We Don't Use Google Analytics. Here's Why.
We don't use Google Analytics. We haven't since we launched.
That's not an accident. It's a decision — and it's worth explaining why.
## The Problem With Google Analytics
Google Analytics tracks users across the web. When you embed the GA script, you're sending your visitors' behaviour — pages visited, time on site, clicks, scroll depth — to Google's servers. Google combines this with data from billions of other sites to build detailed behavioural profiles.
We're a privacy-focused PDF tool. Our users come to us specifically because they don't want their files sent to third parties. It would be a bit insane to then send their browsing behaviour to Google.
That's not a theoretical concern. The moment someone loads a page with GA on it, their browser makes a request to Google's servers — before they've uploaded anything, before they've decided to use the tool. They came to us for privacy. We'd be immediately violating it.
## What We Use Instead
We run Umami — open-source, self-hosted analytics. We host it ourselves. The data stays in our database, under our control, and is never shared with third parties.
Umami is privacy-preserving by design: it doesn't use cookies, it doesn't track users across sessions, and it doesn't fingerprint devices. What we see is aggregate traffic data — page views, referrers, general browser types. That's it.
No individual user profiles. No cross-site tracking. No data leaving our infrastructure.
## What We Track
Page views and basic referrer information — how many people visited a page and roughly where they came from. Button clicks on key interactions, in aggregate. Error rates.
That's enough to know whether a feature is being used, whether a page is performing, and whether something is broken.
## What We Don't Track
Individual users. Session replays. Heatmaps. Form field interactions. Specific file operations (we technically can't — files stay in your browser and never reach our servers). Exit intent. Cross-session behaviour.
We don't know who you are. We don't know what PDF you merged. We don't know what you searched for to find us. We know "someone visited the merge tool page today." That's the level of granularity we operate at.
## Why This Matters for You
If you use our tools, no analytics script is phoning home to a third party about your session. We're not building an advertising profile on you. We're not sharing your behaviour data with Google, Meta, or anyone else.
Your privacy doesn't start when you upload a file (which you don't, because we don't do uploads). It starts the moment you land on our page.
We think that's what "privacy-focused" should actually mean — not just for the feature that's the product's headline, but for everything around it too.
[Check our privacy policy](/privacy) — it's short because there's genuinely not much to say.
That's not an accident. It's a decision — and it's worth explaining why.
## The Problem With Google Analytics
Google Analytics tracks users across the web. When you embed the GA script, you're sending your visitors' behaviour — pages visited, time on site, clicks, scroll depth — to Google's servers. Google combines this with data from billions of other sites to build detailed behavioural profiles.
We're a privacy-focused PDF tool. Our users come to us specifically because they don't want their files sent to third parties. It would be a bit insane to then send their browsing behaviour to Google.
That's not a theoretical concern. The moment someone loads a page with GA on it, their browser makes a request to Google's servers — before they've uploaded anything, before they've decided to use the tool. They came to us for privacy. We'd be immediately violating it.
## What We Use Instead
We run Umami — open-source, self-hosted analytics. We host it ourselves. The data stays in our database, under our control, and is never shared with third parties.
Umami is privacy-preserving by design: it doesn't use cookies, it doesn't track users across sessions, and it doesn't fingerprint devices. What we see is aggregate traffic data — page views, referrers, general browser types. That's it.
No individual user profiles. No cross-site tracking. No data leaving our infrastructure.
## What We Track
Page views and basic referrer information — how many people visited a page and roughly where they came from. Button clicks on key interactions, in aggregate. Error rates.
That's enough to know whether a feature is being used, whether a page is performing, and whether something is broken.
## What We Don't Track
Individual users. Session replays. Heatmaps. Form field interactions. Specific file operations (we technically can't — files stay in your browser and never reach our servers). Exit intent. Cross-session behaviour.
We don't know who you are. We don't know what PDF you merged. We don't know what you searched for to find us. We know "someone visited the merge tool page today." That's the level of granularity we operate at.
## Why This Matters for You
If you use our tools, no analytics script is phoning home to a third party about your session. We're not building an advertising profile on you. We're not sharing your behaviour data with Google, Meta, or anyone else.
Your privacy doesn't start when you upload a file (which you don't, because we don't do uploads). It starts the moment you land on our page.
We think that's what "privacy-focused" should actually mean — not just for the feature that's the product's headline, but for everything around it too.
[Check our privacy policy](/privacy) — it's short because there's genuinely not much to say.