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Frequently asked questions

• What is Pirsch best at?

  Developer-focused, privacy-friendly analytics. It is API-first with server-side tracking through Go, JavaScript and PHP SDKs, the breakdowns are generous (pages, entry and exit pages, channels, UTM, geo down to city level), every plan keeps unlimited data retention, and it starts at just $6 a month. Pulsetic asks a different question: not where traffic came from, but how fast the website was and whether it was up at all.

• How much does Pirsch cost?

  $6 per month for 10,000 pageviews (Standard) and $12 for Plus, which adds unlimited pageviews, funnels, A/B tests and segments. There is a 30-day trial with no credit card required, capped at 100,000 pageviews, but no free tier. Pulsetic starts free, and its $9 Solo plan includes 10,000 RUM pageviews a month plus 10 uptime monitors and status pages.

• Does Pirsch measure page speed or Core Web Vitals?

  No. Pirsch has no performance reporting: no load times, no Core Web Vitals, and no error tracking beyond 404s captured via events. It measures traffic, not experience. Pulsetic records LCP, CLS, INP, FCP and load time percentiles (p50, p75, p95) from real visits, on every plan.

• Can Pirsch tell me when my website is down?

  No. Pirsch offers traffic alerts, but those are data-gap warnings: they fire when analytics data stops flowing, not when an external check fails, and there are no status pages. Pulsetic runs external checks as often as every 30 seconds from 15 regions on the Team plan. Every plan alerts by email and webhook, and Solo adds Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord, Telegram, SMS, WhatsApp and phone calls.

• Is Pulsetic a drop-in replacement for Pirsch?

  No. Pulsetic does not track goals, custom events, funnels or UTM campaigns, and it does not count unique visitors. If your work depends on that reporting, keep Pirsch for it. Both scripts are cookieless, so many teams run the two side by side: Pirsch for traffic, Pulsetic for performance and uptime.

• Does Pulsetic's tracking script use cookies?

  No. Like Pirsch, Pulsetic sets no cookies; it also keeps no client-side visitor identifier at all, because it does not need to count unique visitors. Nothing is written to localStorage. The script sends up to two small performance beacons per pageview, with no sampling.

• How does data retention compare?

  Pirsch wins this one outright: unlimited retention on every plan, which is rare at its price. Pulsetic keeps RUM analytics for 3 months on Free, 1 year on Solo and Team and 5 years on Organization, alongside your uptime history. For most performance work recent percentiles matter more than old ones, but if you need years of raw analytics, Pirsch has the stronger offer.

• When should I switch from Pirsch to Pulsetic?

  When the questions you are asking change: you care less about channels and campaigns and more about why the website felt slow, whether Core Web Vitals pass, and who tells you when it goes down. Pulsetic answers those from its free plan, includes status pages, and costs $9 for the same 10,000 pageviews. If you need both sets of answers, the two scripts coexist happily.