Solutions to count website visitors that's not blocked by ad-blockers?
I'm trying to weed off from Google Analytics and looking for alternatives. I don't need anything complex, I'm mainly looking for a reasonable guesstimate on the number of visitors per page. This is hindered by common use of ad-blockers, which understandably block many analytics scripts. Do I have to build my own solution to this or is there an existing product for counting visitors that is not blocked by ad-blockers?
I've built my own very primitive tracker. PHP on server and a bit of java-script and IMG tag on client. Very simple and works just as well as Plausible and better than Goatcounter (compared the three on same site).
If you go for server logs you need ways to discount bots and other scripts. Probably discount foreign traffic depending on the intended audience - this works well for me in a small european country.
If you just need visitors count, servers logs should be more than enough. If you are looking for something more complex, I am also working on a (premium) self-hosted analytics script[0]. If you go with self-hosted analytics in general it is a lot less likely to get blocked by ad-blockers all resources can be 1st party.
[0]: https://www.usertrack.net/
Use server logs instead of client side libraries