Plausible Analytics: $1M ARR with no ads, by picking a fight with Google

What it is

Plausible is "a simple, lightweight, open source and privacy-friendly alternative to Google Analytics", run by a self-funded team (Plausible).

Timeline

Figures are from Plausible's own write-ups ($1M ARR post, June 2022; $500K ARR post, Oct 2021):

• Dec 2018: first line of code by Uku, who didn't want to add Google Analytics to his employer's landing page (Plausible).
• Jan 2019: public beta launched on Indie Hackers. May 2019: paid plans, $64 MRR (Plausible).
• Sep 2019: went fully open source (MIT, later AGPL) (Plausible).
• Mar 2020: marketer Marko Saric joined after Uku cold-emailed him; $433 MRR (Plausible).
• Apr 2020: "Why you should stop using Google Analytics on your website" hit the top of Hacker News; 25,000+ visitors that day (Plausible).
• Aug 2020: Product Hunt launch: 1,000+ visitors, 15 trial signups, then fewer than 20 visitors a few days later (Plausible).
• Jan 2021: $11,303 MRR. Until $10K MRR the two founders were down more than $50,000 in personal savings (Plausible).
• Oct 2021: $500K ARR; it took 324 days from the first paying subscriber (14 May 2019) to reach $400 MRR (Plausible, Oct 2021). Jan–Mar 2022: Austrian and French regulators ruled against Google Analytics, and Google announced the end of Universal Analytics; March was their best month, +$8,247 net MRR (Plausible).
• 2 Jun 2022: $83,637 MRR ($1M ARR) and 7,000+ paying subscribers (Plausible).

Why it worked

• Positioning against a giant. The breakout post was a direct argument against Google Analytics (Plausible).
• Content as the only channel. "We've never paid to advertise for Plausible"; growth came from word of mouth and blog posts (Plausible).
• A builder plus a marketer. Growth was flat until the second co-founder took over marketing (Plausible).
• Regulatory tailwinds. EU data-protection rulings in 2022 sent buyers looking for alternatives (Plausible).

What to learn

1. Expect a slow start. Plausible took 324 days to reach $400 MRR (Plausible); a slow first year is not proof of failure.
2. Write opinionated posts your target users would argue about on Hacker News.
3. Launch platforms give a spike, not a channel. Plausible called it "the famous spike of hope after which follows the flat line of nope" (Plausible).

Risks and what didn't work

• Donations failed as a funding model: six donations of $5 in about six months (Plausible).
• A permissive license exposed them to companies reselling their code, which pushed the switch to AGPL (Plausible).
• Rapid growth made the app slow until they moved from PostgreSQL to ClickHouse (Plausible).