Umami
Umami is a lightweight, open-source, privacy-first web analytics tool you can self-host to collect essential site metrics without cookies or personal data. It captures pageviews, unique visitors, referrers, devices, basic event goals and exposes a clean, uncluttered dashboard focused on aggregate, anonymized metrics.
The project runs on Node.js with PostgreSQL/MySQL backends and provides official Docker images and Compose examples for quick deployment. It is aimed at developers, site owners and small teams who want full control over their analytics data and prefer a low-footprint, privacy-respecting alternative to third‑party analytics providers.
Use Cases
- Privacy-conscious blogs, personal websites and portfolios that need simple metrics without cookies or tracking identifiers.
- Small businesses and agencies managing multiple client sites who want a central, self-hosted dashboard for basic KPIs.
- Developers and ops teams that prefer to host analytics on their infrastructure (VPS, Docker host, or cloud VMs) for data sovereignty.
- Static sites and server-rendered pages where adding a small tracking snippet is desirable for minimal performance impact.
- Projects that require lightweight event/goal tracking or server-side event ingestion via API for non-browser events.
Strengths
- Privacy-first tracking: No cookies or personal identifiers — reduces GDPR/CCPA surface and visitor concerns.
- Lightweight client script: Small tracking snippet with minimal performance overhead, suitable for static sites.
- Self-hosting with Docker support: Official Docker images and Compose examples speed deployment and upgrades.
- Reliable persistence: Supports PostgreSQL and MySQL/MariaDB backends for durable storage and standard DB tooling.
- Multiple-site management: Track several websites from one instance — useful for agencies and multi-site owners.
- Essential metrics dashboard: Quick access to pageviews, visitors, bounce rate, referrers, browsers and locations without feature bloat.
- Basic event/goal tracking and server API: Enables conversion tracking and non-browser event ingestion for flexible instrumentation.
- Open-source (MIT): Audit, extend or modify the code; community-driven contributions are possible.
- Simple UI and low learning curve: Clean interface helps non-technical users get value quickly.
Limitations
- Limited advanced analytics: No built-in funnels, deep segmentation, path analysis or cohort reports — not a replacement for enterprise analytics.
- Operational overhead: Self-hosting requires managing servers, databases, backups and updates.
- Technical setup for novices: Docker helps, but manual installs or customized deployments need Node.js, DB configuration and basic sysadmin skills.
- Limited bot/crawler insights: Focused on anonymized human traffic; heavy bot analysis may need custom handling.
- Smaller ecosystem: Fewer pre-built integrations and third-party tools compared to major analytics vendors; custom work may be needed for marketing stacks or data warehouses.
- Feature backlog risk: Additional reporting and exports are commonly requested and may lag unless you extend the project yourself.
Final Thoughts
Umami is a strong fit when you need straightforward, privacy-respecting analytics and want to keep data on your infrastructure with minimal client impact. It excels at delivering key web metrics with low overhead and deploys quickly via Docker for teams comfortable with basic ops.
Choose Umami when privacy, simplicity and data control matter more than advanced behavioral analysis. If you need enterprise-grade funnels, deep segmentation or a large integration ecosystem, consider combining Umami for privacy-focused reporting and a specialized tool for advanced analytics, or opt for a managed analytics service. For self-hosting, prefer Docker Compose and a managed database if you want to reduce operational burden; ensure you put in place backups, update procedures and monitoring.