ackee.electerious.com

To self-host Ackee you need a server you control, a Node.js runtime, and the ability to deploy and maintain a web application there. Ackee is a self-hosted, Node.js based analytics tool that runs on your own server, analyzes your websites' traffic, and shows statistics in a minimal interface. It is 100% open-source, so you download it from GitHub rather than signing up for a hosted service. If you can run a Node.js app on a server and add a tracking script to your sites, you have what it takes; if you'd rather not manage a server, self-hosting is the wrong fit.

The core requirements

What you get once it's running

• A dashboard giving an overview of all your websites and how they perform together.
• Insights covering views, referrers, durations, and more.
• Settings to add, edit, and delete domains — a new tracking code is a few clicks away.
• Unlimited domains, so the number of sites or apps you analyze doesn't matter.
• A GraphQL API that acts as a central hub for collecting data from websites, services, and apps, or for building your own interface on top.

Integration is a script, not a rebuild

Adding Ackee to a site works like adding the tracking snippet from Google Analytics: you place a tracking script on your sites, and that's it. The tracking code for each domain is generated from the Settings area, so the workflow is: deploy Ackee on your server → add your domain in Settings → copy the tracking script → paste it into your site.

The privacy model you're signing up for

Ackee's tracking is cookie-free with no unique user tracking. It uses a multi-step anonymization process so tracked users stay anonymous while still producing useful analytics. The data it reports includes:

• Amount of visits
• Visit duration
• Referrers
• Language
• Screen dimensions
• Display colors
• Operating system
• Browser
• Device

Before you commit

• You own the operations. "Your server, your rules" cuts both ways: full transparency and data ownership, but also updates, uptime, and backups on you.
• Check the Get started guide first. The official guide covers a variety of ways to run Ackee, so pick the deployment path that matches your server setup before installing.
• Try the live demo. A demo is available at ackee.electerious.com if you want to see the dashboard and insights before deploying anything.

If you have a server and are comfortable running a Node.js application on it, self-hosting Ackee is a download-and-deploy task with a script-based integration. If you don't want to manage a server, look elsewhere.

Ackee tracks visitors by collecting request-level data — page views, referrers, session duration, language, screen dimensions, operating system, browser, and device — and running it through a multi-step anonymization process instead of storing a persistent identifier. It sets no cookies and does no unique user tracking, so no single visitor can be re-identified across sessions. This suits site owners who want traffic statistics without collecting personal data, but it also means metrics that depend on recognizing returning individuals (such as true unique-visitor counts or cross-session funnels) are not what Ackee is built to produce.

What Ackee actually records

According to the project's own feature list, Ackee's tracking DNA covers:

• Amount of visits
• Visit duration
• Referrers
• Language
• Screen dimensions
• Display colors
• Operating system
• Browser
• Device

Notice what is absent: no user ID, no cookie value, no fingerprint stored against a person. The data describes the visit, not the visitor.

How the anonymization works

Ackee describes its approach as a "multi-step anonymization process" that keeps tracked data anonymous while still yielding useful analytics. The site does not publish the individual steps, so the reliable statement is the design goal rather than a step-by-step recipe: data is processed so that it cannot be tied back to an identifiable individual, and no persistent client-side identifier is created.

The practical consequence: because there is no stored identifier, Ackee cannot follow one person from Monday to Friday. It can tell you that a page received 460 views today, but not that 200 of those came from the same 50 people.

What you get instead

Ackee's interface is built around aggregate traffic insight rather than individual journeys:

The live demo on ackee.electerious.com shows the shape of this: a "Today" figure, plus active visitors, average views, and average duration, queried through a GraphQL API.

How integration works

Integration follows the same pattern as other analytics tools: you add a tracking script to your sites, "similar to the tracking snippet provided by Google Analytics." That is the whole setup on the site side. The difference is entirely in what happens to the data afterward — the script feeds Ackee, and Ackee anonymizes rather than identifies.

Ackee is self-hosted and 100% open-source, running on Node.js on your own server. That matters for the privacy question: you can read the code and verify the anonymization claims yourself rather than trusting a vendor's description. It also means the data never leaves infrastructure you control.

When this approach fits — and when it doesn't

Choose Ackee if:

• You want traffic statistics (views, referrers, duration, device/browser mix) without cookies or consent-banner dependencies tied to tracking.
• You need to self-host so data stays on your own server.
• You want unlimited domains and apps under one instance.
• You want to extend or replace the interface via the GraphQL API.

Look elsewhere if:

• You need cross-session user journeys, cohort retention, or funnel analysis tied to individuals.
• You need advertising attribution that depends on identifying the same user across sites.
• You want a managed SaaS with no server to run — Ackee is self-hosted by design.

The honest summary: Ackee trades individual-level tracking for aggregate insight. If your requirement is "understand traffic without identifying people," that trade is the feature. If your requirement is "follow what each user does," it is a limitation you cannot configure away.

Yes. Ackee exposes a centralized GraphQL API, and the project explicitly positions it as a way to "extend it your way." According to the official site, the API acts as a hub for collecting data from a variety of sources — websites, services, and apps — and you can build your own interface or service on top of it. This makes Ackee a reasonable choice if you want privacy-focused analytics but don't want to be limited to its default dashboard.

What the API actually is

Ackee's API is GraphQL, not REST. The homepage shows a sample query that fetches a domain by ID and returns facts and statistics:

query getDomain($id: "hd11f820-68a1-11e6-8047-79c0c2d9bce0") {
  domain(id: $id) {
    id
    title
    facts {
      activeVisitors
      averageViews
      averageDuration
    }
    statistics {
      views(interval: YEARLY, type: UNIQUE) {
        id
        count
      }
    }
  }
}

Two things are worth noting from this example:

• You query by domain ID, not by hostname, so you'll need to retrieve or store IDs for each site you track.
• The API returns aggregated facts and statistics (active visitors, average views, average duration, view counts over an interval), which maps to what the dashboard displays under "Insights."

What you can build with it

The stated use cases are broad: the API is described as a "powerful hub, perfect to collect data from a variety of sources, including websites, services and apps." In practice that means two directions:

If your goal is a custom analytics view — for example, a status board for a client, or stats embedded in an internal admin panel — the read side of the API is the relevant part.

What this means for self-hosting

Because Ackee is self-hosted and 100% open-source, the API runs on your own server alongside the rest of the tool. There's no separate hosted API tier described on the page, and no pricing signals are present in the source material, so nothing here should be read as a statement about cost or plan limits. The relevant constraint is simply that you're running the instance yourself.

The site's "Get started" guide covers ways to set Ackee up, and the API is part of that same deployment rather than a separate product.

Practical considerations before you commit

• GraphQL schema discovery: The homepage shows one query shape. To build anything real, you'll want to inspect the schema of your running instance rather than assume the fields shown are exhaustive.
• Domain IDs: Since queries key off IDs, plan how your custom interface will map human-readable site names to those IDs.
• Anonymized data: Ackee's tracking is cookie-free with no unique user tracking, and it anonymizes data through a multi-step process. Your custom interface will inherit that same aggregated, anonymized dataset — you won't be able to reconstruct individual user journeys from the API, by design.
• Unlimited domains: The site states Ackee supports as many domains and apps as you want, so a multi-site custom dashboard isn't limited by a domain cap described in the source.

Who this fits

The API is a good fit if you're a developer who wants Ackee's privacy model but needs the data somewhere other than Ackee's own minimal UI. It's a weaker fit if you want a ready-made embeddable widget or a documented REST endpoint with client libraries — none of that is described in the source material. The honest summary: the extension path exists and is central to the product's pitch, but you should expect to work directly with GraphQL against your own instance.

Yes. Ackee supports unlimited domains, so you can analyze as many websites and apps as you want from a single self-hosted instance. You add each domain in the Settings area, and Ackee generates a tracking script you paste into your site — similar to the snippet Google Analytics provides. The dashboard then gives you an overview of all your websites and how they perform together.

How Ackee handles multiple websites

Ackee is built around the idea that one, two, or twenty domains shouldn't change how the tool works. Key points from the project:

• Unlimited domains — there is no stated cap on the number of domains or apps you can analyze.
• Central dashboard — the Dashboard view shows all your websites at once so you can compare how they perform together.
• Per-domain settings — you add, edit, and delete domains in Settings, and each domain gets its own tracking code.
• Shared backend — all domains report into the same self-hosted Ackee instance and the same GraphQL API.

Adding the tracking code: the general flow

Ackee's own description is that integration works "similar to the tracking snippet provided by Google Analytics." The exact menu labels aren't documented in the source material, so treat the steps below as the general pattern rather than a literal click path:

1. Log in to your Ackee instance (the one you self-hosted).
2. Open Settings and add the domain you want to track.
3. Copy the generated tracking script for that domain.
4. Paste the script into your site — typically just before the closing </body> tag, the same placement convention most analytics snippets use.
5. Verify by loading your site and checking that the domain shows activity in the Dashboard.

Because Ackee is self-hosted, the tracking script points at your server, not a third-party endpoint. That's the main practical difference from a hosted analytics service.

What the tracking actually collects

Ackee uses a multi-step anonymization process instead of cookies or unique user tracking. According to the project, it records:

• Amount of visits
• Visit duration
• Referrers
• Language
• Screen dimensions
• Display colors
• Operating system
• Browser
• Device

No cookies and no unique user tracking means you don't need a cookie consent banner for the analytics itself in the way cookie-based tools require — but confirm your own legal obligations, since requirements vary by jurisdiction.

Extending beyond the default script

If you need more than the standard snippet, Ackee exposes a centralized GraphQL API. The project describes it as a "powerful hub, perfect to collect data from a variety of sources, including websites, services and apps." That means you can send events from non-website sources (apps, backend services) into the same instance, and you can build your own interface on top of the API rather than using the built-in UI.

What you need before any of this works

Ackee is self-hosted and Node.js based, so tracking multiple sites assumes you already have:

• A server you control
• A running Ackee instance (the project's Get Started guide and GitHub repo cover installation)
• Access to edit the HTML of each site you want to track

The source material doesn't state pricing, so don't assume the hosted demo at ackee.electerious.com is a free production option — it's presented as a live demo. For production use, plan on running your own instance.

Quick decision guide

The main trade-off is control versus effort: you get full data ownership and unlimited domains, but you're responsible for running the Node.js server.

Ackee is a self-hosted, Node.js-based website analytics tool that runs on your own server. It analyzes traffic across your websites and apps and presents the results in a minimal dashboard. Its defining difference from mainstream analytics is privacy: it uses no cookies and no unique user tracking, relying instead on a multi-step anonymization process.

If you want traffic statistics (views, referrers, visit durations, and similar) without sending visitor data to a third party or requiring cookie consent banners for analytics, Ackee is built for that use case. If you need cross-site advertising attribution, user-level funnels, or session replay, it is not designed for those.

How Ackee differs from typical analytics

The core mechanism is the tracking approach. Where conventional tools often assign identifiers or set cookies to recognize returning visitors, Ackee states it does neither. Instead, it anonymizes tracked data through a multi-step process while still producing aggregate metrics.

What Ackee records, per the site:

• Amount of visits
• Visit duration
• Referrers
• Language
• Screen dimensions
• Display colors
• Operating system
• Browser
• Device

What it explicitly does not do: unique user tracking and cookies.

What you get in the interface

The stated design goal is focus: a fast, minimal UI rather than hundreds of charts and filters.

Key capabilities

• Self-hosted and open-source. Ackee runs on your own server and is 100% open-source, so you control the data and can inspect the code.
• Unlimited domains. You can analyze as many domains and apps as you want.
• Easy integration. Add a tracking script to your sites, similar to the snippet Google Analytics provides.
• GraphQL API. A centralized GraphQL API acts as a hub for collecting data from websites, services, and apps, and you can build your own interface or service on top of it.

What you need to run it

Ackee is Node.js-based and self-hosted, so the practical prerequisites are your own server and the ability to run and maintain a Node.js application. The project points to a Get started guide covering setup options, plus a live demo and GitHub download. Because hosting, maintenance, and updates fall to you, the trade-off for privacy and data ownership is operational responsibility.

When Ackee is a good fit

Choose Ackee if:

• Privacy is a priority and you want cookie-free, anonymized analytics.
• You want your analytics data on infrastructure you control.
• You need straightforward traffic insights across many domains without a complex charting suite.
• You want to extend analytics through an API or build custom interfaces.

Look elsewhere if you need user-level tracking, advertising attribution, or a fully managed service with no server maintenance.