Alternatives to Google Analytics

August 8, 2014 6:50 AM

What should I use on my clients' websites instead of Google Analytics?

I'm tired of Google Analytics: none of the measurements have an official definition, the interface is overly complicated and they change it all the time and I too often end having to tell my clients "I'm not sure what this measurement means, maybe it's an error?". Maybe this would be fixed if I took seminars and training courses, but I don't really have the time to invest in this.
Free is nice, but I could pay something reasonable. I could host it, too.

posted by signal to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

Since you said that you are comfortable hosting it yourself, piwik might be worth a look. In my experience its a whole lot less confusing than google analytics. It's more bare bones, in that there aren't a thousand ways to track campaigns here and conversion targets there.
Self hosting has the added benefit of more privacy for your users and its fairly simple to set up.
posted by kall at 7:05 AM on August 8, 2014

My CEO spends a ton of time looking at SyatCounter and he's not particularly techy.
posted by pyro979 at 7:11 AM on August 8, 2014

Came to also recommend piwik.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 7:22 AM on August 8, 2014

StatCounter is the free Analytics-alternative we've used for years. I prefer their simple interface and stats.
posted by geeky at 8:01 AM on August 8, 2014

Raventools is another alternative to Google Analytics.
posted by jacobean at 10:58 AM on August 8, 2014

I always liked StatCounter. It gives you lots of nice data.
posted by limeonaire at 3:26 PM on August 8, 2014

Piwik is nice. I use the rather expensive but wonderful Parsely on my site, and I've also considered Chartbeat, though both of these are specifically aimed at large-scale blogs.

Whatever you choose, I suggest you keep the GA code on your clients' sites, and upgrade them to Universal Analytics as soon as possible. Google Analytics is still the industry standard, it offers the most granular and varied data, and, to put it bluntly, your clients shouldn't need to miss out on historical data because you're not familiar enough with this tool.

If you are interested in learning more, I highly recommend Avinash Kaushik's work, especially his two books on web analytics.
posted by third word on a random page at 6:45 PM on August 8, 2014 [2 favorites]