6 tools that do a similar job, and what makes each one different.
Fathom Analytics is a website analytics service that puts a whole site on a single dashboard page. That page covers pages, referrers, sources, devices, browsers, countries, events and UTMs. The script feeding it is 2 KB, served from cdn.usefathom.com, and goes in the page head carrying a data-site attribute with the site ID plus the defer attribute. It sets no cookies and states on that basis that no cookie banner is required. Compliance is claimed against GDPR, CCPA, ePrivacy law and PECR, and EU visitor data is routed through EU-located infrastructure. Traffic can be filtered before it is counted using IP blocking, country-level blocking and an allowed domains restriction. A dashboard can be shared privately, publicly, or behind a password. Fathom is a hosted service only and cannot be self-hosted. Events are recorded with a trackEvent call taking an event name and an optional value, and conversion rate can be calculated against total page views or against total people. Two constraints are worth knowing before naming anything: an event cannot be deleted or renamed once it has fired to a dashboard, and events need http or https to fire, so they will not track from a local file. Ecommerce tracking and event tracking carry no extra fee. The API sits at api.usefathom.com/v1 with sections for Account, Sites, Events, Milestones and Reports, and allows 600 requests per hour. Calls are metered against the monthly pageview allowance, so ten Create Site calls cost the same as ten pageviews. Integrations are published for WordPress, Vue, generic single page apps, SavvyCal and ConvertKit. Pricing starts at $15 per month after a seven day free trial, and the tier covering up to 500,000 pageviews per month is $45. Every plan includes at least 50 sites, and further sites are sold in packs of 50 at $10 per month or $100 per year. Paying yearly gives two months free. Historical data is kept for the full life of the account rather than expiring after a retention window, and historical Google Analytics 4 data can be imported. There is no contract, an account can be cancelled from settings at any time, and a full data export is available on cancellation. Fathom states it has never offered discounts and does not intend to.
