When I built Jottings, I had one principle in mind: give everyone something useful for free, and make PRO genuinely worth it. Analytics was the perfect place to implement this philosophy.
Your site traffic matters. Whether you're building an audience, sharing ideas publicly, or just curious who's reading your thoughts—you deserve to see that data. But there's a big difference between "you can see you got traffic" and "you understand where that traffic comes from and why people engage with certain posts."
Let me walk you through what you get at each tier.
Free: The Essentials
With a free Jottings account, you can see your total pageviews—both site-wide and per post.
This sounds simple, but it's surprisingly useful. You can:
- Know that people are actually reading your site
- Spot which posts resonate (the ones with higher view counts)
- Track growth over time by checking back month to month
- Get a basic sense of whether your content is gaining traction
Most other platforms charge for this. I think that's absurd. Basic traffic visibility should be free.
What you can't see on the free tier:
- Where your visitors come from (referrer source)
- How they're accessing your site (device/browser)
- Which pages they visit beyond pageviews
- Geographic data
- Engagement patterns (bounce rate, time on page)
- Real-time visitor activity
For many people, free is enough. You're writing, people are reading, and you get validation through page counts. That's perfectly legitimate.
PRO: The Full Picture
PRO analytics is where things get interesting. When you upgrade, you unlock the context behind your traffic.
Referrer sources are the big one. You'll see exactly how people are finding you:
- Direct visits (people typing your URL or clicking bookmarks)
- Social media referrals (which platforms are sending traffic)
- Search engines (which queries are bringing people to you)
- Link clicks from other sites
- Anonymous/unknown sources
This changes everything. Suddenly, instead of "100 people visited today," you know "50 came from Twitter, 20 from Hacker News, 15 from direct bookmarks, and 15 from a blog that linked to me."
With that intelligence, you can:
- Double down on platforms that drive traffic
- Optimize your posts for search (if that's a big source)
- Engage with communities that appreciate your work
- Understand your audience better
Device and browser data gives you insight into how people consume your content:
- Are they mostly on mobile or desktop?
- Which browsers are they using?
- Are there performance issues on specific devices?
This matters especially if you're tinkering with your site design or optimizing for reading experience.
Post-level engagement metrics (PRO only):
- Time on page (how long people spend reading each post)
- Bounce rate (how many leave after viewing just one page)
- Exit rate (where people navigate to when they leave)
These metrics tell you about content quality. A post with high views but low time-on-page might be getting clicks for the headline but not delivering substance. A post with fewer views but people spending 5 minutes reading? That's resonance.
Real-time activity means you see visitors as they happen. There's something oddly satisfying about watching people read your work in real-time, especially on posts you just published.
The Honest Truth
I won't pretend PRO analytics competes with enterprise tools like Google Analytics or Mixpanel. Those platforms offer depth we don't need for a personal blog.
What PRO analytics does is answer the real questions microbloggers actually ask:
- "Is anyone reading this?"
- "Where are my readers coming from?"
- "Which posts actually resonate?"
- "Am I talking to real people or bots?"
It's built specifically for the context of personal publishing. Not enterprise marketing. Not conversion funnels. Just: Are your ideas reaching people? What are they drawn to?
Why We Structured It This Way
I could've paywalled all analytics. Many platforms do. But that felt wrong.
Knowing that people read your work costs us almost nothing. The data is already captured. Withholding it felt like artificial scarcity—and I don't believe in that.
The PRO features—referrer tracking, device detection, real-time data, engagement metrics—those require additional processing and storage. They're not free to provide at scale, especially with unlimited storage on PRO. So we charge for them.
More importantly, PRO analytics are useful for growing an audience intentionally. Free pageviews are validation. PRO analytics are strategy.
A Personal Note
I originally built Jottings for myself. My analytics? I want to know everything. Where each visitor comes from. What they read. How long they stayed. For me, that's PRO.
But I also know a lot of people write primarily for themselves or a small circle of friends. For them, the free tier—knowing you have readers at all—is enough.
Both are valid. Both are supported. That's the Jottings philosophy.
Ready to See Your Analytics?
Start with free, explore your traffic, and see what insights matter to you. If you want the full picture—referrers, device data, engagement patterns—upgrade to PRO.
Either way, you'll know your audience better than you did yesterday.
Start a free Jottings microblog today and watch your ideas reach people. Upgrade to PRO when you're ready to understand exactly how they're engaging.