How it works?

Metricalp stands out as the most cost-effective web analytics tool with a strong focus on privacy in the current market. Now, let's delve into how it operates under the hood as we aim to address all your inquiries in this article.

First and foremost, we want to emphasize that we never collect IP addresses, any personal identifiers, or utilize cookies. One crucial aspect of any analytics tool is how it tallies daily unique visitors. We employ a well-known technique known as one-direction IP anonymization, a method also utilized by several other analytics tools on the market.

Here's how it works: when the system registers a new screen view or any event, we extract user IP, hostname, tracker ID, and user agent information. Subsequently, we use salts and hash this data in a one-directional manner. Due to the non-recurring nature of these hashes, it is impossible for anyone, including us, to decrypt this data. These hashed values are then stored in our database, allowing us to count unique visitors without ever collecting raw IP or any personal identifier data. Rest assured, your visitors' IP addresses are always secure with us.The fundamental formula guiding this process is:

That's it. This operation is one-way, and no one, including us, can reverse it. Rest assured that your customer-related data is always secure. We calculate unique visitors and unique events using these hashes, eliminating the need for cookies or IPs.

Another aspect to consider is how we store and process data.

Our data is stored exclusively in Europe, fully encrypted, and subjected to regular backups. We rely solely on high-quality service providers such as AWS or Microsoft Azure and never share your data with any other service providers. Session tracking is done using custom algorithms that validate both the start and end of sessions in a bi-directional manner. These algorithms are also utilized to calculate session duration, bounce rate, page views, and unique page views. Daily views are tracked based on the tracker's timezone, with each tracker having its designated timezone, selectable during creation and updatable later. It's important to note that changing the tracker's timezone will impact your metrics since visits can fall into two different days based on the tracker's timezone.

We generate goal hit events when recording goals. Keep in mind that goals don't apply to historical data, and once created, they cannot be updated; only the name can be changed. Goals can be deleted and replaced with new ones. Funnels, however, operate differently. When creating or updating a funnel, you can access historical data related to that specific funnel.

Do you have other questions? Do not hesitate to contact us.