Every webmaster need a tool to monitor the growth of website they responsible to. The majority of webmasters choose Google Analytics because this tool is very powerful and feature-rich.
With Google Analytics you can keep an eye of your site growth like how many people visit your site each day, current active visitors, demography of your visitor and lots more. The other reason why most webmasters prefer to use Google Analytics than other tools is because it’s free (unless your website hits 10 million page views per month).
Majority doesn’t mean everyone. There are a number of webmasters who reluctantly use Google Analytics due to some reasons. Probably they don’t like the way Google having access to all the data. Or other issues that made them less “click” to use Google Analytics.
No matter your problem with Google Analytics, anytime you want to turn away from it you can consider the following tools as the replacement.
1. Piwik
There is always an open source solution of any software. Piwik is an open source solution for analytics softwares. Because it’s open source, you can download the software of Piwik and see the source code if there is any possible to develop it by yourself.
You can install Piwik on your server to monitor the number of visitors to never lose your site growth. Piwik has the capabilities to view detailed log of individual visitor, goal tracking and other useful features. Piwik is available in free and premium version. Don’t worry about the installation because Piwik provides a helpful installation guide.
2. Clicky
One major reason why you need to give Clicky a try is its easy navigation. This analytics tool also doesn’t use any flash components to make it easy and friendly to be accessed via mobile device, which is very handy if you frequently keep an eye of your website on the go. Clicky comes with a number of features that are pretty similar to Google Analytics’s such as real-time tracking, goal tracking, funnel analytics and lots more.
Unfortunately, you need to pay some dollars to have access of all features in Clicky. Free account of Clicky is limited to one website with the limitation of 3,000 daily page views. Installing Clicky is incredibly easy. Just like when you install Google Analytics.
3. Kissmetrics
Kissmetrics has a different focus in helping you monitoring your site visitors. Instead of page views, the tool focuses on behavior. Kisssmetrics is better suited for e-commerce sites where webmasters can monitor what the visitors do in your site, how they found your site and which page variation they saw. Some of handy features of Kissmetrics include unlimited reports, data segmentation, data export, group contact lists and a lot more. Kissmetrics is fully paid tool. The price starts at $150/month for up to 500,000 events each month.
4. Mixpanel
A bit similar to Kissmetrics, Mixpanel also has a different approach in helping you monitoring your visitors. Instead of page views, this tool focuses on events. Mixpanel is great for those running a website that sells something, whether products or services. Why event-based analytics tool is better than page view-based one? Because, in reality, a page view doesn’t tell us much. Some features you can get from Mixpanel include advanced segmentaion, detailed retention reports, customer groupings, and notifications.
Mixpanel is freemium app. You can use this tool for free up to 25,000 data points. Paid accounts available from $150/month.
5. Gauges
The major reason why most webmasters use Google Analytics is because it can inform you the number of visitors whether within a day, week or month. Google Analytics displays an accurate data so that many people trust it. Gauge uses the same approach as Google Analytics. The only different is that Gauge is a fully paid tool. The Gauge package starts at $6/month for 100,000 monthly page views. Nearly all features you can get from Google Analytics also available in Gauge.
One of the good parts about Gauge is it comes with a 100% flash free dashboard, which is very good for mobile viewing.
6. FoxMetrics
FoxMetrics is another paid analytics tool with the focus on actions and behavior rather than page views. Thus, this tool is better suited to be implemented on e-commerce sites that sell products or services. The FoxMetrics price is based on requests instead of page views. For 100,000 requests you will be billed $20 a month. FoxMetrics is also capable to perform real-time analytics and person-level tracking.
7. Woopra
One of the prominent features of Woopra that not all analytic tool has is desktop client. With this feature you can’t check your site statistic without any distractions from any tab in your browser. You can also check your site statistic via smartphone since Woopra also offers a mobile client. Woopra itself is a bit similar to Kissmetrics which focuses on behavior instead of page views.
Another good part about Woopra is that it’s also can be integrated with other tools like MailChimp, Slack, Dropbox, Box, WordPress, SendGrid and lots more. Free account of Woopra is also available for up to 30,000 actions per month.
8. Adobe Analytics
Adobe, the company behind popular image editor Photoshop also has an analytic tool to help you monitoring your site growth. Adobe Analytics is another fully paid tool that is tend to be ideal for enterprises. This tool comes with lots of features such as social analytics, video analytics, real-time analytics and dynamic tag management.
9. Open Web Analytics
Last but not least. Open Web Analytics is another open source solution of analytics tool other than Piwik. And because it’s open source you can download and use the tool for free. Unlike Piwik which offers a premium service, Open Web Analytics is completely free. Open Web Analytics — which often abbreviated as OWA — also comes with built-in support for tracking websites made with WordPress and MediaWiki.