Well, that’s something I would call a solution, not a workaround 
My Workaround:
I’m using https://visualping.io/ to survey changes for element “Nummber of users”:
Visualping instruction “Can I monitor a password protected page?” was useful for me to find out how that works for a PW protected page.
To avoid misunderstanding: I do not check the higlighted “37 users”, but right from Bielefeld & Buß Logo “Users (37)”