Alternatives for Google Analytics
I wanted to remove the cookie banner on my blog and so I was removing all the cookie usage one by one Disqus comments, Google Ads and the next step was Google Analytics. Although, I had Personal data tracking off, Google Analytics still collected a lot of info and used cookies. All I needed was some basic analytics which showed the page views and refer data.
So I tried out a bunch of alternatives and here is my summary about them
Alternatives I tried
1. Cloudfare Web Analytics
Website • Free
Features
- Simple to use
- Captures audience data like Page Views, referrer data, browser data, etc…
- Captures performance data like page load time and Core web vitals
- It doesn’t collect personal data and doesn’t use cookies.
- It is extremely lightweight. It doesn’t have any pageview limitation.
Cons
- The one downside is that it only stores the data for 30 days. After that it is gone.
2. Micro Analytics
Website • Paid with Free tier
Features
- Simple to use.
- Captures audience data like Page Views, referrer data, browser data, etc…
- It doesn’t collect personal data and doesn’t use cookies.
- It is lightweight.
- Has a generous free tier suitable small websites.
- Has lifetime data retention
3. Plausible
Website • Paid with options for Free self hosting
This is a new, simple analytics tool. This is the best option if you want to host your own analytics in sensitive environments. You can self host their service in your cloud and there is dedicated GitHub Discussion for helping with Self hosting.
Features
- Open source.
- Option to self host.
- Doesn’t collect any personal data.
- Simple to use.
- Captures audience data like Page Views, referrer data, browser data, etc…
- Has lifetime data retention
4. Netifly Analytics
Website • Paid
Netifly Analytics is different from the above mentioned analytics based on the fact that it is a server side analytics. It needs your website to be hosted in Netifly and can also track 404.
Features
- Server side analytics.
- No Performance impact as there is no js payload.
- Can track 404 and other details
Firebase Cloud Logging is a similar alternative if you are using Google Firebase.
What I ended up using?
I ended up using both Cloudfare and MicroAnalytics at the time of writing. I use Cloudfare Analytics for tracking performance and Core web Vitals. It is one I prefer but since it lacks long time data retention I also Micro Analytics along with it. However since it lacks Both of them combined are lighter than Google Analytics in terms of performance.