counter.dev VS fugu

> Rather than what looks to be an unproven pet project of some developer. If nobody is paying for it, there are no guarantees of uptime or support.

It's pay what you want. The project is running for three years already, let's see how things go with time.

Apologies for the long downtime. The issue is being resolved, see here for updates:

- https://github.com/ihucos/counter.dev/issues/124

- counter.dev -> Something that I need but it has a lack of accuracy and very tiny functionality.

> Right, and being sessionStorage it's cleared on browser close, and the next time I visit I will be counted as another daily unique visitor right?

No! There are a few rudimentary mechanisms on top of each other if one of them fails as you described. The /track endpoint sets up http caching. So if sessionStorage fails, you still have that. Then there is also inspecting document.referrer. If it is the page you are already on, then it's definitely not a unique visit.

> (or why not just a cookie)

Because cookies are considered "bad". But technically basically just saving a boolean value on the cookie would not be worse from a privacy perspective than using sessionStorage for a boolean value.

> I personally would rather have the pages I visit use a self-hosted solution gather everything I do, instead of a third-party getting little data from many sites I use. If this script is used across many sites it can be checked server-side against my IP to get my usage. I can never verify what logs they keep and for how long.

That is a general problem with externally hosted services. You can audit the source code (https://github.com/ihucos/counter.dev) but there is not way to verify that my deployment is as stated. I heard a podcast once that web hosters could guarantee that a deployment is in a specific way and contains a specific code base revision. But such solutions unfortunately do not exist. If you really want to be sure self hosting is the way to go (but somewhat cumbersome)

I think you can go with counter.dev

I am providing a free and open source web analytics service: https://github.com/ihucos/counter.dev / counter.dev

From their Github. ​

Taking this opportunity to tell you about my open-source side project: I've built a very simple event-based analytics solution some time ago. You can simply host it yourself and track basic events. It's not possible to track any personal information, not even IP: https://github.com/shafy/fugu

Fugu (code) provides simple, privacy-friendly, open source and self-hostable product analytics. While many tools claim to be Google Analytics alternatives, one of the things Fugu really gets right is properly doing "product analytics" – Going beyond simple view tracking to help you figure out how users are using your (web) software.

Here’s a project of mine that’s configured for Gitpod if anybody wants to use it.

I’m the creator of Fugu, which is a privacy-first alternative to Mixpanel/Amplitude. It focuses on simplicity with a very restricted feature set, and is open-source and self-hostable for free. I offer also a hosted version that is paid.

If you track Personally Identifable Information, such as IP addresses or emails, yes. If you track completely anonymously, then no. Of course, this limits what kind of anylses you can do (e.g. cohort-based analyses will be impossible). But I would also wager that you don't really need that, especially if you're a small startup. You can have a look at my open-source, self-hostable Mixpanel alternative if you are interested: https://github.com/shafy/fugu

You can have a look at my .gitpod.yml config file at one of my open source apps, Fugu, for inspiration.

Fugu is a product analytics tool that focuses on privacy and simplicity. Think of it as an alternative to Mixpanel or amplitude. I've created it because I couldn't find a good event-based analytics tool that has these two requirements. Read more on https://fugu.lol