self-hosted analytics service, which means it is your own platform. When you decide to use UZWizz for your own website, you will have full control over your data, since there is no sharing with any third parties. That is what we call privacy-first.

UXWizz offers you all the features you would expect from an analytics platform, and many more. UXWizz gives you the possibility to compare user categories with a single click, which means you can easily find out where converting users are coming from. Besides that, UXWizz also features Heatmaps to understand your user’s attention. Heatmaps give you a great overview of all the parts of your page that get the most attention. Therefore, you will know which elements should be emphasized and which should be removed.

If you want to get a glimpse of how UXWizz' dashboard looks like, you can do so right here by heading over to the demo dashboard.

The Personal License of UXWizz which is perfectly suitable for individuals and small startups will cost you $79 (lifetime license + 1-year support) and will include 5 domains, unlimited visitors, unlimited heat maps, unlimited session recording, and more. If you need to track more than five domains, you can upgrade to the Company License which will cost you $249, and it will give you a multi-user dashboard login system too.


Swetrix

Ultimate open-source analytics to satisfy all your needs.

Swetrix is a fully opensource, cookieless and privacy-focused Google Analytics alternative. Its analytics service brings an advanced and customisable experience to your websites and web applications. Swetrix is a superb service to track every metric you need without ever invading your user's privacy.

With Swetrix you always see the big picture in a simple and straightforward way. One of the biggest drawbacks of Google Analytics (besides the fact that they scrape their user's data) is the fact that their dashboard and functionalities are confusing, cramped, and all over the place, so you hardly ever find the metrics you are looking for. Swetrix delivers your analytics in a super simple way, so you get your reports, metrics, and notifications all at first sight.

On top of that, Swetrix is privacy-focused and open-source. They only track data that they declare. Their analytics script is fully cookie-less and their service, in general, is compliant with regulations such as GDPR, PECR, CCPA, ePrivacy, and COPPA. When you are using Swetrix you can be sure that all of the data they collect is anonymised. Additionally, Swetrix always tries to be as transparent and respectful regarding privacy.

Regarding features, Swetrix not only offers basic tracking of the traffic happening on your website, but you can also create and set up custom events such as button clicks or registrations. You can track unique visitors, do data segmentation, receive detailed email reports and GDPR data exports, share your project with other Swetrix users, set up timezones, API keys and more.

In terms of security, Swetrix provides users an ability to set up and use Two-Factor Authentication (2FA).

You can use Swetrix completely for free for up to 5000 events per month and up to 10 projects. If you need more flexibility you can always upgrade to one of the paid plans, which are starting at $15 per month for up to 100k events per month or selfhost the service yourself via Docker containers.


SEAL metrics

SEAL metrics is another privacy-focused Google Analytics alternatives built and hosted in the EU. Of all the services featured in this list, SEAL metrics has one of the strongest focuses on privacy. SEAL metrics is compliant with GDPR, CCPA, PECR, and ePrivacy. When you are using SEAL metrics for your site you can be user that no personal data gets collected and no cookies are needed. This is the case because of SEAL metrics’ proprietary system as it uses aggregated data only. There is no IP tracking, cookies, local storage, user agents, or anything that would breach the privacy of your visitors involved.

SEAL metrics is a more professional service I would say, although they are offering a Basic Package for individuals who want to use analytics on their personal website or small business, besides their Pro Package which is aimed at business that want to grow by getting detailed insights on cost data, conversions, custom events, and more. Both packages give you unlimited page views, domains, accounts, and events.

No matter what package you will choose, SEAL metrics will provide you with all the data that matters, displayed within a solid dashboard that gives you a nice overview of all the analytics happening on your site. Installing and setting up SEAL metrics on your site is super easy. If you are using WordPress, Magento, WooCommerce, or PrestaShop, you can install SEAL metrics simply by using a plugin. Other than that, all you need to do is copying the tracker code provided by SEAL metrics into all your pages, straight after the  tag.

To get a taste of SEAL metrics head over to their website and check the demo video.


Wide Angle Analytics

Kind, Privacy-Friendly, and Useful Web Analytics

If you are looking for a privacy-friendly Google Analytics alternative designed, built, and hosted in the European Union, then you definitely should check out Wide Angle Analytics. Wide Angle Analytics is a superb service and tool to get powerful visitor insights and pain-free compliance. There are a lot of different analytic services (with Google Analytics up-front) which do not respect their user’s privacy. Wide Angle Analytics was designed to be compliant with GDPR, so you can be sure that your data will always be treated with privacy in mind.

Wide Angle does not store or share any personal data of your users or visitors. Everything is anonymized. The company mentions transparently, that your data is stored and processed solely in the European Union, hosted with one of the biggest European cloud solutions providers, OVHcloud.

When you access your dashboard within Wide Angle Analytics, you will get presented with a clear and structured view to get instant insights into your sites’ performance and all the traffic happening on your website. This makes it possible to quickly uncover any trends, campaign impacts, and potential issues and action points. To prevent that you get overwhelmed with a lot of data, at first sight, Wide Angle Analytics is presenting you key data (which are the top 5 data points) first. If you want to see the bigger picture, you can always click on „show more“ to dive even deeper into the traffic happening on your website.

Wide Angle Analytics also features a dedicated maps view, which gives you a beautiful overview of the geographical location of your visitors. Additionally, you can also apply filters and combine them with adjustments to get an even more detailed view.

Wide Angle Analytics is a great service that delivers privacy-friendly analytics, gives you full control of your data, avoids adblockers, measures the impact of your campaigns, achieves GDPR compliance, and a lot more. The monthly plan of Wide Angle Analytics will cost you €39 per month and per site. The annual plan will cost you €390 per year and per site. If you want to add more sites you can always update your plan.

All plans include up to 3 million events, support for custom domains, the possibility to invite multiple users, responsive email support, and access to new features with your existing plan. On top of that, Wide Angle Analytics is also offering its solution for free to non-profit and for-a-social-cause organizations.


Squeaky

Product analytics for customer-obsessed companies

Squeaky is one of the most powerful analytics suites, as it gives you up to 60% more data compared to other legacy tools, by putting customer privacy first. While most analytic tools give you basic insights about the traffic happening on your website, Squeaky puts data at the heart of how you understand and improve your customer experience.

With Squeaky, you get access to features like Session Recording to discover what your customers are really getting up to. But instead of sifting through hours of recording data, Squeaky has some powerful and advanced filtering options, which help you segment and surface only the most relevant customer recordings. Squeaky’s beautiful dashboard (design-wise it is without a doubt one of the most beautiful dashboards within this list of Google Analytics alternatives) gives you precise insights and data on visitor numbers, page views, and session statistics for any timeframe you need. As most Google Analytics alternatives, Squeaky lets you know where the visitors of your website are coming from. On top of that, it gives you insights on what they're interested in, and the context of their visit.

One feature that clearly differentiates Squeaky from all the other privacy-friendly Google Analytics alternatives from this list, is Heatmaps. With Heatmaps, you get the possibility to quantify your customer experience and discover which content, interfaces, and layouts matter most to your visitors. A feature like this gives you the power to optimise your website, analyse the impact of changes you make, and compare performance across devices. Squeaky’s Heatmaps feature gives you access to Clickmaps, Scrollmaps, Continuous Collection of data from the moment you installed the tracking code, the power to compare the performance across devices, and 365 days of storage of the collected data.

Squeaky would not have made it onto this list if it wasn’t private by design. Installing Squeaky on your website gives you the power to understand your visitors behaviour, without invading their privacy. Privacy-first design has been a core element of Squeaky straight from the beginning. There is no cookie-based tracking, IP addresses do not get stored, and form data will not get captured. Additionally, Squeaky is fully compliant with GDPR and CCPA regulations. That means, you can use Squeaky while protecting the personal data and privacy of your customers.

You can use Squeaky for free for up to 1000 visitors per month. If you exceed that amount, the paid plans of Squeaky are starting at €45 per month or €432 (20% off) for up to 10,000 visits per month. Installing Squeaky on your website is super easy, as all you have to do is installing the tracking code on your website, and you are got to go. Besides that, Squeaky is compatible with the platforms you are already using, like WordPress, Webflow, or Shopify.


As mentioned earlier in this blog post, I will try to constantly update this list of privacy-friendly Google Analytics alternatives as there are more and more projects rising within this sector. I think it is important to highlight those awesome projects by Indie Hackers, Solo developers, and makers, that do care about their users privacy, and therefore create more ethical and privacy-focused tools. If you want to browse through another list of awesome Google Analytics alternatives head over to Andrew Marcuse website where he gathered quite a lot of privacy-friendly Google Analytics alternatives.

If you want to suggest a tool that would fit this list of privacy-friendly Google Analytics alternatives, then simply use the Airtable database on top, where you will find a form to suggest a tool, or just drop me a DM on Twitter or send me an email at philipp[at]creativerly.com.

I hope you enjoyed this blog post. If you want to get a selection of privacy-focused and creativity and productivity-boosting tools and resources delivered straight to your inbox every single week, consider signing up for my weekly newsletter down below.


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