
Battle of the simple, privacy-focused analytics products - pauljarvis
https://usefathom.com/blog/fathom-vs-competition
======
franky47
The competition being (non-exhaustive list, comment if you know of others I
might have missed):

SimpleAnalytics.com, Plausible.io, Matomo.org, GoatCounter.com, and (shameless
plug but WIP) Chiffre.io.

However, while there is a competition to gain users and market share,
ultimately these platforms are in competition against Google Analytics and
other giants of the surveillance industry. The only risk if one of them grows
too fast is that it becomes the new giant. Google used to say "don't be evil",
after all.

~~~
XCSme
I think self-hosting is the solution. This way, there is no company that will
store centralized user data, which is the biggest privacy issue for analytics.

I have been building a self-hosted platform [0], and I always get pressured
into offering it as a SaaS. I am strongly against it and try to make it work
by teaching people that self-hosting is really easy and it's the way of the
future.

[0]: [https://www.usertrack.net](https://www.usertrack.net)

~~~
JackWritesCode
> I think self-hosting is the solution. This way, there is no company that
> will store centralized user data, which is the biggest privacy issue for
> analytics.

Your opinion will change in time. It all comes down to the principles of the
company and who has control of it. That's why Fathom hasn't taken venture
capital. As soon as you bring in people who don't share the same values as
you, things start going downhill. You do not need to store centralized user
data to run a sustainable competitor to Google Analytics

~~~
XCSme
I am slightly confused by your comment. Why do you say my opiniong will change
in time? It has been the same over 8 years now and it just seems to get
stronger and stronger.

"You do not need to store centralized user data to run a sustainable
competitor to Google Analytics." That was exactly my point, right? Any
platform that is hosted stores centralized user data (as they control all the
servers), so self-hosting is the only way to decentralize the data. Am I
missing anything?

~~~
JackWritesCode
You replied to a comment talking about:

> Fathom, SimpleAnalytics.com, Plausible.io, Matomo.org, GoatCounter.com, and
> (shameless plug but WIP) Chiffre.io

and you said :

> I think self-hosting is the solution. This way, there is no company that
> will store centralized user data, which is the biggest privacy issue for
> analytics.".

Your premise was that these companies store centralized user data. That is
absolutely not true. So you presented a fake problem (that doesn't exist
amongst privacy-focused analytics solutions) and gave a solution.

~~~
XCSme
The company has access to all the data, thus it's centralized where one entity
has full control over it. Can you further elaborate how those companies don't
have access to their data? In case of an aquisition, how safe is all the data
stored on all the servers that the company controls? What exactly is not true?

~~~
JackWritesCode
You shouldn’t keep centralized user data. I’m done here as it’s taking us both
too much energy to explain our points. Because I run Fathom, I know about the
data I keep, and there’s nothing user specific. Even in our queue, we never
store user data...

