
Building a website using the Remix.run web app framework? This tutorial will teach you how to add privacy-first analytics to your Remix site with Fathom.

## How to set up Fathom on your Remix site

1. Sign into your account with [Fathom](https://usefathom.com/login), and create a new site.
2. Open the settings for that site, and look for _Script settings_. Hit the clipboard icon to copy the Script tag for your site.

   <Image
     publicId="posts/add-fathom-analytics-to-remix/script-settings"
     alt="Script settings for one of my sites on Fathom's dashboard"
     caption="You site's embed code will be on the script settings page. Hit the clipboard button to copy the code"
   />

3. Open up your Remix site in your IDE of choice. open `root.tsx` (or `root.jsx` if you're using JavaScript instead of TypeScript), and paste your embed code right before the `<Script />` tag:

```jsx
return (
  <html lang="en">
    <head>
      <Meta />
      <Links />
    </head>
    <body>
      <Layout>
        <Outlet />
      </Layout>
      <ScrollRestoration />

      <script
        src="https://cdn.usefathom.com/script.js"
        data-site="TRSSCIOR"
        defer
      />
      <Scripts />
      <LiveReload />
    </body>
  </html>
);
```

<small>
  
  _Note: ☝🏽 I've edited the `<script>` tag here to be self closing, rather than having `<script></script>`. It should work either way._

</small>

4. Start your site with `npm run dev` or `yarn dev` and visit any page (you may have to hit reload if you had the page open already). You should see this reflected in your fathom dashboard in real time!
   <Image
     publicId="posts/add-fathom-analytics-to-remix/tracking-results"
     alt="You'll know it's working when you see a live visitor on your fathom dashboard"
     caption="You'll know it's working when you see a live visitor on your fathom dashboard"
   />

## Try out Fathom - it's great!

I've been using Fathom for years, and am a happy paying customer. If you'd like to give it a shot, you can get $10 off of Fathom when you **use my referral link [https://usefathom.com/ref/DPSSYB](https://usefathom.com/ref/DPSSYB)** to get started.

## If you enjoyed this video

- I wrote a post when I initially adopted fathom, called [Why I switched to Fathom for analytics](https://mikebifulco.com/posts/why-fathom-analytics)
- Make sure to [subscribe to my YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/channel/mikebifulco)


How to add Fathom Analytics to your Remix.run app


This morning, I fully switched my personal site from Google Analytics to [Fathom](https://usefathom.com/) - something that I had been considering for a while, and finally decided to go all in on. Thanks to my colleagues [@andrewpmiller](https://twitter.com/andrewpmiller) and [@jeremias](https://twitter.com/jeremias) for planting this seed months ago - I'm glad I finally made the switch.

## What is Fathom?

In their words, Fathom is "simple analytics for website owners & businesses". Near as I can tell, that's a perfect distillation of what they've built. Fathom provides an easily digestible single page analytics view of your site's traffic.

It's a service that rids you of some of the heft of having Google watch you and your users' every move. They're open and transparent about being [Privacy First](https://usefathom.com/privacy) - something which has long since melted away from Google's ethos.

In addition to giving you information about the traffic coming and going from your web property, fathom also lets you set goals for your site traffic - so that you can keep an eye on performance of what matters to you. Maybe you want to see how many people are visiting your "about me" page, or track newsletter subscriptions -- with Fathom, it's a straightforward javascript call to make that happen.

## Why Fathom?

For me, the functionality it provides is perfect - [my personal site](https://mikebifulco.com) is slowly growing in traffic, which is great! I had been using Google Analytics to keep an eye on my site's traffic, but honestly - I spent a disproportionate amount of time getting lost in all of the bells and whistles of GA. That time wasn't giving me more usable insight... I was just getting lost in the tool.

I also love the idea of Privacy First tooling, which Fathom hits out of the park. When you visit my site, I'm not keeping any of your PII, or doing anything creepy with your browsing behavior. I just want to know how various articles perform, so that I can make better decisions about what to write in the future.

Another benefit was the install process - getting Fathom set up was a breeze. You may know that my site is built on [Gatsby](https://gatsbyjs.org/) - it turns out there's a reasonably well-featured [plugin for gatsby](https://github.com/lgraubner/gatsby-plugin-fathom) created by a member of the community. In addition to that, they're reportedly shipping their own plugin in the next few weeks.

<Tweet tweetLink="usefathom/status/1256954976238055424" align="center" />

<Aside>
  Note: it looks like in the coming weeks, Fathom will be providing their own
  Gatsby plugin!
</Aside>

## Looking for a free option?

**Fathom also has a self-hosted product** called "[fathom lite](https://github.com/usefathom/fathom)" which you can run yourself if you want to use their service for free. It isn't as full-featured as full blown fathom, but it will give you a good idea of what you're in for. I set it up on Heroku (using [these instructions](https://gist.github.com/gmolveau/78f88af3f5951ba6e093f93a07caa302)) for a few weeks before deciding to take the plunge and pay for Fathom's SaaS service.

## Try it yourself!

Thinking about giving it a whirl? One of the perks of being a Fathom customer is their affiliate program - you can use my link to [sign up for Fathom](https://usefathom.com/ref/DPSSYB) for a $10 discount on your first invoice. Sweet!


#analytics: 2 posts tagged

How to add Fathom Analytics to your Remix.run app

Why I switched to Fathom for web analytics

.css-1fb0br2{color:#A0AEC0;}#analytics: 2 posts tagged

#analytics: 2 posts tagged