Google Analytics alternatives: cookieless website analytics for Swiss SMEs

Google Analytics is not prohibited in Switzerland. Using it comes with several obligations, and those obligations determine the effort.

The revised Federal Act on Data Protection, revDSG (revised FADP), has applied since 1 September 2023. Your privacy policy must state at least who processes the data, for what purpose and who receives it. If the data goes abroad, the country and the safeguards are part of it (Art. 19 revDSG). For Google Analytics, that means naming Google and the USA.

Since 15 September 2024, the Swiss-US Data Privacy Framework has applied to the USA. The Federal Council rates data protection as adequate at US organizations that have certified under it. By its own account, Google relies on this framework in certain cases.

For cookies and similar technologies, Art. 45c of the Telecommunications Act (FMG) requires two things. Visitors learn that you process their data and why, and they can decline the processing. That is an opt-out. The Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (EDÖB) confirms this in its fact sheet of 31 March 2026.

The EDÖB guide of 6 October 2025 sets a limit. If tracking leads to high-risk profiling, you need explicit consent in advance. That can include advertising tracking across several websites.

People in the EU change the picture. If your offering is also aimed at them, the GDPR and ePrivacy rules usually require consent before Google Analytics runs. The guide to the Shopify cookie banner under revDSG and GDPR explains how to solve both in one dialog.

Cookieless analytics sets no cookies. From the IP address, a browser identifier and a salt that changes daily – a random extra value – it computes a hash. That is a calculated code that recognizes the visit for one day. Plausible and Fathom describe the method this way. Without the daily change, the identifier stays valid for longer. Some tools also store a random identifier in Local Storage. That, too, counts as access to the device.

A limit follows: someone who visits you on Monday and on Wednesday counts as two visitors. Plausible states itself that it does not recognize the same visitor across several days and devices.

For a website that is meant to bring in inquiries, what you see is usually enough. What counts are sources, most popular pages and the number of inquiries.

A dialog changes the figures too. Visitors who decline are missing from Google Analytics. In Consent Mode, Google can estimate the gap, but only with an advanced setup and enough data volume. A comparison with a cookieless measurement running in parallel shows roughly how large the gap is for you.

All five measure without cookies or can be set up to do so. The differences lie in how you run them, in the license and in the price. The visitor identifier differs as well. Plausible and Fathom change the salt daily, Simple Analytics stores no IP address. With Rybbit and Matomo it depends on the settings. The information comes from the providers' own pages, as of 5 October 2026.

Plausible and Fathom are the simplest starting points: one script, few figures, hardly any settings. Matomo works with cookies by default. In cookieless mode it loses accuracy for returning visitors and for assigning conversions to the original source. In return, it ships with a mode for the French CNIL exemption.

Rybbit has existed since January 2025 and keeps developing (version 2.9, September 2026). Like Plausible, you can host it yourself. Check the settings for the salt. With Rybbit you switch on the daily change yourself, with Plausible it is the default.

If you only need visitor numbers, Cloudflare Web Analytics offers a free, cookieless option. Raw data is kept there for seven days, after that only in aggregated form.

Two measurement systems run in parallel on noevu.ch. Google Analytics runs through Cloudflare Zaraz, a manager for scripts. EU visitors see a consent dialog for it. Rybbit runs without a dialog, sets no cookies and stores a random identifier in Local Storage. Whether that stays free of consent for EU visitors has not been conclusively settled. Rybbit runs on Noevu's own server at Infomaniak in Switzerland.

Both systems receive the same events: chat opened, appointment booked, click on phone or email. That makes the figures directly comparable. The privacy policy names both systems with purpose and provider.

The parallel setup has a purpose. The comparison shows roughly how many visitors are missing in Google Analytics, partly because of the dialog for EU visitors. Read the gap as an order of magnitude, because the two systems count visitors differently. Running it yourself also costs maintenance: updates and backups are your responsibility.

Switching takes five steps, and the longest of them is waiting.

The dialog only goes away if no other service needs it. Advertising pixels such as the Meta pixel usually need consent. For embedded videos, maps and chat widgets, check each service individually before you remove the dialog.