Edgemetry

Product Introduction

1. Definition: Edgemetry is a self-hosted, privacy-first web analytics platform built as a single Cloudflare Worker application with a Cloudflare D1 SQLite database backend. It is a lightweight, serverless alternative to traditional analytics suites.
2. Core Value Proposition: Edgemetry exists to provide developers and website owners with a powerful, cookie-free, and cost-effective analytics solution that respects user privacy, eliminates recurring SaaS fees, and offers unlimited data retention on a generous free tier. Its primary value is delivering enterprise-grade analytics insights without the complexity, privacy concerns, or ongoing costs of platforms like Google Analytics.

Main Features

1. Privacy-First, Cookie-Less Tracking: Edgemetry does not use cookies, localStorage, or any client-side fingerprinting techniques. It generates a daily anonymous visitor hash from request headers (IP, User-Agent), making it inherently GDPR and CCPA compliant without requiring a consent banner. All data processing occurs on your own Cloudflare Worker instance.
2. Serverless Edge Architecture: The entire application runs on Cloudflare's global network as a Worker. This provides near-instantaneous data collection from visitors worldwide and eliminates server management. The data is stored in Cloudflare D1, a serverless SQL database, ensuring a simple, integrated stack with automatic scaling.
3. Comprehensive, Filterable Dashboard: The dashboard provides five core metrics (Visitors, Pageviews, Views/Visit, Bounce Rate, Avg. Time) with sparklines and period-over-period comparisons. A key innovation is its stackable filter system; clicking any data row (e.g., a specific country) instantly applies that filter across all dashboard panels (pages, referrers, devices, etc.), enabling deep, interactive analysis.
4. Cost-Optimized Data Pipeline: The architecture is meticulously designed for Cloudflare's free tier. It uses hourly raw event tables (no indexes) and daily rollup tables (WITHOUT ROWID) to minimize D1 row writes. This engineering allows for approximately 20,000 daily visits at zero cost, with costs scaling linearly and predictably.
5. Multi-Site & Team Management: A single Edgemetry deployment can track an unlimited number of distinct websites. It includes a full role-based access control (RBAC) system with Owner and Viewer roles, allowing secure sharing of dashboard access with clients or team members on a per-site basis.

Problems Solved

1. Pain Point: The overkill and privacy burden of Google Analytics. Many small to medium sites do not need its vast complexity but are forced to use it due to a lack of simple, powerful alternatives. Edgemetry provides essential insights without invasive tracking.
2. Target Audience: Indie hackers, developers with personal blogs or portfolios, small business owners, marketing teams at startups, and privacy-conscious organizations. It's ideal for anyone technically comfortable with deploying a Cloudflare Worker who wants to own their data and reduce costs.
3. Use Cases: Tracking traffic for a personal developer blog, monitoring marketing campaign performance (via UTM tracking) for a startup, providing transparent analytics to clients as an agency, and running analytics on a content-heavy site where long-term, unlimited historical data is valuable.

Unique Advantages

1. Differentiation vs. Competitors: Unlike Google Analytics, it is private and lightweight. Unlike hosted privacy-analytics SaaS (e.g., Plausible, Fathom), it has no monthly fee and offers unlimited history. Unlike self-hosted solutions like Umami or Matomo on a VPS, it requires no server maintenance, scaling, or Docker management.
2. Key Innovation: Its D1-optimized data lifecycle. The combination of index-free raw tables, DROP TABLE for data expiration (free writes), and WITHOUT ROWID rollup tables is a novel architectural approach that makes high-volume, free-tier analytics economically and technically feasible on Cloudflare's platform.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

1. Is Edgemetry really free? Yes, for up to roughly 20,000 visits per day, Edgemetry runs entirely on Cloudflare's free tier, which includes 100,000 D1 row writes and 5 million row reads daily. Beyond that, upgrading to the $5/month Workers Paid plan raises limits significantly.
2. How does Edgemetry track users without cookies? It creates a daily anonymous hash from the visitor's IP address and User-Agent string. This identifies a unique visitor for a 24-hour UTC period without storing personally identifiable information (PII) or using persistent browser storage, ensuring compliance with privacy regulations.
3. Can I use Edgemetry for multiple websites? Absolutely. A single Edgemetry deployment supports unlimited websites. Each site gets a unique tracking snippet, and data is completely isolated. You can also grant dashboard access to others (e.g., clients) for specific sites only.
4. What happens to my historical data? Edgemetry retains unlimited history. Daily rollup data is never deleted. Raw event data is aggregated into these rollups and then dropped, but the essential metrics and breakdowns are preserved forever within the free tier's storage limits (5GB).
5. How accurate is Edgemetry compared to Google Analytics? Edgemetry prioritizes a privacy-first, non-invasive methodology. It will generally report lower visitor counts than Google Analytics, which uses cookies and more persistent tracking. This difference is due to blocking ad/tracker blockers and its stricter, cookie-less definition of a "visit," making it a more conservative and privacy-respecting metric.