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Simple Analytics vs Fathom - Comparison 2025

Simple Analytics vs. Fathom

Last updated on

Reviewed by Camin McCluskey

Stackfix Co-Founder & CTO

CM

Fathom and Simple Analytics represent different approaches to privacy-focused web analytics. Fathom excels in user experience with its polished interface and superior documentation, making it ideal for marketing teams and business users who prioritize ease of use and quick implementation.

Simple Analytics, while less refined in its interface, offers more technical capabilities including automatic event tracking, mobile SDK support, and server-side tracking, making it better suited for development teams needing more technical flexibility. Both tools are lightweight alternatives to Google Analytics that are best for basic web analytics rather than complex product analytics needs.

Simple Analytics Product Logo

Advantages of Simple Analytics

Simple Analytics offers automatic event capture while Fathom requires manual setup
Unlike Fathom which requires manual configuration, Simple Analytics automatically captures common interactions like outbound link clicks, email interactions, and file downloads. This saves development time for teams who want basic interaction tracking without custom implementation.
Simple Analytics includes mobile SDK support that Fathom lacks
While Fathom has no mobile SDK offering, Simple Analytics provides native mobile tracking capabilities through its SDK. This makes it a better choice for businesses needing to track both web and mobile app analytics in one platform.
Simple Analytics offers server-side tracking that Fathom doesn't support
Unlike Fathom, Simple Analytics provides server-side tracking capabilities, making it more suitable for businesses needing to track events from their backend systems or requiring more control over their tracking implementation.
Fathom Product Logo

Advantages of Fathom

Fathom is significantly more polished and better designed than Simple Analytics
While Simple Analytics suffers from load times up to 4 seconds, Fathom delivers a snappy, responsive experience with page loads under 1 second. This modern, clean design makes it much more pleasant to use for marketing teams and business users who need quick access to analytics data.
Fathom offers notably better developer documentation than Simple Analytics
Unlike Simple Analytics' poorly organized documentation that lacks search functionality, Fathom provides well-structured, searchable developer documentation. This makes it much easier for development teams to implement and maintain the analytics integration.

Simple Analytics is best for

  • Businesses with basic web analytics needs who prioritize simplicity over advanced features
  • Who need quick setup and intuitive dashboards for tracking core metrics like pageviews and referrals
  • And/or who need GDPR-compliant analytics with robust data export capabilities

Fathom is best for

  • Businesses with basic web analytics needs seeking a privacy-focused, lightweight Google Analytics alternative
  • Who need a clean, modern interface that's quick to master
  • And/or who need robust privacy compliance with GDPR and SOC 2 Type II certification

Simple Analytics is less good for

  • Businesses with complex analytics requirements needing advanced features like heatmaps, session replays, or user journey mapping
  • Who need extensive dashboard customization and reporting flexibility
  • And/or who need robust data warehouse integrations and third-party tool connectivity

Fathom is less good for

  • Businesses with complex product analytics requirements needing features like heatmaps, session replays, or funnel analysis
  • Who need extensive dashboard customization and reporting capabilities beyond basic web analytics
  • And/or who need advanced data warehouse integrations like BigQuery or Snowflake

Gallery

Simple Analytics logoSimple Analytics
Simple Analytics screenshot
Fathom logoFathom
Fathom screenshot

Pricing, features & ratings

Simple Analytics logo

Simple Analytics

Starting at

$0

Billed monthly

Pricing calculatorVisit Website
Fathom logo

Fathom

Starting at

$15

Billed monthly

Pricing calculatorVisit Website
Stackfix Verdict
Functionality
3

Functionality

3/10

<p>Simple Analytics is a very lightweight web analytics product. As such it lacks many complex features you might want such as heatmaps or session replay. However, it does the basics well - page views, live visitor counts, referral source tracking etc.</p>
3

Functionality

3/10

<p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Fathom is a lightweight web analytics tool. It covers all the essentials for this time of product including real time page view and visitor data, referral source tracking and basic traffic segmentation. However, you'll not find any powerful product analytics functionality like heatmaps or session recordings. Additionally, its self-hosted variant lacks even more features than the cloud hosted option.</span></p>
Ease of Use
7

Ease of Use

7/10

<p>Thanks to its relatively limited feature set - nearly all of Simple Analytics' features are accessible on one main dashboard. As such it would take an average SMB employee less than 20 mins to master its use.</p>
8

Ease of Use

8/10

<p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Given its limited feature set and beautiful design, Fathom is particularly easy to use. It would take an average SMB employee less than 20 minutes to master its use.</span></p>
Look and feel
5

Look and feel

5/10

<p>Simple Analytics' design aesthetic is dark and fairly developer oriented. That being said, its core dashboard will feel very familiar and its data visualizations and graphs are easy to read. Our main complaint is that we faced delays on page load of up to 4 seconds in some instances.</p>
7

Look and feel

7/10

<p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Fathom is a well designed analytics tool. Its aesthetic is clean and modern, albeit a bit dark. Additionally, when tested we found page load time to be snappy and responsive (&lt;1s).</span></p>
Customisability
4

Customisability

4/10

<p>Beyond custom events, Simple Analytics offers limited scope for customization. We would like to have seen more options to tweak the dashboard itself and change how data is visualized.</p>
3

Customisability

3/10

<p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Beyond custom events, Fathom offers limited scope for customization. We would like to have seen more options to tweak the dashboard itself and change how data is visualized.</span></p>
Ease of Setup
7

Ease of Setup

7/10

<p>Simple Analytics stays true to its name as it offers a very intuitive setup process - only requiring a simple script. We appreciated the offer of a self-serve free trial as well as a live demo to get a feel for the tool before installation.</p>
5

Ease of Setup

5/10

<p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Like most web analytics products, Plausible was also very simple to implement - requiring only a simple script. Additionally, it offers a self-serve free trial. However, we did find the lack of any free tier frustrating, meaning you'll need to completely delete your account if you don't want to pay.</span></p>
Customer Support
3

Customer Support

3/10

<p>Simple Analytics' developer documentation is not well presented. We specifically missed the presence of any kind of search bar at all meaning you'll need to trudge through dozens of pages if you're looking for something specific.</p>
7

Customer Support

7/10

<p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Fathoms developer documentation is well laid out, easy to digest and detailed. It also offers very strong search functionality too.</span></p>
Integratability
3

Integratability

3/10

<p>Simple Analytics offers a fairly robust API through which you can interact with data as well as make platform changes. However, it offers little to no integrations beyond this.</p>
4

Integratability

4/10

<p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Fathom offers a robust and well documented API through which you can interact with data programatically. However, it offers little to no integrations beyond this.</span></p>
Ease of Migration
7

Ease of Migration

7/10

<p>Simple Analytics offers self-serve export functionality for key datapoints via its web app. Additionally, its API is robust and allows business to access datapoints programatically.</p>
6

Ease of Migration

6/10

<p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Fathom offers self-serve export functionality for key datapoints via its web app. Additionally, its API is robust and allows business to access datapoints programatically.</span></p>
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