Ackee

What Ackee does

Ackee shows the traffic figures most small sites need in a deliberately minimal interface: page views, unique daily visitors, referrers, visit duration and events. More detailed figures, such as browsers, operating systems, devices, screen sizes and languages, are off by default. Everything in the interface comes from a documented GraphQL API, so the same data is easy to use in your own tools.

The project is clear about its scope. Its FAQ says Ackee is not a replacement for full marketing analytics such as Google Analytics or Matomo; it is an alternative for people who only need the basics.

Privacy and cookies

Ackee does not use tracking cookies. It identifies a visitor with a hash of the IP address, user agent and domain, combined with a salt that changes daily and is never stored, and when the visitor returns it removes identifying data from their earlier records so browsing histories cannot be rebuilt. IP addresses are not stored by default. The project’s privacy guidance says Ackee does not need to appear in a cookie banner, but recommends asking visitors before turning on detailed data or event tracking. The only cookie mentioned is one that excludes the site owner’s own visits.

Self-hosting Ackee

Ackee needs Node.js and MongoDB; a manual install asks for Node.js 24 or newer and MongoDB 7 or newer. The bundled Docker Compose file starts both. The documentation also covers Docker, a community Helm chart and platforms such as Netlify, Vercel, Render, Railway and Koyeb, where you connect an external MongoDB such as MongoDB Atlas. If Ackee runs on a different domain from your sites, you need to set CORS headers. No hardware minimum is documented.

Hosted version

There is no official hosted service. A public demo shows the interface.

Limitations

An Ackee instance has a single user account, so several people need several instances or a shared login. Page views per page are not unique, because Ackee keeps no browsing history, and it cannot import server logs. Reports are basic by design.

Who it suits

Ackee suits personal sites, portfolios and small projects whose owners want a clean traffic dashboard and an API, and who are happy to run MongoDB. Its MIT license and lack of a paid edition mean nothing is held back.