For years, I’ve been frustrated with the state of web analytics. The default choice, Google Analytics, is a powerful but bloated tool that treats our website visitors like data commodities. On the other hand, many simpler alternatives felt a bit too basic. I wanted something that was both deeply insightful and deeply respectful of user privacy, so I decided to build it myself.
Today, I’m launching the public beta of Gridpoint Analytics, a privacy-first web analytics tool I’ve been building as a bootstrapped founder.
My goal was to build this on three core principles that I felt were missing from the market:
1. Absolute Privacy (The Technical Details): This is the foundation. Gridpoint Analytics uses no cookies and does not store or even see visitor IP addresses. To count unique users, we use a daily-rotating salt combined with the anonymized IP address and User-Agent to create a hash. The original data is immediately discarded. This provides a reasonable measure of unique visitors for a 24-hour period without ever storing PII or using invasive device fingerprinting.
2. Actionable Clarity (De-mystifying the "AI"): Instead of just dumping data on you, our "AI Signal Engine" is a set of heuristics and pattern-detection models that surfaces plain-English insights. For example, it can spot when a specific blog post is getting unusual referral traffic and tell you about it, so you don't have to hunt for the "why" behind a traffic spike. It's less "general AI" and more of a helpful data analyst.
3. The Tech Stack (Built on a Modern, Private Web): I wanted to build this entire project on infrastructure I trust.
Frontend: React, Tailwind CSS, and Recharts for the interactive charts.
Backend: The entire thing runs on a serverless Cloudflare stack. The API is built with Cloudflare Functions and the database is Cloudflare D1. This allows for incredibly fast, low-latency data ingestion from anywhere in the world.
This is a self-funded, solo-founder project born from a genuine need. I'm not trying to build the next data behemoth; I'm trying to build a sustainable, ethical business that helps other creators and startups grow.
The product is in public beta, and there’s a generous free tier so you can try it out on a personal site with zero risk.
I would be incredibly grateful for any feedback from the HN community, especially on our privacy methodology and the tech stack. I'm here all day to answer any and all questions.
Hi HN,
For years, I’ve been frustrated with the state of web analytics. The default choice, Google Analytics, is a powerful but bloated tool that treats our website visitors like data commodities. On the other hand, many simpler alternatives felt a bit too basic. I wanted something that was both deeply insightful and deeply respectful of user privacy, so I decided to build it myself.
Today, I’m launching the public beta of Gridpoint Analytics, a privacy-first web analytics tool I’ve been building as a bootstrapped founder.
My goal was to build this on three core principles that I felt were missing from the market:
1. Absolute Privacy (The Technical Details): This is the foundation. Gridpoint Analytics uses no cookies and does not store or even see visitor IP addresses. To count unique users, we use a daily-rotating salt combined with the anonymized IP address and User-Agent to create a hash. The original data is immediately discarded. This provides a reasonable measure of unique visitors for a 24-hour period without ever storing PII or using invasive device fingerprinting.
2. Actionable Clarity (De-mystifying the "AI"): Instead of just dumping data on you, our "AI Signal Engine" is a set of heuristics and pattern-detection models that surfaces plain-English insights. For example, it can spot when a specific blog post is getting unusual referral traffic and tell you about it, so you don't have to hunt for the "why" behind a traffic spike. It's less "general AI" and more of a helpful data analyst.
3. The Tech Stack (Built on a Modern, Private Web): I wanted to build this entire project on infrastructure I trust.
Frontend: React, Tailwind CSS, and Recharts for the interactive charts.
Backend: The entire thing runs on a serverless Cloudflare stack. The API is built with Cloudflare Functions and the database is Cloudflare D1. This allows for incredibly fast, low-latency data ingestion from anywhere in the world.
This is a self-funded, solo-founder project born from a genuine need. I'm not trying to build the next data behemoth; I'm trying to build a sustainable, ethical business that helps other creators and startups grow.
The product is in public beta, and there’s a generous free tier so you can try it out on a personal site with zero risk.
I would be incredibly grateful for any feedback from the HN community, especially on our privacy methodology and the tech stack. I'm here all day to answer any and all questions.
Thanks for taking a look.