Plausible Analytics vs Cloudflare Web Analytics - Which is better?

Web analytics is the process of measuring and analyzing the behavior of visitors on a website. It can help website owners and marketers understand how their site is performing, what their audience is interested in, and how they can improve their user experience and conversions. There's a lot of such tools out there and it can be hard to decide which one to use.

In this article we'll compare Plausible and Cloudflare Web Analytics (the free version). They are also used right here in Wirekat!

Both of them claim to offer simple, privacy-friendly, and accurate web analytics for any website. But how do they compare in terms of features, main selling points, and differences? Let’s find out.

Features

Plausible and Cloudflare Web Analytics' free version have some common features, such as:

• Real-time data: Both tools provide real-time data on the number of visitors, page views, bounce rate, referral sources, countries, devices, browsers, and screen sizes.
• Privacy: Both tools respect the privacy of the visitors and do not use cookies, trackers, or personal identifiers. They also comply with the GDPR, CCPA, and other privacy regulations.
• Accuracy: Both tools claim to provide accurate data by filtering out bots, crawlers, and spam traffic. They also do not rely on third-party services or scripts that may be blocked by ad blockers or browsers.
• Dashboard: Both tools have a simple and intuitive dashboard that shows the most important metrics and trends at a glance. They also allow customizing the dashboard by adding or removing widgets, changing the time range, and exporting the data.

However, there are some features that are in Plausible that are NOT in Cloudflare's free version.

• Goals: Plausible allows setting up custom goals to track specific actions or events on the website, such as sign-ups, purchases, downloads, etc. Cloudflare Web Analytics free version does not have this feature yet, but it is planned for the future.
• Real-time data: Plausible can show what's going on in the site in real time - such as how many visitors are in the page right now and what pages they are visiting.
• Pages: Plausible shows the most visited pages on the website, along with the average time spent, bounce rate, and exit rate. Cloudflare Web Analytics free version does not show this information, but it shows the most requested URLs.
• Search terms: Plausible shows the search terms that visitors used to find the website on search engines, such as Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, etc. Cloudflare Web Analytics free version does not show this information, but it shows the search engines as referral sources.
• Email reports: Plausible allows sending weekly or monthly email reports with a summary of the web analytics data. Cloudflare Web Analytics free version does not have this feature yet, but it is planned for the future.
• API: Plausible has a REST API that allows accessing the web analytics data programmatically. Cloudflare Web Analytics free version does not have an API yet, but it is planned for the future.
• Integration with Google Search Console: Plausible has an integration with Google Search console, if you use it. It requires a few extra steps of tinkering, but having it is very nice!

When reading all of this, it's clear as day why I added Plausible to Wirekat. There's just more features!

Other differences

Plausible and Cloudflare Web Analytics (free version) have some differences, such as:

• Setup: Plausible requires adding a small snippet of JavaScript code to the website’s HTML head tag, or using a plugin or integration for some platforms. Being an open-source tool - you also have to spin up a Plausible instance somewhere on a server/VPS. That is, unless you want to pay for the convenience of Plausible doing it all for you.
  
  Cloudflare Web Analytics does not require any code or plugin, and works automatically for any website that uses Cloudflare’s DNS or CDN service. This means that if you bought a domain from Cloudflare, you can proxy all of your traffic through Cloudflare and have analytics by default! If it does not use it Cloudflare's solutions, then it requires the same as setup as Plausible.
• Data retention: Plausible has no data retention limit and your historical data will remain indefinitely. Cloudflare Web Analytics free version retains the web analytics data for 30 days, and then aggregates it into monthly summaries.

Plausible's hidden feature

Plausible can be hosted on your domain, while Cloudflare's analytics are blocked by many popular ad blockers by default. If you're curious, you can see from the loaded scripts that a.wirekat.com is actually the location where Plausible lives on Wirekat! 😊

This tip can actually be used for most self-hosted analytics software - as long as you do not have its name in the domain.

Conclusion

Plausible and Cloudflare Web Analytics are both great web analytics tools that offer simple, privacy-friendly, and accurate web analytics for any website.

As for me, I found that Cloudflare's solution was great for me when I just started and did not focus that much in analytics. Over time I wanted something more powerful - so after some research, Plausible was a clear, ethical upgrade.