# Build brief — a focused alternative to Fathom Analytics

> **Verdict:** Yes, for personal use · **Buildability:** 71/100 · **Category:** Analytics
> **Source:** https://www.canitbevibecoded.com/fathom-analytics
> Independent editorial assessment from Can It Be Vibe Coded? Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or derived from Fathom Analytics. Verify current pricing and capabilities before acting.

## Context

**Fathom Analytics** — Privacy-focused website analytics with simple dashboards. It currently costs $15/mo.

A simple privacy analytics clone is very buildable; the paid service is hosted compliance posture, uptime, data retention, and polished reporting.

This brief describes a focused, single-operator replacement for the part of Fathom Analytics that is genuinely reproducible. It is deliberately narrower than the product it replaces, and it says so in writing. Build the useful core; do not pretend to have rebuilt the rest.

## What you are building

Collect pageviews/events via JS, aggregate metrics, show simple dashboards, and send reports.

- Ingest a known data source, calculate a focused metric set, and render a useful dashboard.
- A responsive interface with real empty, loading, success, and error states.

## Requirements

### Functional

- Hosted backend.
- Tracker script.
- Database.
- Domain/SSL.
- Backups.
- Bot filtering.

### Non-functional

- Accessibility: semantic markup, labelled controls, visible focus, and reduced-motion support.
- Security: server-side secrets, validated input, and no credentials in the client bundle.
- Reliability: retries with backoff on external calls, and a clear failure state when a provider is down.
- Portability: the operator can export their data and leave without losing it.

## Implementation brief

Build me a privacy-first web analytics service to replace Fathom Analytics. Requirements:

- Node + Express + better-sqlite3, one small app I deploy on my VPS behind
  Caddy or nginx.
- The tracker: a single script tag under 2 KB that sends pageview beacons
  (path, referrer, screen width) with navigator.sendBeacon. No cookies.
- Count unique visitors without storing personal data: hash IP + user agent
  with a salt that rotates daily, then drop the raw values.
- Filter obvious bots against a user-agent blocklist before counting.
- Dashboard page: pageviews, uniques, top pages, top referrers over 7/30/365
  days, one Chart.js line chart plus tables. Protected by a single bearer
  token from .env, no user accounts.
- Retention: raw events kept 30 days, daily rollups kept forever, pruned by a
  nightly node-cron job.
- No cookies, no personal data at rest, no telemetry of its own.
- Out of scope: email reports, team seats, billing. One site, or a short site
  list in config.
- README: deploy steps, adding the script tag, and a plain note that this is
  polite analytics, not a legal compliance product.

## Delivery standard

- Inspect the repository first, then write a short implementation plan before writing code.
- Deliver the smallest complete end-to-end workflow first; every primary control must work against persisted data.
- Use real validation and storage; never substitute fake dashboards, decorative controls, hard-coded success states, or mock integrations.
- Include responsive layouts plus genuine empty, loading, success, validation, and failure states.
- Keep secrets server-side in environment variables, provide .env.example, and never commit credentials or user data.
- Add structured logs around every external call and return actionable errors without leaking sensitive details.
- Write unit tests for the core logic and one automated test of the main user journey.
- Finish with a README covering setup, architecture, data location, backups, tests, deployment, and known limitations.

## Acceptance criteria

- [ ] A clean install starts the app using only the README and .env.example.
- [ ] The primary journey works from first visit through saved result, reload, edit, export, and deletion where applicable.
- [ ] Invalid input, missing configuration, provider failure, and an empty database each have a usable state.
- [ ] The interface works at 390px and 1440px, is keyboard navigable, and shows visible focus on every control.
- [ ] Tests, type checking, linting, and a production build all pass with no ignored failures.
- [ ] No part of the interface implies a live integration, security guarantee, or scale capability that was not actually built and verified.

## Non-goals

Do not build these, and do not claim to have replaced them:

- Managed infrastructure.
- Privacy/compliance messaging.
- Email reports.
- Uptime.
- Reliability at the vendor's scale is an operations problem, not a prompt.
- Trust, audits, and counterparties matter more than feature parity.

## What you still own after launch

- Run migrations, backups, restores, and dependency updates.
- Test the critical journey after every model, API, or hosting change.
- Monitor failures and fix the edge cases a first prompt will miss.

## Risk

**Operational risk.** The code is achievable; dependable data, integrations, and ongoing operations are the real cost.

Editorial confidence in this assessment: medium. No independent one-shot implementation is linked yet.

## Prior art

Working open-source software you can read, fork, or borrow from before starting:

- [Umami](https://github.com/umami-software/umami) — Open-source privacy-focused analytics platform and practical DIY alternative

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Generated by [Can It Be Vibe Coded?](https://www.canitbevibecoded.com) · Full report: https://www.canitbevibecoded.com/fathom-analytics