This article about alternative Website Analytics is archived and may not be up to date.
There are some amazing new website analytics tools, especially when speed and privacy are important. You don’t need to just rely on the bloated Google Analytics anymore, but even if you have to then you can still make the usage more performant to speed up your website. If we all started to use only what we need then we can take a further step towards becoming sustainable. Below I go through some options you have when it comes to website analytics.
Server-side Stats – E.g. Kinsta
To start, if you only require basic stats then maybe your hosting provider already has something built in. For example, if you used Kinsta (WordPress Managed Hosting) then they come with their own server-level stats in their control panel which could remove the need for any additional analytical service. Click here to learn more about Kinsta’s server-side analytics. A large benefit of this is no more additional JavaScript loading, which is a performance boost.
Fathom Analytics (Paid)
Fathom is a privacy focused analytics platform. No personal data is stored, it is fully GDPR and cookie directive compliant because it doesn’t use cookies. Only tracking what is useful for a simple but powerful stats service makes it extremely lightweight. There is no free hosted plan, but if you are a business then cost is really worth while. A self-hosted lite version is available but this has downsides which can be seen on their GitHub page. You can read more in-depth about their data policy by clicking here.
Simple Analytics (Paid)
Like Fathom, Simple Analytics is privacy focused. SA only collects information that is strictly required to show the simple website traffic stats. You can read about what is collected by clicking here. Only showing essential page views, referrers and screen sizes means they don’t use cookies to collect any personal data. This is a paid product with a limited free version.
Minimal Google Analytics
If your requirement is using Google, there are still options to make things more secure and increase the website performance.
The first option is Minimal Google Analytics. Instead of installing the full Google tracking which can be around 75KB you can instead use a minimal Google Analytics tracking code that only tracks minimum data and is only 1.5KB. This is ideal if you can’t move away from Google Analytics but want more performance and a bit more privacy. This isn’t ideal if you need more in-depth tracking as it cuts out some more advanced parts of Google Analytics. This is likely more than enough for your needs unless you’re requiring more advanced metrics (e.g. maybe for an e-commerce).
Self-hosted Google Analytics Lite
Continuing on with Google Analytics, you can use almost the full capabilities of Google Analytics but self-host the JavaScript instead of using the Google CDN. This means that you can cache the JavaScript for longer, allowing you to gain a sizeable performance boost and a bit more privacy, GA Lite will also abide by “Do Not Track” and allows you to anonymise IP. You can check it out by clicking here. There are some downsides such as self-hosting means you’d need to manually keep things in sync and may miss out on some newer features.
Full Google Suite
In the cases where you require the full Google Analytics suite and Google Tag Manager for your WordPress website, then there is now an official WordPress Plugin by Google called “Site Kit by Google”, which you can go straight to by clicking here. Obviously the full kit will not help limit any privacy concerns you may have a will be a lot less performant for your website, but you are better off installing the official plugin if you do decide you need to go down this route.
If you need any help with your website regarding analytics, I provide ongoing WordPress support, so please do get in contact.
