On August 24th, we switched to Fathom Analytics, completely removing our dependency on Google Analytics from this blog, Envoyer, Forge and Vapor.
Fathom is the leading privacy-first alternative to Google Analytics and they're well-known in the Laravel community. Their application is built with Laravel, hosted on Laravel Vapor, and they regularly share their stories via their blog.
Our move to Fathom was triggered by a few reasons.
Firstly, Fathom's dashboard makes it a breeze to see analytics quickly. Google Analytics has always been complex to use. Finding simple information such as "How many people visited this page over the last 7 days" requires multiple clicks. In Fathom, we can see that information right away.
The transition to Fathom also means we do not need to display any cookie banners because they're compliant with GDPR, ePrivacy Directive, and various other privacy laws. Our privacy policies are now simplified because of it.
Of course, we have many years of data within Google Analytics and we don't want to lose it. Fortunately for us, Fathom is about to release a Google Analytics Importer, which means we'll be able to import our existing data.
Outside of all of that, Fathom is a beautiful, fast piece of software built on Laravel and it lets us see what we need right away. They're working on some incredibly exciting features and we're excited for our future with them.
