Google Analytics is free. Fathom costs $14/month. Here’s why I’ve standardized every website I build and manage on Fathom — and why I think you should too.
A few years ago I made a decision that I’ve never second-guessed: I moved my entire agency — every client website I manage — off Google Analytics and onto a privacy-first alternative called Fathom.
At the time, the conversation was mostly about GDPR compliance. An Austrian court had just ruled Google Analytics in violation of European privacy law, and the implications were hard to ignore. I didn’t want to spend my days auditing each client’s exposure and playing legal roulette. So I made a blanket call: everyone moves, no exceptions.
That was the right call then. In 2026, it’s even more obviously right — and the reasons have expanded well beyond compliance.
The problem with “free”
Google Analytics is free because Google’s business model is selling data and advertising, not software. When you install Google Analytics on your website, you’re not just getting a dashboard — you’re feeding data back into Google’s ad machine. Your visitors’ behavior, your conversion data, your audience — all of it flows back to a company whose financial interest is in knowing as much as possible about everyone on the internet.
That never sat well with me. If I’m uncomfortable with advertisers tracking my every move, it felt wrong to turn around and do exactly that to my clients’ visitors.
What’s changed since 2022
The compliance picture has gotten clearer and more serious. Privacy regulations have continued to tighten globally — the EU has doubled down on GDPR enforcement, and US state-level privacy laws (California, Virginia, Colorado, and others) have matured significantly. The days of “wait and see” are over. Data privacy isn’t a European problem anymore.
On top of that, Google forced everyone through a disruptive migration from Universal Analytics to GA4 in 2023 — a platform that many website owners and small businesses found genuinely harder to use. A lot of people lost years of historical data in the transition. It was a good reminder that when you build on free tools, you’re at the mercy of someone else’s roadmap.
Why Fathom
There are several privacy-first analytics tools available now. I’ve standardized on Fathom for a few specific reasons:
- It’s actually simpler to use. One clean dashboard. No certifications required to understand what you’re looking at. I can hand a client access and they can make sense of it without a tutorial.
- It’s not blocked by ad blockers. Google Analytics is routinely blocked, which means you may only be seeing 50-60% of your actual traffic. Fathom’s cookieless tracking gives you a more complete picture.
- Shareable dashboards. I can give clients a public or private link to their analytics without setting up user accounts and permissions.
- Their business model is selling software. At $14/month, Fathom makes money when you pay them — not by monetizing your data.
- It’s lightweight. The script is tiny, which means no performance hit. For sites I’ve optimized to score in the high 90s on Lighthouse, every millisecond counts.
I’ve spoken with the founders personally and followed the company closely. They’ve hired a dedicated privacy officer, worked with top international law firms to stay ahead of compliance requirements, and have been consistent in their values from the beginning. That matters to me when I’m recommending something to every client I work with.
My responsibility as an agency
Part of building good websites is being thoughtful about what you install on them. Every plugin, every script, every third-party tool is a choice — and those choices have implications for the people who visit your clients’ websites.
I don’t think most small business website owners have thought through what “free analytics” actually means. That’s partly on them, but it’s mostly on the agencies and developers who install it without a second thought.
I’d rather charge clients a small fee for a tool that respects their visitors than install something free that doesn’t. Fathom is included as a standard part of every website I build and every care plan I manage.
If you’re unsure whether your current analytics setup is compliant — or if you’d like to see what Fathom looks like in practice — I’m happy to walk you through it. You can also try Fathom free for 7 days with my referral link, which saves you $10 off your first month (and yes, in the interest of full transparency, I get a small referral fee too).
