Marketing & growth
Cookieless Analytics for EU Agencies
GDPR-clean, cookie-banner-free analytics for EU agencies running dozens of client sites, with GA4 import.
Founder thesis
Fathom self-reports thousands of paying customers and Matomo claims 1.5M sites, so private analytics sells. Both incumbents bill per hit or per pageview with tight site and seat caps and neither sells to agencies: Fathom includes 50 sites at $15/mo up to 100k pageviews, Matomo Cloud starts at $29/mo for 50k hits and 30 websites. Betting that EU agencies running dozens of client sites will pay a flat bucket price for EU hosting and a GA4 importer that pulls history out of a dead Universal Analytics account.
What others got wrong
Fathom and Matomo both charge by the hit and cap sites and seats. Fathom gives 50 sites at $15/mo up to 100k pageviews; Matomo Cloud is $29/mo for 50k hits and 30 websites. An agency with many client sites pays for traffic it cannot forecast.
Cookieless, cheap and simple is the incumbents' whole pitch, not an open slot. Matomo's own comparison shows the two overlap on core metrics, so there is no feature wedge to win on.
No incumbent sells a multi-site agency plan. Fathom's 50-site include and Matomo's roll-up reporting are the closest thing, so the segment is served by accident.
What should work
Bill a flat bucket by pageview and include many sites, instead of per hit with tight caps. Fathom's pricing shows 50 sites at $15/mo up to 100k pageviews, with extra 50-site packs at $10/mo.
Ship a GA4 importer and let agencies run it alongside GA while they compare definitions. Fathom's own vs-Google-Analytics page tells buyers to install alongside GA while they evaluate.
Run a customer-only partner program with 25% recurring commissions and source-keyword attribution, the way Fathom does.
What kills it
- Two bootstrapped incumbents already own the cookieless pitch and the pricing.
- No technical moat. A 1.6 KB script and a dashboard are easy to copy.
- No agency-specific demand turned up. The agency fit is read off Fathom's 50-site include and Matomo roll-up reporting, not voiced by agencies.
- Cheap-at-scale ingestion is Fathom's documented stack, not an audited cost model for a new entrant. A $19-25/mo bucket can lose money.
What users want
3Analytics that browsers and adblockers do not strip out
A founder reviving a meditation app said the main worry is that many browsers already block tracker scripts, and called GA 'optimised around advertising rather than engagement' and 'getting quite complicated'.
A way to count events even when client-side scripts are blocked
An HN commenter runs nginx (or Caddy) behind Cloudflare in DNS-only mode, uses real-time logs and a subdomain that dispatches events like /user_sign_up, and says 'This works perfectly even with adblocks.'
A flat price that includes many sites, not per-hit billing
No buyer complaint turned up on this. The want is read off Fathom's pricing page, which includes 50 sites at $15/mo up to 100k pageviews and sells extra 50-site packs at $10/mo.
- Sources
- 9
- Checked
- 9
- Competitors
- 2
- Gaps
- 2
- Page checked
- 9 · 100%
- Snippet only
- 0 · 0%
- Documented
- 4 · 57%
- Interpreted
- 3 · 43%
- market4
- pricing2
- complaint2
- playbook1
Competitors
2- Fathom$10/mo
- Matomo Cloud$29/mo
Parsed from public pricing blurbs (entry paid tier when available). Max in set: $29/mo.
| Competitor | From | Free tier | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fathom | $10/mo | Yes | usefathom.com✓ |
| Matomo Cloud | $29/mo | Yes | matomo.org✓ |
What customers complain about
2| Gap | Src |
|---|---|
Browsers and adblockers block tracker scripts, so measurement breaks. A founder reviving a meditation app said the primary concern is that 'many browsers today are already blocking them as tracker scripts', and that GA is 'optimised around advertising rather than engagement' and 'getting quite complicated'. | |
Operators fall back to DIY server logs when client-side analytics is blocked and cloud HTTP logs are unusable. An HN commenter runs nginx (or Caddy) behind Cloudflare in DNS-only mode with real-time logs and a subdomain dispatching events like /user_sign_up, and says 'Cloud HTTP logs are usually terrible and very slow' and 'This works perfectly even with adblocks.' |
Documented Interpreted
How competitors find customers
2| Tactic | Src |
|---|---|
| Fathom runs a customer-only Partners program: 25% recurring commissions, $10 off the first invoice for referrals, a 30-day attribution cookie plus source-keyword attribution. Fathom self-reports 90% trial-to-paid conversion and 2% churn. | usefathom.com✓ |
| Fathom went open source first: a simple dashboard screenshot spread fast, it gathered millions of downloads, then converted to paid hosted. Fathom says 'That screenshot was posted for fun, but it spread like wildfire. Soon hundreds of people were offering to pay us for the real thing.' | usefathom.com✓ |
Your angle & pricing wedge
| Piece | Claim | Src |
|---|---|---|
| Angle | Agency-first cookieless analytics: 50+ sites per bucket, per-client roll-up reporting, EU hosting, and a GA4 history importer tuned for post-Universal-Analytics migrations. No agency-specific source turned up, so the agency fit is read off Fathom's 50-site include and Matomo roll-up reporting, not voiced by agencies. | |
| Wedge | Bill per pageview bucket with many sites included, not per hit with tight site and seat caps. Fathom's pricing gives 50 sites at $15/mo up to 100k pageviews plus 50-site packs at $10/mo, against Matomo Cloud's $29/mo for 50k hits and 30 websites, so a flat $19-25/mo 50-site bucket with free GA4 import undercuts the agency setup, say 40 client sites and 200k total views. Ingestion looks cheap at scale because Fathom documents cutting its AWS bill by $100,000 and a ClickHouse rebuild across tens of billions of rows, but that is their stack, not a verified cost model for you. |
How others got traction
3| Move | Why | Src |
|---|---|---|
| Fathom launched as an open-source project first, then went paid and hosted | Fathom says 'First as an open-source project (which has now been downloaded millions of times). Then, as a paid and hosted product.' The downloads likely seeded trust and word-of-mouth that paid marketing could not replicate, but no source isolates how much they converted. | usefathom.com✓ |
| Customer-only Partners program paying 25% recurring commissions with source-keyword attribution, promoted through in-depth reviews (Efficient App, AccessAlly) | Fathom documents the program with company-reported figures of 90% trial-to-paid and 2% churn. Review-style content likely converts because buyers compare GA alternatives through reviews, but no source ties a signup number to the program. | usefathom.com✓ |
| Side-by-side evaluation and a GA4 importer to lower switching cost: install alongside GA, import history, compare definitions before cancelling | Fathom's vs-Google-Analytics page advises 'You can install Fathom alongside Google Analytics while you evaluate it' and says the importer 'supports GA4'. It likely cuts migration fear after Google deleted Universal Analytics data, but the page frames it as evaluation guidance, not a measured growth lever. | usefathom.com✓ |
Market heat
Fathom self-reports thousands of paying customers and billions of pageviews processed.
Matomo says it is used by more than 1.5 million websites in 190 countries.
A founder reviving a site asked for 2024 analytics specifically because browsers block tracker scripts, in an Ask HN post.
Revenue signals
3| Signal | Src |
|---|---|
Fathom self-reports thousands of paying customers, billions of pageviews and millions of customer websites. It is bootstrapped and self-funded, with no revenue figure stated and no audit. | usefathom.com✓ |
Matomo states 1.5M+ websites in 190 countries. Its Cloud entry is $29/mo, and a MetaLocator testimonial claims about $150K/yr saved versus alternatives, published by the company and not independently checked. | matomo.org✓ |
Category self-serve pricing runs from $15/mo (Fathom, 100k views) to $29/mo (Matomo Cloud, 50k hits). Whether a $19-25/mo agency-bucket entrant takes share is a guess. |
Should you build this?
Privacy analytics sells: Fathom self-reports thousands of paying customers and Matomo claims 1.5M sites, and the pain is exact, with GA called 'optimised around advertising rather than engagement' and 'blocked by browsers', pushing operators to nginx and Caddy log pipelines that 'work perfectly even with adblocks'. But two bootstrapped incumbents own this space, the cookieless-cheap-simple wedge is their whole positioning, and no agency voiced this demand. Test before building: recruit 15 EU agencies managing 10+ client sites each, get last month's analytics bill, their adblock-loss estimate and one client blocked by a cookie-banner consent, then offer a paid $25/mo pre-order for a 50-site bucket with GA4 import. Kill it if fewer than 5 pre-pay or fewer than 8 can quantify blocked-traffic or consent-banner pain.
More ▾
All sources
9| Source | Kind | Status | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| pricing | page checked | 2026-09-18 | |
| pricing | page checked | 2026-09-18 | |
| complaint | page checked | 2026-09-18 | |
| complaint | page checked | 2026-09-18 | |
| market | page checked | 2026-09-18 | |
| playbook | page checked | 2026-09-18 | |
| market | page checked | 2026-09-18 | |
| market | page checked | 2026-09-18 | |
| market | page checked | 2026-09-18 |