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A Guide to Self-Hosting Your Own Website Analytics With Umami

by Sachin ChaurasiyaSeptember 26th, 2022

Too Long; Didn't Read

Umami provides you with a powerful web analytics solution that respects your users' privacy. The best part is that you will have complete control over your data when you self-host Umami. In this article, we all know that Google Analytics captures all of your users information, so there is no privacy or control over the data. To understand the metrics you will need a PhD, but honestly it's not easy to understand the google analytics metrics. To give a name to your app and I have given a name, go to the **website-analytics-umami**. Then click on the**create app** to create your app.

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When we talk about website analytics, the first thing that comes to mind is Google Analytics. However, we all know that Google Analytics captures all of your users' information, so there is no privacy or control over the data.

Google Analytics captures so many different metrics that we don’t even need, and the most important fact is that to understand the metrics, you will need a Ph.D. 😁 Jokes aside, it's not easy to understand the google analytics metrics.

Lately, I was looking for an analytics solution for my portfolio website, and some people suggested google analytics, but I wanted full control of my website analytics and easy-to-understand metrics with a simple, friendly dashboard.

So, I started searching for google analytics alternatives, and I found a few interesting ones like plausible.io and umami.is.

After a few days of research, I concluded that Umami will be the best fit for my use case because it is open source and focuses on privacy, it provides you with a powerful web analytics solution that respects your users' privacy.

The best part is that you will have complete control over your data when you self-host with Umami.

So, in this article, I will be discussing how to self-host your own Website Analytics With Umami on Heroku.

Let's get started.

Fork the Umami Repository

Visit https://github.com/umami-software/umami and fork the repository.

Create or Log In to the Heroku Account

Go to the __Heroku website __and login into your Heroku account; if you don't have an account, then click on signup to create one.

Create and Configure the Heroku Application

After login, go to the dashboard and from there, click on New > Create new app.

Now, give a name to your app. I have given it website-analytics-umami. Then click on the create app button to create your app.

Connect Your Heroku App to Your Forked Umami Repository

From your dashboard, click on the app name that you just created. I will click on website-analytics-umami.

Now, navigate to the deploy tab, and click on the Connect to GitHub button.

Once you click the Connect to GitHub button, you will have to authorize Heroku to access your GitHub repositories.

Search for a repository that you want to connect to (that is Umami), and then click on connect button to connect your Heroku app with the umami repository.

Enable Automatic Deploys

After connecting your repository, scroll down to the Automatic deploys section, and click on Enable Automatic deploys. Heroku will automatically deploy if you make any new changes to this repository.

Setup Database

As I mentioned, Umami is self-hosted, so you will have to set up a database to store your analytics data.

Navigate to the Resource tab, scroll down to the Add-ons section, and then search for Postgres.

Select the Heroku Postgres option. After selecting it, you will see a modal like below. Select a free plan, and click on the submit order form to add this add-on to your application.

Umami requires the env variable DATABASE_URL to work with the database. Navigate to the settings tab, scroll down to the Config Vars section, and you will see that Heroku has automatically created an env variable DATABASE_URL, so you don't have to set it manually.

Umami requires one more env variable, HASH_SALT. You can add that from the Config Vars section.

Now everything is set up; let's move to the next part, which is deploying your application.

Deploy Umami

You have enabled the automatic deploys for your app, but for the first time, you will have to deploy it manually.

Navigate to the deploy tab, scroll down to the Manual deploy section, and then click on the Deploy Branch button and wait for some time to finish the deployment.

Once your app is deployed, you will see a green check for Deploy to Heroku and a message: Your app was successfully deployed.

Click on the View button to open the deployed app.

Configure Umami

If you open the application, you will see the login screen like this, by default, Umami creates one admin user with username admin and password umami.

From the dashboard, navigate to settings and click on the Add website button.

Give a name to your website and add the domain that you want to track. You can also enable the share URL if you want to share your analytics with someone.

To track stats for your website, you will have to get the tracking code and place it in the <head> section of your website.

<head>
...
<script async defer data-website-id="006299fc-774a-4eda-be0f-8556e629930a" src="https://app-name.herokuapp.com/umami.js"></script>
</head>

Congratulations 🥳, if you've followed along so far, you have successfully self-hosted your own Website Analytics.

View the Analytics

Now from the website's section, click on the website that you have added to view the analytics. I will click on my portfolio website.

You will be redirected to the dashboard where you will see all the available analytics metrics for your website.

Example:

Summary

In this article, we have discussed how to self-host your website analytics with umami on Heroku and as a final result, you will have the self-hosted analytics for your website with privacy and complete control over your data.

And that’s it for this topic. Thank you for reading.