+++
title = "Stepping down from Fathom"
date = 2019-03-18
+++

<div class="message">
	<strong>Update (Mar 2021):</strong> After my departure, the open-source version of Fathom was discontinued. I've since started <a href="https://www.kokoanalytics.com/">Koko Analytics</a> as an open-source alternative.
</div>


I have an announcement to make. Less than a year ago, Paul Jarvis and I [started working on Fathom](/blog/2018/reviving-ana-as-fathom/) (simple and transparent website analytics).

We managed to make a lot of progress during our first year and I'm more than a little proud of what Fathom is today. I'm running it on most of my sites and I'd say it's very much a viable alternative for Google Analytics for a lot of websites already.

![Fathom screenshot](/media/2019/fathom-screenshot.png)

The open-source community around Fathom is very much alive and kicking. The GitHub repository for Fathom currently boosts over 5.000 GitHub stars and Fathom has been a [trending Go project](https://github.com/trending/go) for pretty much every week over the last year!

And the Docker image has been pulled over a million times, even though Fathom is already a single static binary that is super easy to deploy to your infrastructure of choice. There's even a [one-click installer if you're on DigitalOcean](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KE0NKODYEAM).

The software we built proved very effective in terms of performance. A single $5 VPS can easily handle tens of millions of pageviews per month, as proved by some of the bigger customers on Fathom's PRO plans.

### Stepping down

To think that Fathom would be so well received and grow so rapidly during its first year is amazing and I'm super proud to have been a part of that.

Have been, because going forward, I will not be actively involved with Fathom anymore. **Fathom itself is not going anywhere though.** Paul is now joined by Jack Ellis with whom he will be continuing the project. Having seen them work together during the handover phase, I completely trust in their abilities to keep making Fathom better.

I am a little sad to leave Fathom behind but juggling its responsibilities with being a newbie dad and running [Mailchimp for WordPress](https://www.mc4wp.com/) while also wanting to spend less time behind a computer proved way harder than anticipated.

At the same time, I'm stoked to see [their plans](https://trello.com/b/x2aBwH2J/fathom-roadmap) unfold over the next few months. I'm confident they will take good care of what we managed to build over the past year.
