Contentsquare vs Simple Analytics

Compare Contentsquare and Simple Analytics on capabilities, jurisdiction, assurance, and fit for European buyers.

Both listed as alternatives to: Adobe Analytics, Google Analytics, Hotjar

Contentsquare

France· Web Analytics

Needs review

Shortlist Contentsquare when a European-headquartered enterprise needs zone heatmaps, replay, journeys, and error-to-revenue analysis in one SaaS, with a public DPA and selectable Ireland hosting. Skip when you cannot accept AWS or Azure (US-group cloud), session replay of visitor pages, or a sales-led Pro and Enterprise stack. Consider Mouseflow for a smaller European heatmap and replay tool, or Plausible / Friendly Analytics when you only need privacy-first traffic analytics.

EU-operated (FR SAS)Zone heatmapsSession replayPublic DPAEU or US cloud regionISO 27001 (claimed)

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Simple Analytics

Netherlands· Web Analytics

Needs review

Shortlist when you need EU-operated, cookieless web metrics without visitor IDs or stored IPs—especially as a visibility layer beside GA4. Skip when you need self-host/open-source control, session replay, or identity-rich marketing analytics; consider Plausible Analytics or Matomo/Piwik PRO instead.

Cookieless analyticsNo stored IPs / visitor IDsEU-hosted (NL focus)Dutch B.V.Works beside GA4API & BI export

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Highlighted rows differ between the two products.

Contentsquare vs Simple Analytics: Snapshot
Feature	Contentsquare	Simple Analytics
Country of origin	France	Netherlands
Category	Web Analytics	Web Analytics
Open source	No	No
Self-hosted	No	No
Headquarters	France	Netherlands
Legal entity	Content Square SAS, 7 rue de Madrid, 75008 Paris, France	Simple Analytics B.V., Amsterdam (KVK 88269922, VAT NL864560011B01)
Governing law	Not listed	Netherlands / EU
US parent / control	No known US parent	No known US parent
CLOUD Act exposure (indicative)	Medium	Low
Hosting / residency	Visitor hosting on AWS and Azure: Ireland (eu-west-1 / North Europe) by default for EU customers, or Virginia. Free and Growth stay in Ireland. Backup region unnamed. Support: Zendesk (USA), Atlassian (Australia), Content Square, Inc. (USA). Sense: Bedrock, Azure LLMs, OpenAI (PA chat). VoC: Twilio, Daily.co, Postmark, Tremendous. Conversation Intelligence: Deepgram, Snowflake, Salesforce.	Analytics data claimed processed in the Netherlands/EU. Public subprocessors (May 2026): Worldstream + Leaseweb (NL hosting), Hetzner (DE hosting), Bunny (SI CDN/DNS), Hyperping (FR uptime), Intention (NL domains). Vendor states this list covers website visitor-data subprocessors only—not payments/internal ops.
Summary	Paris-headquartered experience intelligence platform: zone heatmaps, session replay, journey analysis, Voice of Customer, and Sense AI on AWS or Azure with selectable EU or US regions.	Dutch privacy-first web analytics SaaS: cookieless pageviews and campaigns without visitor IDs or stored IPs, EU-hosted by Simple Analytics B.V. in Amsterdam.
Tags	gdpr experience-analytics session-replay heatmaps voice-of-customer enterprise	gdpr analytics privacy cookieless web-analytics saas api eu-hosted

At a glance: Contentsquare vs Simple Analytics
At a glance	Contentsquare	Simple Analytics
HQ	Paris, France	Amsterdam, Netherlands
Legal entity (typical EU)	Content Square SAS	Not listed
Founded	2012 (Paris)	2018
Hosting	AWS and Azure, Ireland or Virginia	Not listed
Deployment	Multi-tenant SaaS (not self-hosted)	Not listed
Commercial model	Free and Growth self-serve; Pro and Enterprise sales-led	Free hobby tier + usage-based paid + enterprise
Legal entity	Not listed	Simple Analytics B.V. (KVK 88269922)
Product type	Not listed	Hosted web analytics SaaS (not self-hosted)
Open source	Not listed	No (proprietary)
Data focus	Not listed	Cookieless, non-identifying aggregate metrics
Primary hosting	Not listed	Netherlands (EU); see subprocessors

Key capabilities: Contentsquare vs Simple Analytics
Key capabilities	Contentsquare	Simple Analytics
EU-operated (FR SAS)	Yes	Not listed
Zone heatmaps	Yes	Not listed
Session replay	Yes	Not listed
Public DPA	Yes	Not listed
EU or US cloud region	Yes	Not listed
ISO 27001 (claimed)	Yes	Not listed
Cookieless analytics	Not listed	Yes
No stored IPs / visitor IDs	Not listed	Yes
EU-hosted (NL focus)	Not listed	Yes
Dutch B.V.	Not listed	Yes
Works beside GA4	Not listed	Yes
API & BI export	Not listed	Yes

Contentsquare

Zone-based heatmaps and journey analysis
Experience Analytics maps clicks, hovers, and scrolls to page zones and attributes engagement, conversion, and revenue to those elements. Journey analysis (Pro and Enterprise) follows visitors from entry to exit so CRO and UX teams can find drop-off without reconstructing funnels in a separate BI tool. Limit: Free and Growth include heatmaps but not the full journey module.
Session replay with Smart Capture
The Main Tag and mobile SDKs auto-capture clicks, scrolls, taps, and swipes without a full custom event taxonomy. Replays can be summarized by Sense. Docs expose CSS-selector and page-level PII masking. Customer-submitted identifiers (email, username) are off by default. Limit: Shopify checkout replay and zoning require Shopify Plus, and checkout pages must use page masking. The product is multi-tenant SaaS, not a self-hosted recorder.
Error, speed, and frustration monitoring
Experience Monitoring ties JavaScript errors, crashes, custom business errors, and page-speed metrics to the same sessions as replay. Frustration Score ranks journeys with rage clicks and similar signals. Impact Quantification estimates conversion and revenue effects so engineering can triage by business cost. Alerts and several of these modules are Pro and Enterprise only.
Voice of Customer and conversation intelligence
Surveys and feedback (Ask), Observe, and Engage interviews or user tests sit on the same group platform as Hotjar-branded VoC. Conversation Intelligence (Loris) scores agent and requester chats, including optional audio via Deepgram. Interview and user-test recordings are retained for 2 years per the DPA. These modules pull extra subprocessors (Twilio, Daily.co, Postmark, Tremendous).
Sense AI on regional LLM endpoints
Sense generates dashboards, error summaries, mapping help, and replay summaries from captured behavior. The DPA lists AWS Bedrock and Azure models for Growth, Pro, and Enterprise, served from EU or US regions based on customer location. Product Analytics Sense Chat can also call OpenAI. The vendor says customers should avoid putting personal data in prompts. This is in-product AI, not a self-hosted model.
Selectable AWS or Azure residency plus enterprise access
EU-based customers default to Ireland (AWS eu-west-1 or Azure North Europe). US hosting (Virginia) is an explicit option. SAML 2.0 SSO and MFA are documented. Data Connect can export visitor data to a warehouse (Frankfurt or Virginia for Experience Analytics). There is no EU-sovereign cloud option that avoids US-group providers.

Simple Analytics

Cookieless metrics without visitor IDs or stored IPs
Collects pageviews, referrers, UTMs, time-on-page, and scroll depth without cookies, localStorage, fingerprints, or stored IP addresses. Unique visits are inferred from referrer hostname matching, not device IDs. Built for sites that want analytics without a consent banner solely for this tool—and without building visitor profiles.
Country from time zone, not geo-IP
Country-level location is derived from the visitor’s IANA time zone rather than IP lookup, so IPs can be dropped end-to-end. City/region is not available; some border and multi-country zones can mis-tag. Useful when legal teams reject IP-based geolocation even when hashed.
Cookieless layer beside GA4 and BI stacks
Positioned to measure traffic lost when consent is denied in cookie-based tools. Import historical Google Analytics data; export via Stats/Export APIs and integrations toward Looker Studio, Power BI, and warehouse workflows so analysts can compare consented vs observed traffic without replacing every GA report.
Lightweight script, events, goals, and ad-blocker bypass
Vendor claims a single script under 5 KB. Supports events, automated events (e.g. downloads, outbound links), goals, filters, email reports, and robot/referrer-spam controls. Ad-blocker resilience is via first-party proxy or custom subdomain CNAME—not automatic immunity for every blocklist.
Team access, SSO, and EU-operated SaaS
Hosted product from Simple Analytics B.V. (Amsterdam) with role-oriented team features on higher tiers and documented SAML SSO for Okta and Microsoft Entra. No official self-host edition—operations and residency follow the vendor’s EU infrastructure and public subprocessor list.

Assurance & compliance: Contentsquare vs Simple Analytics
Assurance & compliance	Contentsquare	Simple Analytics
Independent security / no-logs audit	On request / NDA Trust portal lists a pentest report and security whitepaper behind access. Security page claims annual external pentests, monthly scans, and a public bug bounty. No public no-logs audit (wrong category for a behavior recorder).	Not found Searched security/trust pages; no public independent audit PDF found.
ISO 27001	Vendor claimed Trust portal and security page state ISO/IEC 27001 certification (also 27017, 27018). Certificate files require portal access. Not independently verified in a public registry during this draft.	Not found No ISO 27001 certificate claimed on primary security pages.
ISO 27701	Vendor claimed Vendor claims ISO/IEC 27701 on the trust portal and company page. Same access-gated evidence.	Not listed
SOC 2 / SOC 3	Vendor claimed Vendor states it holds a SOC 2 Type II report. Report is on the trust portal, not a public PDF in this research pass.	Partial Vendor states SOC 2 Type II is in progress / coming soon—not completed certification at research time.
GDPR / EU data protection	Vendor claimed French SAS, public DPA with GDPR, UK GDPR, ePrivacy Directive, EU SCCs (French law, French courts), customer-as-controller. Customer still owns consent, masking, and lawful basis for visitor capture.	Vendor claimed Dutch EU entity; vendor claims no personal data collection (no cookies/IPs/visitor IDs) and GDPR-friendly design. Not legal advice—confirm for your processing facts.
US CLOUD Act exposure (indicative)	Partial EuropeanStack assessment, not a vendor slogan. French entity and no known US parent, but visitor data sits on AWS and Azure (US-group clouds), a US affiliate provides support, and US SaaS subprocessors include Zendesk, Postmark, OpenAI, Deepgram, Snowflake, and Salesforce. US region is an explicit option. DPF covers the US entity. Not legal advice.	Partial EU entity, no known US parent, public analytics subprocessors are EU-based (Worldstream, Leaseweb, Hetzner, Bunny, Hyperping). Residual risk remains; reconcile Cloudflare mention on GDPR page vs Bunny on subprocessors. Assessment by EuropeanStack—not a vendor 'safe' claim. Not legal advice.
Data processing agreement (B2B)	Vendor claimed Public DPA last updated June 2026 (v.2026.2). Subprocessor objection window 30 days. SCCs Module Two and Three.	Partial Vendor says DPA usually not required (no personal data) but will review/sign customer-provided DPAs aligned with architecture.
EU AI Act	Partial Sense is in-product generative AI over customer and visitor data (Bedrock, Azure, OpenAI). No public AI Act conformity statement found. Customer is told to avoid personal data in prompts. Not treated as not_applicable.	Not applicable Web analytics product; not marketed as an AI system subject to AI Act high-risk regimes.
EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework	Vendor claimed DPA and services privacy policy state Content Square, Inc. is DPF certified (EU-U.S., UK Extension, Swiss-U.S.). Listing not re-opened during this draft.	Not listed
HIPAA	Vendor claimed Security page displays a HIPAA mark. No public BAA text reviewed. Confirm with vendor if health data is in scope (DPA says the service is not designed for sensitive data).	Not listed
CSA STAR	Vendor claimed Security page shows a STAR mark. Trust portal lists CAIQ. Registry entry not independently opened.	Not listed

Considerations & known limitations: Contentsquare vs Simple Analytics
Considerations & known limitations	Contentsquare	Simple Analytics
AWS and Azure plus US SaaS subprocessors	Medium Even with Ireland as the default EU region, the infrastructure providers are Amazon Web Services and Microsoft. Support and AI paths include Zendesk, a US affiliate, Bedrock or Azure OpenAI, and in some modules OpenAI, Deepgram, Snowflake, and Salesforce. Practical impact: a residency policy that bans US-group processors will fail this vendor regardless of the France HQ story.	Not listed
High-sensitivity visitor capture	Medium Session replay and zoning record on-page behavior and can include on-screen text. Masking is configurable, not a guarantee that every form is clean. The customer is controller for consent and special-category data. Practical impact: legal and privacy must review checkout, account, and health or finance pages before go-live.	Not listed
Full DX stack is sales-led	Low Journeys, error and speed analysis, alerts, and Data Connect are documented as Pro and Enterprise. Free and Growth cover heatmaps and replay only. Practical impact: do not shortlist on the free signup if those enterprise modules are the actual requirement.	Not listed
Hotjar, Heap, and Loris live in one group	Low Subprocessors and retention differ by module (13 months DXA, 37 months product analytics, 2 years for interview recordings). Practical impact: a Hotjar-only DPIA does not cover Conversation Intelligence or Sense Chat.	Not listed
ISO and SOC evidence behind the trust portal	Low ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II are vendor-claimed. Independent certificate files were not downloaded in this draft. Practical impact: security review should request current reports before treating badges as verified.	Not listed
Hosted SaaS only—no self-host	Not listed	Medium No official self-host edition. Orgs with air-gap or on-prem telemetry mandates need Plausible self-host, Matomo, or similar instead.
SOC 2 not yet complete	Not listed	Medium SOC 2 Type II is publicly 'in progress'. Enterprise security reviews may block until a report is available or accept compensating controls (minimal data + EU hosts).
Referrer-based uniques and timezone country	Not listed	Low Uniques are not durable visitor IDs; country is timezone-based with known mis-tag edge cases. Totals will differ from GA client-ID models—set stakeholder expectations.
CDN/DDoS vendor documentation inconsistency	Not listed	Low Subprocessors list Bunny (EU) for CDN/DNS; GDPR page still references Cloudflare for CDN/DDoS. Ask for current edge path before asserting zero US-group infrastructure touch.
Small independent operator	Not listed	Low Public About page describes a three-person self-funded team. Fine for many sites; large enterprises should assess continuity, support SLAs, and roadmap capacity explicitly.

Fit

Contentsquare

Best fit when

Enterprise or mid-market CRO, UX, ecommerce, and digital product teams that need zoning, journeys, and replay tied to conversion
European buyers who want a French SAS contracting entity and a public DPA with EU SCCs under French law
Teams already running GA4 or Adobe Analytics that need a visual DX layer rather than another pageview tool
Support and engineering groups that must reproduce errors from the visitor's screen and rank them by revenue impact
Organisations that can accept AWS or Azure Ireland as the primary region and will configure PII masking on checkout and forms

Poor fit when

Buyers who require no US-group cloud, no US affiliate support access, and no US SaaS subprocessors
Teams that only need cookieless traffic analytics without session replay or heatmaps
Procurement that mandates self-hosted or open-source DXA with data never leaving owned infrastructure
Sites that cannot deploy a third-party Main Tag or mobile SDK, or cannot mask PII in replays

Consider instead when

When: You want European heatmap, replay, and friction analysis at a smaller scale than enterprise DXA
Consider: Mouseflow
Danish SaaS in the catalog. Confirm its own hosting and DPA independently.
When: You only need privacy-first page analytics without session video
Consider: Plausible Analytics or Friendly Analytics
Different job: traffic and privacy, not zoning or replay.
When: You already use Hotjar for surveys and light replay and do not need enterprise quantification
Consider: Stay on the Hotjar (Ask / Observe / Engage) SKU in the same group
Same French SAS for non-Americas contracts. Not a separate catalog product at draft time.
When: You need US-parented enterprise DXA already standardized in the US stack
Consider: FullStory, or Adobe Analytics plus a replay add-on
Closer operationally to Contentsquare's full suite, but not European-operated.

Simple Analytics

Best fit when

Teams measuring traffic lost when consent is denied in cookie-based analytics (GA4/Adobe)
Public-sector and regulated sites that need no cookies/IPs/visitor profiles for web stats
EU procurement that requires Dutch legal entity + published EU subprocessors for visitor data
Agencies/multi-site operators wanting a simple hosted dashboard, reports, and API/BI egress
Sites that want essential pageview/referrer/UTM metrics without an analytics-only consent banner

Poor fit when

Product analytics needing session replay, heatmaps, or person-level funnels
Organizations that must self-host analytics or prefer open-source governance (see Plausible/Matomo)
Buyers requiring city/region geolocation accuracy (country is timezone-derived)
Teams whose primary need is identity-rich attribution, audiences, and marketing automation inside the analytics suite

Consider instead when

When: You need open-source and/or official self-hosting of privacy-first analytics
Consider: Plausible Analytics (catalog: plausible_analytics) or Matomo
Simple Analytics is hosted SaaS only; Plausible and Matomo cover self-host paths many security policies require.
When: You need a deeper EU enterprise analytics platform with configurable processing and on-prem options
Consider: Piwik PRO (catalog: piwik_pro)
Heavier suite and procurement surface than Simple Analytics’ minimal cookieless product.
When: You need identity graphs, remarketing audiences, and full marketing analytics depth
Consider: Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics
Keep those for consented deep analysis; Simple Analytics is the opposite design tradeoff.
When: You want another lightweight EU cookieless tracker and are comparing peers
Consider: Pirsch Analytics (pirsch_analytics) or Friendly Analytics (friendly_analytics)
Compare retention, multi-site, SSO, and API maturity rather than GDPR slogans alone.

Open questions for due diligence

Contentsquare

What is the geographic backup or DR region for the Ireland pipeline (security page says a backup region, not which one)?
Can a reviewer download current ISO 27001, ISO 27701, and SOC 2 Type II reports from the trust portal, including scope and expiry?
Is Content Square, Inc. support access to EU visitor data on by default, or only when a ticket requires it?
Who holds controlling ownership after SoftBank Vision Fund, Sixth Street, and other rounds (no US parent found, but cap table is private)?
For Sense, what exact visitor fields leave the selected region when Bedrock, Azure, or OpenAI is invoked?
Does the latest public-authorities transparency report show any US law-enforcement requests for EU visitor data?

Simple Analytics

Is Cloudflare still used for any CDN/DDoS path, or has Bunny fully replaced it for edge services?
When will SOC 2 Type II complete, and will the report be available under NDA?
What exact data-retention windows apply per plan for your expected traffic volume?
Will the vendor sign your standard DPA/SCC pack as-is for public-sector procurement?
Are any non-EU subprocessors used for account email, payments, or support that could affect broader vendor risk (visitor analytics list excludes these)?