Google Analytics alternative: page views and heatmaps from one script tag, no cookies

The pitch

Google Analytics 4 is free and goes deep on acquisition and ads. Many small sites open it to answer simpler questions: how many people came, from where, and what did they do on the page. This post is for those sites.

Where UpControl is better

• No cookie and nothing stored on the device. A visitor is a hash that changes every day, so nobody is followed into tomorrow.
• Heatmaps are included. Clicks, rage clicks, mouse movement and scroll depth are drawn over your own live page, one map per device size.
• One tag and nothing to configure. A page view arrives on load and on every route change of a single-page app.
• It sits next to your uptime checks and logs. A drop in visits and the outage that caused it are in one place.

Where Google Analytics is better

• It is free at traffic far beyond a small site's. UpControl counts visits per plan: 3,000 a month on Free, 30,000 on Indie, 150,000 on Growth, 300,000 on Agency. Past the allowance nothing new is stored until the month turns.
• Advertising. Attribution, audiences and the link to Google Ads have no equivalent here.
• History. Heat is kept 31 days at most, and heatmaps cover your busiest pages only: 5 on Free, up to 100 on Agency.
• Everyone already knows it, and most tools plug into it.

Add it next to Google Analytics

1. Run npx upcontrol web https://example.com with your own address, or open Connect in the app and press Add it to a website.
2. Paste the tag it prints into the head of the layout every page shares.
3. Load the site once, then run npx upcontrol verify --web.
4. Add a Heatmap card to your dashboard. Each row opens that page with its map drawn over it.