HONEST ALTERNATIVE · SEO + AI VISIBILITY
Open Web Analytics (OWA) is a free, open-source, self-hosted web analytics platform — visitor tracking, heatmaps, session replay, and click tracking on infrastructure you control, with no visitor data sent to third-party providers. DeepSEOAnalysis is a free technical SEO audit tool — CrUX p75 Core Web Vitals, structured data validation, canonical and hreflang checks, and AI visibility scoring, on demand at no cost. These tools address different problems: OWA measures what visitors do on your website after they arrive; DeepSEOAnalysis audits the technical signals that determine whether Google ranks your pages so visitors can find your website in the first place.
At a glance
The useful answer is not “which tool is best?” It is which tool fits the job you need done this week.
| Criterion | Competitor | DeepSEOAnalysis |
|---|---|---|
| Primary purpose | Self-hosted open-source web analytics — visitor tracking, pageview counts, session data, heatmaps, click tracking, and event recording for website owners who want full data ownership and privacy without sending visitor data to third-party analytics providers | Technical SEO audit — crawl-based analysis of a website's technical health, CrUX p75 Core Web Vitals, structured data validity, AI visibility signals, and on-page SEO across 80+ checks |
| Self-hosted analytics | Fully self-hosted on your own server — OWA is deployed on PHP/MySQL infrastructure you control, with all visitor data stored in your own database. No data leaves your server, no third-party analytics provider receives your visitor information, and you have complete control over data retention and deletion. OWA can be integrated via a JavaScript tracker or directly as a WordPress plugin | No self-hosted analytics capability — DeepSEOAnalysis is a SaaS audit tool that crawls your website's public pages on demand and retrieves CrUX data from the Google Chrome User Experience Report API. It does not run on your own infrastructure and does not collect or store visitor session data |
| Heatmaps and click tracking | Click heatmaps and DOM element click tracking — OWA records where visitors click on your pages, generating visual heatmaps showing click density. Includes DOM element tracking that attributes clicks to specific HTML elements, enabling analysis of which buttons, links, and content areas receive the most engagement. Session replay allows playback of individual visitor sessions to understand user behaviour | No heatmap or click tracking capability — DeepSEOAnalysis does not record visitor sessions, mouse movements, clicks, or user interactions. It analyses the technical structure of your web pages as Googlebot sees them, not the behavioural patterns of the visitors who interact with those pages |
| Data ownership and privacy | Complete data ownership — because OWA runs on your own server, all visitor data is stored in your database with no third-party access. This makes OWA compliant with strict privacy interpretations of GDPR: visitor data never leaves your infrastructure, there is no data processing agreement needed with an analytics provider, and data can be deleted or exported entirely at your discretion. Popular with organisations in privacy-sensitive sectors (healthcare, legal, public sector) where sending visitor data to US-based analytics providers creates compliance risk | No visitor data collection — DeepSEOAnalysis does not collect visitor data from your website at all. It crawls your public HTML pages as Googlebot does and retrieves aggregate anonymous CrUX field data from Google's API. There is no visitor tracking, no cookies placed on your visitors' browsers, and no personal data processed from your website's visitors |
| CWV data | No Core Web Vitals data — OWA collects visitor session data (page views, events, clicks) from the JavaScript tracker running in visitors' browsers, but does not measure or report Core Web Vitals (LCP, INP, CLS) from the Chrome User Experience Report. OWA has no integration with Google's CrUX API or Page Experience data | CrUX p75 field data — LCP, INP, and CLS from real Chrome users, segmented by mobile and desktop, against Google's exact Good/Needs Improvement/Poor thresholds. The same data Google uses as a Page Experience ranking signal |
| Structured data | No structured data validation — OWA is an analytics platform that tracks visitor behaviour on your live website. It does not parse HTML, validate JSON-LD schema markup, or assess whether your structured data meets Google's rich result specifications | Full schema.org structured data validation across all major types — LocalBusiness, Article, FAQPage, Product, BreadcrumbList — with required property checks and rich result eligibility assessment |
| Technical SEO | No technical SEO capability — OWA is an analytics tool focused on visitor behaviour measurement. It does not audit canonical tags, hreflang implementation, redirect chains, robots.txt configuration, XML sitemaps, or any of the crawlability signals that affect Google's ability to index and rank your pages | Full technical SEO audit: canonical configuration, hreflang validation, redirect chain detection, robots.txt analysis, XML sitemap checks, broken internal links, orphan pages, and AI visibility scoring (llms.txt, AI crawler access, FAQPage schema, GEO score) |
| Target audience | Privacy-conscious website owners, developers, and organisations in regulated sectors (healthcare, education, public sector, legal) who need web analytics without sending visitor data to US-based third-party providers. Also popular with technically capable WordPress users and open-source advocates who prefer self-hosted software to SaaS analytics subscriptions | SEO professionals, developers, and site owners who need to diagnose technical SEO issues, verify Core Web Vitals against Google's ranking signal thresholds, and validate structured data for rich result eligibility |
| Pricing | Free and open-source — OWA is available under the GPL licence at openwebanalytics.com at no cost. You provide and maintain the server infrastructure (PHP, MySQL); there is no licence fee, no per-visit charge, and no subscription. The cost is your server hosting (typically $5–$20/month for a VPS) and time spent on installation, maintenance, and updates | Free — no account, no subscription, no credit card required for a full technical SEO and CWV audit. Paid plans (Pro $24/mo, Agency $89/mo) add monitoring, multi-site tracking, and white-label workflows |
What each product is
Open Web Analytics is best understood as a self-hosted behavioural analytics layer: it provides visitor tracking, heatmaps, and session replay on your own server infrastructure, giving privacy-sensitive organisations full data ownership and eliminating the GDPR data transfer concerns that affect US-hosted analytics services.
DeepSEOAnalysis is best understood as a technical SEO audit layer: it crawls the live server HTML of any website, validates structured data against Google's specifications, measures real CrUX Core Web Vitals from the CrUX API, and scores AI visibility — providing the diagnostic data SEO teams need to fix organic ranking signal gaps.
When to choose which
Pricing context
FAQ
Open Web Analytics (OWA) is a free, open-source web analytics platform that you install and run on your own web server. Released under the GPL licence and available at openwebanalytics.com, OWA provides visitor tracking, pageview counts, session recording, click heatmaps, DOM element click tracking, and event logging — similar in function to Google Analytics, but entirely self-hosted on infrastructure you control. OWA runs on PHP and MySQL and can be integrated via a JavaScript tracking snippet or as a WordPress plugin (OWA for WordPress). Because all data is stored in your own database on your own server, OWA is particularly popular with organisations that cannot or do not want to send visitor data to US-based analytics providers — a common requirement in European public sector, healthcare, and legal sectors where GDPR interpretations restrict data transfers to third countries. OWA does not collect Core Web Vitals data, does not perform technical SEO audits, and has no integration with Google Search Console or the CrUX API.
Self-hosted analytics — what OWA provides — is the measurement of visitor behaviour on your live website: who visits, which pages they view, how long they stay, where they click, and what events they trigger. It answers "how are users behaving on my site?" and requires you to run tracking infrastructure that collects visitor events. Technical SEO — what DeepSEOAnalysis audits — is the analysis of signals that determine whether Google can crawl, understand, and rank your website: Core Web Vitals from real Chrome users, structured data validity, canonical configuration, redirect chains, and AI visibility. It answers "is my website technically sound for Google?" and involves crawling your public pages and checking them against Google's documented requirements. The two disciplines are complementary: self-hosted analytics tells you what users do after they find your site; technical SEO determines whether Google ranks your site so users can find it. OWA and DeepSEOAnalysis address different layers of the same website.
OWA's self-hosted architecture addresses the main GDPR data transfer concern about third-party analytics providers: because visitor data never leaves your own server, there is no data transfer to a third country (e.g., to US-based servers) and no data processor relationship with an analytics company. This resolves the Schrems II-related compliance issues that affected Google Analytics in some EU member states. However, self-hosting does not make analytics automatically GDPR-compliant: you still need to obtain valid consent (or establish another legal basis) before collecting visitor data, provide clear privacy notice disclosures, honour data subject access and deletion rights, and implement appropriate security measures on your server. OWA does provide IP anonymisation settings and data retention controls that help with GDPR compliance, but you remain the data controller and are responsible for your own compliance implementation. For organisations requiring zero visitor tracking (rather than first-party tracking), DeepSEOAnalysis audits your website's technical SEO without placing any cookies or collecting any visitor data from your website.
Use OWA if you need self-hosted web analytics that keeps visitor data on your own infrastructure — tracking visitor sessions, pageviews, clicks, and user behaviour without sending data to a third-party provider. OWA is the right choice for organisations with strict data sovereignty requirements, privacy-conscious teams that prefer open-source software, or WordPress site owners who want analytics without Google Analytics's GDPR implications. Use DeepSEOAnalysis if you need to audit the technical health of your website for organic search performance — checking CrUX p75 Core Web Vitals against Google's Page Experience thresholds, validating JSON-LD structured data for rich result eligibility, identifying crawlability issues (canonical misconfiguration, redirect chains, robots.txt problems), and scoring AI visibility. The two tools are not alternatives in any meaningful sense: OWA measures visitor behaviour; DeepSEOAnalysis audits technical SEO signals that determine whether visitors find your site via organic search. Many privacy-conscious site owners run OWA for behavioural analytics and use DeepSEOAnalysis for technical SEO health monitoring.
Paste a URL and get the complete technical SEO, Core Web Vitals, structured data, internal linking, CMS, and AI-visibility audit.
Run a free audit →