Analytics

Hugolify ships with ten analytics services: Google Analytics and Meta Pixel, both wired to the cookie banner, and eight alternatives, most of them cookieless and loaded without consent.

Which one

Self-hosting Umami, Plausible, Matomo and GoatCounter is free: you only pay for the server.

How it works

• Production only: every service, Google Analytics and Meta Pixel included, is rendered when hugo.IsProduction is true. hugo server and --environment staging builds are never tracked.
• Consent: Google Analytics and Matomo with cookies: true wait for the analytics category of the cookie banner, Meta Pixel for the marketing category. The other services are cookieless and load without consent.
• Build checks: an enabled service with a missing required parameter fails the build. A service whose banner or consent category is disabled is not loaded, and the build warns.
• Overrides: each service has its own partial, /layouts/partials/footer/analytics/<service>.html. Override it for options the configuration does not expose (SPA mode, tags, exclusions…).

Google Analytics

Setup

googleAnalytics:
  id: "G-XXXXXXXXXX"

This is the native Hugo service configuration.

Enable the banner

See Cookie banner for the full banner reference.

cookie_banner:
  enable: true # Required
  cookieconsent:
    enable: true # Use CookieConsent
    analytics: true # Required to load Google Analytics

Behaviours

The banner has two modes, and each one loads Google Analytics differently.

In CookieConsent mode, nothing is sent before a choice is made: consent defaults to denied for every storage type, with ads_data_redaction on and url_passthrough on.

Meta Pixel

Meta Pixel is an advertising tracker, so it waits for the marketing category of CookieConsent, not analytics.

analytics:
  meta:
    pixel_id: "000000000000000" # Required
cookie_banner:
  enable: true # Required
  cookieconsent:
    enable: true # Required
    marketing: true # Required to load Meta Pixel

It is listed as a separate service in the advertisement section of the preferences modal. The simple banner is not supported: without CookieConsent and the marketing category, the build warns and the pixel is not loaded.

There is no <noscript> fallback pixel, because it would be sent before any consent.

Other services

Configuration

Every other service is configured under analytics, like Meta Pixel. A service is enabled by its block, or by true when it needs no parameter. An empty block ({}) is ignored.

analytics:
  umami:
    website_id: "94db1cb1-74f4-4a40-ad6c-962362670409"
  cabin: true

Several services can run side by side, for example while comparing two of them.

Migrating from scripts.html

If you added Plausible, or any other service below, in /layouts/partials/footer/scripts.html following a previous version of this page, remove it when you enable the service under analytics. Otherwise the script loads twice.

Umami

Open source analytics with a simple dashboard: visits, page views, referrers and events. Umami Cloud is hosted in the US and the EU.

analytics:
  umami:
    website_id: "94db1cb1-74f4-4a40-ad6c-962362670409" # Required
    url: "" # Self-hosted script URL, defaults to https://cloud.umami.is/script.js
    domains: "" # Comma-separated hostnames allowed to send data

domains keeps deploy previews and staging hosts out of your statistics, for example example.com,www.example.com.

Plausible

Lightweight, open source and privacy-first. Plausible Cloud is hosted in the EU.

analytics:
  plausible:
    script_id: "pa-XXXXXXXX" # Site settings > General > Site installation
    url: "" # Self-hosted instance URL, defaults to https://plausible.io

script_id loads the script Plausible generates for your site. It is the recommended setup since October 2025.

Legacy script

The previous script, with a data-domain attribute, still works but Plausible no longer recommends it. Use it when your instance does not provide a per-site script yet, or to send stats to several dashboards at once. It applies when script_id is not set.

analytics:
  plausible:
    domain: "" # Defaults to the baseURL hostname
    url: "" # Full script URL, defaults to https://plausible.io/js/script.js

The build fails when the domain resolves to an empty value, for example with a baseURL of /.

Matomo

The most complete service on this page, Cloud or self-hosted. Matomo Cloud is hosted in Frankfurt.

analytics:
  matomo:
    url: "https://matomo.example.com" # Required, instance URL
    site_id: "1" # Required
    cookies: false # Optional, see below

With cookies: true, Matomo needs the CookieConsent mode of the cookie banner:

cookie_banner:
  enable: true
  cookieconsent:
    enable: true
    analytics: true

Without CookieConsent, with the simple banner or no banner at all, the build warns and Matomo is not loaded.

Seline

Privacy-first and cookieless, hosted in the EU.

analytics:
  seline:
    token: "PROJECT_TOKEN" # Required, project settings

Fathom

Privacy-focused and cookieless, SaaS only, with an EU isolation option.

analytics:
  fathom:
    site_id: "ABCDEFG" # Required

GoatCounter

Open source and cookieless. The hosted version is free for personal sites and small businesses, and you can self-host it.

analytics:
  goatcounter:
    code: "yoursite" # Hosted, https://yoursite.goatcounter.com
    endpoint: "" # Self-hosted count endpoint, takes precedence over code
    src: "" # Self-hosted script URL, defaults to https://gc.zgo.at/count.js

code or endpoint is required. Set src too and nothing is loaded from goatcounter.com or zgo.at.

Simple Analytics

Cookieless and collects no personal data. Hosted in the Netherlands.

analytics:
  simpleanalytics: true

No identifier: declare your domains in the Simple Analytics dashboard. A <noscript> pixel is rendered for visitors without JavaScript.

Cabin

Cookieless, with a lightweight script and carbon reporting. Data is stored in the EU.

analytics:
  cabin: true

No identifier: declare your domain on the Domains page of the Cabin dashboard.

Documentation

• Hugo services
• Umami
• Plausible
• Matomo
• Seline
• Fathom
• GoatCounter
• Simple Analytics
• Cabin