Privacy-Friendly Analytics on a Static Website

If you want to know who's visiting your website, you need analytics. Good news: static.app includes a privacy-focused analytics solution out of the box. For most websites, you can turn it on and skip every external tool. This article covers the built-in option first, then the external alternatives if you outgrow it.

The built-in option

Static.app's analytics is cookie-free, requires no script tag, and gives you all the standard reports. To set it up, go to Settings → Analytics in your website dashboard and pick one of three modes:

Disabled. No data collected.
Private. Collects page views and traffic data without logging user IP addresses. This is the privacy-respecting default. No cookie consent banner needed in the EU.
Public. Collects IP addresses too, for detailed location and demographic insights. If you choose this, the same consent rules as any other IP-logging analytics apply.

Save changes and that's the installation. No <script> tag, no third-party domain, no performance hit.

One thing to know: changing your analytics setting resets any previously collected data. Pick the mode you want and stick with it.

What you actually see

The Analytics dashboard in static.app gives you reports for:

General overview metrics
Keyphrases, search terms visitors used to find your website (genuinely useful for SEO and not always available in free analytics tools)
Referrers and Referring Websites — where traffic is coming from
Locations — geographic breakdown
Browsers and Operating Systems
Requests — page-by-page traffic data

For deeper exploration, the View Full Analytics option opens an expanded view.

The Keyphrases report is the standout for SEO. It pairs naturally with Search Console: Search Console tells you what's happening in Google specifically, the Keyphrases report tells you what's happening across all referrers in aggregate.

When to look beyond the built-in option

The built-in analytics covers the basics most static websites need. You might want an external tool if you need:

Custom event tracking (button clicks, scroll depth, video plays)
Conversion funnels through multiple pages
A/B testing integration
Integration with ad platforms (Google Ads, Meta Ads) where conversion data has to flow back
Real-time dashboards for monitoring traffic spikes

External alternatives, in order of recommendation

Plausible. Paid, around $9/month for small websites. Cookie-free, GDPR-compliant out of the box, single dashboard view. Open source if you want to self-host.

Umami. Free if you self-host, paid hosted plans available. Similar feature set to Plausible. Better if you're willing to run your own database.

GoatCounter. Free for non-commercial use. Minimalist, fast, simple. Good for personal websites.

Cloudflare Web Analytics. Free if your website uses Cloudflare. Cookie-free. Less detailed than the others but adequate for basic traffic monitoring.

Google Analytics 4. Free, powerful, and required if you integrate with Google Ads or need their conversion tracking. The trade-offs: heavier script, cookie consent banner needed in the EU, complex interface, your data is used to inform Google's ad products.

How to install an external tool (example: Plausible)

If you go this route, you'll add a script tag to every HTML page. Sign up at Plausible.io, add your domain, get a script tag like this:

<script defer data-domain="yoursite.com"
 src="https://plausible.io/js/script.js"></script>

Paste it in the <head> of every HTML file. The defer attribute means it loads after the page renders, so it doesn't slow anything down. You can paste it through the platform's built-in Edit Code editor page by page, or if you use the API or a build script, inject it programmatically.

Combining analytics with Search Console

Whichever analytics tool you pick, pair it with Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Analytics tells you what visitors do on your website. Search Console tells you how they found you in search. Both together give you the full picture.

Turn on the built-in option first

For most static.app websites, the built-in analytics is the right answer. Five seconds of setup, no script tag, no privacy headaches, and it includes a Keyphrases report that's genuinely useful for SEO. Only reach for an external tool when you've outgrown what it offers.