Privacy-First Analytics for WordPress

Most analytics give you a choice: understand your audience, or respect their privacy. Accelerate is built so you don't have to choose. It's cookieless, anonymous by default, stored only in the EU, and it speaks the WordPress consent standard — so the privacy work is part of the product, not a plugin stack you assemble yourself.

This page is the map. For the complete reference — every field collected, where it lives, retention, and data-subject handling — see Data Privacy.

What makes it privacy-first#

  • No cookies. Accelerate identifies returning visitors with a pseudonymous UUID in the browser's localStorage, never a tracking cookie. There is no third-party cookie to block and no cross-site profile to build.
  • Anonymous by default. No name, email, or phone number is collected. The only field that can hold a direct identifier is an explicit Broadcast opt-in, which the visitor chooses. See Data Privacy → What data is collected.
  • Stored only in the EU. All analytics data is processed and stored in AWS eu-central-1 (Frankfurt). No analytics data is transferred outside the EU — which closes the international-transfer question by design (see below).
  • Consent-aware, the WordPress way. Accelerate integrates the WP Consent API, so a single, standard consent signal governs it alongside the rest of your site — no bespoke wiring per plugin.
  • WordPress-native. Analytics run through your own site and Accelerate's EU backend, not a third-party JavaScript vendor you bolt on. One tool, one data path.

How we count without cookies

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A visitor arrives with no tracking cookie. Accelerate writes one random ID into their own browser storage (localStorage), then tags their page views and clicks with it, just enough to tell a returning reader from a new one. That ID is never linked to a name or email, and nothing follows them to other sites. That's how the counts add up while staying anonymous.

Privacy that also means better data#

Privacy-first isn't only a compliance posture — it's a data-quality one. Because Accelerate is first-party and cookieless, its measurement isn't gutted the way third-party, cookie-based analytics are by browser cookie-blocking, tracker lists, and ad-blockers. You measure your audience from your own site, not through a vendor tag that a growing share of browsers quietly drop.

This does not remove your consent obligations: because Accelerate stores a persistent identifier on the device and processes it, EU/EEA visitors still need consent before tracking begins (see GDPR). What it removes is the third-party fragility — the part you can't fix with a banner.

International data transfers (Schrems II)#

The simplest answer to the transfer question is not to transfer. Accelerate stores and processes all analytics data within the EU, so there is no transfer of EU visitor data to the US or other third countries to assess under Schrems II. Human Made Ltd acts as your data processor under a Data Processing Agreement, with AWS as sub-processor; a DPA is available at privacy@humanmade.com. Full detail in Data Privacy → Data roles.

By regulation#

Accelerate's defaults — cookieless, anonymous, EU-stored, consent-aware — map cleanly onto the major regimes:

GDPR & consent

What's collected, the two consent categories, and how to require explicit opt-in.

ePrivacy & PECR

Why localStorage still counts as "storage on a device," and how consent covers it.

CCPA / CPRA

Why "we don't sell data" and "no PII by default" answer most California requirements.

Data Privacy reference

The complete reference: fields, storage, retention, and data-subject rights.

Replace the stack#

On many WordPress sites, "analytics" means a third-party measurement script, a consent-mode integration to make it lawful, and a separate testing tool — three vendors, three data paths, three privacy reviews. Accelerate collapses that into one WordPress-native tool: cookieless analytics, A/B testing, and personalization, governed by one consent signal and stored in one place you can point to on a map.