The 5 Best Cookieless Web Analytics Tools & Plugins for WP
Here’s something you may not know:
Web analytics tools don’t need to use cookies.
Tools like Google Analytics use cookies to track views because it makes it easy to recognize repeat visits, but cookies have become a highly flawed tracking technique. It is possible for visitors to block or reject cookies, and with the advent of GDPR, you now need to show a consent banner allowing visitors to opt-in before tracking them.
The end result?
As many as 95% of visitors reject additional cookies. Analytics are never perfectly accurate, but missing out on that volume of traffic makes them practically useless.
Luckily, there’s another way.
The plugins and platforms outlined here record web analytics without the use of cookies (cookieless tracking). This means that their tracking can’t be blocked and doesn’t require an opt-in from visitors, resulting in much more accurate data (especially for EU countries).
Now that you know the massive benefits of using cookieless analytics, let’s get to some of the awesome tools available to implement it on your site.
1. Independent Analytics
Independent Analytics is our solution for cookieless visitor tracking. It’s made exclusively for WordPress and is free to use on as many sites as you want.
With Independent Analytics, you don’t have to create an account anywhere or go through a lengthy configuration process; installation takes seconds, and tracking starts immediately.
Even better, you can check your analytics from right inside your WP dashboard.
As a plugin, Independent Analytics runs entirely on your server, which means that it never shares data with outside servers. This makes it superior in terms of privacy when compared to apps that collect and store your data on their own servers.
Instead of using cookies, it makes a REST API request to your own site whenever a page is loaded. The visitor’s IP address is used to get the geolocation and is then thoroughly encrypted and saved as a unique ID to identify future visits.
This approach gives you much more accurate results than relying on cookies. It’s also worth noting that Google Analytics can be used without cookies, but when used in this way, it loses its ability to count unique visitors altogether.
If you want a free and privacy-friendly analytics solution for your WordPress website, give it a try!
2. Statify
If you’re looking for a basic cookieless analytics plugin, it doesn’t get any simpler than Statify.
We like this plugin because it has the absolute lowest footprint possible. There’s no impact on performance, no communication with outside servers, and it doesn’t collect any personal data.
The only drawback of this plugin is that it is extremely simple. There is a chart where you can see how many views you got each day and a list of the top pages and referring sites. It doesn’t include the number of unique visitors, geographical locations, or any filtering options.
If you want a low-impact solution to track your daily views without using cookies, Statify could be a great plugin for your WordPress website.
3. Clicky
Clicky is not a WordPress plugin but rather a standalone platform of its own. There’s a simple tracking script you can add to your site, and then the data will start flowing into the dashboard.
The advantage of Clicky is that it can be used on WordPress and non-WordPress sites alike, and it does not use cookies by default. However, Clicky does not have a reliable way to track unique visitors without the use of cookies, so you will see most visitors counted repeatedly.
Clicky has been around for many years, so it has evolved to become a robust platform. It has some pretty advanced features, such as video analytics and heatmaps, that are hard to find elsewhere.
If you’d prefer to use an analytics platform outside of WordPress, give Clicky a try.
4. Post Views Counter
Post Views Counter is a simple analytics plugin that also includes a public-facing view counter. You can use the counter to show off how many visits each page on your site has had. You can also find this feature in the Independent Analytics plugin.
With Post Views Counter, you can see your stats in the dashboard widget, which you’ll see right away when you login to your site. The widget includes a chart showing the number of views each day and the number of posts that have been viewed. Additionally, there is a list of your top pages for the month and how many views each one has had.
And, of course, to make it into this list, Post Views Counter does all its tracking without using any cookies or communicating with outside servers, for that matter.
5. WP Statistics
WP Statistics is another good option for a cookieless WordPress analytics plugin.
The WP Statistics plugin includes a robust data dashboard with reports for your visitor geolocations, traffic over time, top referrers, and much more. You’ll see most of this data on the summary page, which links out to more detailed reports with additional data.
This plugin does not use cookies at all, and to comply with GDPR laws, it anonymizes visitor IP addresses. This used to be optional in the past, but they’ve since made it a requirement to always anonymize IPs.
If you’re interested in a cookie-free analytics solution with lots of reports, this could be a solid addition to your site.
Start tracking without cookies today
WordPress users are pretty lucky.
Most sites have just a few paid platforms to choose from, but thanks to the huge developer community built around WordPress, there are lots of free options to get cookieless analytics.
We are biased, of course, but we think Independent Analytics is the best cookie-free analytics plugin around. It’s completely free to use, so give it a try and let us know what you think!
Learn more about Independent Analytics
If you want to explore an alternative, you can get lightweight stats from Statify and similar data along with a view counter from the Post Views Counter plugin.
If you’d prefer an external platform, Clicky is feature-filled and cookie-free. And lastly, WP Statistics is a good option if you’re looking for a wide variety of data and reports.
Thanks for checking out this list of the best cookieless web analytics solutions for WordPress. You can leave a comment below if you have any questions or concerns.
Originally published at https://independentwp.com/blog/best-cookieless-web-analytics-wordpress/ on June 6, 2023.
