Comparisons
How Zenith compares
Nine head-to-heads, each with the rows Zenith loses left in. Zenith does not do funnels, cohorts, session replay or heatmaps, and no table here pretends otherwise — if one of those is what you need, these pages will tell you which tool to buy instead.
Zenith vs Google Analytics
No consent banner, no sampling, and the data stays yours.
- No cookie banner, because there are no cookies
- You hold the raw data, on your own server
- One deploy covers every client site
- A dashboard on your client's own domain
Zenith vs Plausible
The same privacy stance, plus client dashboards and SEO.
- Your client reads their analytics on their own domain
- No per-site or per-pageview cost, ever
- SEO audits and monthly client emails included
- A smaller feature set, honestly
Zenith vs Matomo
Cookieless by default, and nothing behind a paid plugin.
- Cookieless by default, with nothing to configure
- Two Go binaries instead of a PHP stack
- Nothing sold as a paid plugin
- A dashboard on your client's own domain
Zenith vs Umami
The closest comparison — until you have clients to serve.
- A dashboard served from your client's own domain
- Built-in SEO audits with Core Web Vitals
- Monthly client report emails, scheduled automatically
- Fewer analytics features, honestly
Zenith vs Mixpanel
Website analytics, not product analytics — and far simpler.
- Nothing to instrument — pageviews work on install
- Cookieless, so no consent banner
- Self-hosted, so the data stays yours
- Far less product than Mixpanel, deliberately
Zenith vs Amplitude
For websites, not product teams — and you keep the data.
- One screen a client can read without training
- No consent banner, because there are no cookies
- Self-hosted, so nothing leaves your server
- None of Amplitude's depth, deliberately
Zenith vs PostHog
A smaller tool that a client can read, and actually own.
- Cookieless, so no consent banner
- A dashboard on your client's own domain
- Two Go binaries, not a Kubernetes platform
- A fraction of PostHog's features, honestly
Zenith vs Heap
Deliberate events instead of capturing everything.
- A handful of numbers, not a haystack
- Cookieless, so no consent banner
- Self-hosted, so nothing leaves your server
- No autocapture, by design
Zenith vs Pendo
Analytics as the product, not as a tab beside onboarding.
- Built for websites, not signed-in applications
- Cookieless, self-hosted, no consent banner
- Client dashboards and SEO audits included
- No in-app guides or surveys at all
The short version
Where Zenith sits, on one table.
| Capability | Google Analytics | Plausible / Fathom | Umami (self-hosted) | Zenith |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cookie banner needed | Yes | No | No | No |
| Cost per extra site | Free | Per site or pageview | Free | Free |
| You own the data | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Client reads it on their domain | No | No | No | Yes |
| SEO audits built in | No | No | No | Yes |
| Monthly client emails | No | Some plans | No | Yes |
| Setup effort | Paste a tag | Paste a tag | Deploy a server | Deploy a server |
| Funnels, cohorts, replay | Extensive | Growing | Basic | Basic |
Choose something else if
you want zero infrastructure — Plausible and Fathom cloud are excellent — or you need deep product analytics: funnels, cohorts, session replay, attribution modelling. Zenith deliberately doesn’t do those.
Choose Zenith if
you look after several sites for other people, you’re tired of consent banners and per-site pricing, and you’d rather hand a client a page on their own domain than another login.
Deploy it once and see.
Fifteen minutes on a server you already have. It is MIT licensed, so the worst case is an evening.