Compare Pulse by Ciphera and Tinylytics 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.
United Kingdom· Web Analytics
Needs review
Shortlist Tinylytics when you want cookieless page analytics plus bundled uptime/SSL/content checks for a handful of small sites, with primary data on Hetzner in Germany and founder support. Skip when you need self-host/open source, formal ISO/SOC packs, or enterprise multi-tenant governance—consider Plausible Analytics or Simple Analytics instead.
Highlighted rows differ between the two products.
| Feature | Pulse by Ciphera | Tinylytics |
|---|---|---|
| Country of origin | Belgium | United Kingdom |
| Category | Web Analytics | Web Analytics |
| Open source | Yes | No |
| Self-hosted | No | No |
| Headquarters | Belgium | United Kingdom |
| Legal entity | Ciphera BV | Vincent Ritter Consulting (service brand; terms state not separately incorporated yet) |
| Governing law | Belgian law (GDPR); Swiss FADP for infrastructure location | Not clearly stated as a single governing-law clause on the public terms page; confirm contractually |
| 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. | Primary analytics storage: Hetzner Falkenstein (Germany). CDN/security: Cloudflare. Error monitoring: Sentry.io. Payments: Paddle and Lemon Squeezy (Stripe company). Optional: IPinfo geo fallback for API hits; opt-in AI Insights via xAI and Google Gemini. No public backup-provider detail beyond that stack. |
| Summary | Cookie-free web analytics with traffic, funnels, uptime and Lighthouse checks in one Belgian-operated, Swiss-hosted dashboard. | Privacy-first cookieless web analytics for small sites, with bundled uptime/SSL checks, content monitoring, events, and founder support—hosted primarily on Hetzner in Germany. |
| Tags |
| At a glance | Pulse by Ciphera | Tinylytics |
|---|---|---|
| HQ | Diegem, Belgium (Ciphera BV) | Not listed |
| Legal entity | Ciphera BV (KBO/BCE 1013.721.660) | Not listed |
| Founded | 18 September 2024 (CBE) | Not listed |
| 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 | Paid site-count plans; short trial; no permanent free tier |
| HQ / operator | Not listed | Vincent Ritter Consulting, United Kingdom |
| Launched | Not listed | 12 June 2023 (live counters on homepage) |
| Primary hosting | Not listed | Hetzner, Falkenstein, Germany |
| Deployment | Not listed | Managed SaaS only (not open source, not self-hosted) |
| Differentiators | Not listed | Analytics + uptime/SSL/content monitoring + widgets |
| 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 | Tinylytics |
|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| Primary host: Hetzner DE | Not listed | Yes |
| Uptime + SSL monitoring | Not listed | Yes |
| Broken-link crawls | Not listed | Yes |
| SaaS only (no self-host) | Not listed | Yes |
| Solo-founder UK | 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.
Cookie-free unique hits with rotating salts
Page views and unique hits without tracking cookies or fingerprinting. Uniques combine truncated request signals with a 12-hour rotating salt and one-way hash, reset daily at midnight UTC; visitor IPs are not stored in hits. Suited to indie sites that want trendable uniques without consent banners for analytics cookies.
Thunder Clap uptime, SSL, and domain alerts
In-house multi-region health checks (default every 10 minutes) confirm downtime before emailing, plus SSL expiry notices and domain monitoring. Ultra can shorten intervals. Replaces a separate uptime tool for small fleets—but false downs can occur if WAFs block the Tinylytics monitor user-agent.
Daily content crawl for broken links and mixed content
Subscribed sites can crawl up to 50 pages (two levels deep) on a daily cadence, flagging broken links and mixed HTTP assets on HTTPS pages, with ignore lists and re-check. Ultra adds optional AI spell-check on visible copy—keep it off if AI subprocessors are out of policy.
Attribute-based event tracking (beta)
Enable events on the embed script and mark elements with data-tinylytics-event using category.action names (optional values for downloads). No GTM required; beacon mode helps navigations. Still beta—expect API/schema changes and incomplete capture under aggressive blockers.
Public stats, kudos, hit counters, API, and webhooks
Share passcode-protected public stats, embed hit counters and kudos buttons, export CSV, call the documented API, and push signed webhooks for visits, events, and monitoring. Built for transparent blogs and light automation rather than enterprise BI warehouses.
| Assurance & compliance | Pulse by Ciphera | Tinylytics |
|---|---|---|
| Independent security / no-logs audit | Not found Trust page states no independent audit yet; Tessera self-audit published; independent audit planned. | Not found No public third-party security or no-logs audit report found on official docs. |
| ISO 27001 | Not found Ciphera explicitly states it holds no ISO 27001 certification. | Not found No ISO 27001 claim found on privacy, compliance, or hosting pages. |
| SOC 2 / SOC 3 | Not found Ciphera explicitly states it holds no SOC 2 certification. | Not found No SOC 2/3 report or claim found on public site. |
| GDPR / EU data protection | Vendor claimed Belgian controller; privacy policy describes GDPR/FADP bases and Pulse processor role. Not legal advice. | Vendor claimed Vendor documents GDPR-oriented design (cookieless, data minimisation, EU primary host, deletion). Not independent certification. |
| 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 UK operator, no known US parent, primary host Hetzner DE; partial exposure via Cloudflare, Sentry, Lemon Squeezy/Paddle, optional IPinfo and opt-in US AI APIs. Not legal advice. |
| Data processing agreement (B2B) | On request / NDA Privacy policy: DPA available on request at privacy@ciphera.net for Pulse processor relationships. | Not found No public DPA/downloadable processor agreement found; ask the vendor before B2B rollout. |
| EU AI Act | Not applicable Web analytics product; not an AI system product page. | Not applicable Core product is analytics/monitoring; optional AI insights are secondary and opt-in. |
| Considerations & known limitations | Pulse by Ciphera | Tinylytics |
|---|---|---|
| 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. | Medium Enterprise security questionnaires will hit gaps until the vendor supplies audits and a B2B DPA under NDA or email. |
| 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 subprocessors on the data path | Not listed | Medium Cloudflare, Sentry, payment processors (incl. Lemon Squeezy/Stripe group), optional IPinfo and opt-in xAI/Gemini mean the stack is not EU-only end-to-end despite Hetzner primary storage. |
| Solo-founder operational concentration | Not listed | Medium Service is provided by Vincent Ritter Consulting / a solo developer. Support is personal and fast for indies, but bus-factor and formal SLA expectations differ from larger vendors. |
| Scale and feature boundaries | Not listed | Low Content crawls are depth/page limited; event tracking is beta; fair-usage applies to extreme hit volumes; no self-host escape hatch. |
| Optional AI shares aggregated analytics | Not listed | Low AI Insights and related AI spell-check are opt-in and send aggregated (not visitor PII per vendor) data to third-party AI providers—leave disabled under strict AI policies. |
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 optional self-hosting of the analytics stack
Consider: Plausible Analytics
Estonian product with Cloud plus Community Edition self-host; less bundling of uptime/content monitors.
When: You want European cookieless analytics with a simpler analytics-only scope
Consider: Simple Analytics
Strong privacy positioning; compare feature depth and monitoring separately.
When: You need free-at-scale marketing analytics, ads integrations, or attribution depth
Consider: Google Analytics (incumbent) — or stay on a privacy tool if GA is disallowed
Different privacy and sovereignty profile entirely.
When: You need session replay or heatmaps and accept that privacy model
Consider: Microsoft Clarity or specialised replay tools
Tinylytics deliberately avoids fingerprinting-style session products.