If you are looking for a privacy-focused, lightweight, and simple web analytics solution for your child sites, then I would recommend looking at using Plausible Analytics.
Plausible Analytics script is only 1KB in size which means it will not slow your site down by having to load a number of scripts on load like a number of other analytics solutions like say Google Analytics.
You can sign up for a free 30 day trial that does not require a credit card and then if you decide that Plausible Analytics is the right solution for your site then the pricing starts at only $6 a month for up to 10k page views. 100k page views pricing still only works out at $12 a month which is very reasonable. It is very easy to upgrade to a paid plan from the trial.
After you have signed up for Plausible Analytics you will need to first verify your email address and then set the password for your account.
Next, you will need to add the domain name of the site that you want to use Plausible analytics on. Being able to integrate Plausible analytics with WordPress is very easy and there is a number of ways to do that from adding the script to the header of your site.
In this case, we are going to use the Plausible Analytics plugin. After you have installed and activated the plugin it will add a new sub-menu item into the following location;
Settings > Plausible Analytics
In the plugin setting, you can also set if you want to use a custom domain for Plausible analytics. Using a custom domain would mean that the script would be served from your domain from a subdomain. You can also exclude or set admin users to be tracked in the analytics being reported on your site. If you want to verify if Plausible is working correctly then you can verify that the integration is working.
Plausible Analytics has a very easy to use dashboard without the multiple complex options that Google Analytics provides. Within the dashboard, you can track the top sources, top pages, countries that are viewing your site, and devices that are viewing your site as well. For a detailed overview of all of the metrics that Plausible analytics provide then read through this guide.
It is possible to get pageview goals, as well as custom event goals for your site, tracked analytics. In the dashboard setting for your site, you can set email reports to be sent out to specific email addresses.
If you have some technical skills then it is also possible to self-host Plausible Analytics.
Another big plus of using Plausible Analytics is that is it open-source, which means you can contribute to it on GitHub. Plausible Analytics provides an easy to use community forum powered using Discourse.
If you want an alternative solution to Google Analytics then you will find that Plausible Analytics is the right solution for you.
