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Analytics is the process of collecting and analyzing data about how visitors interact with your website. This information is crucial because it allows you to make informed decisions to improve your website.

Google Analytics is a great choice but there could be data privacy as well as GDPR compliance concerns.

When choosing an analytics tool, it's important that it:

is free (open source)
allows self hosting (no vendor lock in)
is GDPR compliant
is light weight & fast

Umami Analytics checks all these boxes.

Umami Analytics : An open source analytics solution

Umami Analytics is a simple, fast, and privacy-focused tool that lets you track website usage without compromising user privacy. It is an open-source alternative to Google Analytics. A big plus is that Umami analytics is GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) compliant.

There are two options to use UMAMI analytics

use UMAMI cloud solutions (paid with free tier plan)
Self host on your server

In this article we are going to explore self hosting option. We are going to use Supabase (free tier plan) for database (postgres) and Vercel (free tier/hobby plan) for hosting Umami.

Let us dive into how to self host Umami analytics using Vercel + Supabase for free

1. Create new project in Supabase

Create a new account (if you don’t already have one) with Supabase and create new project by pressing + New Project
Provide project name as you like (eg. your_app_name-analytics)
Don’t forget to store password somewhere, it would be needed later.
Select a region nearest to the location of hosting server.

2. Initial Configuration for Supabase

Select the project, navigate to SQL editor
Copy the SQL scripts provided in the github repo

Paste it on the SQL editor and click on run

You’ll be able to see newly created tables on Table Editor option

Navigate to Project Settings → Database → Connection String → Copy Connection URL

3. Fork UMAMI on github

Fork the https://github.com/umami-software/umami project to your GitHub account.

Edit db/postgresql/schema.prisma file (add directUrl)

datasource db {
  provider     = "postgresql"
  url          = env("DATABASE_URL")
  directUrl    = env("DIRECT_DATABASE_URL")  //add this line
  relationMode = "prisma"
}

4. Deploy on Vercel

Go to Dashboard on Vercel and create new project
From the dashboard page click Import Project then specify the URL to your fork of the project on GitHub.
Before clicking on Deploy add the following environment variables

DATABASE_URL = postgres://[user]:[password]@aws-0-[aws-region].pooler.supabase.com:6543/postgres?**pgbouncer=true&connection_limit=1**
DIRECT_DATABASE_URL = postgres://[user]:[password]@aws-0-[aws-region].pooler.supabase.com:**5432**/postgres

Important!!

💡 DATABASE_URL is same as the Connection Url copied from supabase (in step 2) but you have to add ?pgbouncer=true&connect_timeout=1 at the end of Url

💡 DATABASE_URL is same as the Connection Url copied from supabase (in step 2) but you have to replace the port from 6543 to 5432

After that click on deploy

5. Resolving Error “The database Schema is not empty”

In step two we did run a sql script in Supabase which created few tables in the database. Now when script is run during deployment it throws an error with error code P3005 saying Database schema is not empty
To resolve this, clone your forked repository in your local and add the same environment variables as mentioned above (in step 4)
Now run the following commands (to install dependencies and setup db connection)
```
yarn install
yarn build-db
```
Then we would create a baseline migration by following below step

If you have a prisma/migrations folder, delete, move, rename, or archive this folder.
Run the following command to create a migrations directory inside with your preferred name. This example will use 01_init for the migration name:
```
 mkdir -p prisma/migrations/01_init
```

Generate a migration and save it to a file using prisma migrate diff

 npx prisma migrate diff \
 --from-empty \
 --to-schema-datamodel prisma/schema.prisma \
 --script > prisma/migrations/01_init/migration.sql

Run the prisma migrate resolve command for each migration that should be ignored:
```
 npx prisma migrate resolve --applied 01_init
```
This command adds the target migration to the _prisma_migrations table and marks it as applied. When you run prisma migrate deploy to apply new migrations, Prisma Migrate:
1. Skips all migrations marked as 'applied', including the baseline migration
2. Applies any new migrations that come after the baseline migration

You will be able to successfully deploy the app on Vercel server after this. The URL of your analytics app would be available under project tab of Vercel app.

The default credentials for login is

username : admin
password : umami

To change the default credentials navigate to settings → users → admin → edit
Enter your new password and click on save.

7. Configure your website for analytics tracking

navigate to settings → websites → + Add website

Name : provide any name of your choice
Domain : your [website](https://www.invoizly.com) domain (eg. invoizly.com)

Once website is added navigate to settings → website → your website name → edit → tracking code. Copy the tracking code.

8. Add tracking code to your project

In Next.JS projects to load a third-party script for multiple routes, import next/script and include the script directly in your layout component:

import Script from 'next/script'
 
export default function Layout({
  children,
}: {
  children: React.ReactNode
}) {
  return (
		<html lang="en" className="dark">
      <body className={cn(`${inter.className} antialiased`)}>
	      <Navbar />
        {children}
        <Footer />
      </body>
      <Script 
	      defer 
	      src="https://[your-analytics-app].vercel.app/script.js" 
	      data-website-id="xxxx-xxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxx" 
	    />
    </>
  )
}

After adding the Sript in your root layout, deploy your app and visit your web page. you will be able to track the visits on your analytics dashboard page.

Conclusion

Hope with help of this article you will be able to set up analytics for your application quickly and easily, without relying on third-party services. Since Vercel and Supabase both provides generous free tier, you can run your analytics for free in the initial days while being GDPR compliant.

About Invoizly

Invoizly is all about making invoicing easy and free. With Invoizly, you can quickly create high-quality, customizable invoices that look professional. It’s designed to be super user-friendly, so you can focus on your business instead of getting bogged down in paperwork.

Your Complete Guide to Self-Hosting Umami Analytics with Vercel and Supabase