Productivity - Setup Guide

How to set up Plausible

Otto's honest, no-fluff walkthrough. Every step here is what we'd actually do if we were sitting at your keyboard. Real gotchas first, real steps second, and a link to the personalized version at the bottom.

Read these before you start

• Uses a rolling 30-day retention for the free trial only; paid retention is unlimited but data is aggregate, so you cannot rehydrate individual sessions after the fact.
• Plausible does NOT block itself from counting your own visits by default. You either add ?plausible_ignore=true to your URL or install the browser extension. Otherwise agencies inflate their own numbers accidentally.
• Ad blockers block Plausible less than they block GA4, but they still block it. Some users deploy Plausible via a proxy (documented, free) to route through their own domain and bypass blockers [source: plausible.io/docs/proxy].
• No cross-domain tracking in the standard setup. Users who move across brand.com and app.brand.com show as two separate visitors.
• Funnels and revenue tracking are on the Business tier, not Growth. If you need those, the price jumps.

The 7-step setup

1. 1

   Create your Plausible account

   Sign up at the link below. Card required for the paid tier - most plans include a trial period; check the pricing section on this page first so you know what you're committing to.

   Open Plausible signup
2. 2

   Complete the initial onboarding

   Skip the marketing questionnaires when you can. Fill only the fields that actually configure the product - name, timezone, your first workspace or project. If Plausible pushes you into a setup wizard, take it - it usually accelerates the first productive session.

3. 3

   Connect your existing tools

   Wire Plausible into the rest of your stack. The integrations that most people set up first: Google Search Console (import search terms), WordPress, Ghost, Webflow, Wix (script paste), Zapier, Slack (goal alerts), Notion (embed dashboards). No native ad-platform integrations, which is intentional; Plausible does not want to be a marketing attribution tool.. Do these before importing data - clean integration first, data second.

4. 4

   Import your existing data (only what you'll actually use)

   Do NOT bulk-import everything. Import the last 30 days of the ONE workflow you're moving over first. Prove it works. Then import more. Big-bang migrations are how Plausible deployments die in month 3.

5. 5

   Set up your first real workflow

   Pick the single most-frequent task you'll do in Plausible - the daily-driver workflow. Configure it end-to-end. Use it live for a week. Do not touch any other feature yet. Adoption failure comes from teams trying to use everything on day one instead of the one thing that actually pays.

6. 6

   Add your team (if applicable) and set access

   Once your solo workflow works, invite one teammate at a time. Watch them use it. The friction points you missed are the ones they hit. Fix those before scaling to more users. Never invite 20 people at once - you'll get 20 confused people and 0 useful feedback.

7. 7

   Compound with the right pairings

   Recommend for solo founders, small teams, content sites, and any client explicitly nervous about privacy or GA4 complexity. Do not recommend when the client already runs Google Ads heavily; GA4's Ads integration is too valuable. Pair with Microsoft Clarity for session replay if the client wants qualitative behavior on top.