Analytics and monitoring decision
Vemetric
Self-hosting is realistic because Vemetric's AGPL-3.0 repository is available; a technical user should self-host rather than reimplement the product to avoid recreating core functionality.
Visit website↗$5/mo
$60/yr
Read off the official pricing page.
$20one-off6 h to build
$0/mo6 h/mo upkeep
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 1 seat.
Open-source builds that already do this
Every project below is open source and already does this job today. Fork one, self-host it, or take the parts you need - the build prompt further down assumes an empty file, and this is the shortcut past that. Licences differ; check the one on each card before you ship. All Vemetric alternatives, with the arithmetic →
What a replacement has to do
- 1) Receive events from a JS/HTTP SDK endpoint and validate payloads; 2) Persist events and user/profile records in Postgres (and short-term cache in Redis); 3) Sessionize events into sessions and user journeys (batch or streaming job); 4) Build query endpoints that aggregate events into funnels, top pages, referrers and event streams; 5) Minimal web UI to display dashboard, funnels, event streams and user detail pages (React + API).
What it still won’t have
- Hosted infrastructure, uptime SLA and backups managed by vendor
- Vendor support, onboarding, and product roadmap/feature updates
- Automatic upgrades and hosted analytics optimizations
What remains hard
- Product polish and ongoing maintenance
First-year cost
Keep paying
Paying is—cheaper in year one.
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 1 seat.
Money you would actually spend
Time you would spend
—
What you would spend
What we assumed
The verdict above measures whether you could build it. This one is only about money.
Runnable build prompt
Build a self-hosted Vemetric deployment using Docker Compose (or Kubernetes) with Postgres (primary event store), Redis (cache/sessionization), a Node.js or Go ingestion API, and a React frontend. Core features in scope: ingest Pageviews and Custom Events via a JS snippet and HTTP API; durable event storage in Postgres; a background sessionization and aggregation job; API endpoints for dashboards, funnels, top pages, referrers, event streams and individual user timelines; minimal RBAC for one org and project; TLS via Let's Encrypt and reverse proxy (Nginx). Out of scope: multi-tenant billing, advanced long-term cold storage, and premium managed-hosting. Include error handling, input validation, DB migrations, basic tests (unit for ingestion and integration test for end-to-end event→dashboard flow), and deployment/run instructions.
How we checked
How the score was reached
- Self-host verdict base92
- An open-source build was found+5
- 4 cited sources+3
- Price verified on pricing page+3
- 2/2 assessment runs agreed+4
- Evidence score99
The base comes from the verdict. Everything under it is a check that either happened or did not, and each one is a fact frozen in this record rather than a judgement made at render time - so the same evidence always produces the same number.
How scoring works →Cited sources · 4
Every page the run actually retrieved.
- official productVemetric — official product
- official pricingVemetric Pricing
- official docsVemetric Documentation
- open sourceFathom Lite (usefathom/fathom)
Integrity checks
What held up, and what did not.
