How a Two-Person Analytics Startup Used Its Blog to Win Customers From Google

In December 2018, developer Uku Täht started building Plausible Analytics, a privacy-friendly alternative to Google Analytics. Paid plans launched in May 2019, and ten months later revenue was still about $400 a month. In March 2020, marketer Marko Saric joined as co-founder. His first blog post, published April 8, 2020, told site owners to stop using Google Analytics. More than 25,000 people visited that day.

Through 2020, Plausible published about one opinionated post a week. It shared its traffic and revenue publicly and never paid for ads. It reached $1 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) on June 2, 2022, with four people and more than 7,000 paying subscribers. Today it reports more than 22,000 paying subscribers, a team of 10 and no outside investors.

A Side Project Stalls at $400 a Month

Täht had the idea when his employer's marketing head asked him to add Google Analytics to a landing page. He launched a public beta on Indie Hackers in January 2019 and posted every update there and on Twitter. Paid plans followed in May, when Plausible had 60 active beta users. The first paying subscriber signed up on May 14, and the month closed at $64 in monthly recurring revenue (MRR). A July 2019 post on single-page apps drew 2,500 visitors from Hacker News in a day. In September, he open-sourced the code. It took 324 days after the first paying subscriber to reach $400 in MRR.

A Marketing Co-Founder Picks a Fight With Google

Täht cold-emailed Saric after reading his post on removing Google services from a website. Saric started on March 16, 2020. The day before, the site had 49 visitors, none from Google search, so his first goal was 10 Google visitors a day. He spent his first weeks repositioning Plausible as a simple, lightweight, open-source and privacy-first alternative to Google Analytics.

His April 8 post reached the top of Hacker News. More than 50,000 people read it over the next few days, against 27,300 unique visitors in the previous 15 months. It brought 166 trials in a week, more than the prior four months combined. With a 30-day trial, MRR doubled in May 2020 to $1,055.

One Post a Week

Plausible published 15 posts in the next four months. Most answered what site owners searched for about Google Analytics, privacy, and cookie banners. Others took a position on the news. One on paying rent with an open source project drew more than 35,000 visitors in a day in July 2020.

The founders paid themselves their first salaries in September 2020. By January 2021, MRR passed $10,000, and the business covered its costs after the two had spent more than $50,000 of their savings. In 2021, a post on resisting Google's FLoC tracking proposal drew more than 16,000 readers, and one on Google ending search preference for AMP pages drew more than 35,000 in a couple of days. In August, a study showing that 58% of visitors from Hacker News, Reddit and other tech sites block Google Analytics drew 30,000 readers in 24 hours and doubled trial signups over five days.

Publishing the Numbers in Public

Plausible's own website statistics have been on a public dashboard since the start. In July 2020, Saric published the company's top 10 referral sources for the previous four months, led by Hacker News with 43,600 visitors. In October 2020, Plausible moved from the MIT license to the AGPL after its growing reach made it aware of companies that could take advantage of permissive terms.

Google Brings the Next Wave

Plausible hit $500,000 ARR in October 2021 with two founders and one part-time support hire. In early 2022, Austrian and French regulators ruled that Google Analytics violated the GDPR. Plausible, which runs only on EU-owned infrastructure, wrote about both rulings and saw interest rise after each. In March, Google announced the end of Universal Analytics with no way to move old data to GA4. Plausible added $8,247 in net new MRR that month, its best to date, and in April released a tool to import old Google Analytics data. It reached $83,637 MRR on June 2, 2022, with more than 7,000 paying subscribers.

A Profitable Business With No Plans to Sell

Plausible stopped sharing revenue after $1 million. In August 2025, Saric told the Subscription Heroes podcast that publishing the numbers had started to feel like bragging. He said May 2025 was the company's best month yet and that average revenue per customer was about $30 a month. The entry plan now costs $9, up from about $5 in 2021.

More than 2,400 teams have paid for five years or longer. Plausible says it has never spent money on advertising, affiliates, or paid endorsements. In 2024, it split its software into a self-hosted Community Edition, still under the AGPL, and a managed cloud service that keeps some newer features for paying customers.

Google and ChatGPT Now Bring Equal Trial Signups

Saric said Plausible now publishes far less often than in its first years. In 2025, Google sent about 800 visitors a day and ChatGPT about 100, and the two produced roughly the same number of trial signups.

Plausible spent nothing on advertising between its first post in April 2020 and its $1 million milestone in June 2022. Its marketing came down to a clear position against Google Analytics and open figures on revenue and traffic. Saric has said that openness built trust in a market where buyers care what happens to their data. For small publishers, a clear editorial position and transparency about business performance can help build an audience and earn trust without a large marketing budget.

When Saric joined Plausible in March 2020, the company earned about $400 a month and attracted fewer than 50 daily visitors. His first blog post brought 25,000 visitors in a single day. Regular publishing, a clear position against Google Analytics, and public reporting of company performance helped turn that early attention into paying customers.

By June 2022, Plausible had reached $1 million ARR with four employees, more than 7,000 paying subscribers, and no outside investment. Since then, the company has grown to more than 22,000 paying subscribers without spending on advertising or paid endorsements. Its experience shows how consistent publishing and transparency can help a small business attract customers and compete with much larger companies.

See you next week.

If you liked this edition of Growth Curve, forward it to a founder or marketer who needs to stop renting their audience — and start owning it.