Self-hosted website analytics are alternatives to Google Analytics that offer benefits such as protecting user privacy and reducing page size, making websites load faster. These solutions are typically smaller than Google Analytics and do not collect personal data or set cookies, ensuring GDPR compliance. By self-hosting an open-source analytics provider, users own their data and can be confident in what it is doing behind the scenes. Most ad-blockers and browsers block the Google Analytics script, but self-hosted solutions under a custom domain can avoid these issues. Two popular self-hosted analytics starters available on Railway are Ackee and Umami, which provide minimal interfaces and offer free, open-sourced alternatives to paid solutions.