I’ve recently switched all my sites away from Google Analytics to Plausible – a privacy focused, ethical alternative.
Google make a lot of money from ads and data mining. While we have usually installed the free Google Analytics tracking to our client sites, most of our clients barely check the stats, rarely understand the avalanche of data offered and don’t use the advanced features.
Plausible offer simple, easy to read traffic stats without any of the privacy issues around Google products. There’s no need to annoy users with cryptic GDPR cookie consent popups either (or just break the law as many do) as no cookies are used.
Plausible analytics dashboard
Easy Setup
Plausible links to Google Search Console to see incoming search terms, and there’s a WordPress plugin to make setup even easier. You can also receive an optional weekly or monthly email digest of your website traffic.
Ethics & Privacy
Plausible are also strong on ethics, stating the following on their website:
We say no to venture funding. We say no to Google and surveillance capitalism. We practice ethical marketing. And we give our customers a useful and privacy-friendly way to learn how to improve their websites and businesses.
Venture capital often leads to demands for higher returns and a sell off, meaning the product suffers and the user comes last. Big tech constantly get caught for unethical behaviour and breaking the law, and hit with small fines they just laugh off. If we want a better world, we need to vote with our money and not support that kind of behaviour. As the saying goes: If products are free, our data is the product.
Summary
There is a small monthly cost to run Plausible analytics, but I consider it well worth the investment and will be offering it to clients from now on as an alternative to Google Analytics.