I just swapped out Google Analytics with Plausible for AINIRO.IO. It’s only been a week, but so far I am super jazzed about it. First of all, Plausible doesn’t use cookies, so I can completely drop all cookie disclaimers and popups I had because of GDPR. Second of all, the site scores significantly better on load time. This results in a 10x better user experience for my website visitors, while making sure the website is still 100% conforming to GDPR laws.
GA is a hot smoking pile of garbage
Everyone who knows anything about software development, and Google Analytics, knows it's basically garbage software. In fact, everything Google does is garbage. They’re violating every single industry best practice in most of their frontend JavaScript code, such as creating blocking JavaScript, sprinkling their code with document.write, and basically adding code you’d expect even a junior developer to be incapable of producing. What they do in their backend code, nobody knows of course, since 100% of their backend code is closed source.
For instance, if you add the reCAPTCHA frontend JavaScript to your page, your page drops 20 points when measured with Page Speed Insight. There’s no way to say this politely, and I’m not even sure we should, since sometimes the truth simply needs to get out there — But …
Google Analytics is garbage tech!
Simplicity
As a software developer by trade, having been forced to understanding marketing to sell our AI chatbot — Plausible is also a bajillion times less complex and easier to understand. I am 100% confident in that Google Analytics has “a bajillion” features Plausible does not have — But that’s kind of the point. I can understand Plausible, and I can rapidly find what I’m looking for.
In addition there’s the bonus of that Plausible doesn’t keep on crashing my web browser like GA does every now and then. Which reminds me of …
Did I tell you Google’s frontend code is garbage?
Open Source
Plausible is also 100% open source. I personally use their cloud version, first of all because I don’t want to spend a couple of days configuring it in our Kubernetes cluster — Secondly, because I kind of enjoy the idea of paying them a little bit. Besides, it’s only $10 per month, so it’s not like as if I’m going bankrupt or anything. They also have a 30 day trial version if you want to try before you buy.
However, the idea of having an Open Source alternative to Google Analytics is simply such a good feeling for me personally — Especially considering it seems to be a bajillion times better than GA’s junkware …
Watering the good stuff
I enjoy shedding a light on great products — And for the record, I am not affiliated with Plausible in any ways. I’m simply writing this because I like Plausible’s products, and I think they deserve some light of day. They don’t know I’m writing this, but I might at-reply them on LinkedIn and Facebook when I publish it.
However, sometimes in order to have the great stuff grow and prosper, we also need to shed a light on the sick junkware it’s intended to replace. And where Google Analytics fails at every single important metric possible to measure by, Plausible simply wins hands down — At least so far ...
I’ve only used Plausible for a week, so my feelings about it might change over time. However, if you read this article in the future, then post a comment asking me if I still love it. If it passes the test of time, and I’m still an advocate 6 months down the road, I guess we can all rest assured of that where Google fails on every metric possible to measure by, Plausible wins. If you want to try it out, you can find a link below.
Edit - And yes, I tried my best to SEO optimise this article, such that it hopefully over time will score for all the good keywords, such that we hopefully collectively as a specie might rid the world of the junkware known by the name of; "Google Analytics" ...
Top comments (7)
My exposure to google "coding" practices and "quality" was with their C++ in Google Maps backend servers; the geospatial backend they produced for fusing map images and serving google map tiles that they then tried to drop selling themselves and then open source so other companies picked it up to serve federal accounts google abandoned. Worst C++ code ever written. Everyone who worked on that concluded the same rather quickly.
I hear they now feel they are more productive with rust than with C++. I suspect this is only because they haven't learned how to googlify rust coding practices into crap yet.
Hehe, I am not surprised. I became inspired by my own article BTW, so I started working on a reCAPTCHA alternative, based upon BlowFish hashing (proof of work), with UNIX timespans to prevent replay attacks, in addition to a server-side secret. I think I'll be able to completely eliminate reCPATCHA in fact ^_^
So far I'm 2 hours into coding, and I've got an 80% working solution. Before the end of the day, I can finally get to do SHIFT+DELETE "refactoring" on Google's reCPATCHA junkware ... :D
I'm a little bit late to the party with my own LiteAnalytics.com but feel free give it a try if you have some time.
But it is nice to see so many good alternatives to GA.
Looks great. Did you fork Plausible?
LOL no. I didn't even know about Plausible when I was starting, I have tried some other analytics tools but I wasn't totally satisfied with them. I found about Plausible in the middle of the process, but back then there wasn't an option to compare time periods in Plausible which was crucial for me and Lite had that option from the day one and.
Anyway, I was already in the process of making Lite Analytics, I love building things, and I run some heavy traffic websites, any 3rd party analytics would cost me hundred if not thousands of dollars so I have decided to make my own.
Here is the story with my experience with GA and my decision to make Lite Analytics: liteanalytics.com/blog/why-have-i-...
Love the story, it reminds me of me. I've got a similar story behind Magic Cloud - docs.ainiro.io - Basically building it "because I can, and because I need it myself."
Lovely work. My reasons for asking about forking plausible is because these two systems seems to be almost identical, even using the same UI building blocks in the frontend, etc ...
Regardless, great job! Love the passion :)
Psst, everything Google creates comes out as a hot smoking pile of garbage ...
As to replacing Google junkware ...
I guess the similar look comes from the usage of popular Headless UI and similar UI components. Lots of SaaS have similar landing pages these days.
But I'm still not happy with my interface or website, so I guess things will change in the future.