What analytics does VeloCMS provide without a third-party tool?

VeloCMS ships a privacy-first analytics dashboard at Admin → Analytics that tracks page views, unique visitors, your most-read posts, subscriber growth over time, and newsletter open rates — all stored in your own PocketBase database with no data sent to third parties. You get meaningful traffic insights without needing to install Google Analytics at all.

What does the built-in analytics dashboard cover?

The dashboard is split into four sections. Traffic shows daily page views and estimated unique visitors over the last 30 days, with a chart that makes traffic trends immediately visible. Top content ranks your posts by views in the selected time period — essential for knowing which articles to update, promote, or write follow-ups to. Subscribers tracks your reader base growth over time: new sign-ups, cancellations, and net growth by week. Email performance shows open rate and click rate for each newsletter blast you've sent through VeloCMS's built-in newsletter feature.

How does VeloCMS count page views without cookies?

VeloCMS uses a server-side approach rather than client-side JavaScript cookies. When a public page is requested, the VeloCMS backend logs a lightweight event in PocketBase containing the post slug, a hashed IP address (not the raw IP — the hash is irreversible and can't be used to identify individuals), and a timestamp. On the Next.js side, a small beacon fires asynchronously after the page renders to capture the full URL path. Because no cookies are set and no fingerprinting is used, this approach is GDPR-compliant by design and accurately counts visits from users who run ad-blockers (which typically block JavaScript-based analytics but can't intercept server-side logging).

What are the limitations of the built-in analytics?

The built-in analytics deliberately prioritizes privacy and simplicity over depth. There's no referrer breakdown (so you can't see exactly which external sites send you traffic), no geographic data, no device or browser segmentation, and no conversion funnel tracking. For most independent publishers these omissions aren't a problem — knowing which posts are popular and whether your subscriber count is growing covers 80% of the decisions you actually need analytics for. If you need referrer data, geographic breakdowns, or detailed UTM attribution, connecting a third-party tool like Google Analytics 4, Plausible, or Fathom alongside the built-in dashboard gives you the best of both worlds.

How long is analytics data retained?

Analytics events in PocketBase are retained for 13 months by default — long enough to compare year-over-year trends. After 13 months, events older than that are automatically deleted by a nightly cleanup job to keep your database from growing indefinitely. You can export the raw analytics data to CSV at any time from Admin → Analytics → Export, which is useful if you want to archive historical data before the 13-month window closes or run your own analysis in a spreadsheet.