As others have mentioned, the most popular simplified ones are: Cloudflare Web Analytics, Fathom, and Plausible. Cloudflare (as well as Simple Analytics) use only HTTP referrer to count visits, which makes them the most privacy-friendly but also limits what they can do in terms of tracking an individual session. Fathom and Plausible both use hashed IP and User-Agent, which allows for more functionality, though they still can't track returning visits across separate days because they rotate their salts every day.
GoAccess, AWStats, or other log analyzers can get you a lot of the same data, but they also have even more trouble identifying bots and have little to no ability for customization. Also if you use client-side only javascript functionality on your site there's no ability to track that.. so if you wanted to track how many people zoom in on cool bonsai tree pics you wouldn't be able to do that with a log analyzer. Those also don't work well with CDNs.
There's other more sophisticated tools like Matomo and Piwik Pro that are similar to GA3 in functionality but have the ability to work without cookies if that's what you want. Looks like you don't need something that involved. I'd probably go with either Plausible or possibly Cloudflare if you're looking for something free. Looks like you're already using Cloudflare for some CDN assets.
> possibly Cloudflare if you're looking for something free.
I only tried cloudflare in response to this thread, but I am considering their image hosting. One thing though, they only have very very basic analytics on their free plan, like total visits per day
Edit: Correction. It is free but their dashboard tries to convince you to upgrade.
Cloudflare has two different analytics products which makes things pretty confusing. "Web analytics" is always free and under Analytics > Web Analytics at the account level. That's the one you want, not "traffic analytics" under Analytics > Traffic in the individual website.
But yeah it is very basic.. Visits, pageviews, referrer, browser, RUM metrics and a few other things. Tools like Plausible give you some more features but still a lot less than GA3. Tools like Piwik Pro give you something equivalent to GA3. Product analytics tools like Posthog give you something more like GA4.
The majority of GA alternatives use cookies, which of course do allow tracking returning visitors.
If you're asking what GA alternatives don't use cookies but DO allow tracking returning visitors, then the list gets pretty limited. The only tools I review in my book that don't use cookies by default but do allow tracking of return visitors are Clicky (which does it with User Agent + IP) and Visitor Analytics (which does it through fingerprinting).
User Agent + IP as used by Fathom and Plausible could track returning visitors if they didn't rotate their salts, but if they did this then you would need to ask for consent to track. IMHO, the issue that determines if you need to ask for consent is this persistent tracking, not the technology you use.
Thanks for the suggestion. I've added it to my list of alternatives that I'm tracking, but it doesn't appear to have the install base required for inclusion in my book yet. I'm currently looking for GA alternatives that have at least .1% adoption within the top 1M sites.
GoAccess, AWStats, or other log analyzers can get you a lot of the same data, but they also have even more trouble identifying bots and have little to no ability for customization. Also if you use client-side only javascript functionality on your site there's no ability to track that.. so if you wanted to track how many people zoom in on cool bonsai tree pics you wouldn't be able to do that with a log analyzer. Those also don't work well with CDNs.
There's other more sophisticated tools like Matomo and Piwik Pro that are similar to GA3 in functionality but have the ability to work without cookies if that's what you want. Looks like you don't need something that involved. I'd probably go with either Plausible or possibly Cloudflare if you're looking for something free. Looks like you're already using Cloudflare for some CDN assets.
I've written a book on this subject that covers 15 different options: https://www.quantable.com/analytics/google-analytics-alterna...