From building client websites to launching my own SaaS — and why I stopped trusting GA4!
I didn’t start with SaaS.
I started by building websites WordPress for survival.
My first real projects were simple sites — landing pages, directories, small tools.
One of them grew into Around md — a platform that helps people discover restaurants, parks, and interesting places in their city.
No VC. No team.
Just real users searching for where to go and what to explore around them.
Later, I officially opened my company — dricomm.com
Sounds fancy. Reality was not. Analytics…
It was:
• clients asking “why numbers don’t match”
• analytics dashboards nobody trusted
• GDPR emails every few months
• cookie banners everywhere
• and GA4… always GA4
Every site I launched had the same issue: analytics data never felt real.
Pageviews were lower than expected. Funnels didn’t make sense.
Marketing decisions were based on “best guesses”.
And the moment you add a cookie banner — boom: 30–50% of users disappear from your data.
At some point I realized something uncomfortable: I don’t actually know what’s happening on my own websites.
That’s when I stopped trying to “fix GA4”
and started building what I personally needed.
So I built CheckAnalytic.com — slowly, alone, after client work, without a roadmap slide deck.
What I wanted was simple:
• No cookies
• No consent banners
• No legal anxiety
• Numbers I can trust
• Setup that takes minutes, not hours
Not an “enterprise solution”.
Not a “GA4 replacement”.
Just analytics that works for founders who actually ship.
The funny part?
I didn’t plan to sell it. I used it on my own projects first. Around md. Client sites. Side projects.
And for the first time, numbers started to make sense.
Traffic matched feedback.
Marketing experiments became predictable.
Decisions stopped being emotional.
When I shared it with a few other founders, the feedback was always the same: “This finally feels honest.”
That sentence hit me harder than any metric. Because web analytics today isn’t broken technically. It’s broken emotionally.
Founders don’t trust their own dashboards anymore.
So yes — I’m still solo.
Still iterating.
Still answering support myself.
Still improving onboarding, UX, and performance.
But now I’m building for the future:
• privacy-first by default
• EU-friendly without legal gymnastics
• simple enough that you don’t need tutorials
If you’re an indie hacker, SaaS founder, or agency owner — you probably felt this pain too.
So I’m not here to pitch.
I’m here to ask: What made you stop trusting your analytics?
I’ll read every reply. Even the brutal ones.
This really resonated with me, especially the part about analytics feeling emotionally broken rather than technically broken. I’ve had the same experience where dashboards were technically “correct,” but they never matched what I was seeing anecdotally from users or clients. That disconnect slowly erodes confidence, and once trust is gone, every decision starts to feel like a guess.
The cookie banner point is also something I think people underestimate. It’s not just the data loss — it’s the cognitive overhead. You add compliance, then exceptions, then explanations to clients or stakeholders about why numbers dropped overnight. At some point, analytics stops being a tool and starts being something you have to defend.
I also appreciate the framing of building something you personally needed first. That seems to be a common thread in products that actually stick — not trying to “fix” a category from the outside, but responding to a frustration you’re repeatedly running into in real work. The fact that you didn’t originally plan to sell it makes that even more believable.
Curious how you think about the tradeoff between simplicity and depth going forward. At what point does adding more insight risk recreating the same complexity that made analytics feel untrustworthy in the first place?
Happy to give extended access to anyone willing to share honest feedback.
I can truly relate to this. Started with custom/worpdress websites.
And the irony is, I built my own analytics as well, lol.
GA4 is a nightmare. The only benefit it has is free data retention. thats it. and thats all i recommend it to clients for.
For anything else? There are better alternatives.
What stack did you use for CheckAnalytic?
So you understand that clients don't need complex graphs and unnecessary figures in analytics. Software Framework Laravel. Thank you for your comment!
Really honest and relatable story, thanks for sharing this. The part about not trusting your own analytics hits hard. Love that you built something out of real pain, not a pitch. Wishing you solid traction with it
Thank you very much! ;)
This hit close to home for me too — especially the part about the numbers not feeling real. ~
I’ve been on sites where GA looked busy, funnels looked healthy, and yet none of it lined up with what users were actually saying. You start doubting the users, then marketing, and eventually yourself.
What shifted things for me wasn’t adding more tracking. It was cutting back to a few signals I actually trusted. Once the data matched the conversations we were having with users, decisions got calmer and less reactive.
The stories of people who have encountered this are very interesting! Let's move forward with experience!
Thank you for your comment!
This resonates so much, Serghei!
My husband and I are builders from Belgium and we had a very similar 'directory' experience. We tried building a platform to reference dog parks across Belgium, but we eventually had to pull the plug. Between the skyrocketing Google Maps API costs and the realization that the ROI just wasn't there, it was a tough lesson. It’s refreshing to hear someone talk about that side of the journey.
So we gave up that project.
We’re currently launching our new project, 13-Virtues (a Ben Franklin-inspired tracker), and we’ve adopted that same mindset: privacy-first, no-SaaS, and keeping things honest.
Web analytics is definitely 'broken emotionally' as you said. People want to see the truth of their work, not a filtered, legal-headache version of it.
Cheering for you on CheckAnalytic — we need more 'honest' tools for founders who just want to ship!"
Thank you very much for your comment! You had a very good idea, it's a pity that it wasn't fully realised.
I wish you luck with your new project, I hope everything turns out the way you planned! :)
Even if the project did not come to an end, we learned a lot ! We see it as an experience :-)
Thank you !
GA4 is just an upsell tool for G ads nowdays and there are better options, especially for mobile.
Of course, this is not a "replacement for GA4".