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<!DOCTYPE html> <html data-wf-page="63d0fba3e4971482cc7ada18" data-wf-site="63cbdbf2b9a071c685717244"> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <title>Plausible — A Good Alternative to Google Analytics?</title> <meta content="Is Plausible Analytics a good alternative to Google Analytics for small businesses and freelancers? Read our in-depth review." name="description"> <meta content="Plausible — A Good Alternative to Google Analytics?" property="og:title"> <meta content="Is Plausible Analytics a good alternative to Google Analytics for small businesses and freelancers? Read our in-depth review." property="og:description"> <meta content="http://images.statcounter.com/article_content/og_google-analytics_alternatives_for_small_businesses.png" property="og:image"> <meta content="Plausible — A Good Alternative to Google Analytics?" property="twitter:title"> <meta content="Is Plausible Analytics a good alternative to Google Analytics for small businesses and freelancers? Read our in-depth review." property="twitter:description"> <meta content="http://images.statcounter.com/article_content/og_google-analytics_alternatives_for_small_businesses.png" property="twitter:image"> <meta property="og:type" content="website"> <meta content="summary_large_image" name="twitter:card"> <meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1" name="viewport"> <link href="css/normalize.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"> <link href="css/components.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"> <link href="css/ga-alternatives.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"> <link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com" rel="preconnect"> <link href="https://fonts.gstatic.com" rel="preconnect" crossorigin="anonymous"> <script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/webfont/1.6.26/webfont.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> WebFont.load({ google: { families: ["Open Sans:300,300italic,400,400italic,600,600italic,700,700italic,800,800italic"] } }); </script>  <script type="text/javascript"> ! function(o, c) { var n = c.documentElement, t = " w-mod-"; n.className += t + "js", ("ontouchstart" in o || o.DocumentTouch && c instanceof DocumentTouch) && (n.className += t + "touch") }(window, document); </script> <link href="images/favicon.png" rel="shortcut icon" type="image/x-icon"> <link href="images/webclip.png" rel="apple-touch-icon"> </head> <body> <div class="header internal-header wf-section"> <div class="logo-nav w-container"><img src="images/logo_articles.svg" loading="lazy" alt="Statcounter" class="image"></div> </div> <div class="content w-container"> <h1 class="heading">Plausible Analytics Review - A Good Alternative to Google Analytics?</h1> <p class="article-meta">Published: <span class="text-span-2">26th JANUARY 2023</span> Author: <span class="text-span-3">JONATHAN MORTON</span></p> <p class="lead-paragraph">Founded in 2018 and in general release since 2019, Plausible is an open-source, privacy-focused website analytics tool. The 30 day trial gave us a chance to review it and see if it’s a good replacement for Google Analytics.</p> <div class="div-block"> <div class="w-layout-grid product-summary"> <div id="w-node-_4cfe1824-d2ac-a252-20d5-e3f770f947f4-cc7ada18">Cost from:</div> <div id="w-node-_80e4f53e-44fb-3fb8-efad-1d3dd625b371-cc7ada18"><strong>$9</strong> /month</div> <div id="w-node-cae99af6-f268-9158-4351-ddd78ce959ea-cc7ada18">Free Trial:</div> <div id="w-node-_1ebe1181-4fcb-6652-0b05-8aeb8690cd7c-cc7ada18"><strong>30 days</strong> </div> <div id="w-node-a2574486-500d-7d5d-3bc4-ee70b668ce1d-cc7ada18">Free plan:</div> <div id="w-node-_0261af41-7dbf-bc21-0ad5-7099b3add82b-cc7ada18">Websites:</div> <div id="w-node-_97601d58-d3ff-3baa-3e1c-6a28b9d96411-cc7ada18"><strong>50</strong></div> <div id="w-node-_30396e7a-3614-539a-f77c-e521cec16b58-cc7ada18">Users:</div> <div id="w-node-_5464e92d-42f2-7a5a-932b-a13004e7fa48-cc7ada18"><strong>Unlimited</strong></div><img src="images/icon_cross.svg" loading="lazy" id="w-node-_0bd665e9-7aaf-92dd-69ae-699a366dff5c-cc7ada18" alt="No"> </div> </div> <h2 class="heading-2">Signing up for Plausible Analytics</h2> <p>The process of signing up for the 30 day trial of Plausible spans four screens and a confirmation screen. No credit card or billing details are required to create an account and start the trial.</p> <h3 class="heading-3"><strong>1. Register</strong></h3> <p>The simple register screen asks for your Name and Email Address and to choose a Password.</p><img src="images/plausible_create_account.png" loading="lazy" alt="" class="screenshot"> <div class="caption"><em>Creating an account with Plausible</em></div> <h3 class="heading-3"><strong>2. Activate Account</strong></h3> <p>A four digit verification code will be sent to the email address you used to create your account. You’ll need to enter it on this screen before you can proceed and activate your account.</p><img src="images/plausible_activate_account.png" loading="lazy" alt="Email verification is required to activate your account in Plausible" class="screenshot"> <div class="caption"><em>Email verification is required to activate your account in Plausible</em></div> <h3 class="heading-3"><strong>3. Add Website Details</strong></h3> <p>In addition to adding your website URL, you can set your time zone to ensure the time and date information and filtering in Plausible are accurate for your location.</p><img src="images/plausible_add_website.png" loading="lazy" alt="Adding your website details in Plausible" class="screenshot"> <div class="caption"><em>Adding your website details in Plausible</em></div> <h3 class="heading-3"><strong>4. Add Javascript Snippet</strong></h3> <p>A short Javascript tracking code is presented for you to copy and paste into the <head> of your website HTML.</p><img src="images/plausible_add_snippet.png" loading="lazy" alt="Adding the Plausible tracking code to your website" class="screenshot"> <div class="caption"><em>Adding the Plausible tracking code to your website</em></div> <h2 class="heading-2">Plausible Analytics Features</h2> <p>Plausible offers a handful of rudimentary aggregate metrics for a very general overview of your website traffic. </p> <div class="trial-prompt"><img src="images/logo_trial_prompt.svg" loading="lazy" alt="" class="trial-prompt-logo"> <p class="trial-prompt-paragraph">See how visitors are <span class="trial-prompt-strong">really</span> experiencing your website</p> <div class="trial-prompt-button"> <a href="https://statcounter.com/" class="trial-prompt-link">Try FREE for 30 days</a> </div> </div> <h3 class="heading-3"><strong>Dashboard</strong></h3> <p>It’s curious how many similarities there are between Plausible and Fathom, not just in the types of metrics they display but also how the dashboard interface is organized almost identically in both. Like Fathom, Plausible presents all the visitor data it collects on a single dashboard page in aggregate form.</p> <p>A trend chart helps you to see how your traffic changes over time and can be toggled between Unique Visitors, Total Pageviews, Bounce Rate and Visit Duration using the clickable headline stats above. The headline stats also include a comparison with the previous period, based on the selected date range</p> <p>The four panels below the chart display lists sorted by numbers of visitors. These include Top Sources (referrers), Top pages, Entry Pages, Exit Pages, Regions and Devices.</p><img src="images/fathom_dashboard.png" loading="lazy" sizes="(max-width: 479px) 100vw, (max-width: 767px) 91vw, (max-width: 991px) 700px, 680px" srcset="images/fathom_dashboard-p-500.png 500w, images/fathom_dashboard.png 1509w" alt="The Dashboard in Plausible" class="screenshot"> <div class="caption"><em>The Dashboard in Plausible</em></div> <h3 class="heading-3"><strong>Goal Tracking</strong></h3> <p>Goal tracking in Plausible lets you track aggregate data for events and page views. The screen for setting up goals is available on the Site Settings page which you get to via the dropdown menu labeled with your site URL, directly under the Plausible logo. This wasn’t immediately obvious to us.</p> <p>Once you add a goal, you can then filter your dashboard metrics by that goal and a new Goal Conversions panel will appear at the bottom of the dashboard with a conversion rate for each goal.</p> <h3 class="heading-3"><strong>UTM Tracking</strong></h3> <p>UTM tracking is available to help identify visits from your social, email and ad campaigns. As with all data in Plausible, the website activity for these is only available at an aggregate level. UTM parameters are limited to the following: utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_content and utm_term.</p> <h3 class="heading-3"><strong>Google Search Console Integration</strong></h3> <p>Like <a href="statcounter-review">Statcounter</a>, Plausible can connect to your Google Search Console account to get the search keywords visitors are using to find your website.</p> <h3 class="heading-3"><strong>Filtering</strong></h3> <p>Filtering by date range and category are both available in dropdowns at the top right of the dashboard. And yet another similarity with Fathom, you can add a category filter by clicking on the relevant row in the dashboard.</p> <h3 class="heading-3"><strong>User Management</strong></h3> <p>Some basic user management enables you to invite clients or colleagues to have either Admin or Viewer access to your account.</p> <h3 class="heading-3"><strong>Email Reports</strong></h3> <p>Plausible has two types of email reports. One is a report of your stats, available either weekly on Mondays or monthly on the 1st of the month. This is limited to total numbers of unique visitors and page views, bounce rate (for your entire site only) and top referrers and visited pages.</p> <p>The other report lets you know if your traffic spikes above a certain number of current visitors. This number is set by you in the settings section.</p><img src="images/plausible_email_report.png" loading="lazy" alt="Plausible Analytics Weekly Email Report" class="screenshot"> <div class="caption"><em>Plausible Analytics Weekly Email Report</em></div> <h3 class="heading-3"><strong>Cookieless Tracking</strong></h3> <p>Plausible doesn’t use cookies for visitor tracking, theoretically removing the need to display cookie consent banners or pop-up windows on your website. If you use other website tools that rely on cookies, having cookieless tracking on one of them won’t change this.</p> <h2 class="heading-2">Plausible Analytics Pricing</h2> <p>There is no free plan available with Plausible and pricing starts at <strong>$9</strong> <strong>per month</strong> for up to <strong>10,000 monthly pageviews</strong>, increasing to $169 per month for up to 10 million page views.</p> <p>This covers up to 50 websites<strong> </strong>with unlimited data retention and unlimited team members. You’ll get the equivalent of two months free if you pay yearly.</p><img src="images/plausible_pricing.png" loading="lazy" alt="Plausible Analytics pricing" class="screenshot"> <div class="caption"><em>Plausible Analytics pricing</em></div> <h2 class="heading-2">Pros & Cons of Plausible Analytics</h2> <div class="pros-cons-container"> <div class="div-block-2"> <h3 class="heading-3"><strong>Pros</strong></h3> <ul role="list" class="pros-cons-list"> <li>Simple User Interface</li> <li>Custom Event Tracking</li> <li>Unlimited Data Retention</li> </ul> </div> <div class="div-block-3"> <h3 class="heading-3"><strong>Cons</strong></h3> <ul role="list" class="pros-cons-list"> <li>Very Basic Metrics</li> <li>Aggregate Data Only</li> <li>Limited UTM Tracking</li> <li>Expensive For What You Get</li> <li>No Free Plan</li> </ul> </div> </div> <h2 class="heading-2">Conclusion <span class="text-span">—</span> Is Plausible a Good Alternative to Google Analytics?</h2> <p>Protecting the privacy of the people who visit your website is important and legally required in many countries. This means not collecting or reporting on any information that could be used to identify an individual person. All of the analytics tools we reviewed respect this rule.</p> <p>However, analytics tools like Plausible and Fathom have adopted an ideological approach to privacy, which may be inevitable since they have made privacy their unique selling point. Unfortunately, this comes at the cost of usefulness.</p> <p>Like Fathom, Plausible Analytics offers some basic metrics in aggregate form and all information is displayed in real-time. The simple interface makes for a gentle learning curve but insights into how visitors behave on your site are very limited.</p> <p>Plausible will show you the percentage of your visitors who came from Facebook or Google Search for example, or what percentage of your visitors completed a goal such as reaching your order confirmation page. To grow your business, you need to understand your visitors at a more granular level. This isn’t about breaching your visitors’ privacy and finding out who they are. It’s about finding out what they did, how they experienced your website, what happened to those that didn’t make it to your order confirmation page.</p> <p>More often than not, website owners are oblivious to many of the struggles their hard-earned visitors encounter while trying to use their websites. These struggles occur in between the page views and are revealed in the actions of individual visitors. Insights like these cannot be gleaned from the basic aggregate metrics available in Plausible, leaving you with a massive blind spot.</p> <div class="div-block"> <h3 class="heading-4">Google Analytics Alternatives Reviews</h3> <div class="w-layout-grid review-list"><img src="images/icon_statcounter.png" loading="lazy" id="w-node-_035d1ea9-3726-946a-d60a-c5ca60ae3340-60ae333c" alt=""> <a href="statcounter-review" id="w-node-_035d1ea9-3726-946a-d60a-c5ca60ae3341-60ae333c" class="link">Statcounter</a> <a id="w-node-_035d1ea9-3726-946a-d60a-c5ca60ae3343-60ae333c" href="fathom-analytics-review" class="link">Fathom Analytics</a> <a id="w-node-_035d1ea9-3726-946a-d60a-c5ca60ae3345-60ae333c" href="plausible-analytics-review" aria-current="page" class="link w--current">Plausible Analytics</a><img src="images/icon_fathom.png" loading="lazy" id="w-node-_035d1ea9-3726-946a-d60a-c5ca60ae3347-60ae333c" alt=""><img src="images/icon_plausible.png" loading="lazy" id="w-node-_035d1ea9-3726-946a-d60a-c5ca60ae3348-60ae333c" alt=""> </div> </div> </div> <div class="footer wf-section"> <div class="footer-content w-container"> <p class="paragraph-3">© Statcounter 1999-2023. 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