Compare Pulse by Ciphera and Simple Analytics on capabilities, jurisdiction, assurance, and fit for European buyers.
Both listed as alternatives to: Fathom Analytics, 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.
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.
Highlighted rows differ between the two products.
| Feature | Pulse by Ciphera | Simple Analytics |
|---|---|---|
| Country of origin | Belgium | Netherlands |
| Category | Web Analytics | Web Analytics |
| Open source | Yes | No |
| Self-hosted | No | No |
| Headquarters | Belgium | Netherlands |
| Legal entity | Ciphera BV | Simple Analytics B.V., Amsterdam (KVK 88269922, VAT NL864560011B01) |
| Governing law | Belgian law (GDPR); Swiss FADP for infrastructure location | Netherlands / EU |
| US parent / control | No known US parent | No known US parent |
| CLOUD Act exposure (indicative) | Low | Low |
| 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. | 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 | Cookie-free web analytics with traffic, funnels, uptime and Lighthouse checks in one Belgian-operated, Swiss-hosted dashboard. | 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 |
| At a glance | Pulse by Ciphera | Simple Analytics |
|---|---|---|
| HQ | Diegem, Belgium (Ciphera BV) | Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| Legal entity | Ciphera BV (KBO/BCE 1013.721.660) | Simple Analytics B.V. (KVK 88269922) |
| Founded | 18 September 2024 (CBE) | 2018 |
| 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 | Free hobby tier + usage-based paid + enterprise |
| 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 |
| 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 | Simple Analytics |
|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| 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 |
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.
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 | Pulse by Ciphera | Simple Analytics |
|---|---|---|
| Independent security / no-logs audit | Not found Trust page states no independent audit yet; Tessera self-audit published; independent audit planned. | Not found Searched security/trust pages; no public independent audit PDF found. |
| ISO 27001 | Not found Ciphera explicitly states it holds no ISO 27001 certification. | Not found No ISO 27001 certificate claimed on primary security pages. |
| SOC 2 / SOC 3 | Not found Ciphera explicitly states it holds no SOC 2 certification. | Partial Vendor states SOC 2 Type II is in progress / coming soon—not completed certification at research time. |
| GDPR / EU data protection | Vendor claimed Belgian controller; privacy policy describes GDPR/FADP bases and Pulse processor role. Not legal advice. | 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 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, 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) | On request / NDA Privacy policy: DPA available on request at privacy@ciphera.net for Pulse processor relationships. | Partial Vendor says DPA usually not required (no personal data) but will review/sign customer-provided DPAs aligned with architecture. |
| EU AI Act | Not applicable Web analytics product; not an AI system product page. | Not applicable Web analytics product; not marketed as an AI system subject to AI Act high-risk regimes. |
| Considerations & known limitations | Pulse by Ciphera | Simple Analytics |
|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| 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. |
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 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.