Privacy-Friendly Analytics for Indie Hackers: Why You Should Ditch Google Analytics

If you're an indie hacker running a side project or early-stage SaaS, you've probably dropped a Google Analytics snippet onto your site without thinking twice. It's free, it's everywhere, and it's what everyone recommends.

But here's the thing: Google Analytics is built for enterprise marketing teams with thousands of campaigns to track. For indie hackers, it's overkill — and it comes with serious privacy baggage.

The problem with Google Analytics

Cookie banners kill conversions

GDPR requires you to show a cookie consent banner before loading Google Analytics. Studies consistently show that 30-50% of users reject cookies. That means you're losing data on a third of your visitors before they even see your product.

You're feeding Google's ad machine

Google Analytics doesn't just track your visitors — it feeds data into Google's advertising ecosystem. Your users' browsing behavior becomes training data for ad targeting. That's a trade-off many indie hackers don't realize they're making.

It's way more than you need

Do you really need event funnels, attribution modeling, and audience segments? Probably not. You need to know: How many people visited? Where did they come from? What pages are popular? That's it.

What privacy-friendly analytics looks like

A good privacy-friendly analytics tool should:

• No cookies — No consent banners needed. Track visits without storing anything in the browser.
• No IP tracking — Anonymize or skip IP addresses entirely. No personal data means no GDPR headaches.
• Lightweight — A tiny script that doesn't slow down your site.
• Essential metrics only — Page views, referrers, devices, and bounce rates. Nothing more.

How Corvura handles analytics

Corvura takes a different approach. When you add the feedback widget to your site, you automatically get privacy-friendly analytics built in:

• Zero cookies — We use anonymous session IDs stored in sessionStorage (cleared when the tab closes).
• No IP addresses stored — We hash IPs with a daily rotating salt for uniqueness, then discard the original. We never store raw IPs.
• No consent banner required — Since we don't collect personal data, GDPR doesn't require a consent popup.
• Referrer tracking — See exactly which Hacker News post or Twitter thread is driving traffic.
• Device and browser breakdown — Know if your users are on mobile or desktop without tracking them individually.

The best part? You get all of this alongside your feedback inbox. One script tag, two tools.

When do you need more?

If you're running paid ad campaigns with complex attribution, you might still need a dedicated analytics platform. But for organic traffic, launch tracking, and understanding your audience? Privacy-friendly analytics gives you everything you need.

Get started

Corvura's free tier includes 1,000 events per month — more than enough for most indie projects. Add the widget, get analytics, and start collecting feedback. All without compromising your users' privacy.

Sign up free and see your first analytics in minutes.