Privacy-first analytics, written by a practitioner.
No fluff, no marketing speak, no “revolutionary” buzzwords. Guidance you can apply on Monday morning — and tools chosen because they work, not because someone paid for placement.
01 Who's behind this
One person, one editorial line — no rotating staff, no ghostwritten reviews.
Mark Sutton
Web analytics specialist with eight years of experience helping site owners measure what matters without compromising user privacy. My work spans GA4 alternatives, GDPR-friendly tracking patterns, and conversion analytics for sites that don’t want to feed third-party ad networks.
I started this site after watching too many teams drown in dashboards while their actual question — “is this working?” — went unanswered. The editorial line: track less, trust your data more, and prefer tools that respect your visitors.
Every article on this site is written from a practitioner’s seat, then audited against published research and real platform documentation.
Outside of writing, I’m available for analytics consulting and second-opinion sessions — GA4-to-privacy migrations, cookieless measurement setups, or just a sanity check on what tool fits your stack. Reach out if you’d like to talk through a specific problem.
02 By the numbers
The directory in four data points.
03 What I write about
Four topics, each with its own depth. Articles connect to tool reviews and pillar guides where they apply.
Privacy & Compliance
GDPR, ePrivacy, recent EU court decisions, and what compliant cookie-less setups actually look like in practice.
GA Alternatives
Plausible, Fathom, Matomo, Umami, Rybbit, Simple Analytics, GoatCounter — measured comparisons of features, hosting models, and pricing.
Cookie-less Tracking
First-party analytics, server-side patterns, log analysis, and consent-free measurement that survives the cookie deprecation tail.
Minimalist Measurement
The 7 metrics that survive every platform change. The vanity metrics worth dropping. Reading data without drowning in dashboards.
04 Mechanism over recipe
How I write — and why most articles read like a teardown, not a tutorial.
Every article on this site follows a simple principle: explain how a tool or technique works before showing how to use it. Knowing the mechanism makes you better at applying it — and better at knowing when not to apply it.
You won’t find hype. If a tool has limitations, I document them. If a technique only matters in specific situations, I say so. If a metric is mostly vanity, I’ll write that too.
The site openly welcomes AI search and AI training crawlers. Content here is meant to be referenced, summarized, and cited. See llms.txt for the full editorial scope.
05 Start reading
Browse the latest articles, or open the pillar guides on cookie consent and GA alternatives.
Pick a starting point
Three popular entry points into the site.