Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Plausible.io VS Discourse

Compare Plausible.io VS Discourse and see what are their differences

Plausible.io logo Plausible.io

Plausible Analytics is a simple, open-source, lightweight (< 1 KB) and privacy-friendly web analytics alternative to Google Analytics. Made and hosted in the EU, powered by European-owned cloud infrastructure πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί

Discourse logo Discourse

Discourse is an open source discussion platform built for the next decade of the Internet.
  • Plausible.io Landing page
    Landing page //
    2020-07-07

Plausible Analytics is not designed to be a clone of Google Analytics. It is meant as a simple-to-use replacement and a privacy-friendly alternative that can help many site owners.

  • It's quick, simple to use and understand with all the metrics displayed on one page. Doesn't track hundreds of metrics like Google Analytics does

  • Lightweight script of less than 1 KB so sites load fast. The script is 45 times smaller script than the Google Analytics one

  • Doesn't use cookies so there's no need to worry about cookie banners

  • Doesn't track personal data so it's compliant with GDPR out of the box and you don't need to worry about asking for data consent

  • It's open source with the code available on GitHub so you can even self host exactly the same product free as in beer

  • Unlike Google Analytics, the cloud product is not free as in beer because the business model is subscriptions rather than selling the data of your visitors. Plausible Analytics is bootstrapped without any external funding so the subscription fees help cover the costs and time spent on development.

  • Discourse Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-06-13

Plausible.io

$ Details
paid Free Trial $9.0 / Monthly (10,000 pageviews)
Platforms
Web Browser Google Chrome Firefox Safari Wordpress
Release Date
2019 April

Discourse

$ Details
paid Free Trial $100.0 / Monthly
Platforms
-
Release Date
-

Plausible.io videos

Cardano Blackboard Series #5: What is plausible deniability?

More videos:

  • Review - How Plausible is the Balkanized America from Crimson Skies? (A Map Analysis)
  • Review - Movie Review - How Plausible is The Martian?

Discourse videos

Why We Chose The Discourse Platform For Our Forums

More videos:

  • Review - Why Discourse is the Best Forum Software Out There (No, Really) | Location Rebel
  • Review - A Grammar Review for Discourse Analysis

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Plausible.io and Discourse)
Analytics
100 100%
0% 0
Forums
0 0%
100% 100
Web Analytics
100 100%
0% 0
Forums And Forum Software

User comments

Share your experience with using Plausible.io and Discourse. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Plausible.io and Discourse

Plausible.io Reviews

  1. Happy Paying User :)

    I've been using plausible since Sep 2019 and never had any doubts about it. It provides me with everything I need related to visitor stats while keeping privacy in first place.

    It doesn't slow down my website loading speed (it's amazing, it's less than 1KB in size!), is not blocked by adblockers since it's not really a tracker tracker, and owners are super cool and they actually respond to every inquiry you could possibly have.

    If you're looking for de-googling your stuff, you can start with Plausible :)

    🏁 Competitors: Google Analytics, Matomo, Woopra
    πŸ‘ Pros:    Loading speed|Clean ui|Privacy concisous|Custom domain|Affordable prices|Easy integration|Super simple
  2. Plausibly simple analytics!

    I tried several analytics tools prior to Plausible, namely Google Analytics and later on Matomo. I found both to be fairly complicated for my usage which is a personal blog. Complicated in the way I had to install and use them. Plausible's simple to set up approach combined with a very clean and inviting user interface was a breath of fresh air. It's simple and clean enough that it actually makes me want to check and analyse my traffic which is a feeling I never thought I'd have having tried alternatives.

    🏁 Competitors: Google Analytics, Simple Analytics, Matomo
  3. Excellent alternative to google analytics

    It offers clear information about what I really need, without distractions, without advertising and does not slow my site.

    🏁 Competitors: Google Analytics

Top 5 open source alternatives to Google Analytics
Plausible is a newer kid on the open source analytics tools block. It’s lean, it’s fast, and only collects a small amount of information β€” that includes numbers of unique visitors and the top pages they visited, the number of page views, the bounce rate, and referrers. Plausible is simple and very focused.
Source: opensource.com
Privacy-oriented alternatives to Google Analytics
I learned about Plausible just recently, but they deserve to be on top of this list for me. Their platform is completely Open Source on GitHub under the MIT license. I personally also like that it’s written in Elixir.
Lightweight alternatives to Google Analytics
Plausible is another relatively new analytics tool that was launched in early 2019. Soon after launching, it switched to open source, with the code licensed under the permissive MIT license. The company's business model is to charge for the hosting, with pricing aimed at small businesses. In addition to making its source code available, Plausible is one of an increasing...
Source: lwn.net

Discourse Reviews

20 Telegram Alternatives to Chat With in 2024
Discourse is a basic forum function that could be an alternative to Telegram if you want to stick to text discussions. It's pretty analog, missing both video and livestreaming tools. Instead, Discourse is a basic community that lets you organize discussions--it feels a bit like having your own reddit or Quora.
18 Best Discord Alternatives 2020 | Expert Reviews
Discourse comes in a couple of flavours. You can self-host it yourself in which case the software is free, and you simply need to sign up for server space, or you can pay Discourse for a hosted-for-you option, though self-hosting is a lot cheaper the premium option takes care of the technical side.
IndieHackers: Best forum software
I used Flarum when trying to get a community set up for my product (ended up abandoning it to revisit when we have a larger customer base). It worked fairly well and I enjoyed it but it's definitely beta and unless you're fairly tech savvy it's not quite worth the setup / maintenance. Lots of config changes, crashes, huge issues with plugins, and some features missing. I'd...

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Plausible.io should be more popular than Discourse. It has been mentiond 191 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Plausible.io mentions (191)

  • Show HN: I've made Keyword Research tool that's 90% cheaper than anything
    This is funny to me because it also looks just like Plausible Analytics' design. (They also used Tailwind). I guess both took heavy inspiration from the tailwind example design https://plausible.io. - Source: Hacker News / 1 day ago
  • Counterscale and the New Self-Hosted
    Shout out to Plausible for open-source, dead-simple, Saas-or-self-hosted analytics. https://plausible.io. - Source: Hacker News / 12 days ago
  • Time Series Analysis of Plausible Data
    # Function to get Plausible Analytics timeseries data Def get_plausible_timeseries_data(): # Calculate the date range for the last 90 days date_to = datetime.today().strftime('%Y-%m-%d') date_from = (datetime.today() - timedelta(days=90)).strftime('%Y-%m-%d') # Setting the metrics we want to look at metrics='visitors,pageviews' # Actually pulling the data we want url =... - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • Any Google Analytics Alternatives?
    I think a single Google Analytics alternative is pretty hard to pick considering that GA can be used to very much varying extents. For simple and "detailed enough" insights, I enjoyed using Plausible (https://plausible.io/) in the past. For more in depth analytics that give you a detailed view into your own product, PostHog.com seems to be by far the best and most popular option out there. - Source: Hacker News / 2 months ago
  • We need to Speak about Google Code Quality
    I could do the same exercise with Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager, but luckily I don't need to, since Plausible already did. A piece of advice, rip out Google Analytics and use Plausible instead. It first of all doesn't destroy your website, and secondly it doesn't violate the GDPR - So you can embed it on your site without having to warn your visitors about that they're being spied on by Google. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
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Discourse mentions (23)

  • Qilin: A Starter Project Template For Every Open Source Project
    GitHub Discussions can also be a great place for support as long as these are regularly monitored. Another option along the same lines is Discourse and the Open Source Matrix which is used by quite a few Open Source and community-based projects. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Ask HN: How to run an old-school mailing list?
    A lot of communities use [Discourse ](https://discourse.org). [LPSF](https://forum lpsf.org) migrated to it when Yahoo Groups was discontinued. Some of the advantages are that it's open source, self-hostable, and can be configured to work as both a traditional mailing list and modern forum. - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
  • My Fediverse use – I'm hosting everything myself – PeerTube, Mastodon and Lemmy
    More like https://discourse.org/. You can run it yourself, but I can also just have them ding a credit card every month and not think about it again (I do this for a community). - Source: Hacker News / 7 months ago
  • Reddit faces content quality concerns after its Great Mod Purge
    Discourse perhaps? I've seen it in use in a few places; it has a modern look and feel to it at least. https://discourse.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 10 months ago
  • So Long, Twitter and Reddit
    I fully agree with you see my comment here[0] -- I think you may have misread my comment, it says "Discourse" (as in the forum software[1]), not Discord. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37245220. - Source: Hacker News / 11 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Plausible.io and Discourse, you can also consider the following products

Google Analytics - Improve your website to increase conversions, improve the user experience, and make more money using Google Analytics. Measure, understand and quantify engagement on your site with customized and in-depth reports.

Flarum - Flarum is the next-generation forum software that makes online discussion fun. It's simple, fast, and free.

Matomo - Matomo is an open-source web analytics platform

phpBB - Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi is a cheap, credit-card sized computer. The official website uses phpBB for their discussion forums. phpBB is not affiliated with nor responsible for any of the sites listed on the showcase.

Fathom Analytics - Simple, trustworthy website analytics (finally)

Vanilla Forums - Build an engaging community forum using Vanilla's modern cloud forum software.