More than 28 Million websites use Google Analytics - representing 84% of all websites that utilize traffic analytics solutions. That's a tough number, right?
Google Analytics is the most popular web analytics tool, that's for sure. But it is not the only tool out there. In the last couple of years, people started to complain about the users' lack of privacy, prompting businesses to explore alternative solutions. Also, other competitors started to offer new features that are being embraced by enterprises.
This article explores the role of Google Analytics alternatives and showcases the best 10+ alternative tools that are used by companies.
Why use a Google Analytics alternative?
Some of the reasons for using an alternative to Google Analytics are:
- User Privacy Issues - As we all already know, Google Analytics uses cookies that can transmit personal information such as name, log in details, IP address, saved payment method, and more to collect data. Then, it shares the data with thirty-party tools. This way, some of the user's personal details can end up with advertisers without consumers' direct knowledge or consent. This use of user's data for other purposes seems kind of intrusive, right?
- Hard to use - Google Analytics is the most popular web analytics tool and also the most difficult to learn. Wait to see the new version, which is even harder to master.
- Slow to Load - There are usually two issues with Google Analytics: the interface itself is not responding quickly, or the data is not updating fast enough. Google Analytics is slow because it is built with heavy Javascript codes.
Other reasons can refer to this tool's features. However, choosing an alternative should be based on your business needs.
To make your research work easier, we've compiled a list of the best Google Analytics alternatives available on the market. Read about them and then make a list of the features that are a must for your website. You are one step away from the choice.
Google Analytics Alternatives Examples
1. Nepcha Analytics
Nepcha is a powerful tool designed for companies and startups that helps gain valuable insights into the website's traffic without compromising on user privacy or violating regulations like GDPR. Besides being a privacy-focused Google Analytics alternative, Nepcha is a user-friendly analytics solution that will help you understand your users' behavior in no time.
Main Features:
- Lightweight (< 2 KB) and fast web analytics
- Requires no use of cookies - the data is stored in individual data-centers in Europe or the USA
- Easy to set up (it requires just one line of code) and use
- Privacy-focused (no personal data is collected)
- Real-time and historical reporting
Pricing:
- Free Trial: Up to 10,000 views/month
- Paid Plan: begins at $8 per month
2. Simple Analytics
Simple Analytics is a great Google Analytics alternative that provides an overview of all your website's essential metrics in a single dashboard. As the name suggests, this tool is very easy to use, intuitive, and it provides you with a full picture of your website analytics by only collecting the bare minimum amount of data needed.
Main Features:
- Privacy-focused analytics - No tracking of personal data
- Real-time and historical reporting
- Visualization of the referral page
- Easy to set up and understand - simple one-page dashboard
- Customizable dashboards and reports
Pricing:
- Free Trial: 14 days
- Paid Plan: begins at $9 per month (depending on the datapoints per month needed)
3. Plausible
Plausible enables you to gain valuable insights into your website performance while promoting trust and transparency. It is a lightweight and open-source web analytics tool. It's built to protect your users' privacy while giving you the meaningful analytics data you need. It complies with GDPR, CCPA, or PECR requirements.
Main Features:
- Lightweight (< 1 KB)
- No tracking of personal data
- Easy to set up (open-source) and understand
- Real-time and historical reporting
- Google Search Console integration
Pricing:
- Free Trial: 30-day unlimited
- Paid Plan: begins at $9 per month (depending on your site's monthly page views)
4. Clicky
Clicky is an analytics tool that displays results immediately, in real-time, and will help you monitor, analyze, and react to your website's traffic. What is great about this tool is that it provides heatmap tracking, which allows you to visualize the user's journey on your site. Also, it is known as one of the best Google Analytics alternatives due to its similar metrics.
Main Features:
- Real-time data
- Heatmaps and behavior analysis
- Customizable dashboards and reports
- Integrations with other tools
- Raw data export
Pricing:
- Free Trial: 3,000 Daily page views for 1 website
- Paid Plan: begins at $9.99 per month (depending on the number of Daily page views and the number of websites tracked)
5. Matomo
Matomo (formerly called Piwik)is another great Google Analytics alternative that includes many of the advanced features you'd expect in an analytics platform. Matomo is a software and needs to be installed on its own server to work. Therefore, any data that is collected about a person's behavior on our website never leaves the server and is not sold to a 3rd party.
Main Features:
- Open-source analytics tool
- Real-time data
- E-commerce tracking and analysis
- User behavior tracking and engagement metrics
- Historical reporting and video analytics
Pricing:
- Free Trial: hosted on your servers
- Paid Plan: $19/month (Hosted on Matomo servers)
6. Piwik PRO
Piwik PRO is a user-friendly analytics tool that provides accurate data and privacy features. This platform comes with a great customer care. From implementation and onboarding, through product training, to analytics consulting and custom integrations – Piwik PRO provides a personal approach at every step of your journey.
Main Features:
- Easy and straightforward interface
- Real-time and historical reporting
- Privacy features
- Raw data export
- User behavior tracking and engagement metrics
- Requires no development support
Pricing:
- Free Trial: 500,000 monthly actions
- Paid Plan: Customizable - requires getting a quote
7. Woopra
Woopra is a cloud-based customer analytics solution that helps you to study data on the behavior of your users' live. The way it works is similar to Google Analytics, where a tracking code is placed on a website that collects information about all visitors and then reports through the dashboard.
Main features:
- Real-time website analytics
- Customer journey tracking and engagement metrics
- Funnel analysis and predictive analytics
- 50+ Integrations with other tools
Pricing:
- Free Trial: 500,000 monthly actions
- Paid Plan: starts from $999/month
8. Fathom Analytics
Fathom Analytics is one of the best privacy-focused Google Analytics alternatives. It provides a simple yet powerful dashboard with all of the important data you need. The data is also more accurate because ad-blockers can't thwart its tracking.
Main Features:
- Provides a method for by-passing most ad blockers
- Single-page dashboard
- Simple and easy to use
- No need for cookie banners
Pricing:
- Free Trial: 30 days
- Paid Plan: starts from $14/month
9. Smartlook
Smartlook combines quantitative with qualitative analytics, giving you access to powerful insights about your audience. Using this tool, you can see what your customers do on your website, which is like viewing your business from their point of view.
Main Features:
- User's session recording (with filtering capabilities)
- Heatmaps and behavior analysis
- Mobile app heatmap tool
- 50+ Apps Integration
- It uses cookies, but it does not share the data with third party tools
Pricing:
- Free Trial: 3,000 monthly sessions
- Paid Plan: starts from $55/month
10. Heap
Using Heap, you can get the insights you need to build a better holistic experience across your product, site, and mobile app. Once your events and analyses are set up it's really easy to track them, and the UI is nice and simple.
Main Features:
- Eliminate blind spots
- Integrated Session Replay
- Integration with other tools
- It uses cookies, but it does not share the data with third party tools
Pricing:
- Free Trial: up to 10k sessions/month
- Paid Plan: starts from $3,600/ yearly
11. Mixpanel
Mixpanes comes with powerful user reports to answer any question. One of the best things about Mixpanel is its ability to track and analyze user behavior on websites and mobile applications. It also offers a variety of tools for segmentation, engagement, and retention analysis, making it a powerful tool for gaining insights into user behavior.
Main Features:
- Funnel and retention analysis
- Event tracking
- Real-time data
- It uses cookies, but it does not share the data with third party tools
Pricing:
- Free Trial: 100,000 Monthly Tracked Users
- Paid Plan: starts from $25/month
12. GoSquared
With 15+ years of experience, GoSquared is an all-in-one solution, a one-stop shop for digital entrepreneurs to scale their businesses. The UI is amazing, and the support is highly appreciated awesome. Also, it comes with concise and clear documentation.
Main Features:
- Real-time data
- Smart Predictions
- One-click Timeframe Selector
- It uses cookies, but it does not share the data with third party tools
Pricing:
- Free Trial
Final Thoughts
Google Analytics is the most popular tool for web tracking, but it is not the only one. There are a lot of great tools that gained popularity due to user privacy issues, ease of use, and new features. The article above showcases 10+ examples of such tools - Google Alternatives. We hope it will help you make an informed decision about which alternative to use to monitor your website performance.
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