Why I stopped using Google Analytics (and what I built instead)

I want to be clear: Google Analytics is an incredible product. The engineering behind GA4 is genuinely impressive. This isn’t a rant.

But I stopped using it. And here’s what happened.

As a solo founder, I spent more time configuring GA4 than actually learning from it. Custom dimensions, conversion events, attribution models, it all requires real expertise. Every time I opened it, I felt like I needed a certification just to find what I was looking for. So I opened it less and less. Maybe once a month. And a dashboard you check once a month is basically useless.

Then there was the fragmentation. GA4 doesn’t do heatmaps. It doesn’t do session replay. So I was paying for Hotjar alongside it. Two tools. Two dashboards. Two JavaScript snippets on my site. And zero connection between them. I could see traffic go up in GA4 and someone rage-click on my pricing page in Hotjar but connecting those dots required manual work I rarely did.

And then the privacy issue surprised me. I added a cookie consent banner and my analytics data immediately became unreliable. Around 40% of my European visitors rejected cookies. That meant 40% of my traffic was simply invisible. I was making decisions based on data that systematically excluded a huge chunk of my audience.

So I built Zenovay. One dashboard with traffic analytics, heatmaps, session replay, AI insights where you can literally ask questions about your traffic in plain English, error logs, uptime monitoring, conversion funnels, team collaboration with SSO, and white-label support for agencies.
No cookies. No consent banner required. You actually see all your visitors instead of just the 60% who click “accept.”

The takeaway isn’t necessarily “ditch GA4.” It’s this: if you open your analytics tool and feel overwhelmed, the tool is wrong for you regardless of how powerful it is. Your analytics should answer questions, not create them.

If any of this resonates, I’d genuinely love feedback from this community. Still early and improving every day.