GhostlyX
Privacy-first analytics without cookies or clutter
115 followers
Privacy-first analytics without cookies or clutter
115 followers
GhostlyX is a lightweight, privacy-first web analytics platform built for modern websites. No cookies, no trackers, and no invasive data collection. Just fast, reliable, and actionable insights that help you understand your traffic, measure performance, and make better decisions without compromising user privacy.
Hi Jamie. How is this different than Google Analytics, Goatcounter, Matomo, Plausible, Fathom, Posthog, etc.? I think you are entering a very saturated industry, but I am not sure what I am looking at and what is the core differentiator is.
Maybe I should spend more time around the product. From what I can understand, you require a JavaScript based script to be embedded on the frontend which is just standard across all marketing analytics products.
Most marketing analytics platforms do not advertise themselves as "cookie-less," so I am not even sure what the contrast between cookie-based analytics and cookieless analytics is. My opinion is that the average developer do not give too much mind about cookies.
@anyfactor
On market saturation: You're right that privacy-focused analytics is not a new idea. Plausible, Fathom, and Pirsch all exist and are well-built products. GhostlyX is not trying to be the first. It's trying to be the most complete option in that same privacy-first space. The honest differentiation is in the feature set at the price point, not the underlying concept.
On cookie-less vs cookie-based: This is a real distinction, and worth explaining clearly. Cookie-based analytics (Google Analytics, Matomo's default) set a persistent identifier in the browser. This means:
Under GDPR, ePrivacy Directive (UK PECR), and CCPA, you are legally required to obtain consent before dropping that cookie. That's the cookie banner users hate.
Visitors who reject the banner are simply not counted, which skews your data.
Cookie-free analytics (GhostlyX, Plausible, Fathom) use a daily-rotating, irreversible hash of the IP address + user-agent + a site-specific salt. No personal data is stored. No consent banner is legally required. Your data is complete because no one can reject tracking they aren't prompted to accept.
The average developer may not care about cookies, but the average website owner cares about not having to pay a lawyer to review their consent flow, and about having accurate data.
What GhostlyX specifically adds over Plausible/Fathom/Fathom: The honest answer is bundled features. Uptime monitoring, funnels, traffic spike alerts, team roles, a TV/real-time mode, and a REST API are all included at the price points where Plausible or Fathom either charge more or don't offer them at all. It's not a fundamentally different product, it's a more complete one at a competitive price.
What GhostlyX does not do: It's not open-source at this time. If full data sovereignty and self-hosting with source access is the priority, Plausible or Matomo are better answers.
@jamiewoody Hi Jamie,
Thank you for the explanation. I do not know how Product Hunt works exactly. Everyone is so congratulatory, it almost seems... nevermind. I work in GTM advisory and I thought I would share my honest take.
> The honest differentiation is in the feature set at the price point, not the underlying concept.
I would highly recommend creating comparison pages for each of your competitors. People do not compare apples to oranges, but they compare apples to apples.
> The average developer may not care about cookies, but the average website owner cares about not having to pay a lawyer to review their consent flow, and about having accurate data.
Well, most analytics platforms either have that cookie consent form or they are cookieless. Nobody (as far as I know) is building custom marketing analytics software that uses unconsented cookies these days. It is, as far as I know, baked into platforms and you trust the platform.
If I am wrong, you should show the cases that were filed under GDPR to small average website operators under GDPR.
> Visitors who reject the banner are simply not counted, which skews your data.
To what extent does this skew the analytics, though? Most services I have used have a mandatory field to "accept necessary cookies." You really have to go the extra mile to access a website without accepting "necessary cookies". Moreover, with adblockers cookiefull/cookieless all services get blocked either way.
> The honest answer is bundled features. Uptime monitoring, funnels, traffic spike alerts, team roles, a TV/real-time mode, and a REST API are all included at the price points where Plausible or Fathom either charge more or don't offer them at all. It's not a fundamentally different product, it's a more complete one at a competitive price.
Shouldn't your product motto be that? "A complete marketing analytics platform". I advised adtech companies before. I do not understand the concept of "privacy first" or "cookieless" at all. This is an analytics platform, you want data.
Unless the EU is spending trillions suing the average website owner for GDPR violations, those things do not translate well. Not using cookies is a bonus, not a marketing statement. We are selling a product, not a narrative. Sell what the product is good for.
> It's not open-source at this time. If full data sovereignty and self-hosting with source access is the priority, Plausible or Matomo are better answers.
It does not need to be open source. You are selling a software service, not a github repo.
@anyfactor
You're largely right, and I appreciate the directness.
On the GDPR point, you're right that enforcement against small website operators is relatively rare, but it does happen. What’s changing now is accessibility. With AI, it’s becoming easier for individuals to generate and issue complaints or legal requests around how their data is stored and processed. It’s no longer just regulators or solicitors, users themselves are starting to take action.
At the same time, the narrative that "you’ll get sued over analytics cookies" is often exaggerated and often used as a fear tactic. Leading with that weakens the product. It positions it as a compliance checkbox rather than something genuinely useful.
The reality sits somewhere in the middle.
The landscape is shifting fast. AI is making it easier than ever to build and launch products, but the legal and ethical side is often overlooked. That gap is only going to widen. This started as a pet project and quickly became an MVP. It came from frustration with how big tech platforms collect and use data to strengthen their own ecosystems. I wanted to build something simpler, more transparent, and actually aligned with the people using it. The idea came from GrapheneOS which is something I personally use everyday.
On the cookie consent acceptance rate: the data is messier than the marketing suggests. IAB-compliant consent banners on average see 60–75% acceptance rates in Europe, which means 25–40% of visitors are excluded from cookie-based analytics. This is based on publicly available data from providers like Cookiebot and Usercentrics.
That’s material data loss, not trivial. But you're also right that "necessary cookies" banners muddy this, and adblockers affect all analytics equally. The honest version of the argument is narrower: if you run a consent banner, cookie-based analytics will undercount users who decline tracking cookies. That's real, but it shouldn’t be the headline.
On the core positioning point: you're right. "Privacy-first" and "cookieless" are architect-facing abstractions, not customer benefits. The actual value proposition is closer to: accurate traffic data, simple setup, no compliance overhead, with monitoring and reporting built in. That's a product story, not a narrative. I'll be rethinking how I talk about this.
The comparison pages are live and can be accessed via: https://ghostlyx.com/vs
Appreciate the honest take. This is more useful than congratulations.
@jamiewoody Thank you, Jamie. The comparison page looks good. Just keep in mind when selling a product, you should not focus on philosophy, focus on the problem it solves. That is the problem I often see with developers getting boxed in the idea of builder-moder/hacker-mode.
@anyfactor @jamiewoody Just FYI, Jamie. The ePrivacy Directive does not explicitly mention cookies, but rather the accessing/storing/sending data that is not strictly necessary for the product to function. This means that legally, the developer is still required to show a consent banner when using your product for analytics. This is for the ePrivacy Directive at least, I have no knowledge about the other legislatons.
Finally a tool that doesnt track my website visitors like Joe Goldberg tracks his crushes:D
@eugene_chernyak We are going to make a T-Shirt out of this!! hahaha
@jamiewoody Hahah, foreal? Send me a pic on Linkedin when it drops!
@eugene_chernyak I'll do you one better, I will get it designed and uploaded to our merch partner site then you can use the voucher for free shipping and the free t-shirt haha!
@jamiewoody Hahaha bro thats hillarious, let me know when, ill be unofficial ambassador! Which messenger do u use? Good luck with the launch
GhostlyX now includes a built-in Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that lets AI assistants query your analytics data directly.
The MCP server exposes 10 tools that cover the full breadth of GhostlyX functionality: listing sites, fetching site statistics, viewing top pages and traffic sources, checking real-time visitor counts, reading uptime monitor status, listing goal conversions, retrieving funnel step data, managing annotations, and creating or viewing support tickets.
All tools are authenticated through GhostlyX API tokens, so only authorised users and their AI assistants can access your data. Read-only tools like site stats and top pages never modify anything. Write-capable tools (annotations and support tickets) respect the same role-based permissions as the dashboard.
To connect your AI assistant, point it at the /mcp/v1 endpoint with a valid Bearer token. Full setup instructions are available in the MCP Server documentation page.