Frequently Asked Questions

VeritaMetrics is a privacy-first web analytics service designed to give you valuable insights into your website traffic without compromising user privacy. It's cookieless, doesn't store IP addresses long-term, and focuses on essential, aggregated metrics.

The main difference lies in privacy. VeritaMetrics doesn't use cookies for tracking and doesn't store visitor IP addresses in your analytics data, so there is far less to disclose and configure. Google Analytics relies heavily on cookies and collects more extensive data, often requiring complex consent configurations. VeritaMetrics focuses on essential metrics with a simpler interface, while GA offers a broader, more complex feature set often tied to advertising.

It's ideal for SMBs, startups, tech companies, bloggers, agencies, and any organization that values user privacy, needs GDPR/CCPA compliance, and wants straightforward, reliable web analytics without the complexity of traditional platforms.

Yes, VeritaMetrics is designed with GDPR, CCPA, and PECR compliance principles at its core. By not using tracking cookies and not storing full IP addresses, it helps you meet regulatory requirements for web analytics. Always consult legal counsel for your specific situation.

For the analytics tracking provided by VeritaMetrics itself, you generally do not need a cookie banner because it doesn't use cookies for tracking. If your website uses cookies for other purposes (e.g., advertising, functional login), you will still need consent for those specific cookies.

No IP address is written to a pageview or event row. The address is used during the request to derive an approximate location (country/region/city) and the daily pseudonymous `visitId`, and the location provider's answer is cached under it for up to 24 hours.

We collect essential, aggregated data like page URL, referrer, browser/OS/device type, browser viewport width, preferred language (one tag, such as en-GB), derived geo-location (country/region/city), UTM parameters, and a daily pseudonymous visitor count. We focus on data minimization. See our Privacy Policy for full details.

For our hosted cloud service, all analytics data is processed and stored on infrastructure within the European Union (EU).

No. Traditional 'Session Replay' tools record a video of the user's screen, which is invasive, heavy, and risky (often capturing sensitive form inputs). Instead, we use **Session Reconstruction**. We log a lightweight timeline of discrete events, like 'Viewed Pricing', 'Scrolled 50%', or 'Clicked Sign Up'. This gives you the debugging power to understand funnel drop-offs without the 'creepy' surveillance factor or legal liability of screen recording.

Add one script tag to your site's ``, or just before the closing ``. It loads asynchronously and sets no cookies. For visitors without JavaScript, a 43-byte pixel records the pageview on our server instead. Our platform install guides carry the snippet and the exact steps for each platform we support.

Our tracking script is lightweight (~8KB gzipped) and loads asynchronously. For visitors without JavaScript, a 43-byte pixel request is processed server-side. It's designed to have minimal impact on your site's performance.

Instead of cookies, we identify unique visits within a 24-hour period using a pseudonymous daily identifier (`visitId`). We first truncate the IP address to its first three blocks, then hash that with the User Agent, the website ID, the date, and a salt that rotates daily. The full address never reaches the hash and is never written to a pageview row, so daily counts stay accurate without following anyone from one day to the next.

If a visitor opens your site in multiple tabs on the same browser, VeritaMetrics recognizes them as the same session. We automatically merge the activity from all open tabs into a single chronological timeline. This allows you to see exactly how users multitask or compare different pages on your site without inflating your visitor counts.

VeritaMetrics provides accurate aggregate trends. Because it doesn't require cookie consent for core tracking, it can often capture data from a higher percentage of visitors compared to consent-gated platforms, potentially offering a more complete view of overall traffic. Identifying unique visitors across multiple days is intentionally not possible due to our privacy design.

Yes, our JavaScript snippet includes logic to detect route changes in common SPA frameworks (like Next.js, React Router). For custom setups, you may need to manually trigger a pageview event on route changes. See our documentation for details.

Yes. Create a Custom HTML tag, paste the VeritaMetrics snippet into it, set the trigger to All Pages, then Submit and Publish. Until you publish, Preview mode shows the tag firing while the live site sends nothing, so the tag looks installed and your dashboard stays empty. This keeps VeritaMetrics alongside your other tags with no change to your site's source. Our Google Tag Manager guide carries the snippet and every step.

Yes. Our own plugin is the shortest route: install it, paste your site id, and a theme update cannot remove it. It is not in the WordPress.org directory yet, so ask us for the zip; the plugin guide covers its settings and how it honours consent. Three snippet routes work as well if you would rather not add a plugin: a script tag pasted into a header and footer plugin such as WPCode, a functions.php snippet in a child theme, or a Custom HTML tag on a site already running Google Tag Manager. Avoid editing the active theme's files from the WordPress admin, because the next theme update replaces them and the tracking stops with no error anywhere. Our WordPress install guide carries the snippet and the steps for each route. Page builders such as Elementor and caching plugins need no extra steps.

Yes. VeritaMetrics has a REST API for reading and exporting your analytics, so you can feed dashboards, data warehouses, or BI tools. Every plan can create an API key, including the free one, and each key is scoped to the sites and permissions you give it. See the API reference for endpoints, parameters and authentication.

Yes. Because the tracking snippet is a simple HTML/JS embed, it works with any tag manager that supports Custom HTML tags, including Matomo Tag Manager, Tealium, and Adobe Launch. The setup process is similar: create a Custom HTML tag, paste the snippet, and configure it to fire on all pages.

Insight widgets are interactive cards on your dashboard that surface key analytics findings at a glance. They highlight trends like traffic spikes, top-performing pages, referral sources, and growth patterns, so you can act on data without digging through reports.

Yes. You can add, remove, drag and resize the cards, and change a chart card between sizes. Your layout is saved to your account, so it is there on your next visit. Every card follows the one date range you pick in the dashboard header, which is what keeps two cards on the same screen from covering different windows.

Growth Insights reads a 30-day window and raises findings by itself, including high bounce rate, rage clicks, dead clicks, dead end pages, revenue leaks, flow bottlenecks, low mobile traffic and significant bot traffic. Each card carries an impact score and what to do about it, and together they set a site health score you can track over time.

Yes. You can export from the dashboard as CSV, JSON or XLSX. You can also share a read-only link to a dashboard with someone who has no account, so a client or a colleague reads the live numbers without a login.

User journey tracking shows you the sequence of pages a visitor views during a single session. It helps you understand how users navigate your site, where they enter, what content they engage with, and where they drop off, all without invasive session recording.

We use the same pseudonymous daily visitId that powers our core analytics. All pageviews within a session are linked to this identifier, allowing us to reconstruct the visitor's path through your site. The identifier resets daily and cannot be used to track individuals across days.

Yes. A funnel is a sequence of pages (for example Homepage → Pricing → Sign Up → Thank You), and we show how many visits reached each step and where the rest stopped. Steps are pages rather than events, so a checkout that never changes URL needs a page in the path to measure.

User journey tracking shows you the sequence of pages and events a visitor triggered, presented as a timeline. Session replay (or our privacy-friendly 'Session Reconstruction') shows a more detailed event-by-event breakdown within a single page. Together, they give you both the macro view (which pages) and the micro view (what happened on each page) without recording the user's screen.

There is no time-limited trial. There is a free plan, and it does not expire: 1 site and 50,000 pageviews a month, with no credit card. See our Pricing Page for the paid tiers.

Pricing is usually based on the number of monthly pageviews recorded for your website(s). We offer tiered plans to suit different traffic levels. Check our Pricing Page for specifics.

You'll need compatible server infrastructure (e.g., Node.js environment, potentially Docker/Kubernetes) and a PostgreSQL database. Detailed requirements are in the Self-Hosting Documentation.

It requires technical expertise in server management, database administration, and application deployment. While we provide documentation, it's intended for users comfortable with managing their own infrastructure.

Self-hosting is a premium offering, and the level of support depends on the specific plan. Basic setup guidance is typically included, but ongoing infrastructure management is the customer's responsibility. Contact sales for details.