However, I’m wondering if people have used any alternatives to these? I’m looking for something with more granularity than the built-in dashboard, but I’d prefer not to have Google track all my visitors if I can help it.
Seems to me like I’ll need to use a tracking script in the custom code section, and there are two dimensions to the choice:
is the script contained in the HTML, or requested from another server?
is the tracking data sent to a hosting provider or am I self hosting?
Fathom and Matomo (formerly Piwik) seem like decent choices: Fathom is privacy-focused, though no plan below $14/month, and Matomo is open source with a hosted product and a self-hosting option.
Does anyone have success stories or horror stories to share? What are you using for analytics?
Hey there. Strangely I have started using Matomo myself with my clients - my clients love it because they can UNDERSTAND what the stats mean. Google Analytics can sometimes be not very intuitive and customers hate that - especially customers that are not web designers. Matomo gives you a more clear overview and you can give access to specific stats to your customers. I am using the self hosted version and so far I am very happy and my customers are happy as well :}
Welcome to the forum @finback! I haven’t used matomo but do know Paul who runs Fathom, I haven’t personally used it yet, though. I tend to use gosquared and clicky. Gosquared is good for low-traffic sites but becomes costly quickly. Clicky allows for, I think, 100,000 visitors/month for three websites.
Both those have a script you’ll embed into the head. They’re pretty much the same although you can see individual visits in clicky, you can only see a summary on gosquared’s free plan.