Compare Pulse by Ciphera and SEAL Metrics on capabilities, jurisdiction, assurance, and fit for European buyers.
Both listed as alternatives to: Google Analytics
Belgium· Web Analytics
Needs review
Shortlist Pulse when you want cookieless traffic analytics plus uptime and Lighthouse in one Belgian-operated, Swiss-hosted SaaS and can accept a closed managed backend. Skip when you need full self-hosting or GA-style user-level history; consider Plausible Analytics or Simple Analytics instead.
Spain· Web Analytics
Needs review
Shortlist when European eCommerce or hospitality teams need cookieless full-traffic capture and last-click ROAS they can align with finance—without GA4 Consent Mode as the measurement backbone. Skip when you need self-host or open source, session replay and product analytics depth, or a certified ISO/SOC package today—consider Plausible, Simple Analytics, Pirsch, or Matomo-based hosts instead.
Highlighted rows differ between the two products.
| Feature | Pulse by Ciphera | SEAL Metrics |
|---|---|---|
| Country of origin | Belgium | Spain |
| Category | Web Analytics | Web Analytics |
| Open source | Yes | No |
| Self-hosted | No | No |
| Headquarters | Belgium | Spain |
| Legal entity | Ciphera BV | SealMetrics (Spain; exact registered company name not found on public imprint) |
| Governing law | Belgian law (GDPR); Swiss FADP for infrastructure location | Spain (Terms of Service; courts of Barcelona) |
| US parent / control | No known US parent | No known US parent |
| CLOUD Act exposure (indicative) | Low | Medium |
| EU-hosted status | Partial | Not listed |
| Hosting / residency | Primary compute and object storage on Exoscale in Switzerland (Zurich). Encrypted backups and domain registration via Infomaniak (Switzerland). CDN/DNS/DDoS via Bunny (Slovenia HQ, global edge for transient IPs). Payments via Mollie (Netherlands). GitHub (US) for public source code only, per Trust page. | Customer analytics app, DB, and backups: Dublin, Ireland (EU data center, provider not named publicly). Subprocessor: Cloudflare for CDN/DDoS on encrypted transit at EU edge locations; vendor states no analytics data at rest on Cloudflare and no US cloud storage of customer analytics. |
| Summary | Cookie-free web analytics with traffic, funnels, uptime and Lighthouse checks in one Belgian-operated, Swiss-hosted dashboard. | Spanish cookieless web analytics for European eCommerce: first-party capture, Dublin EU storage, last-click revenue and ROAS without consent-dependent tags. |
| Tags |
| At a glance | Pulse by Ciphera | SEAL Metrics |
|---|---|---|
| HQ | Diegem, Belgium (Ciphera BV) | Spain (Spanish law; Barcelona courts per Terms) |
| Legal entity | Ciphera BV (KBO/BCE 1013.721.660) | Not listed |
| Founded | 18 September 2024 (CBE) | 2020 (vendor how-it-works page) |
| Primary data region | Switzerland (Exoscale Zurich) | Not listed |
| License | AGPL-3.0 client; managed backend closed | Not listed |
| Commercial model | Free Hobby tier; paid plans by traffic scale | Not listed |
| Hosting | Not listed | Dublin, Ireland — EU data center; Cloudflare edge transit |
| Model | Not listed | SaaS; event-volume plans; free agentic tier + trial |
| Open source | Not listed | No |
| Self-host | Not listed | No |
| Cookieless | Yes (vendor claim: no cookies, no fingerprinting) | Not listed |
| Data residency regions | Switzerland (Exoscale primary; Infomaniak backups) | Not listed |
| Key capabilities | Pulse by Ciphera | SEAL Metrics |
|---|---|---|
| EU-operated | Yes | Not listed |
| Cookieless | Yes | Yes |
| Open-source client | Yes | Not listed |
| Swiss-hosted data | Yes | Not listed |
| No analytics cookies | Yes | Not listed |
| EU-hosted (Dublin) | Not listed | Yes |
| Revenue / ROAS focus | Not listed | Yes |
| Real-time dashboards | Not listed | Yes |
| DPA included | Not listed | Yes |
| SaaS only | Not listed | Yes |
Cookieless traffic dashboard
Pageviews, unique-visitor estimates, referrers, UTM campaigns, device or browser splits, and country-level geo from a single script tag, without cookies or fingerprinting according to Ciphera's privacy docs.
Journeys and conversion funnels
Step-by-step path columns and multi-step funnels with drop-off analysis, filterable by page, country, device, or referrer for privacy-preserving conversion debugging.
Uptime monitors with alert routes
Built-in uptime checks with downtime and recovery alerts to email, Slack, Discord, or a webhook, so availability sits beside traffic in one console.
Daily Lighthouse and Core Web Vitals
Scheduled mobile and desktop Lighthouse runs with performance, accessibility, best-practices, SEO scores, and Core Web Vitals trends without a separate RUM product.
Inspectable AGPL client and read API
Dashboard and tracking script are AGPL-3.0 on GitHub; Ciphera also documents a public read API, CLI, and export paths while keeping the managed backend closed.
846-byte first-party cookieless pixel
Install a tiny first-party script on your domain that logs pageviews without cookies, localStorage, or fingerprinting. Designed so ad blockers that target third-party analytics domains hit less often. Benefit: fuller traffic capture for teams stuck with consent-gated tags; trade-off: aggregate and channel metrics rather than person-level journey stitching.
Last-click revenue and ROAS attribution
Attributes conversions and revenue to channels, campaigns, and landing pages with last-click models the vendor positions as CRM-alignable. Built for eCommerce and hospitality media decisions—not generic pageview vanity charts. Limits: not a full multi-touch marketing mix model out of the box; validate against your CRM as the case studies do.
Real-time promo and campaign dashboards
Live views of revenue, channels, campaigns, and products during Promo Days so media teams can reallocate spend the same day. Suited to peak-load retail calendars. Constraint: value depends on tagging microconversions and keeping UTM hygiene; not a substitute for warehouse-grade BI alone.
LENS private AI on full capture
Optional LENS layer answers growth, risk, and wasted-spend questions in plain language against SealMetrics data (vendor states exclusive private AI on Enterprise tiers). Useful when analysts are scarce. Caveat: AI outputs are assistive—confirm high-stakes budget cuts against raw reports and offline finance data.
MCP and AI-assisted provisioning
Hosted MCP endpoint and docs let teams spin up accounts, pixels, and reports from AI coding assistants instead of a pure UI-only onboarding path. Speeds evaluation for engineering-heavy stacks. Still SaaS-only—there is no self-hosted SEAL Metrics server to run in your VPC.
EU Dublin storage with exports
Vendor documents processing and backups in Dublin, Ireland, with TLS 1.3, AES-256 at rest, and roughly 24-month analytics retention. API and BigQuery-style exports support dual-running with GA4. Hosting operator is described generically as an EU data center; Cloudflare sits on the transit path only.
| Assurance & compliance | Pulse by Ciphera | SEAL Metrics |
|---|---|---|
| Independent security / no-logs audit | Not found Trust page states no independent audit yet; Tessera self-audit published; independent audit planned. | Not found Vendor mentions regular security audits and independent legal audits; no public third-party audit PDF found on site/docs. |
| ISO 27001 | Not found Ciphera explicitly states it holds no ISO 27001 certification. | Not found Data location docs list ISO 27001 as planned, not certified. |
| SOC 2 / SOC 3 | Not found Ciphera explicitly states it holds no SOC 2 certification. | Partial Vendor docs list SOC 2 Type II as in progress — not a completed public report. |
| GDPR / EU data protection | Vendor claimed Belgian controller; privacy policy describes GDPR/FADP bases and Pulse processor role. Not legal advice. | Vendor claimed Spanish entity; cookieless architecture; EEA processing claims; DPA published. Legal conclusion remains for counsel. |
| US CLOUD Act exposure (indicative) | Partial EU (Belgian) entity with no known US parent; primary hosts are European (Exoscale, Infomaniak, Bunny, Mollie). Residual paths: GitHub (US) for source code only; Bunny global edge for transient IPs. Indicative only, not legal advice. | Partial EU entity / no known US parent; analytics at rest in Dublin. Cloudflare (US group) processes TLS transit at EU edge. Not legal advice. |
| Data processing agreement (B2B) | On request / NDA Privacy policy: DPA available on request at privacy@ciphera.net for Pulse processor relationships. | Vendor claimed Public DPA page; vendor states standard DPA with every plan, custom on Enterprise. |
| EU AI Act | Not applicable Web analytics product; not an AI system product page. | Not applicable Core product is measurement analytics; optional LENS private AI is a feature—confirm classification if heavily relied on for automated decisions. |
| Considerations & known limitations | Pulse by Ciphera | SEAL Metrics |
|---|---|---|
| Managed backend is not open source | Medium You can audit the browser script and dashboard code, but not the operated ingestion and storage service. Procurement that requires full-stack self-host or full server auditability should look elsewhere. | Not listed |
| No ISO/SOC or independent audit yet | Medium Ciphera publishes threat models, a warrant canary, and a subprocessor list, but explicitly has no ISO 27001 or SOC 2 and no completed independent audit. Enterprise security reviews will need questionnaires and a signed DPA. | Not listed |
| Primary data residency is Switzerland, not EU/EEA | Low Swiss adequacy covers many GDPR transfer questions, but policies that hard-require EU/EEA datacenter soil will classify this as partial rather than EU-hosted. | Not listed |
| Marketing vs privacy wording conflicts | Low Product FAQ pages disagree on whether custom events ship today and whether a DPA is needed. Prefer privacy@ and the privacy policy for legal commitments until Ciphera aligns the FAQs. | Not listed |
| US-group edge subprocessor (Cloudflare) | Not listed | Medium Even with Dublin storage, Cloudflare sits on encrypted traffic. Procurement that bans any US-group vendor in the path will need a written exception or alternative edge posture. |
| ISO/SOC not fully certified yet | Not listed | Medium SOC 2 in progress and ISO planned per vendor docs. Enterprise security questionnaires may block until reports are available under NDA. |
| Consentless claim is architectural, not a warranty | Not listed | Medium Vendor argues no personal data / no cookies so analytics need no banner. Other scripts on the same site and national guidance still matter—get DPO sign-off. |
| SaaS-only, proprietary pipeline | Not listed | Low No self-host path. Mitigate with API/BigQuery export and dual-running with GA4 during evaluation. |
| Hosting operator not named | Not listed | Low Docs say EU data center in Dublin without naming the cloud or colo operator. Ask for the concrete provider in the TPSR pack. |
When: You need a mature EU cookieless analytics product with an official full-stack self-host option
Consider: Plausible Analytics
Plausible (Estonia) is the common self-host plus SaaS peer; Pulse keeps the backend managed-only.
When: You want a minimal Dutch cookieless counter without uptime or Lighthouse bundles
Consider: Simple Analytics
Closer peer for strictly analytics SaaS; Pulse differentiates with ops-style panels.
When: You need enterprise analytics with strong EU residency controls and heavier compliance packaging
Consider: Piwik PRO or Friendly Analytics
Heavier Matomo-class or Swiss-hosted peers when Pulse's startup assurance set is too thin.
When: You need open-source or self-hosted cookieless analytics
Consider: Plausible Analytics (self-host Community Edition) or Matomo
SEAL Metrics is SaaS-only with no public source license.
When: You want simple privacy-first page analytics without eCommerce ROAS tooling
Consider: Simple Analytics or Pirsch Analytics
Lighter EU privacy analytics peers; less paid-media attribution depth.
When: You need managed Matomo with Swiss hosting or enterprise on-prem options
Consider: Friendly Analytics
Matomo ecosystem plugins and heatmaps vs SealMetrics proprietary ROAS focus.
When: You need Google Ads-native reporting and free-tier product analytics breadth
Consider: Google Analytics 4
Different sovereignty and consent trade-offs; often kept alongside SealMetrics.