By Plausible.ioPlausible Analytics Plugin
Plausible Analytics is an easy-to-use, open source, lightweight and privacy-friendly web analytics alternative to Google Analytics.
Plausible Analytics is an easy-to-use, open source, lightweight (<1 KB) and privacy-friendly web analytics alternative to Google Analytics.
Plausible Analytics doesn’t use cookies and is fully compliant with GDPR, CCPA and PECR. Made and hosted in the EU, powered by European-owned cloud infrastructure 🇪🇺.
Take a look at the live demo.
You need a subscription to Plausible Analytics to track your stats. There’s a free 30-day trial with no credit card required.
We’re completely independent, self-funded, bootstrapped and debt-free. We’re not interested in raising funds or taking investment. We choose the subscription business model rather than surveillance capitalism. We’re operating a sustainable project funded solely by the fees that our subscribers pay us.
Visit our website for full details.
Why use Plausible?
Google Analytics is frustrating to use, difficult to understand, slow to load and privacy-invasive. That’s why we built Plausible Analytics, a simple but powerful, lightweight, open source and privacy-friendly alternative.
Here’s what makes Plausible a great Google Analytics alternative and why over 12,000 paying subscribers trust us with their website and business insights:
Smooth transition from Google Analytics
Plausible features a realtime dashboard, entry pages report and integration with Search Console. You can track your paid campaigns and conversions. You can invite team members. You can even import your historical stats from Google Analytics. Learn how to get the most out of your Plausible experience and join thousands who have already migrated from Google Analytics.
Simple analytics at a glance
Plausible is simple analytics. It is easy to understand and it cuts through the noise. Check your site traffic and get all the essential insights on one page in one minute. There are no layers of menus, there is no need for you to build custom reports, custom dashboards or PowerPoint documents.
Lightweight script that keeps your site speed fast
Plausible is lightweight analytics. Our script is 45 times smaller than Google Analytics. Your page weight will be cut down, your site will load faster and you’ll reduce your carbon footprint for a greener and more sustainable web. A site with 10,000 monthly visitors can save 4.5 kg of CO2 emissions per year by switching.
No need for cookie banners or GDPR consent
Plausible is privacy-friendly analytics. All the site measurement is carried out absolutely anonymously. Cookies are not used and no personal data is collected. There are no persistent identifiers. No cross-site or cross-device tracking either. Your site data is not used for any other purposes. All visitor data is exclusively processed with servers owned and operated by European companies and it never leaves the EU.
Track events and marketing campaigns
Plausible is useful. Segment your audience by any metric you click on. Answer the important questions about your visitors, content and referral sources. Analyze paid campaigns using UTM parameters. Track site search terms, outbound link clicks, file downloads, 404 error pages, post authors, post categories and custom taxonomies without manually configuring anything or writing any code.
Built-in WooCommerce analytics
Plausible provides an automatic WooCommerce analytics solution to track conversions, revenue and attribution. Activities tracked include adding to cart, removing from cart, entering checkout and completing a purchase. A purchase funnel looking at the user journey from viewing a product to making a purchase is enabled to help you see the drop-off rates between the different steps, understand your cart abandonment rate and increase your conversions.
Invite team members and share your dashboard
Plausible is shareable. Your stats are private by default but you can choose to be transparent and make them public so anyone with your custom link can view them. You can also share your stats privately by generating a secure link. This link is impossible to guess but you can add password protection for extra security. You can invite team members and assign user roles too.
Transparent and open source software
Plausible is open source analytics. Our source code is available and accessible on GitHub so anyone can read it, inspect it and review it to verify that our actions match with our words. We welcome feedback and have a public roadmap. If you’re happy to manage your own infrastructure, you can self-host Plausible too.
Features
- Our product is updated several times per week and with our WordPress plugin you always have access to all the latest features
- Automatically includes tracking code in the header of your site
- Simple plugin settings page with easy options and an onboarding guide
- Get more accurate stats and count those who use adblockers by running the Plausible script as a first-party connection from your domain name
- View your Plausible stats directly in your WordPress dashboard (you can grant access to other user roles too)
- Tracking of admin users is disabled by default (you can also disable tracking of other user roles)
- Enable WooCommerce revenue, file downloads, external link clicks, site search terms and 404 error pages tracking
- Enable automated tracking of post authors, post categories and custom taxonomies for better content analysis
- Custom events and custom dimensions can be setup using CSS class names directly in the WordPress editor
- Integrate with Google Search Console so you can see search queries people use to find your site in Google’s search results
- Import your historical Google Analytics stats
- Keep an eye on your traffic with weekly and/or monthly email and Slack reports
- Get traffic spike notifications via email or Slack so you don’t miss being on the Hacker News
- Tag your paid ads, emails and social media posts with UTM tags and analyze your ecommerce and marketing campaigns from click to conversion using marketing funnels
- Filter the dashboard by any metric that you click on to get further insights. Mix and match filters too
For more information: How to setup Plausible Analytics WordPress plugin.
Installation
Automatic installation
Automatic installation is the easiest option as WordPress handles the file transfers itself and you don’t need to leave your web browser. To do an automatic install of Plausible Analytics, log in to your WordPress dashboard, navigate to the Plugins menu and click “Add New”.
In the search field type “Plausible Analytics” and click Search Plugins. Once you have found the plugin you can view details about it such as the point release, rating and description. Most importantly of course, you can install it by simply clicking “Install Now”.
Manual installation
The manual installation method involves downloading our plugin and uploading it to your server via your favorite FTP application. The WordPress codex contains instructions on how to do this here.
Screenshots
Plausible.io Analytics Dashboard
Plausible Analytics WordPress Plugin Settings Page
FAQ
For more information, visit the Plausible Analytics website. And for answers to all the frequently asked questions, check out our documentation.
We may be biased but we don’t recommend you use Google Analytics on your WordPress site because of these reasons:
It’s owned by Google, the largest ad-tech company in the world
It’s a bloated script that affects your site speed
It’s overkill for the majority of site owners
It’s a liability considering GDPR, CCPA and other privacy regulations
It uses cookies so you must obtain consent to store cookies
It’s blocked by many plugins and browsers so the data is not very accurate
It requires an extensive privacy policy
It’s abused by referral spam that skews the data
It’s a proprietary product so you need to put your trust in Google
It worsens the user experience due to the necessity for the annoying prompts
Read more: https://plausible.io/blog/best-wordpress-analytics-plugins
Google Analytics is free because Google has built their company and their wealth by collecting and analyzing huge amounts of personal information from web users and using these personal and behavioral insights to sell advertisements.
With Plausible, you 100% own and control all of your website data. This data is not being shared with or sold to any third-parties. Since we don’t make money from targeted advertisement, we must charge a subscription fee.
Revenue from subscriptions is used to pay our rent, further develop Plausible and allow us to commit to Plausible and open source full time.
Yes, you can check out our demo at https://plausible.io/plausible.io
Check out our GitHub repository where all the development of Plausible Analytics and of our WordPress plugin are done in the open.
Main repo: https://github.com/plausible/analytics
Plugin repo: https://github.com/plausible/wordpress
You can also blog and in other ways share with the world what you like about Plausible, what you use it for and how it helps you solve your challenges. Our growth can be attributed to people who love to use Plausible and who decide to share their Plausible experience with the world.
You can also contribute to Plausible by translating our plugin. Take a look at https://translate.wordpress.org
You can read more about us: https://plausible.io/about
Contact us: https://plausible.io/contact
Changelog
2.1.0 | July 21st, 2024
- Tested with WP 6.6
- Added: WooCommerce integration. This is automatically enabled when the enhanced measurement Ecommerce Revenue is enabled. For current users who wish to switch to the WooCommerce integration, please disable and enable the option to make sure the required goals and funnel are created.
- Added: Enhanced measuring for Search Queries.
- Added: Cloudflare Rocket Loader compatibility.
- Fixed: the plugin would crash the admin screen on instances not running cURL or with allow_url_fopen disabled.
v2.0.9 | May 22nd, 2024
- Improved: Added files required for Automated Testing.
- Improved: Updated API client.
- Improved: Auto provisioning is now enabled for Plausible Community Edition (self-hosting) as well. This means a plugin token is now required when Plausible CE is used.
- Important! Plausible CE v2.1.0-rc.0 or higher is required to access the plugin token feature.
- Improved: The Settings page no longer reloads when certain features are enabled.
- Improved: The Authors and Categories feature now supports custom post types.
- Fixed: Enhanced Measurements couldn’t be enabled when Plausible CE was used.
- Fixed: Plausible CE users would be stuck on the onboarding wizard after updating to v2.0.8.
- Overall code improvements and bug fixes.
For the full changelog, check out our Github repository.