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Discussion on: Google analytics, privacy, and personal blog

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glennmen profile image
Glenn Carremans

I haven't tried it myself but I am really interested in Matomo (used to be Piwik), they are free if you host it yourself.

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stereobooster profile image
stereobooster

I wrote about this in article - the cheapest hosting I can think of is DIgitalOcean (I guess AWS will be cheaper but much more pain as well)

I guess cheapest would be to rent DigitalOcean server for 5$ month (e.g. 60$ a year)

So free = $60 year and I will need to maintain it myself (roll security patches etc)

There is github.com/usefathom/fathom as well.

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Keith Bremner

You might be able to use Matomo on AWS free tier for a year?

Yes, it’s more work but it’s also a learning opportunity.

With free of charge saas like google analytics, it has to be worth it for the provider so you or your visitors are the product.

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stereobooster profile image
stereobooster

With free of charge saas like google analytics, it has to be worth it for the provider so you or your visitors are the product.

Yes I know. I wonder if strict privacy settings in GA would help to make it tolerable. It doesn't send cookies (so they don't know which user is that even if I logged into Gmail). I store (with permission) unique identifier in local storage (not in cookies). You can't really identify user outside of the website and no private information is stored. And you can erase it at any point. I can send anonymous IP flag.