Why We Use Plausible Analytics
When most people think of web analytics, they first think of Google Analytics, and that's probably because Google Analytics can be found on over 84% of sites. There are a few reasons for that. The biggest reason likely being because it's free. Google Analytics is easy to add to a site and integrates with other Google services. So why does The Church Factory not use Google Analytics? A few reasons:
- Privacy of our readers
- Transparency with our partners and readers
- Clarity of where our data goes and who gets access
- Ownership and control of our data
With Google Analytics, you simply don't get those benefits. With Plausible, we're able to maintain our user's privacy, share our analytics data with our partners and readers, and know who gets access to our data. Unlike Google, Plausible isn't a data company. Because their service is open source, we know that they're not selling our data to other companies.
We at The Church Factory are responsible for protecting and responsibly using the data you provide us. Our priority is to exercise "golden rule" data practices, meaning we don't want to do with your information what we wouldn't want to be done to our data. We hope to help lead other church content publications and indi publishers into a privacy-oriented future by pursuing this initiative. We want to promote and use open-source and privacy-first products and services that allow us to fulfill that priority.
It really is that simple. We care about our users and their data. Should you start using Plausible? Maybe, maybe not. Plausible is a paid service, but it's also open source. You can choose to self-host on your server for maximum privacy and independence. Plausible isn't designed to invade the privacy of users. If that's something you rely on, maybe Plausible isn't for you. You can choose whether to make your analytics open to the public (like we have) or choose to keep it private.
If you're interested in joining the privacy-first movement by switching over to Plausible, check out their Google Analytics vs. Plausible comparison.
To see our analytics (the same data we see), visit The Church Factory's Plausible page here.