List of Web Analytics Software Tools for Data-Driven Decisions

Having the right web analytics software is crucial for making data-driven decisions. Google Analytics is a popular choice, offering features like event tracking and e-commerce tracking.

For smaller businesses, tools like Matomo can be a cost-effective alternative. It provides similar features to Google Analytics, including real-time analytics and goal tracking.

If you're looking for a more comprehensive solution, tools like Adobe Analytics might be the way to go. They offer advanced features like predictive analytics and personalization.

There are two main types of web analytics tools: on-site/hosted and third-party/off-site. On-site tools like Google Analytics or Clicky generate analytics unique to your site, while third-party tools like SimilarWeb collect insights from multiple websites.

Within these groups, web analytics software fall into five categories. You can think of these as different lenses to examine your website's performance.

Here are the five categories:

To understand the types of tools available, let's first look at the criteria for our guide.

This guide only includes open-source analytics tools that are self-hostable, meaning you can deploy them on your own servers without any additional costs.

To be included, tools must also be actively developed or maintained by a company or community, with evidence of recent contributions such as merged pull requests and commits to their repositories.

The responsiveness of the maintainer to review requests is also a key factor in determining whether a tool meets this criterion.

Here are the three main criteria for the tools included in this guide:

Tools that are "open core" but don't offer a free, self-hostable deployment option are not included in this guide.

Professional Tools are designed for advanced users who need more features and customization options. They often require a more significant investment, but offer in-depth insights and analytics capabilities.

Some popular Professional Tools include Google Analytics, Mixpanel, and Adobe Analytics. These tools offer a wide range of features, such as event tracking, user behavior insights, and A/B testing.

Google Analytics is a highly-regarded tool that offers comprehensive analytics capabilities, including audience insights, traffic analysis, and user behavior tracking. It's free, with a premium version (GA 360) starting at $150,000/year.

Mixpanel is another popular tool that specializes in behavioral analytics, user segmentation, retention tracking, and cohort analysis. It offers a free plan, with paid plans starting at $995/month for Growth.

Adobe Analytics is a powerful tool that offers data visualization, business intelligence, and dashboards. It's designed for large businesses and offers custom pricing based on the size and needs of the business.

Here's a brief comparison of these three tools:

These Professional Tools are ideal for businesses that need advanced analytics capabilities and customization options.

Matomo is a great tool for marketing and website teams looking to track content performance and marketing attribution. It's suitable for both small and big businesses, including the European Union, which runs a version of Matomo on all its websites.

Matomo offers a Google Analytics data importer, making it easy to switch from Google Analytics. It's also easy to set up on WordPress and WooCommerce, which is a big plus for e-commerce websites. Marketing metrics and attribution are also available, giving you a clear picture of how your marketing efforts are performing.

Matomo has built-in GDPR and tag managers, which is a must-have for any website that handles sensitive user data. This means you can rest assured that your website is compliant with data protection regulations.

Here are some key features of Matomo that make it a great choice for marketing and website teams:

Mode is a web analytics tool that collects data from various sources for further study. It works with the most popular data storage platforms.

Mode offers different packages, including a free starter package called Studio, a Business package designed for experienced marketers, and an Enterprise package that provides access to all features.

You can request a demo to get a quote for the Enterprise package. Marketers appreciate Mode's ability to improve the dynamics of their products' development by analyzing indicators.

Mode's clients include well-known companies like Twitch, Zillow, and Shopify.

Visitor tools are a must-have for any online presence. An accessible website intelligence platform, like Visitor Analytics, provides valuable insights into how your website is performing.

Visitor Analytics is a great example of this, offering three categories of insights: website statistics, visitor behavior analytics, and visitor communication.

Counter is a web analytics tool that's free and privacy-friendly. It's designed to be simple and doesn't collect any data that could compromise user privacy.

One of the key features of Counter is that it doesn't use cookies, logging, or IP address fingerprinting. This means that users can trust that their data is safe and won't be used for any malicious purposes.

Counter is a great option for anyone who wants to track their website's performance without sacrificing user privacy. It's a straightforward and easy-to-use tool that can provide valuable insights into how users are interacting with your site.

Overtracking can be a major issue for website owners. It's the practice of collecting too much data on users, which can lead to a poor user experience.

Easy-to-use analytics tools can sometimes make it tempting to track every aspect of user behavior. Tools like Web Analytics let you track traffic and user behavior, record and replay user sessions, and even create heatmaps.

This level of tracking can be overwhelming for users and may even lead to them abandoning your site.

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Popular web analytics software offers a range of features to help businesses track and analyze website performance. SmarterStats, for example, can generate over 100 reports, each segmented by year, month, and day, allowing marketers to see changes in metrics after launching a campaign. This tool is suitable for small companies or individuals who need complex web analytics.

SmarterStats offers two subscriptions: Professional from $399 and Enterprise from $599. Crazy Egg, on the other hand, provides visual data on user behavior, including heat maps and A/B testing capabilities. Its features include increased user engagement, higher conversion rates, and a better understanding of user behavior.

Here's a quick rundown of the pricing for these tools:

Clicky also offers a free option for one website and up to 3000 daily page views, making it a great option for small businesses or individuals.

Google offers a range of web analytics tools to help professionals track user behavior and understand their data. Google Analytics is a popular data collection tool that works great with other company products and has several variations.

Google Analytics is a free service with many restrictions, offering only 20 indicators, and the data update time varies from 24 to 48 hours. This may not provide all the details needed to create a coherent picture, so marketers often resort to third-party products.

Google Analytics 4 is a customisable and free web analytics tool that provides insights into user behavior with an event-based tracking model, and extensive attribution methods. It's ideal for marketers who want to track user behavior and understand what drives sales and traffic.

One of the key features of Google Analytics is its ability to track quantitative data, like sessions or bounce rate, organized in dedicated reports. This helps users learn what's happening on their site and make data-driven decisions.

Google Analytics can also be integrated with the rest of the Google Marketing Platform tools, like Adwords or the Search Console, to combine all your data in one place. This makes it a powerful tool for marketers who want to get a comprehensive view of their user behavior.

Here's a comparison of Google Analytics with other popular web analytics tools:

Note that Google Analytics 4 is a newer version of Google Analytics that provides more advanced features and better data insights. However, it's still a free service with some limitations.

Amplitude is a self-service digital analytics platform that helps teams understand their users, drive conversions, and increase engagement, growth, and revenue. It's ideal for product or growth teams.

Amplitude offers a free package called Starter, which has no limits on data storage and allows you to track up to 10 million actions per month. The company has clients like Walmart, Ford, and Atlassian.

Amplitude's platform provides a holistic understanding of every action your users take from the first touchpoint, tracks, analyzes, and optimizes every touchpoint that affects the customer experience, and automates workflows with built-in triggers and integrations with other popular web analytics tools.

Here are some key features of Amplitude:

The free basic account with Amplitude has a limit of 30,000 actions per month, and pricing starts from $79.95 for 400,000 actions per month.

If you're looking for alternative and open-source web analytics options, consider Matomo, a tool that emphasizes data ownership and user privacy. It's compliant with strict privacy laws, including GDPR and HIPAA, and offers comprehensive web analytics data.

Matomo is free for self-hosted users, with a 19€/month option for hosting on their servers (21-day free trial). Other popular alternatives include Plausible, a lightweight and open-source web analytics tool, and PostHog, an open-source product analytics platform for developers.

Some other options worth considering are Clicky, a privacy-friendly and GDPR-compliant website analytics tool, and Fathom, a privacy-friendly and GDPR-compliant Google Analytics alternative with a sleek user interface.

Redash is a tool for connecting to and visualizing data from a number of different sources.

You need to be fluent in SQL to get the most from it, which can be a barrier for those without programming experience.

Redash supports more data sources than Metabase by default, though how important this is will depend on your specific needs.

If you're concerned about protecting your users' privacy, you're not alone. Data privacy regulations like GDPR force you to prioritize users' rights.

There are many web analytics tools that are designed with privacy in mind. For instance, Matomo is an open-source web analytics tool that emphasizes data protection and user privacy. It's compliant with strict privacy laws, including GDPR, HIPAA, CCPA, LGPD, and PECR.

You can safely use analytics with Matomo without worrying about data being used for marketing purposes. It's free for self-hosted users, and 19€/month for hosting on Matomo's servers, with a 21-day free trial.

Some other options include Clicky, Plausible, Fathom, and Simple Analytics. These tools are all privacy-friendly and GDPR-compliant. They're great alternatives to traditional analytics tools like Google Analytics.

Here are some key features of these tools:

Hockey Stack is a platform that allows you to increase website conversions, optimize your marketing, and measure your progress without using cookies or code injection.

It offers four packages to suit your needs, including a free forever plan with limited data and page views, a startup plan for $25 with data history for the last 6 months, an accelerate plan for $59 with a history of user actions and 100,000 tracked page views over the past year, and a boost plan for $249 with access to all features and a threshold of 350,000 tracked page views.

Marketers have noted that Hockey Stack is more effective than Google Analytics, and its clients include notable companies like Nightingale, FormulaDesk, and Heroes of Digital.

Here are the package details:

Mouseflow is a great tool for optimizing your website. It helps you focus on the right areas by providing automatic Friction Scores that detect where to focus first.

You can watch real user journeys with Mouseflow, giving you a clear understanding of how visitors interact with your site.

Its ability to analyze user behavior makes it an essential tool for any website owner.

Here are some key features of Mouseflow:

Mouseflow is a reliable choice for website optimization, and its ease of use makes it accessible to anyone.

Piwik is a great alternative to Google Analytics, especially if you're looking for a free option. It's an open-source web analytics platform that can be hosted on your own server for free access.

Piwik offers both Android and iOS apps for smartphone access of your web analytics report, making it easy to stay on top of your website's performance on-the-go. You can also import log files and track multiple websites without worrying about extra costs.

One of the standout features of Piwik is its customizable user interface, allowing you to create a dashboard that fits your needs. However, some users have noted that the interface can be a bit disorganized and not very user-friendly.

Piwik also has a feature set similar to Google Analytics, including goal conversion tracking, real-time data updates, events, and campaign tracking. However, it's worth noting that Piwik has no limit on data storage, keeping all historical visitor data and reports by default.

If you're looking for a more organized and user-friendly interface, you might want to consider other options. However, if you're already familiar with Google Analytics, Piwik could be a viable alternative.

Here are some key features of Piwik:

Grafana is a popular open-source tool that provides data visualization and business intelligence capabilities. It's a great alternative to some of the paid options listed in the article.

One of the key features of Grafana is its ability to integrate with a wide range of data sources, including Looker and Amplitude Analytics. This allows users to create custom dashboards and reports that provide valuable insights into their business.

Grafana offers a free plan, as well as several paid plans that start at $24/month for the Standard plan. This makes it a cost-effective option for businesses of all sizes.

Here are some of the key features of Grafana:

Overall, Grafana is a powerful and flexible tool that can help businesses make data-driven decisions. Its ability to integrate with a wide range of data sources and provide custom visualization and analytics capabilities make it a great option for businesses looking for an alternative to some of the paid options listed in the article.