Website Analytics Platform : Different Perspectives

In today’s data-driven web development landscape, choosing the right Website Analytics Platform is crucial for understanding user behaviour and improving your website’s performance. We’ve compiled insights from real developers discussing their preferred analytics solutions, highlighting the strengths and use cases of each tool. This is summarisation of a Reddit Post here

Matomo

Overview: Self-hosted analytics solution that keeps data entirely in-house.

Developer Feedback:

  • “Matomo is free, very easy to set up using FTP and a DB. It has a neat interface with all relevant info and also a good and user-friendly mobile app.”
  • Can be installed on shared hosting as long as PHP and MySQL are available
  • Popular choice for developers looking to avoid Google’s ecosystem
  • Some debate about whether a VPS is required (one user claims shared hosting is sufficient, while another insists a VPS is necessary)

We had compared PostHog and Google Analytics Separately here

Fathom Analytics

Overview: Simple, privacy-focused analytics tool that’s GDPR compliant.

Developer Feedback:

  • “Fathom is simple and elegant, performant and GDPR compliant.”
  • “GA4 is unusable. UA was great for me but GA4 ruined everything. The reporting is inaccurate and delayed. I switched to Fathom Analytics and it’s been fantastic.”
  • “Everything that I needed and nothing that I don’t. Smooth, good UI, great instant data.”
  • “They don’t use cookies so it’s GDPR compliant by default. No need for an annoying banner on your site.”
  • Pricing was mentioned as a potential barrier for personal blogs or small projects

Plausible

Overview: Simple, lightweight, privacy-focused analytics.

Developer Feedback:

  • “Super simple and affordable, gives us what we need while being GDPR compliant.”
  • “Their API is a breeze to use in comparison to Google Analytics!”
  • “For simple stuff you can dump out super simple CSV files of everything. Everything about it is so much easier!”

Umami

Overview: Privacy-focused open-source alternative.

Developer Feedback:

  • “Umami is pretty neat!”
  • “Umami is perfect.”
  • Minimal but positive feedback suggests satisfaction among users

Google Analytics/Looker Studio

Overview: Google’s powerful but complex analytics platform.

Developer Feedback:

  • “GA into Looker Studio – flexible to design any dashboards we need.”
  • Some users expressed concerns about Google’s data practices
  • One user specifically criticized GA4: “GA4 is unusable. UA was great for me but GA4 ruined everything.”

Swetrix

Overview: Open-source, GDPR-friendly analytics platform.

Developer Feedback:

  • “It’s open-source, GDPR friendly and besides regular web analytics has some cool features like performance monitoring.”

NLevel Analytics

Overview: New analytics service focused on readable dashboards.

Developer Feedback:

  • Mentioned by its creator as “focused on easy to read and understand dashboard.”

Visitor Analytics

Overview: GDPR-compliant, cookieless web analytics platform.

Developer Feedback:

  • “100% GDPR compliant and most importantly are 100% cookieless.”
  • “I used to lose webstats due to cookie blockers and not receiving consent via the consent banner. But with Visitor Analytics features my statistics have gone up by 4x.”

Hitsteps

Overview: Web analytics with real-time monitoring capabilities.

Developer Feedback:

  • “I vote for Hitsteps web analytics… due to simplicity and realtime data monitor.”
  • One user mentioned keeping “Google Analytics setup on the sides as some enterprises want to compare data with GA only.”

BiasML

Overview: Simple, real-time analytics solution.

Developer Feedback:

  • “Super easy and has real-time. Google analytics is too complicated and annoying.”

UXCam

Overview: Analytics platform with user behavior tracking.

Developer Feedback:

  • “UXCam is my favorite website analytics platform.”
  • “They recently introduced their UXCam Web Product Analytics, which appears to be a robust solution worth exploring.”
  • “It streamlines implementation efforts while providing instant access to both qualitative and quantitative insights.”

Shotcut Track

Overview: Multi-functional analytics with behavior monitoring and uptime tracking.

Developer Feedback:

  • “More than just analytics, it also has user behavior and monitoring uptime.”

Publytics

Overview: Newer analytics platform.

Developer Feedback:

  • One user mentioned trying it but was “undecided between it and Matomo.”

The Contrarian View

Interestingly, one developer made a compelling case against web analytics altogether:

  • “I call it the ‘Emperor’s New Analytics Platform.'”
  • “If you measure the wrong thing, you are actively harming your business.”
  • This user suggests focusing on direct customer feedback, issue tracking, and financial metrics instead
  • “I measure how happy my customers are, and how much money they pay, and how many problems they have. Web traffic is relevant to none of those.”

Conclusion

The choice of web analytics tool ultimately depends on your specific needs, budget, and privacy considerations. Self-hosted solutions like Matomo offer complete data ownership, while services like Fathom and Plausible provide simplicity and privacy compliance with minimal setup. For those needing extensive customization, Google Analytics with Looker Studio remains a powerful option despite some criticism of its latest iteration.

When selecting an analytics platform, consider factors like:

  • Data privacy and GDPR compliance
  • Ease of implementation and use
  • Feature set versus your actual needs
  • Budget constraints
  • Self-hosting versus cloud service options

And perhaps most importantly, remember that website analytics platform should serve your business goals rather than becoming an end in themselves.

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