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Google Analytics is "illegal" in Europe. Alternatives?

So apparently using Google Analytics (continuously) in Europe is in breach of GDPR.

An EU watchdog has ruled that one German's company use of Analytics breached GDPR. How? By sending data to the US. This breaks the "Privacy Shield data protection arrangements" that EU struct with the US in 2020.

If you live in the EU and/or your primary audience are people who live in EU, do you plan to switch? What will you use?

  1. 5

    I just setup Pirsch.io (also here on IH) for https://developedin.eu yesterday.

    Obviously the site is pretty simple and built with no-code. But seems like you can integrate Pirsch server-side & setup custom events.
    To me it looks great. I haven‘t tried to much, only done the basic setup. But I feel like that‘s the best compromise between privacy and detailed analytics.
    I will update after i have tried to configure it more.

    Also: for these cases the site developedin.eu exists - a directory of APIs, Tools, Startups etc from Europe.
    Because it was always hard to find alternatives to use, when you have to value privacy or data-exchange with US companies or servers.
    You might want to check it out and i would love for anyone to contribute their own products or others they know of.

    1. 4

      Curious how Pirsch differs from Plausible.

      1. 3

        Co-founder of Pirsch here!

        As @x21 already mentioned we put a strong focus on our backend solution which lets you remove any sort of JavaScript from your website. We consider this to be the best approach even though it requires a bit more effort than simply pasting the snippet.

        1. 3

          Just been checking out some of the live demos that have been listed on behalf of a friend's company.

          Its a small thing but on your date selection drop down could you include a "Last month" and "Month to date" as options?

          I know these could be set manually, but make it a lot easier (single click, rather than using 2 date pickers) for marketing teams to see calendar month for reporting on rather than last 30 day period.

          Rest looks nice and easy to use.

          1. 3

            We just released an update that includes the date selection you requested - thanks again for your input!

          2. 3

            Sure, I added it to our ToDo list for the next update. Thank you for the suggestion!

        2. 3

          Can you share if many users are going this route? I am considering using only server-side analytics.

          1. 2

            So far only a small percentage actually takes advantage of this as using the JS snippet is a lot easier and not everybody builds the backend for their websites themselves.

            We do however have a large customer running a page builder for interactive marketing content. They also offer analytics for their clients and recently made the switch from GA to Pirsch. This is an interesting use case because they only interact with Pirsch through the API - whether it's creating or removing domains (every client has their own), sending hits and events (roughly 10M per month), or retrieving the data to display it in their custom dashboard.

  2. 3

    I've found Google Analytics a complex, confusing mess to use and hadn't looked at it for about 5 years because I didn't understand how to use it anymore. Switching to Plausible is a breath of fresh air compared to that.

  3. 3

    I've been using Plausible.io. Really easy to set up and no cookies so no worries about GDPR. They're a fellow indiehacker as well.

  4. 3

    Plausible Analytics for me.

    1. 3

      They seem pretty popular here on IH. Any free alternatives?

      1. 3

        Plausible is open source, so you can host it yourself if you like.

        https://plausible.io/open-source-website-analytics

      2. 2

        May I ask how many monthly pageviews you receive? We are currently validating a small free tier with a limited feature set to enable more people to make the jump from Google Analytics.

      3. 1

        This comment was deleted 2 years ago.

    2. 2

      Yes, same. It's so simple and does everything I want.

  5. 2

    What do you guys think of https://counter.dev? It's free and doesn't use any cookies. I found that on Dev.to on the other day.

    1. 2

      takes like 10 seconds to sign up and its free

  6. 1

    Your case study is very interesting. Thank you for sharing it. The techniques you shared are extremely impressive, and I look forward to applying them to our own website https://lemotwordle.com/ . Following this step-by-step guide will hopefully help us to develop our startup as fast as possible. This is the same as what you discussed in your case study. Thanks a lot.

  7. 1

    Thank you for sharing your case study. Your shared techniques are extremely impressive, and I look forward to applying them to our own website https://thecourtdirect.com/east-orange-court/ , Following this step-by-step guide will hopefully help us to develop our startup as quickly as possible. The same as you discussed in the case study. Thank you.

  8. 1

    Thank you for sharing your case study. You shared techniques are extremely impressive, and I look forward to applying them to our own website https://boundown.com/best-vlogging-camera-under-300/, Following this step-by-step guide will hopefully help us to develop our startup as quickly as possible. The same as you discussed in the case study. Thank you.

  9. 1

    There could be a GDPR compliant version of GA4

  10. 1

    https://matomo.org/ is a name that haven't seen here yet. Anyone using that? Looks a bit overkill compared to the modern alternatives.

  11. 1

    Umami and Shynet are both open source, simple to use and GDPR compliant.

  12. 1

    If you want something with a free tier that is pretty simple, I use SplitBee. They offer some nice things like A/B testing and automation, but they are quite as robust as some of the others suggested here.

    Fathom and Plausible are great alternatives as well. I don’t know a lot about plausible but see a lot of posts about them. But Fathom really focused on being the privacy-first alternative to GA. And their co-founder Jack is pretty active on Twitter and easy to talk to.

    1. 1

      Fathom seems good but compared to Plausible which offers the same features and in open source, I choose Plausible.

  13. 1

    Howuku & Nocodelytics were the ones I was looking into for my webflow website.

  14. 1

    I tried Fathom and thought it worked well. There's many cookieless options available: Fathom, Pirsch, SimpleAnalytics, and more. Here's a list of web analytics.

  15. 1

    We're building hockeystack.com with cookieless automatic tracking, let me know if it works for you :)

  16. 1

    +1

    I would also like to know about a completely free alternative for Google Analytics.

    It seems a bit strange to see suggestions of an alternative that is open source, but not completely free.

    For some folks, it can feel like they made it open source just to sound more developer-friendly.

    open source scam

    1. 3

      Well to be fair, Google Analytics (or similar) is not free either.
      The price is just paid with data of your users, by your users.

      1. 1

        I hear this argument every now and then, pretty much every day.

        To me - Nothing still beats a completely free solution, and Google Analytics is GREAT despite privacy gotchas. Of course some businesses may be particular about the caveats.

    2. 2

      A completely free alternative for Google Analytics is Plausible.io ! This is designed to be self-hosted via Docker and very easy to setup.

      The paid version is reserved for users who do not want to self-host the application, but it does not include premium features 😉

      https://plausible.io/

    3. 2

      Hi! I've actually been working on a free alternative for myself and my plan is to enable opt-in donations in the future to help me cover hosting fees etc. Feel free to give it a go if you'd like 🙂

      https://stenkolle.com

    4. 1

      Were you referring to Plausible? Wasn't aware they're open source.

      1. -2

        This comment has been voted down. Click to show.

        1. 5

          You're either a completely free open source solution, built and maintained by a community.

          That's a weird statement, in my opinion as a developer, to be honest. Lots of companies are open source but funded by their customers, that's how they can grow big in the first place (not saying all open source projects didn't grow big without charging, just that if you charge money, you're more likely to grow big).

          Companies like GitLab, Sidekiq, etc are all open source to some extent with paid features and support. Hell, Red Hat was all open source and was bought by IBM for billions of dollars, and developers didn't hate them.

          Making money while being free for some users is not "dishonest," it's just another business model.

          1. 3

            +1. Open source doesn't mean free. It also doesn't mean that one is invited to code in their code-base. To me, it's one way to ensure transparency, thus build trust.

        2. 2

          Weird take since you can self-host Plausible and you can also develop Plausible further, you just need to share your code as well.

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