Summary

Cookie free analytics platforms have offered businesses and website owners with a privacy friendly alternative to Google Analytics. Cookieless platforms naturally offer privacy benefits & improved tracking capabilities that can’t be matched cookie based tracking like Google Analytics. But there is a tradeoff, this article will walk you through the benefits and shortcomings with cookie free web analytics.

What are cookies

Cookies are small text files that websites store on a visitor’s browser to remember preferences and track activity. They help with things like keeping users logged in, saving shopping cart items, and usage analytics. For businesses, cookies improve website functionality and can support marketing efforts by understanding visitor behavior.

How is data tracked online

Cookie free tracking like Ziplytics autotracking snippet gathers data by anonymizing browser metadata which is aggregated into an irreversibly scrambled session ID. As users take action on your website these actions & metadata are continuously processed and new events / users are created or existing sessions are updated to add the new behavior to your dashboard.

Cookie based tracking platforms like Google Analytics rely on cookies to track session data. When a user visits a new website tracking data with GA, a random identifier is created and this is stored as a small text file in a cookie. This cookie is stored for a number of months or years. As the user continues to interact with the website actions are added to GA.

Benefits of cookieless platform

Cookie free web analytics platforms offer several significant benefits that are particularly important lately. Privacy concerns are on user’s minds and regulatory compliance across various regions is difficult and critical.

1. Regulatory compliance: Cookieless platforms align better with stringent privacy laws like GDPR in the EU, CCPA/CRPA in California, and dozens of other privacy laws in various U.S. states. These regulations require clear consent and transparency in data handling, which cookieless tracking naturally supports by minimizing the collection and storage of personal data. This compliance helps businesses avoid potential fines and legal challenges.
2. Data accuracy: Without relying on cookies, Ziplytics can offer more accurate web analytics in most use cases. Google Analytics data is hampered by ad blockers & rejected cookie banners which often filters out up to 40% of your traffic.
3. Enhanced user privacy: One of the primary advantages of cookie free analytics platforms like Ziplytics is that it significantly enhances user privacy. Cookieless tracking obviously doesn’t rely on cookies, which means extensive data is not getting stored on your user’s devices. This minimizes the risk of personal data breaches and reduces invasive excessive tracking, which can help build trust with your users.
4. Future-proofing: With the digital world moving away from cookie-based tracking due to privacy concerns and technical limitations, cookieless tracking is more sustainable. It helps to future-proofing your business against the evolving landscape of web privacy standards, ensuring that analytics practices remain viable as traditional tracking methods become obsolete.
5. Improved data security: By not relying on cookies, which can be vulnerable to privacy concerns, cookieless analytics platforms enhance data security. We reduce the risk of unauthorized data access and increase control over how data is collected and used.
6. You own your data: Google Analytics is a free platform because Google benefits from tracking 80%+ of internet traffic. Ziplytics only makes money via paid subscriptions, your data is always yours. This significantly reduces your company’s legal & compliance exposure.

Disadvantages of cookieless tracking

1. Less granular data: Cookie free tracking methods cannot capture as much data as cookie based tracking methods can. Ziplytics offers a simplified dashboard to gather all the most important data but more granular and user specific data isn’t available via cookie free tracking.
2. Difficulty tracking return visitors: Most cookie free platforms can only track visits over a single day. This is the secret sauce for Ziplytics cookie free tracking. We’re able to track data across multiple days which more accurately represents the sales cycle for most businesses. Longer tracking durations will result in some duplication of users over time. Cookie free platforms like Ziplytics aggregate and irreversibly anonymize data, this is how platforms like ours are more privacy friendly and able to capture visits that GA cannot. But the nature of how this technology works means that over time it becomes less accurate. As users make updates and/or visits originate from a new source, new visits are created; this is because it appears to the platform as if its a new user when these changes occur.
3. Cross device tracking challenges: Cookie free tracking is often not the best option for businesses that need to track visit data cross device or cross platform (e.g. you have a website and a mobile app). Without cookies to identify existing users vs new users, visits are often duplicated. If you’re tracking data across web and mobile we recommend utilizing our API/SDKs to issue pageview events & custom events across both your website & mobile app.
4. Your legal team may still require policy updates: Ziplytics cookie free tracking naturally doesn’t use cookies, so it’s not subject to the ePrivacy Directive cookie compliance policies. However, if you do business in the EU or US you still may be subject to GDPR, CCPA/CPRA, and various other laws. When loading a page with a Ziplytics snippet a user’s machine sends an HTTPS payload to Ziplytics. This payload contains the referer IP address, which can be an individual’s IP address. The GDPR considers an individual’s IP address personally identifiable information or PII in some circumstances. Depending on your legal team’s interpretation of the law and how you process data from Ziplytics; your team may require updates to various legal policies including your subprocessor list.

How to navigate user analytics in 2025?

If you need to track website / app visit data you have a few options, cookie free tracking, traditional cookie based tracking, and server side tracking. Each have their trade offs. We’ve discussed cookie based tracking vs cookie free tracking in this article. Server side analytics has the benefit of being able to provide more accurate data but will require more work from your development team and may require additional tooling for bot detection. Platforms like Ziplytics and Google Analytics have automated bot detection tooling to automatically filter noise out of your analytics data. Depending on how you process inbound requests it’s possible you may upload & include bot data in your traffic unless you explicitly filter bot traffic.

As you’ve noticed throughout this article, the answer to which tracking method is “the best” isn’t as straightforward as it seems. Ultimately you’ll want to put together a list of what is most important to your organization, what constraints you have and find a tool(s) that works best for your organization. We have a number of other articles on our site to help you navigate the industry, from the compliance and legal constraints your business is under in 2025 to features available to industry lingo & glossary guides.

Why Ziplytics?

Whatever tracking method you decide, Ziplytics has you covered. Our bread and butter is our cookie free analytics. It’s what Ziplytics was built upon. We also have a REST API and a number of SDKs to make the development process quicker and easier for your team if you choose to track data via server side analytics. Finally, this summer we’re releasing our highly anticipated cookie based tracking. This will allow you the flexibility to choose if you’d like to use cookie based tracking to ensure cross device compatibility or if you’d like to continue with the user friendly & privacy friendly cookie free option.

Any questions? Click the chat button in the bottom right corner & we’d be happy to help. Ready for a free 30 day trial for Ziplytics? Start my trial!