Statflow — Feature Roadmap

Last updated: May 2026
Strategy: Ship a production-quality, privacy-first analytics platform in three milestones — each one independently valuable and deployable, each one obsoleting a competitor.

Guiding Principles

Every milestone delivers a shippable, coherent product. Jalon 1 alone replaces Plausible. Jalons 1+2 replace GA4. All three replace the GA4 + Clarity + PostHog combination.
Behavioral analytics are never behind a paywall. The full feature set is always free in the self-hosted tier, always.
Privacy is structurally enforced, not a checkbox. Anonymization happens in the ingestion layer before any write. No raw IPs, no fingerprints, no cross-site tracking.
Self-hosting must be one command. Complexity is our enemy for adoption. Every architectural decision that increases ops burden requires explicit justification.
Open core, not open bait. AGPL-3.0 for the entire platform. Enterprise features (SSO, embeddable dashboards, advanced RBAC) are in the same repo, same license — not a commercial tier.

Milestone Map

Jalon 1 ─── Plausible parity        → Cookieless audience measurement, done right
Jalon 2 ─── GA4 parity              → Full event model, goals, funnels, retention
Jalon 3 ─── Beyond GA4              → Behavioral layer, integrations, e-commerce

Jalon 1 — Plausible Parity

Theme: "The privacy-first Google Analytics replacement that works without a consent banner."
Target users: Web publishers, indie developers, small SaaS teams, privacy-conscious businesses.
Definition of done: A team currently on Plausible (or considering it) can migrate to Statflow self-hosted with zero loss of features and a meaningful gain in data ownership.

Core Tracking Infrastructure

#	Feature	Priority	Notes
1.1	Cookieless unique visitor counting (IP + UA daily-rotating salt, in-memory only — never persisted)	Critical	The privacy guarantee is structural. Implement per the Plausible architecture.
1.2	Tracking script < 2 KB (minified + gzip)	Critical	Performance is a feature. Adhere to this as a hard constraint in CI.
1.3	Pageview event ingestion (endpoint, schema, batching)	Critical	Single-tenant and multi-tenant ingestion paths from day one.
1.4	Bot and spider filtering (IP reputation list + UA pattern matching)	High	Prevents artificial inflation of metrics.
1.5	Referrer chain normalization (strip tracking params, group search engines)	High	Referrer data is often noisy; consistent normalization is essential.
1.6	Campaign source attribution via UTM parameters (utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_content, utm_term)	High	Required for any marketing team to adopt Statflow.

Dashboard — Audience Metrics

#	Feature	Priority	Notes
1.7	Real-time visitor count (last 5 minutes, active pages)	Critical	Trust-building feature; users expect it on day one.
1.8	Visitors / unique visitors / pageviews / sessions	Critical	Primary KPIs on every dashboard.
1.9	Bounce rate and average session duration	Critical
1.10	Traffic sources report (referrers, search engines, UTM campaigns, direct, social)	Critical
1.11	Top pages report (with entry/exit breakdown)	Critical
1.12	Devices report (device type, OS, browser)	High
1.13	Geographic report (country, region, city)	High	Use IP-to-geo without storing the IP.
1.14	Flexible date ranges (last 7/30/90/12 months, custom picker, comparison periods)	Critical
1.15	Aggregated multi-site dashboard	High	Essential for agencies and operators managing multiple properties.

Privacy Architecture

#	Feature	Priority	Notes
1.16	No PII write path — anonymization at ingestion boundary before any database write	Critical	Non-negotiable design constraint. Documented in ADR.
1.17	GDPR/CCPA/PECR compliance mode on by default	Critical	No consent banner required for EU deployments in default mode.
1.18	Data residency: user chooses storage location at install time	High
1.19	Data deletion API (right to erasure — no-op for cookieless as no personal data exists; document this clearly)	Medium

Self-Hosting & Operations

#	Feature	Priority	Notes
1.20	Single `docker compose up` installation (ingestion service + ClickHouse + UI)	Critical	Must work on a $6/month VPS. Document this explicitly in README.
1.21	Built-in reverse proxy / anti-adblock first-party endpoint (proxied under site's own domain)	High	Increases data accuracy by 15–25% in typical European markets.
1.22	Environment-variable-based configuration (no config file editing required for basic setup)	High
1.23	Automatic HTTPS via Caddy integration	Medium	Reduces friction for non-technical operators.
1.24	Basic admin UI: add/remove sites, regenerate tracking keys	High

Sharing & Transparency

#	Feature	Priority	Notes
1.25	Public dashboard mode (anyone with the URL can view)	High	Strong adoption driver; open-source projects and indie devs love this.
1.26	Password-protected shareable dashboard link	Medium	Agency use case.
1.27	Embeddable iframe for public stats widget	Low	Nice-to-have for portfolio pages and open-source project READMEs.

Jalon 1 — Acceptance Criteria

A Plausible self-hosted user can export their data and have equivalent reports in Statflow within one hour.
Tracking script scores < 2 KB over the wire.
No request to a tracking endpoint stores a raw IP address or any hash that persists beyond the current UTC day.
The platform passes a GDPR technical audit (no cookies, no PII, no cross-session linking).
Full installation from docker compose up to first pageview in < 15 minutes on a clean VPS.

Jalon 2 — GA4 Parity

Theme: "Everything Google Analytics 4 offers, on your infrastructure, without the privacy compromise."
Target users: Growth and marketing teams, SaaS product managers, data analysts who currently use GA4 but are frustrated by consent loss, data opacity, or compliance risk.
Definition of done: A team currently on GA4 can run Statflow alongside for 30 days, see equivalent or superior reporting, and feel confident removing GA4.

All Jalon 1 features are prerequisites.

Event Model & Custom Tracking

#	Feature	Priority	Notes
2.1	Custom event API (name + arbitrary property map)	Critical	The foundation of all product analytics.
2.2	Autocapture SDK (clicks, form submissions, outbound links, JS errors, scroll depth — zero config)	Critical	Match PostHog's zero-instrumentation experience.
2.3	Custom dimensions and metrics (up to 50 of each per site)	High	Required for business-specific reporting.
2.4	Event deduplication and idempotency guarantees	High	Data quality is trust.
2.5	Server-side event ingestion endpoint (for server-to-server tracking, immune to adblock)	High
2.6	Enhanced measurement (automatic scroll, outbound click, file download, 404 tracking)	Medium

Goals & Conversions

#	Feature	Priority
2.7	Goal definition UI (URL-based, event-based, duration-based, pages/session-based)	Critical
2.8	Conversion rate tracking per goal	Critical
2.9	Revenue attribution to goals (custom event revenue property)	High
2.10	Goal-based filtering across all reports	High

Funnel Analysis

#	Feature	Priority	Notes
2.11	Multi-step funnel builder (URL steps, event steps, or mixed; up to 16 steps)	Critical	Exceeds Plausible's 8-step limit.
2.12	Funnel conversion rates per step with drop-off visualization	Critical
2.13	Funnel segmentation by dimension (source, device, country, custom property)	High
2.14	Funnel time-to-convert histogram	Medium

Segments & Filters

#	Feature	Priority
2.15	Saved segments (reusable filter sets)	High
2.16	Comparison segments (A vs. B on the same chart)	High
2.17	Filter by any event property, UTM field, dimension, device, or geography	Critical
2.18	Cross-report filter persistence (apply a segment once, see it everywhere)	High

Retention & Cohort Analysis

#	Feature	Priority	Notes
2.19	Retention matrix (N-day, N-week, N-month return rate)	High	Cookieless retention requires a consistent anonymous identifier scoped to the session sequence — design this carefully.
2.20	Cohort analysis by acquisition date, first event, or first campaign	High
2.21	Lifecycle segmentation (new, returning, at-risk, churned visitors)	Medium

User Journeys & Path Analysis

#	Feature	Priority
2.22	Forward path exploration (from entry page: where did users go next?)	High
2.23	Backward path exploration (before conversion: what path did users take?)	High
2.24	Sankey-style flow visualization	Medium
2.25	Top exit pages per funnel step	High

Campaign & Attribution

#	Feature	Priority
2.26	UTM campaign dashboard with conversion attribution	High
2.27	First-touch / last-touch / linear attribution models	Medium
2.28	Referral chain report (multi-hop source tracking within a session)	Medium

Multi-User & Access Control

#	Feature	Priority	Notes
2.29	User accounts (email + password, invite-based)	Critical	Required for any team adoption.
2.30	Role-based access: Owner, Admin, Editor, Viewer	High
2.31	Per-site access grants	High
2.32	API key management per user	High
2.33	Audit log of admin actions	Medium

Data Access & Integrations

#	Feature	Priority
2.34	Stats REST API (replicate Plausible's Stats API surface, add custom event queries)	High
2.35	Webhooks (event triggers: goal achieved, anomaly detected, threshold crossed)	Medium
2.36	Google Search Console integration (overlay organic search queries on top pages)	Medium
2.37	CSV export for any report	High

Jalon 2 — Acceptance Criteria

A GA4 event schema (gtag.js custom events + conversions) can be migrated to Statflow's event API with a documented migration guide.
Funnel and retention reports produce results consistent with GA4 Explorations for the same dataset, within statistical noise.
Multi-user roles enforce least-privilege — a Viewer cannot modify goals, access the API, or export raw data unless granted explicitly.
Stats API passes an integration test suite covering all core report endpoints.

Jalon 3 — Beyond GA4

Theme: "The last analytics tool you'll ever need — audience, behavioral, and business intelligence in one open platform."
Target users: Teams that currently pay for GA4 + Clarity + PostHog + a BI tool. Statflow collapses all four into one self-hosted, privacy-preserving platform.
Definition of done: A team can retire all four external analytics tools and replace them entirely with Statflow.

All Jalon 1 and 2 features are prerequisites.

Behavioral Analytics — Heatmaps

#	Feature	Priority	Notes
3.1	Click maps (aggregated click density over DOM snapshot)	Critical	Core behavioral insight. Must work without storing personal data.
3.2	Scroll depth maps (fold visibility by percentage of users)	Critical
3.3	Move / hover maps (mouse movement trajectory aggregation)	Medium
3.4	Rage-click and dead-click detection	High	Match Clarity's flagship UX frustration signals.
3.5	Mobile vs. desktop heatmap views	High
3.6	Heatmap filtered by segment (funnel step, device, source)	High	This is the key differentiator vs. Clarity — behavioral data linked to analytical context.
3.7	Heatmap history: compare two time periods side by side	Medium

Behavioral Analytics — Session Journeys

#	Feature	Priority	Notes
3.8	Session replay with automatic PII masking (input fields, credit card numbers)	High	Privacy-preserving: mask by default, allow explicit un-masking per element class.
3.9	Session filtering by funnel step, goal, segment, or rage-click signal	High	Enables qualitative investigation of quantitative anomalies.
3.10	Session tagging and annotation	Medium
3.11	Linked heatmap ↔ session replay (click on a heatmap hotspot, see sessions that generated it)	High	The unified data model makes this possible. No competitor does this cleanly.
3.12	AI-assisted session summary (key moments, detected frustration signals, page flow summary)	Medium	Reduces review time from hours to minutes.

Data API & Exports

#	Feature	Priority	Notes
3.13	Full raw event export (JSON, CSV, Parquet)	High	Data ownership means data portability.
3.14	ClickHouse direct query access for self-hosted deployments (document the schema)	High	Power users who want direct SQL access should have it without an abstraction layer.
3.15	Scheduled report exports (daily/weekly/monthly email digests)	High	Replaces GA4's scheduled email reports.
3.16	Streaming export via webhook (per-event, near-real-time)	Medium	ETL / data warehouse integration use case.
3.17	Embeddable dashboard widgets (signed iframes, configurable per site)	High	Agency / SaaS product use case.

Alerting & Monitoring

#	Feature	Priority
3.18	Anomaly detection alerts (traffic spike, goal conversion drop, error rate spike)	High
3.19	Threshold-based alerts (e.g., "alert me when daily visitors < 500")	High
3.20	Alert delivery via email, Slack webhook, or custom webhook	Medium
3.21	Site uptime / script availability monitoring	Low

E-commerce & Revenue

#	Feature	Priority	Notes
3.22	Order / transaction event schema (order_id, revenue, tax, shipping, items)	High
3.23	Revenue dashboard (total revenue, average order value, revenue per source)	High
3.24	Product performance report (impressions, add-to-cart rate, purchase rate per SKU)	Medium
3.25	Customer lifetime value (CLV) approximation by cohort	Medium	Requires consistent anonymous ID over time — design for cookieless LTV carefully.
3.26	Checkout funnel pre-built template	High

GDPR & Privacy Tooling

#	Feature	Priority	Notes
3.27	Integrated consent mode: if a site chooses to use cookies/consent, Statflow degrades gracefully and tracks consented users separately from anonymous sessions	High	Some clients will run in a hybrid mode — support it without judgment.
3.28	Data processing agreement (DPA) generator (self-hosted operators need this for their own clients)	Medium
3.29	Automated data retention policies (delete events older than N days per site, configurable)	High
3.30	IP exclusion list (self-hosted operators can exclude their own office IPs)	Medium
3.31	Visitor opt-out endpoint (respects the Plausible opt-out standard via localStorage flag)	High

Enterprise & Extensibility

#	Feature	Priority	Notes
3.32	SSO / SAML 2.0 support	Medium	Enterprise deployments require this.
3.33	SCIM user provisioning	Low
3.34	Plugin / integration SDK (documented event ingestion hook + UI extension points)	Medium	Enable community integrations (WordPress, Shopify, Next.js, etc.).
3.35	White-label mode (custom logo, color scheme, custom domain for embedded dashboards)	Medium	Agency reseller use case.

Jalon 3 — Acceptance Criteria

Heatmap data collection adds < 3 KB to the tracking script with lazy loading.
Session replay never records a raw password field, payment field, or email field by default.
A heatmap filter by funnel segment returns results in < 3 seconds at 10 M events on a single-node deployment.
Anomaly detection generates zero false-positive alerts in a 7-day test on a property with stable traffic.
The data export pipeline produces a Parquet file of 1 year of events in < 10 minutes on commodity hardware.

Cross-Cutting Concerns (All Milestones)

These are not tied to a single milestone — they run through every sprint.

Area	Requirement
Performance	All dashboard queries < 1 second at 10 M events on a single ClickHouse node
Test coverage	Unit + integration tests > 80% on ingestion and query layers
Accessibility	Dashboard WCAG 2.1 AA compliant
Documentation	Every public API endpoint documented with examples; self-hosting guide updated on every release
Changelog	Public changelog entry for every release, categorized by user impact
Security	Dependency audit on every CI run; OWASP Top 10 checklist per milestone
Upgrade path	Zero-downtime ClickHouse schema migrations via versioned migration runner
SDK coverage	JavaScript (vanilla + npm), TypeScript, React, Next.js server components, Python, Go, PHP adapters

Milestone Timeline (Indicative)

Milestone	Scope	Estimated effort	Marker
Jalon 1	Features 1.1 – 1.27	~4 months (small core team)	First public release / v1.0
Jalon 2	Features 2.1 – 2.37	~5 months	v2.0 — GA4 parity
Jalon 3	Features 3.1 – 3.35	~6 months	v3.0 — full platform

Timelines assume a core team of 3–4 engineers. Community contributions can accelerate Jalon 3 significantly once the platform has early adopters from Jalons 1 and 2.

Deprioritized / Out of Scope (For Now)

The following were considered and deliberately deferred:

A/B testing and feature flags — PostHog owns this space; integrating with PostHog or Unleash via a documented adapter is a better use of resources than building from scratch.
LLM / AI-native analytics — Valuable but requires significant data volumes to be meaningful. Revisit after Jalon 3 when the user base is large enough.
Mobile SDK (iOS, Android) — Important long-term; requires a separate bounded context and SDK surface. Roadmap candidate for Jalon 4.
CDP / user identity stitching — Conflicts with the privacy model. Requires a deliberate design decision and community discussion before implementation.

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