Google Analytics is a behemoth of a tracker. It’s one of the causes of the bloated web and one of the reasons I hate ads as an industry.
However, if you want to have any idea of the number of users visiting your page, you need some kind of tool that is lightweight, respects the privacy of visitors to your site, but still shows useful information.
I have found a plausible alternative. Let’s check it out together.
Plausible
Plausible is nothing more than a small script to embed on your site or blog that aggregates some basic information about your visitors such as country of origin, devices, pages visited and sources. It falls into the category of OpenSass software. This means that the service is offered via the cloud, managed by the Plausible team, but can also be self-hosted and used on a VPS (such as DigitalOcean).
OpenSass
Plausible is an Open Source Saas software. This means that the central application can be:
- used via the plausible.io website for a fee
- self-hosted via Docker on your own server.
Personally I find this business model fantastic because it combines the opensource philosophy, giving source code access to the community, while allowing the creators of the product to monetize. You can self-host it if you know what you are doing or you can let the Plausible team do it for you.
Bonus points for stealing possible clients from Google (me included).
Data ownership and visitors privacy
The problem of google analytics and which collects user behavioral data and uses them to create a behavioral profile to monetize more effectively.
Remember:
If it’s free, you are the product.
With plausible you are the owner of the site data and protect the privacy of your visitors. In fact, only basic data are collected to understand the origin of users (geographic, device, site) and the pages visited. These data are more than enough to understand the type of content to be offered on your site.
Small footprint
Plausible Analytics script weighs less than 1 KB. That’s 45 times smaller than the Google Analytics script. This is always a plus IMHO. Even though most of the world has internet access with relatively good speed, there are always the extreme cases where a single kb makes the difference between a user who stops on your page and one who leaves.
Accurate information
Google Analytics doesn’t always display correct information because the script is blocked by many people who use adblockers or privacy focused browsers. In the tech word up to 60% of people block Google Analytics. I just straight up block it at a DNS level with a pihole.
Plausible is not part of the adtech industry and is not covered by these blockers. You can also self-host Plausible to use it ad a first party connection.
Conclusion
To recap Plausible is:
- OpenSass - Open Source Saas that can be uses as a saas for a fee or self-hosted
- Privacy focused - doesn’t collect behavioural data, only usage data
- Lightweight - < 1KB script
- Accurate - not blocked by script blockers
You can find a live demo of the dashboard here.
Reading the article back it seems that I have a deep hatred for Google Analytics and that Plausible is the absolute salvation. Although the first part of the sentence is true, Plausible is just a tool I found that meets all my criteria. If you are looking for other solutions more similar to Google Analytics that you can still self-host you can try Matomo.
Until next time, Alex.