Simple Analytics

What Simple Analytics Is

Simple Analytics is the minimalist option. Dutch company. Zero cookies, zero personal data collected whatsoever. Not “anonymized” — literally no individual tracking at all.

Script size: ~1.3KB (gzipped)
Data collection: Aggregated only (page, referrer, device type, country)
Consent needed: No, anywhere (not just EU)
Founded: 2018, bootstrapped, profitable
Philosophy: “No filler, no bloat”

Key Features

What you get:

Pageview count (with daily/weekly/monthly breakdown)
Top pages
Traffic source (referrer)
UTM parameter parsing
Device type (desktop, mobile, tablet)
Country/language
Event goals (simple, no properties)
Email reports

What you don’t get:

Custom event properties
User segments
Filtering beyond basic dimensions
Historical data export
API access (limited)

Implementation

Direct script embed

<script async src="https://scripts.simpleanalyticscdn.com/latest.js"></script>
<noscript><img src="https://queue.simpleanalyticscdn.com/noscript.gif" alt="" referrerpolicy="no-referrer-when-downgrade" /></noscript>

That’s it. Add to your <head>. No configuration needed.

Verify it’s working

Open your site, check the browser DevTools Network tab. You should see requests to queue.simpleanalyticscdn.com.
Via GTM (not recommended)

You can load Simple Analytics through GTM, but it defeats the purpose. The advantage of Simple Analytics is that it can’t be blocked. Loading through GTM changes that.
Subdomain proxy for ad blockers

If ad blockers are impacting traffic:
```
<script async src="https://yourdomain.com/stats/latest.js"></script>
```
Configure the proxy in Simple Analytics settings. It acts as a transparent forward to their servers.

Custom Events

Simple Analytics event tracking is minimal by design:

// Basic event
sa_event('signup');

// Event with callback
sa_event('download', {
  callback: () => console.log('event tracked')
});

// Form submission
document.querySelector('form').addEventListener('submit', () => {
  sa_event('form_submitted');
});

// Button click
document.querySelector('.cta').addEventListener('click', () => {
  sa_event('cta_clicked');
});

// Purchase/conversion (value in cents)
sa_event('purchase', {
  callback: () => window.location.href = '/thank-you'
});

Important: Simple Analytics events don’t support custom properties. You’re tracking that an event happened, not the details. If you need to know which product was purchased, you need a different tool.

UTM Tracking

Simple Analytics automatically captures:

utm_source — Traffic source
utm_medium — Campaign medium
utm_campaign — Campaign name
utm_content — Creative/content identifier
utm_term — Search term

Filter by UTM in the dashboard. No manual setup required.

What You Give Up vs GA4 (and Plausible)

Simple Analytics has narrower scope than Plausible, which has narrower scope than GA4:

Capability	GA4	Plausible	Fathom	Simple Analytics
Event properties	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Segments	Yes	No	No	No
Filtering	Advanced	Basic	Moderate	Very basic
Custom dimensions	Yes	No	No	No
BigQuery export	Yes	No	No	No
API	Yes	Paid	No	Very limited
Funnel analysis	Yes	No	No	No
Revenue tracking	Yes	Basic	Basic	No properties

When Simple Analytics breaks down:

Need to know which product sold → Not available
Need to segment users → Not possible
Need to filter by multiple dimensions → Very limited
Need historical data export → Not available
Need audience building → Not possible

Pricing

Up to 100K pageviews/month: $9
Up to 500K pageviews/month: $24
Up to 2M pageviews/month: $99
Custom: Anything larger

Better value at scale than Plausible. No free tier.

When to Choose Simple Analytics

✅ Good fit:

Blogs and content sites (just want traffic count)
Personal projects
Teams that want absolute simplicity
Sites where “how many visitors” is the only metric
Strict privacy positioning (zero data collection is a selling point)
Early-stage startups (cheap, no config overhead)

❌ Bad fit:

Any need for event properties
Segmentation required
Complex dashboards
Revenue/ecommerce tracking
Teams that want API access
Historical reporting

Features That Make Simple Analytics Unique

Tweet Viewer

Simple Analytics has a quirky feature: shows tweets linking to your pages. Useful for content/media sites to see social traction without integration complexity.

AI Insights

Newer feature: “Fathom-style” automated insights. Highlights anomalies and trends. Still basic compared to GA4.

Annual Reports

Generate an annual performance report automatically. Good for year-end sharing.