GDPR

Plausible: Self-hosted Privacy-aware open-source Google Analytics Alternative

Hazem Abbas

Aug 31, 2021 — 2 min read

Website Analytics is a crucial tool for website admins, content creators and marketers. While Google Analytics is the primary choice for many site admins and content creators, it is not easy to use, manage and learn.

Furthermore, Google Analytics is a web service hosted and managed by Google, users do not own their data or better control over the analytics script.

So, here Plausible comes to the rescue as an open-source alternative which focuses on privacy and decision.

Plausible is completely free self-hosted web analytic software for website admins, owners and content creators to keep track of their users and reader activities.

Unlike several others self-hosted open-source web analytics, Plausible is made to follow and comply with the new EU user privacy standards.

It is the right choice for bloggers, freelancers, startups and companies.

Key features

1- Privacy-aware

Plausible does not need cookies banners or GDPR consent.

2- Compliant with the new privacy standard

Currently, Plausible is fully compliant with:

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)
The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR)

3- Super easy to use and control

Plausible is easy to control, configure and use. It also offers a simple metric within a clean dashboard which allows the user to focus on the important numbers and make the right decision.

Features

Clean UI
Simple metrics dashboard
Lightweight tracking script
Privacy-friendly
Open-source
Easy-to-install
Search keywords
Docker installation support
Email and Slack reporting
No tracking cookies, no personal data is collected
Well documented
Developer-friendly
Track error pages
Team
Email reporting
Slack integration notification
Define key goals
Track conversions
Search keywords analytics
SPA: Single Page App support
Integrates with Google's Search Console
Analyze marketing campaigns
Metric filtering with simple clicks
Google Integration
Twitter integration
IP Geolocation
Mailer/ SMTP server
ClickhouseDB support
Google Search Integration

Tech stack

The software is built on top of Elixir/ Phoenix, it uses PostgreSQL database and TailwindCSS framework for cosmetics.

Install and setup on your server

Because, Plausible supports Docker, you can install it easily on any server with Docker-compose such as DigitalOcean.

All you need is a $5-$10 droplet, Ubuntu or Debian Linux systems, have Docker and Docker compose up, clone the source, configure the several basic parameters and run docker-compose up -d. In few moments you will have everything up and running.

You may require some extra configuration like domain, SSL and/ or custom settings, but that will not be an issue.