Prisme Analytics is an Open Source, privacy-friendly, and lightweight web analytics solution that serves as an alternative to Google Analytics. Unlike many proprietary tools, Prisme's Open Source nature allows for transparency, self-hosting flexibility, and a privacy-first approach to data collection and analysis. Let's take a look at what that means exactly.

What is web analytics?

Web analytics refers to the process of measuring and analyzing website usage data. When you activate Prisme on your website, you gain access to a straightforward, Open Source analytics dashboard.

This dashboard provides key website metrics, including the number of unique visitors and sessions, page views per page, and the referral sources driving traffic to your site.

With this data, you can assess your website's performance and identify areas for improvement to enhance your future online efforts.

What is Open Source web analytics?

The term "Open Source" is widely used in marketing, but it can have different meanings. With Prisme, we adhere to the definition provided by the Open Source Initiative.

Being Open Source means our source code is available and accessible on GitHub. Anyone can read, inspect, and review the code to understand how it works and ensure data is handled privately and securely. This transparency and openness are what make Open Source products more trustworthy than proprietary, closed-source alternatives.

Moreover, you can download Prisme Analytics and install and run it on your own server, giving you full control over your data.

What license is Prisme released under?

Prisme is Open Source under the GNU Affero General Public License Version 3 (AGPL-3.0) or any later version. You can find it here.

The goal of the AGPL-3.0 license is to maximize user freedom and to encourage companies to contribute to open source. This means you have the right to use, modify, and distribute the Prisme Analytics software, as long as you make the source code available under the same license.

Can Prisme Analytics be self-hosted?

Yes, Prisme Analytics can be self-hosted. It is available as both a free-as-in-beer and free-as-in-speech solution that you can install, host, and manage yourself.

Since Prisme is Open Source, all of our code is available on GitHub. This allows you to take a closer look at the details of our self-hosted web analytics solution.

Prisme is open in other ways too

Open to community feedback with a public roadmap

Prisme is open to feedback from our community. We have a public roadmap that is driven by feature suggestions from our community members. We are also available via email if you have any questions or need assistance.

Is Google Analytics Open Source too?

Google Analytics is not Open Source. It is a closed-source, proprietary product. There's simply no way of knowing what's going on behind the scenes when you're using the Google Analytics script on your website. You have to put your trust in Google.

What are the other ways that Prisme is different from Google Analytics?

Other than Prisme being open source while Google Analytics is closed source, there are many other ways these two site analytics products differ:

  1. Prisme is more simple to use, as it tracks a smaller number of essential metrics and presents them on an easier to understand dashboard. Rather than tracking every imaginable metric, many of which you may never use, Prisme Analytics focuses only on the most critical statistics.
  2. Prisme Analytics is also more lightweight. Our script is small and loads quickly, reducing the page weight of your site compared to the typical Google Analytics script, which is more than 45 times larger.
  3. Crucially, Prisme doesn't use cookies and doesn't track or collect any personal data. This means it is compliant with cookie laws and privacy regulations out of the box - there's no need for GDPR, CCPA, or other consent prompts, nor a lengthy privacy policy.

For further details on the differences between Prisme and Google Analytics, take a look at our comprehensive Prisme vs Google Analytics comparison.

How to switch from Google Analytics to an Open Source analytics alternative?

Do you have a website or blog? We encourage you to give Prisme a chance.

Sign up for a 30-day free trial with no obligations and explore our Open Source site analytics dashboard. You don't even need to remove your current analytics provider until you've tested Prisme and decided if you like our product.

Prisme is simple to set up and integrate into your website, no matter which CMS you use or how your site is built. You simply insert our one-line JavaScript snippet into the <head> section of the pages you want to track, and the metrics will start rolling in.