Import from Plausible

You can bring your history from Plausible into Tidemark, so your graph and reports don't start from zero. You export your data from Plausible as a zip file and upload it in Tidemark's site settings. Everything is read in your browser and sent to Tidemark in small batches, so large exports work too.

Step 1: Export from Plausible

  1. In Plausible, open the site and go to Settings → Imports & exports.
  2. Under Export data, click Prepare download. For a site with a lot of history this can take up to about 20 minutes, and you can leave the page and come back.
  3. When it is ready, download the .zip  file. Plausible keeps it for 7 days.

Step 2: Import into Tidemark

  1. Add the site to Tidemark if you haven't yet, using the same domain, and set its reporting timezone to match Plausible's (Settings → General). Dates in the export follow the timezone the site had in Plausible.
  2. Go to the site's Settings → General and find Import from Plausible.
  3. Click Choose the .zip file and pick the file you downloaded. Keep the tab open until it says the import has finished. A 200 MB export takes a few minutes.

Imported numbers take room in your database. A very large export, such as 3.5 years of a busy site with a 215 MB zip, added roughly 330 MB to a SQLite database, so check you have space first. Smaller sites add very little.

You need to be an owner or admin of the site. The file is not uploaded as a whole: your browser reads it and sends only the numbers Tidemark needs.

What is imported

  • Daily totals: visitors, visits, pageviews, bounce rate and visit duration.
  • Sources: channels, sources, referrers and UTM campaign fields.
  • Pages: top pages, entry pages and exit pages.
  • Locations: countries and regions.
  • Devices: device types, browsers and operating systems.
  • Custom events: counted in the Goals report for goals with the same event name. Create a goal with the event's name in Settings → Goals to see them.

What is not imported

  • Cities, because Plausible exports them as numeric ids.
  • Custom properties, scroll depth and time on page.
  • Goal definitions, funnels and shared links. Set these up again in Tidemark.
  • Browser and operating system versions. Tidemark reports each browser and system as a whole.

How imported data appears

Imported numbers are daily totals, so they behave a little differently from data Tidemark collected itself:

  • They are included in the top stats, the graph and the reports for periods made of whole days. They don't appear in hourly views such as Today.
  • They are left out while a filter is applied, because the export doesn't say how the numbers relate to each other (for example, which pages the visitors from one country looked at). A note on the dashboard tells you when this is the case.
  • Visitors are added up day by day. Someone who visited on two different days counts as two visitors across a longer period, the same way Plausible's own numbers work.

Days Tidemark already has

Tidemark only imports days before the first day it recorded a visit for the site, so nothing is counted twice. If you ran Tidemark and Plausible side by side, the days when both were running come from Tidemark. Rows that were left out for this reason are counted in the message you see when the import finishes.

Plan limits on Tidemark Cloud

Imported days older than your plan keeps history are skipped: six months on Free and five years on Pro. See Plans and limits. Upgrading and importing again brings in the older days.

Importing again or removing it

Importing again replaces the earlier import, so it is safe to repeat if something was interrupted. To remove imported data, use Remove imported data in the same settings section. This never touches what Tidemark collected itself. Resetting a site's statistics or deleting the site removes imported data too.

Troubleshooting

  • "This does not look like a zip file". Choose the .zip  that Plausible prepared. If your browser unpacked it automatically, zip the folder again or download it with a different browser.
  • "This zip has no imported_visitors.csv". The file is not a Plausible export. Make sure you exported from Settings → Imports & exports, not from the dashboard's CSV buttons.
  • The import stopped part way. Run it again. It starts from scratch each time.
  • The totals look different from Plausible's. Check that the reporting timezone matches, and remember that visitors are added up day by day.

Moving between Tidemark installs works differently: see Moving between installs.