Reviving Ana as Fathom: simple & transparent website analytics

Update (Mar 2019): I am leaving Fathom Analytics.

As I was browsing my Twitter feed a few weeks ago, I came across the following tweet by Paul Jarvis.

I had the same idea in late 2016 when I set out to built my own open-source website analytics alternative called Ana. It even got some traction back then and a handful of users are running it on their own servers already.

Sadly, I got sidetracked and didn't spend any more time on it during the last few months. I still firmly believe in the idea though.

Too many websites simply slam a Google Analytics tracking snippet in their footer and then barely look at it. There should be a simpler, faster and more private option available.

Knowing Paul as a super knowledgeable power-user of our Mailchimp for WordPress plugin, I replied to him that I would love to help out, if at all possible. And it was!

Together, we are setting out to build website analytics that is simple, transparent and that respects your visitor's privacy. We're a few weeks in at this point and already running a beta version of it on our personal sites:

We're developing Fathom Analytics out in the open; here's Fathom on GitHub. Expects lots of development happening over the next few weeks.

The plan is to create an open-source version that you can self-host on your own servers, free of charge. A hosted offering will be available if you want us to take care of running the software & keeping it online.