Globe Visitors Counter vs VisitStats

Globe Visitors Counter (Lite) adds a beautiful, fast, iframe-isolated 3D visitor globe to any WordPress site. It instantly shows your audience geography — fully locally, privately, and without any third-party tracking. This Lite version is designed for clarity, speed, and instant visual feedback — especially on landing pages and campaign pages. Use Case: Instant Visual Feedback for Advertising Campaigns The situation You have a product or a service. You launch an advertising campaign: Google Ads Facebook / Instagram TikTok banner ads email campaigns any other traffic source All traffic is sent to one landing page. Usually what comes next is boring: tables, charts, numbers, dashboards, “we’ll analyze it later”. The solution You place Globe Visitors Counter Lite directly on the landing page. No server setup. No external analytics. No configuration. And you start seeing your traffic with your own eyes. How it works (very simple) You launch the ads Visitors arrive at the page Each real visitor appears as a dot on the globe — in real time, from their actual location The globe comes alive and instantly shows: – whether people are coming at all – which countries and regions react – whether the campaign works or misses completely No dots — ads don’t work. Dots appear — ads are alive. Why Lite is perfect for landing pages Lite is not deep analytics. It’s a visual “life indicator”. Perfect when you need: – fast visual feedback – immediate confirmation that traffic is real – zero setup and zero learning curve – a simple “wow effect” for clients, teams, or investors You watch, not analyze. Key Features Interactive 3D Land-Cover globe included out of the box Real-time visitor logging using a tiny local JSON file Historical dots displayed automatically Zero configuration, works with all themes & editors Shortcode-based, easy placement on any page No cookies, no remote APIs, GDPR-friendly Ultra-fast loading thanks to iframe sandboxing How It Works When a page with the shortcode is opened, the plugin loads a fully self-contained viewer from: /wp-content/uploads/visitors-lite-landcover/ Each visit is logged locally as a minimal record (timestamp + coordinates + city + country) into: visitors.json Everything stays on your server. No tracking pixels. No third-party analytics. No cookies. Why Use It Ideal for landing pages and product launches Visualizes global audience instantly Safe for cached pages and CDNs Works even on heavily optimized sites When You May Need the Full Version Lite is intentionally simple and fast. If you need: – long-term statistics – multiple pages or sites – extended visitor history – advanced visual modes and skins – more control and customization …then the Full (Pro) version may be a better fit. Lite remains perfect for single pages, launches, tests, and quick visual validation. Tester Program (optional) We are tuning defaults and performance for upcoming builds. If you want to enable advanced features during testing at no cost (extra visual modes, effects, skins), join via Support: https://wordpress.org/support/topic/looking-for-testers-free-advanced-features-for-feedback/ Usage Shortcode: [visitors_globe_lite title=”VISITORS” width=”100%” height=”600″] Attributes: – title — optional caption above the globe – width — iframe width (100% or fixed px) – height — iframe height in px Place the shortcode anywhere — Classic or Block editor.

VisitStats is a lightweight, privacy-first analytics plugin for WordPress. All your data stays in your own WordPress database — we never see it, no third party sees it. Why VisitStats? No cookies, no consent banner needed. Tracking is GDPR-friendly by default. Self-hosted. All data lives in your WordPress database. No external service, no Automattic, no Google. Lightweight. Frontend tracker is under 2KB. Loads asynchronously. Won’t slow your site. Zero setup. Install, activate, done. No theme edits, no tag manager, no JS snippets. Built for WordPress. Reports appear inside your WordPress dashboard — no separate app to log into. Recommended for sites with up to ~10,000 daily pageviews (around 95% of WordPress sites). For very high-traffic sites, consider dedicated analytics services. What you get (all free, all the time): Real-time visitor count — see who’s on your site right now Pageviews, unique visitors, sessions Top pages Top traffic sources (direct, search, social, AI, referral) Top referrers — actual URLs sending you traffic Device breakdown (desktop, mobile, tablet) Browser & operating system detection Configurable data retention from 1 day up to 1 year Date range views: today, 7 days, 30 days, 90 days, 1 year Engagement signals (scroll depth, time on page) Cookieless visitor identification using daily-rotating salt + SHA-256 hashing Bot filtering with built-in bot signature detection Optional administrator / logged-in user exclusion Honors Do Not Track browser signal Automatic data pruning to keep your database lean Rate-limited tracking endpoint protects against abuse IP anonymization before hashing — actual IPs never stored Privacy by design VisitStats never: Sets cookies Stores IP addresses Sends data to third parties Fingerprints visitors Tracks across days Visitor identification uses a daily-rotating salt hashed with the (anonymized) IP and User Agent to count unique visits within a 24-hour window. The salt regenerates every 24 hours, making cross-day tracking impossible. This is the same approach used by Plausible Analytics and Fathom Analytics. For developers Clean REST API at /wp-json/visitstats/v1/ Filter hooks for customizing behavior (rate limiting, bot detection, etc.) PSR-style class organization No external dependencies — pure WordPress core