Simple Analytics

Overview

Simple Analytics is a privacy-first web analytics platform designed as a direct alternative to Google Analytics. Built in the Netherlands with a strict focus on EU privacy laws, it allows website owners to track visitor data without using cookies or collecting personally identifiable information (PII). This architectural choice means users often do not need to display annoying cookie consent banners, providing a smoother user experience while remaining fully compliant with GDPR, PECR, and CCPA regulations.

The tool strips away the complexity often associated with enterprise analytics, offering a clean, single-page dashboard that presents essential metrics—such as page views, referrers, and screen sizes—at a glance. It serves over 34,000 users, ranging from solo developers and indie hackers to government agencies and large NGOs like the UK Government and Michelin. Key differentiators include the ability to import historical data from Google Analytics (ensuring no data loss during the switch) and an AI interface that allows users to query their data using natural language.

Key Features

Cookieless & Privacy-First Architecture

The core philosophy of Simple Analytics is that you don’t need to invade privacy to get useful data. Unlike traditional tools that track users across the web using cookies and IP fingerprinting, Simple Analytics collects only non-personal data. It generates unique visitor counts based on the browser’s referrer and other non-identifiable signals for a single day, ensuring that no PII is ever stored.

This approach has significant practical benefits beyond ethics. Because it doesn’t rely on cookies, it captures data that is often blocked by ad-blockers or rejected by users on consent banners. For businesses operating in or targeting the EU, this ensures 100% GDPR compliance “out of the box” without complex legal configurations. The data is encrypted in transit and at rest on Dutch servers, ensuring it never leaves the EU jurisdiction.

AI-Powered Insights

Recognizing that many users find traditional analytics dashboards overwhelming, Simple Analytics includes an AI-driven interface. This feature enables users to have a conversation with their analytics rather than clicking through multiple reports and filters. It lowers the barrier to entry for non-technical team members who need data to make decisions but lack data science training.

For example, a marketing manager can ask, “Show me the top 5 pages from organic search this month,” or “Compare mobile vs. desktop traffic for last week.” The system interprets the natural language query and retrieves the precise metrics or generates the relevant chart instantly. This streamlines the reporting process and helps teams find actionable insights without needing to understand query languages or complex filtering logic.

Automated Event Collection

While primarily a web analytics tool, Simple Analytics offers robust event tracking capabilities without the need for code-heavy implementation. The system is designed to “auto-collect” common interactions that signal user intent. By default, it can track downloads, clicks on outbound links, and interactions with email links (mailto:).

For more specific tracking needs, users can implement custom events to track button clicks or specific page interactions. Importantly, this event tracking adheres to the same privacy standards as the rest of the platform—tracing the aggregate performance of buttons and features without creating a profile of individual users. This makes it ideal for measuring conversion rates on landing pages or the effectiveness of call-to-action buttons without compromising user trust.

Pricing

Simple Analytics offers a straightforward pricing model based on data volume (pageviews/events), with options for monthly or annual billing. There is a “Free Forever” plan designed for hobby projects, which includes 1 user, up to 5 websites, and unlimited pageviews, but creates a hard cap on data history—retaining data for only the last 30 days.

For businesses requiring data retention, paid plans start with the Simple tier at $15/month (starting at 20k pageviews). This plan increases retention to 3 years, allows for 10 websites, and unlocks features like email support and the goals dashboard. The Team plan, starting at $40/month, adds multi-user support, raw data export, 5-year retention, and advanced features like ad-blocker bypass and IP range blocking. All paid plans come with a 14-day free trial that requires no credit card to start.

Pricing scales based on traffic volume; as your website grows from 20k to 1M+ pageviews, the monthly fee adjusts via a slider on their pricing page. Enterprise plans are available for organizations needing custom limits, SLAs, and dedicated support.