Website analytics for European companies
Fathom Analytics was built from the ground up to be fully compliant with privacy laws in Europe. And, since we have intelligent routing, our script loads up to 50% faster than EU-only infrastructure.
While Fathom isn’t based in the EU, compliance with EU privacy laws is one of the top priorities we have as a business.
That’s why we work with legal experts and lawyers across Europe to ensure our software is compliant. And now that Google Analytics is illegal in the EU, it’s even more important to ensure that you’re using GDPR compliant analytics.)
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The gist of why Fathom is the best and most compliant website analytics software for European companies is the following
Fathom is a 100% Canadian corporation, and the European Commission made an adequacy decision which determined that Canada has an adequate level of data protection.
Fathom created EU Isolation, to process all EU visitor data in the EU, on EU servers, owned by an EU company. So EU traffic is routed to Germany, but US visitors are still routed to our US infrastructure.
Fathom is a data processor, and we have a solid, fair Data Processing Agreement (DPA) that we created with our EU lawyers. We encourage customers to read (or have their lawyers read it), and then sign it.
Our script loads quickly from around the world
In the scary world of trying to be GDPR compliant and not showing customers cookie banners it’s critical to use someone you trust and for me that’s Fathom Analytics
Simon Bennett, CEO of SnapShooter 🇬🇧
We use Fathom because we care about the privacy of our customers, and GDPR compliance is important to us.
Peter Suhm, cofounder of Reform 🇩🇰
Fathom collects hundreds of thousands of pageviews across all our sites and gives us a simple but powerful overview of our business in real time. By using Fathom Analytics, our visitors can view our content without interfering cookie banners and this creates a frictionless buying experience for them.
Sebastian Schlein, Managing Partner of Beyond Code GmbH 🇩🇪
Not only is their product and support awesome, but they've shown how much they actually care about their privacy-focused mission.
Miguel Piedrafita, founder of Sitesauce 🇪🇸
Fathom is used by companies who care about your privacy
Google Analytics is against the law
On January 13, 2022, the Austrian DPA ruled that Google Analytics is illegal. This means if your European company uses Google Analytics (or any analytics provider that has US servers or servers which are owned by a US cloud provider), your company is at risk of complaints and fines.
| Google Analytics | Other analytics | Fathom Analytics | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Personal Data collected | |||
| Anonymized logs | |||
| EU traffic processed on EU-owned servers | |||
| Schrems II compliant | |||
| GDPR compliant |
Website analytics features
for European companies
Compliance
Fathom Analytics is a GDPR-compliant website analytics tool (including the Schrems II ruling). We work with legal experts and lawyers from the EU and around the world to ensure we don’t just guess about privacy laws. You can read more about our GDPR, ePrivacy Directive, PECR (and more) in our compliance section.
Canadian-based
As we’ve mentioned, Fathom is a Canadian company, and Canada has a data adequacy ruling under the GDPR. This means that we don’t need to be based in the EU to be as compliant as EU companies are. Not to toot our own horns, but Fathom is more compliant than the majority of EU companies, as we don’t use US controlled cloud servers to process EU visitor data.
No cookie banners needed
Because we don’t use cookies (we invented cookie-free analytics), you can use legitimate interest as a lawful basis for using Fathom under the GDPR, and we are compliant with the ePrivacy Directive.
Solid Data Processing Agreement
We are a data processor and have put together a solid Data Processing Agreement with leading EU lawyers to ensure our customers are compliant with their GDPR obligations.
How does EU isolation work?
Fathom’s EU Isolation method works by intelligently routing visitors to the right place to process their data.
- If a visitor is outside the EU, our EU-owned CDN (Bunny.net) sends their pageview to our US servers directly and anonymizes their "personal data" (IP address).
- If a visitor is inside the EU, our CDN sends their pageview to our European servers (owned by a German company, Hetzner) and anonymizes their data prior to it leaving the EU. This means that raw IP Address & User Agent never hit our US infrastructure, and the EU holds a secret SHA256 salt that ensures US surveillance is kept in the dark.
In all scenarios, Fathom fully protects the privacy of every website visitor’s personal information.
Questions European companies may have about Fathom Analytics
- “Don’t I need to use an EU-based analytics solution?”
- No, the European Commission has given an adequacy ruling for Canada, so using Fathom (we’re a Canadian company) means you’re just as compliant with GDPR and Schrems II. If for some reason Canada loses it’s adequacy decision (extremely unlikely), Fathom is 50% European owned, so we’d open a separate company in Europe that would take over processing EU traffic.
- “Is Fathom (a Canadian company) fully GDPR compliant? ”
- Yes, we very much are. We work with legal experts and lawyers from the EU and around the world to ensure our solution is completely compliant (including the Schrems II ruling). As a Canadian company, we have an adequacy ruling under the GDPR as well.
- “Where is EU visitor data processed with Fathom?”
- In Germany, on servers owned by Hetzner (a German company). No US servers, US services or US personnel have access to these servers, as they’re fully managed by Canadians and our German partners.
Our EU Cloud is monitored 24/7, highly available (across three regions in the EU), multi-region and has enough capacity to process “Sir Lewis Hamilton level” traffic. - “How do I set up EU isolation? ”
- EU isolation is available to all customers, on all plans, and automatically runs, to ensure all customers comply with privacy laws. We enable this by default for everyone on every plan.
- “Can I route all of my traffic through the EU?”
- Yes. Some of our customers want to route all of their traffic, even from folks in the US, through EU Isolation. This isn’t required by law, and is usually a case of not wanting US cloud providers to handle *any* traffic.
Give Fathom a try today (for free)
We believe Fathom is the best and most compliant website analytics solution for European companies for all the above reasons and much more. You can give Fathom a try by signing up for our 30-day free trial. If you have any questions, please get in touch, we’d be happy to answer them.