How to Connect Plausible Analytics to Data Studio

We are big fans of Plausible Analytics as a simple, privacy-focused alternative to Google Analytics. It’s the only analytics tool we run on the Epilocal site, and we couldn’t be more happy with it.

But we’re always looking at how we can extend the tools we work with and make them better, and one thing that Plausible Analytics could use is more reporting options. Thankfully, it has a very comprehensive API that lets us connect it to Google Data Studio. And once we’ve gotten our Plausible Analytics data in Data Studio, we have a wide variety of data visualization options at our disposal that we can use for creating customized reports.

So let’s see step-by-step how we can do that - here’s how to connect Plausible Analytics to Google Data Studio.

Data Studio Connectors

In order to connect Plausible Analytics to Data Studio, we are going to use a custom connector. Google Data Studio has built-in integrations to Google data sources like Google Analytics which allows the data to automatically flow into Data Studio.

To get data from sources that aren’t directly integrated into Data Studio, Google allows 3rd parties to build custom data connectors. There are lots of different connectors our there for many different data sources, including one that we’ve built for Mailchimp. You can find them all here in Google’s Data Studio connector gallery:

But up to recently, no one had built one for Plausible Analytics - so we decided to do it.

Our connector is free to try. You can preview it by linking one Plausible Analytics site for 24 hours without entering any credit card details. You can then link up to 3 sites on our Basic plan and up to 50 with our Pro plan. Both are priced affordably for small businesses and come with a 14 day free trial and a 30 day money back guarantee.

Here’s how you can set up everything and get Plausible Analytics data flowing into Data Studio in no time.

Add the Connector as a Data Source

We will start by opening up Data Studio and adding a new Data Source:

This will bring up the connector gallery, where you can find the Plausible Analytics connector by Epilocal:

Click on the connector and you will be prompted to configure it.

Basic Connector Configuration

When you first link the connector, you will be prompted to authorize your Google account - this gives the connector permission to access your Data Studio account. (Be sure to pick the account that you use Data Studio with)

Next, if you are trying the connector for the first time and don’t have a subscription yet, you will be prompted for a Username and Token:

The username is simply the name of any of your Plausible Analytics sites - enter the name of the site you want to link to Data Studio in the format mysite.com. (later, we will see how you can link multiple sites if you have a subscription)

For the token, you will need to create a Plausible Analytics API Key. To do this, you should open up your Plausible Analytics dashboard and go to Settings. Then scroll down to API Keys and click New API Key:

Then copy the API Key and paste it into Data Studio where it asks for token. You can then give the API Key a name that you will remember and press Continue:

After you’ve done that, you should see a blue Connect button in the upper right hand corner of Data Studio.

Start Using Plausible Analytics Data in Data Studio

Now you are all connected. If you check the box “Use report template for new reports”, you can use the free starter template we created to help you get started:

Our free template gives you a lot of the same metrics that you see on the default Plausible Analytics dashboard so you can get a feel for things before you start customizing reports:

Link Multiple Plausible Analytics Sites

The above setup will get you started with our free 24 hour preview for one site. But once you’ve signed up a free trial for one of our subscriptions, you can link multiple Plausible Analytics sites at one time. (3 sites for our Basic plan and up to 50 sites for our Pro plan)

First, go to the Plausible Analytics Data Studio Connector product page to create your Epilocal account and start your free-trial. Once you’ve done this, login to your Epilocal account and scroll down to Manage Subscriptions.

Here you should see your Plausible Analytics Data Studio Connector subscription with several options:

Before linking our Plausible Sites, let’s first go to Manage Users. By default, the connector will give access to whichever email you created your Epilocal account with. If this is different from the email account you use with Data Studio, you should change that:

(Note: if you have a Pro subscription you can give access to multiple users at once)

With that out of the way, we can link our Plausible sites by going to Manage Plausible Analytics Sites.

Here we will click on Link Plausible Analytics.

The first time we set this up we will enter the Plausible Analytics API Key we created before. We will also enter one of our Plausible Analytics Sites. (using the format mysite.com)

If everything was linked with no problem, we will now see our first site listed with the option to link more:

Then all we need to do is enter the Site ID for each of the additional sites that we want to link:

And if it is successful, you will see it added to the list:

Now we are ready to use the data from both of our connected sites in Data Studio. All we need to do is go back to the Configuration screen of Data Studio and our linked sites will automatically be populated in the dropdown menu Plausible Sites:

Now, we just choose which site we want to use in Data Studio at that time and everything else works the same as before.

Wrapping Up

That’s all there is to it. We hope that this has been a helpful introduction to what you can do with Plausible Analytics in Data Studio by using our connector.

If you have any questions or issues, feel free to drop us a note on our Contact Us page.