Why I Stopped using Google Analytics and setup my own Self Hosted Analytics (Plausible)

Ever since I started my blogging journey and started making websites I always used Google analytics as my go to analytics software for measuring user growth. Now that Google has switched to Google Analytics 4 and stopped supporting the Universal version, It became a lot harder to move around with the data.

They stopped giving you the real-time users present on your website. Instead it started giving you the total number of users that visited in the last 30 minutes.

In my opinion, I think that the interface became a lot slower than it used to be. if I reload the home page, It took around 20 to 30 seconds to fully load and to be able to show me the exact data.

Every thing just got so complicated that it was no longer an easy to use software for me.

I do not want all this mumbo jumbo, I just was simple metrics to look at and make my decisions based on them. I just felt that now analytics is hard to navigate and it’s code is also heavy.

I also noticed that there were a lot of data gaps in between the reporting, A lot of the times data was missing and the reporting became slower, It took hours before the data was available for me to see.

This is where I realised that I need to make a change.

and I found PLAUSIBLE.

It is actually an open source and lightweight analytics  software that you can self host on your server. The code that you put on your website is also less than 1 KB in size.

It has been one week since I started using plausible and I have to say that my experience has been phenomenal.

Currently, I am hosting 5 sites on Plausible to measure their metrics:

I absolutely love the user interface. I absolutely love the speed. and I love the real time reporting that i was missing on Google Analytics.

If you want to look at the UI of how plausible feels, you can check out the demo here.

Here's how I setup my own (Some technical background required):

• I bought a Cloud sever with the following configration (4GB RAM, 3 Core CPU, 80GB SSD). It costed me around 7.62$/month. (You can also use a smaller config cloud as well)
  
  PS. I am also hosting this blog (shukrant.com) on this server as well.

• I installed ubuntu on it and followed the documentation provided by Plausible to further complete the installation. It uses docker to get Plausible live and uses Nginx to reverse proxy it to your domain (any domain/sub domain you own).
• You would need to debug on your own in case you get errors during the installation (Google is your friend).
• After you get plausible live on your domain, You can install as many sites you want (or as many as your server can handle). It all depends on how much traffic you're getting.

Here are the things i absolutely loved about plausibel (Coming from Google analytics)

• Their Dark theme is amazing, the dashboard just feels very pleasing to look at.

• Real time user reporting is amazing, low-key this is what i look at the most through out the day to analyse the trends.

• You can import all your data from Google analytics to Plausible using Google's API, Here's a how to guide. Similarly, you can connect Search console to Plausible and it will show search terms your site is getting searched for in the dashboard itself.
• It also has a feature to give reports straight to your email.(Weeky/Monthly/Notification on traffic spikes)
• It provides all the data in a single page, No mumbo jumbo, just straight to the point. That's how i like it.
• You control your data, You have it stored under a server you pay for and control.
• and a lot more features, i would recommend you get your hands on it yourself.

I am damn sure if you're reading this, you are going to love this. Definately recommend from my side.

I will be sticking to Plausible for a while now, not going back.

If you're a stupid nerd about these things like me, you would surely enjoy this adventure of self hosting it on your own server, give it a go.

Any questions? shoot them in the comments.