I'm a web developer and I run a couple of dozen small websites and side projects.
So, obviously, I want to keep track of the basics: number of visits and where visitors are coming from.
I used Google (Universal) Analytics for a long time, but it's heavy, tracks everything and everyone.
I later switched to a simpler, privacy-first alternative, which I liked a lot. But as soon as I wanted to track more than a few sites or keep data longer than 30 days, the price quickly went into the hundreds per year.
And then I thought: why not dogfood this problem?
I wanted something extremely simple: no accounts, no cookies, no tracking, only copy and paste the script and it's done
So I built my own service, PageviewsOnline - a privacy-first analytics tool where stats are aggregated, public by default, and stored in the EU.
The core ideas are:
- Privacy first & EU-based - you can see exactly what is collected and what is stored
- Simple - paste a script tag and it just works
- No accounts - I don't want to deal with PII, so the service is open by design
- Site-level config - not implemented yet, but I'm thinking of something like an analytics.json (similar to robots.txt) for per-site settings, that to ensure site owner
I've built an MVP. It works technically, but the design and feature set are still very basic.
The elephant in the room:
I know this can't stay entirely free forever - hosting, storage, and bandwidth will add up.
But I want to be as free/affordable as much as possible, but later on I'm thinking about a small premium tier (for things that obviously will make hosting more expensive; like longer retention or view more metrics). Something like ~$10/year per site for higher-cost features.
This is still early, but I would really appreciate feedback:
- Does this solve a real problem?
- Am I missing something obvious?
- If you are also web developer, would you use something like this?
- Or did I just reinvent a 15th competing standard?
Any feedback is appreciated!
(I have also created a simple Discord server if you want to give me feedback there personally as well)
cute_penguin•1mo ago
So, obviously, I want to keep track of the basics: number of visits and where visitors are coming from.
I used Google (Universal) Analytics for a long time, but it's heavy, tracks everything and everyone.
I later switched to a simpler, privacy-first alternative, which I liked a lot. But as soon as I wanted to track more than a few sites or keep data longer than 30 days, the price quickly went into the hundreds per year.
And then I thought: why not dogfood this problem?
I wanted something extremely simple: no accounts, no cookies, no tracking, only copy and paste the script and it's done
So I built my own service, PageviewsOnline - a privacy-first analytics tool where stats are aggregated, public by default, and stored in the EU.
The core ideas are:
- Privacy first & EU-based - you can see exactly what is collected and what is stored
- Simple - paste a script tag and it just works - No accounts - I don't want to deal with PII, so the service is open by design
- Site-level config - not implemented yet, but I'm thinking of something like an analytics.json (similar to robots.txt) for per-site settings, that to ensure site owner
I've built an MVP. It works technically, but the design and feature set are still very basic.
The elephant in the room:
I know this can't stay entirely free forever - hosting, storage, and bandwidth will add up.
But I want to be as free/affordable as much as possible, but later on I'm thinking about a small premium tier (for things that obviously will make hosting more expensive; like longer retention or view more metrics). Something like ~$10/year per site for higher-cost features.
This is still early, but I would really appreciate feedback:
- Does this solve a real problem?
- Am I missing something obvious?
- If you are also web developer, would you use something like this?
- Or did I just reinvent a 15th competing standard?
Any feedback is appreciated!
(I have also created a simple Discord server if you want to give me feedback there personally as well)