50 Posts on Analytics: What We Learned

We set out to write 50 posts about privacy-first analytics — practical guides, honest comparisons, technical how-tos, and explainers for everyone from indie developers to non-technical founders. Starting from March 2026, we published roughly one post per weekday until this one.

This is the retrospective: what we actually covered, what patterns emerged, and what surprised us.

What the blog covers

The 50 posts span five clusters:

1. Privacy-first analytics and tooling — What cookieless tracking means, how visitor counting works without cookies, what data gets stored, how consent banners relate to analytics choices, and the privacy landscape for Australian businesses.

2. Alternatives and migrations — Honest comparisons of analytics tools, the economics of per-site vs flat-rate pricing, why people leave Google Analytics, and when to stay on it.

3. Indie developers and personal sites — What metrics actually matter for small sites, analytics for portfolios, open-source projects, blogs, newsletters, e-commerce shops, and side-project portfolios.

4. AI-assisted building and vibe coding — Adding analytics to AI-built apps, prompting AI tools to do the setup, how MCP servers connect analytics to your editor, and the AI coding tool landscape.

5. Implementation guides — Next.js, Astro, SvelteKit, Nuxt, WordPress, Webflow, SPAs, proxies, UTM tracking, conversion goals, CSV export, the API, and date range analysis.

The questions readers ask most

Across all five clusters, a handful of questions came up again and again:

"Do I actually need analytics on my site?"

Yes, even minimal analytics. Not because you need 50 metrics, but because without any data you are genuinely blind. The five that matter — visitors, top pages, referrers, bounce rate, and trends — answer almost every question a small site needs answered.

See what analytics data do you actually need? for the case for starting small.

"Can I remove my cookie banner if I switch to cookieless analytics?"

This was the most nuanced question, and the answer is: it depends on what else is on your site. Switching analytics alone removes one reason for the banner, but chat widgets, ad pixels, and social embeds may still require consent.

See do you need a cookie banner with privacy-friendly analytics? for the full picture.

"How does this work without cookies?"

The mechanism — a daily-rotating hash that estimates unique visitors without persisting any identifier — is genuinely different from cookie-based counting. It is worth understanding if you care about your data's accuracy and meaning.

See how cookieless analytics counts visitors for a plain-language explanation.

"Is Antlytics right for me, or should I stay on Google Analytics?"

We were honest about this throughout the blog: if you actively use GA4's advanced features — audiences, BigQuery export, Google Ads integration, funnel analysis — stay on GA4. Privacy-first analytics is the right fit for sites where you mostly look at pageviews, referrers, and top pages.

See when Google Analytics is still the right choice for the honest take.

Themes that emerged

The pricing conversation

Multi-site pricing came up more often than expected. Indie developers and small agencies consistently found that per-site analytics pricing scaled poorly for portfolios of 5, 10, or 20 small projects. Flat-rate pricing is not just a marketing angle — it genuinely changes the economics for this audience.

The vibe coding audience is real

Posts in the AI-assisted building cluster performed well and generated thoughtful questions. Developers using Cursor, Claude Code, Bolt, and Lovable do ship analytics-free apps — not from laziness, but because analytics is not part of the default scaffold. A one-command or one-prompt install genuinely lowers the barrier.

Framework-specific guides are underserved

The Astro, SvelteKit, Nuxt, and SPA analytics posts filled a genuine gap. The specific gotchas — island architecture in Astro, navigation hooks in SvelteKit, afterNavigate vs popstate, Vue Router integration — are not covered well elsewhere. These posts earned the most "exactly what I needed" responses.

Privacy concerns are practical, not ideological

The audience for this content is not primarily ideologically motivated around privacy. Most developers and site owners want practical answers: does this break my compliance obligations? will I still have accurate data? can I remove the cookie banner? The best-performing posts answered practical questions, not privacy philosophy.

What surprised us

How many developers don't know what their analytics actually collects

Posts explaining the mechanics — what gets stored, what sessionStorage means, how IP addresses are handled — drew consistent engagement. There is a significant gap between "I have analytics installed" and "I understand what it collects." Filling that gap is part of what this blog is for.

The Australian context is underserved

The AUD pricing post and the Australian businesses post were topics we chose to emphasise deliberately. SaaS tools overwhelmingly target US and European audiences. Billing in AUD, framing compliance in terms of Australian Privacy Principles, and acknowledging the timezone difference in support — these details matter to Australian developers and business owners more than the broader industry tends to acknowledge.

Non-technical readers are a bigger audience than expected

The non-technical founder guide and how to read your analytics dashboard were written specifically to reach beyond the developer audience. Analytics tools talk to developers. The people who act on analytics data are often not developers.

What comes next

This blog programme is ongoing. The next set of posts will follow user questions, document new features as they ship, and dig deeper into topics where a single post was not enough.

If you have a question that none of these 50 posts answers, let us know.

Explore the full blog: Privacy-first analytics guide · Analytics for indie developers · Analytics for vibe coders · Implementation guides