You know how important it is to track how many people are visiting your website. As well as seeing how someone is browsing your site. It gives you an idea of how well your marketing efforts are performing. That said, a lot of these website analytics tools can be hard to use.
Google Analytics has been a giant in the website stats space for what seems like forever. But it may not be the best choice for your website. With incomplete data issues, due to privacy. As well is it being a steep learning curve to use their dashboard. It’s difficult to get your head around.
Even though Google Analytics is the most used analytics tool. Sometimes getting the relevant metrics google analytics provides can be a challenge. There are many alternatives that you can try. Some free alternatives to Google Analytics exist, but you may end up paying for a service.
There are Google Analytics alternatives, that can help you monitor your website. Which ones can you use?
Alternatives to Google Analytics, Competitors and Full-blown Replacements
Matamo
Matomo, which used to be Piwik. Allows you to import historic Google Analytics data into its platform. And serves as a full-service web analytics tool.
Matomo allows you to create heatmaps. Run A/B test, create funnels, and set goals for your site. As well as having other conversion features.
Their tagline is “Ethical Analytics, Powerful Insights”. They promise 100% data ownership and user privacy protection.
You can even host Matomo on your own servers if you’re worried about sensitive data. They also offer cloud-based hosting on servers located in France.
There are also no data limits with Matomo.
There is a free trial with prices for Matomo. Starting at $19 a month for lite use and custom quotes for enterprise use.
Woopra
Woopra is a tool that provides information to product teams, marketing. Sales, and support teams as it tracks users throughout their experience on the site.
It has custom tracking capabilities and has more than 50 integrations. With products such as Salesforce, Google Ads, Google Drive, Hubspot, and Campaign Monitor.
It can also do real-time things like sending a message to a sales Slack channel right when a new user signs up.
There is a free trial and a free plan with more robust plans starting at $999 a month.
GoSquared
GoSquared provides analytics and a live chat to help boost sales. You can check the browsing activity that led a user to your site. And, if they give you their email address, see more of their social activity.
You can buy their Analytics or Live Chat services. Or combine them into their Suite package, with pricing starting at $79 monthly for the suite.
GoSquared also offers a Customer Data Hub and Automation for SaaS businesses. To use the software you have to install Javascript code on your site.
It has integrations with Salesforce, Slack, Zapier, Twitter, Drip, and more. Both the Analytics and Live Chat modules have a small free plan.
FoxMetrics
FoxMetrics stores your raw data in a “data warehouse” that you have access to. With the ability to generate reports via SQL.
With the ability to use SQL to access your data. You can create specific queries to give you the exact information you want. This means your not tied down to the usually offered reporting.
You can either use the FoxMetrics’ Javascript library. Or use a product called Segment to grab the data you need.
This product allows eCommerce companies to do all the usual things. Like track and segment customers, analyze cart abandonment. You can also optimize popups and customer site surveys.
They offer a two-week free trial with a monthly service starting at $450.
13 Best Google Analytics Alternatives for Powerful Data Gathering
Mixpanel
This is one of my favorite alternatives. I’ve used Mixpanel and a few projects and love its simplicity.
Mixpanel lets you dive deep into user behavior.
You can:
- “Nudge” users with messages based on real-time set behaviors.
- Analyze predictive data models to see which users are more likely to convert.
- Get notified when specific metrics change. With information about the users causing those changes.
There is a free package with the next-level package starting at $779 a year.
Heap
Heap is a tool that may be best summed up from a quote on its site from one of its users. “To me, Heap is to Product Managers what Google Analytics is to Marketers.”
As more of a product analytics tool. Heap’s designed to give data about products and how customers interact with them.
There is a free trial and a free limited-use plan with all other plans requiring a custom quote.
StatCounter
StatCounter is a web analytics tool that also can detect click fraud for paid ads. It also notifies you when a critical visitor returns to the site.
With this tool. You can watch the entire user journey. Identifying possible issues with navigation, site structure, and flow.
You can also look at how users are interacting with your content. They offer a 30-day free trial.
Chartbeat
Chartbeat is a “content intelligence platform” geared toward helping large sites. Who tend to get over 5 million monthly page views. Chartbeat helps with identifying their best readers. Then understand how they interact with your content.
It integrates with Facebook Instant Articles. And offers offsite social monitoring through Facebook’s CrowdTangle.
It has a video dashboard as well. Which lets you anything things like ad drop-off, engagement, play rate, etc.
Pricing starts at $7,000 a year and they offer a free 14-day trial.
Clicky
Clicky is a free web analytics platform that also offers a Pro version, with pricing starting at $9.99 per month.
They say that their bot detection is the best in the business. By helping to cut all the referral spam that can clog up data.
They also watch your site and alert you if it’s down. If you like old-school tools this might be a winner for you.
Some features (heatmaps and uptime monitoring) are not available to lower-level plans. Clicky also offers white-label analytics.
Leadfeeder
Leadfeeder integrates your marketing and sales data. Telling you what pages companies are looking at. It also has a CRM, and can even email you when your dream company visits your site.
It looks like a great tool to help generate leads. They have live webinars and lots of downloadable guides/ebooks. Showing you how to maximize the use of their product.
There is a free trial and even a free basic plan, with pricing for bigger plans starting at $53 a month.
Note: this product integrates with Google Analytics and uses that data so it’s not a replacement. It’s an enhancement that can help you hone in the desired data you need.
HubSpot Marketing Analytics
HubSpot offers CRM-powered marketing, which includes website analytics.
You’ll be able to view data on traffic sources, page performance, conversions, and more.
What’s more, everything ties back to contact records in your free CRM. Allowing you to track the complete customer lifecycle for any person in the database.
You can create custom reports and dashboards for the views that are most important to you and your team.
Gauges
Gauges is another great alternative to Google Analytics. Offering you a comprehensive insight into the traffic coming to your site.
It comes with attribution modeling capabilities. Allowing you to get customer journey insights, track campaign performance, and analyze revenue.
Its most interesting feature is its real-time data breakdowns. Which allows you to see data for specific locations without refreshing the dashboard.
W3counter
If you want to know the health of your site at a glance. W3counter provides detailed information about your website traffic on an attractive dashboard.
With this system, you can identify your most engaging pages. Understand more about your visitors, and track their path through your site.
Open Web Analytics
Open Web Analytics’ structure, layout, and functionality is very similar to Google’s.
There is an integrated heat map function. When a user clicks on the map. Website operators can see how users react and behave depending on the design of the landing page.
You can also define e-commerce goals. Allowing you to get specific statistics. So you can use the site conversion and user-defined results.
Open Web Analytics is available free of charge. With no restrictions on the number of data sets and the number of websites you want to test
Adobe Analytics
Adobe Analytics, which was originally known as “Omniture”. Is more than a classic analysis tool for websites.
It offers by far the most functions when it comes to the Google Analytics alternatives.
Besides web analysis. the Adobe solution also integrates social analytics. Personalization and testing, campaign management, advertising expenses optimization, and content management.
Despite there being so many features. The dashboard manages to remain easy to use and customize.
To find out how much this Google Analytics alternative would cost. You need to get in touch with them to request the prices.
Inspectlet
Inspectlet isn’t quite an exact alternative to Google Analytics. but it still proves to be interesting for many website operators.
The tool makes sure that the website visitor is the center of the analysis. Which enables you to see your website through the eyes of the user.
There are some advanced features with Inspectlet. Including detailed recordings of the movements on your website. Such as eye-tracking and scroll heat maps, as well as form analysis.
Also, A/B tests can also be used with this software.
Inspectlet is free up to 1,000 sessions and 1,000 A/B test views per month. They also offer various packages starting at approx. £30.
It’s more a case of additional software, rather than a replacement for Google’s analysis software. It can also be used together with other tools without any problems.
Smartlook
Smartlook is a user behavior tool recording visitors on websites. And in mobile apps and games.
Smartlook’s toolkit is combining advanced features of both quantitative and qualitative analytics. Thanks to filtering recordings exactly to a specific event. It is possible to use the tool for a high volume of visits.
Recently, multi-user workspace and REST API are part of their offering. Which makes it a viable solution even for large enterprise companies.
A free plan is available. Starter plan from $31/month
Optimizely
Optimizely is a robust platform that includes web testing and analytics. Along with the ability to personalize web experience for site visitors.
Optimizely also offers full-stack analytics: a similar platform tailored to product developers.
Marketo
Marketo is another robust marketing automation platform like HubSpot.
Marketo is best known for its extensive analytics capabilities not included in HubSpot.
Including predictive analytics about user content preferences across campaigns and channels. As well as the ROI of marketing endeavors based on tied revenue.
Simple Analytics
Simple Analytics whats to provide “simple, clean and friendly analytics”. While respecting people’s privacy.
The software only tracks these metrics:
- Pageviews.
- Referrers.
- Top pages.
- Screen sizes.
- Browsers.
- Countries.
There are three pricing tiers. The $9/month Starter plan, the $49/month Business plan, and the custom Enterprise plan.
Fathom Analytics
Fathom is another company that offers analytics software that respects people’s privacy.
It only tracks these metrics:
- Unique visitors.
- Pageviews.
- Average time on site.
- Bounce rate.
- Top pages.
- Top referrers.
- Country, Device type, Browser.
- User set Goals.
There are three pricing tiers. The $14/month Standard plan, the $44/month Business plan, and the $114/month Enterprise plan.
Hitsteps
Hitsteps offers real-time analytics with features. Such as heatmaps, page analysis, company profiles, profile visualizing, reports, and more.
There are five pricing tiers. The Free plan, the $4.99/month Starter plan, the $9.99/month Basic plan, the $21.99/month Pro plan, and the $49.99/month Ultimate plan:
This software is worth considering if you want something that goes beyond the basics. But is also an affordable replacement for Google analytics.
Kissmetrics
Kissmetrics offers powerful analytics and funnel-analysis software. That helps you better understand customer behavior and automate customer engagement.
Over 900 companies, including some well-known brands such as Unbounce, use Kissmetrics. They promote themselves as a more robust Google Analytics alternative
Pricing is available only by booking a demo on their website.
Plausible
Plausible, a lightweight and open-source analytics tool. The main differences with Google Analytics are:
- Transparent and open source analytics software. You can inspect their code on GitHub. With Plausible Analytics, you own and control all your website data.
- Compliant with privacy regulations. No cookiesand no personal data is collected when using Plausible.
- The Plausible analytics script weights only 1.4 KB. Which makes it 33x smaller than the Google Analytics Global Site Tag. This will help keep your pages loading fast.
There are three pricing tiers at Plausible. The $6/month Personal plan, the $12/month Startup plan, and the $36/month Business plan. There’s an additional 33% discount for those who subscribe to an annual plan.
Conclusion
Google Analytics is, without a doubt, is an amazing analytics tool. But it’s not the only option out there to track analytics. Many of Google Analytics’ features can be found in alternative tools.
If it fails to meet your needs or if you want to provide more privacy for your visitors. You should definitely look into the many Google Analytics alternatives.
If you decide to go with one of the Google Analytics alternatives. You might need to actually pay for the software.
The price will be well worth it if the product is more suitable for your business. Plus, several of the above options offer a free plan for smaller sites.
Remember: “the most popular” doesn’t mean “the best” and it doesn’t mean “the best for you.”
Hope you found our list of Google Analytics alternatives useful!
Bonus Alternative
If you do want to stick with Google Analytics. And don’t want to look into Google Analytics alternatives.
But are still struggling to get your head around their complicated dashboard. And don’t want to look into Google Anal
Or still in the dark about which stats to look at on a regular basis.
Why not give Elementary Analytics a try? Start your free trial today and use our simple, accessible dashboard. Which allows you to review the key stats from Google Analytics in seconds.
You can also link key metrics from other services such as Google Search Console. And the social media giants such as Facebook and Instagram.
Check out our video on how to get started reviewing you website traffic stats.
