7 Free & Paid Google Analytics Alternatives (Comparison 2022)

Google Analytics has been the most popular web analytics platform, with a market share of 30%, followed by Google Universal Analytics and Google Global Site Tag. Although 28.1 million websites use Google Analytics, it’s far from perfect. Due to the lack of qualitative analytics features, privacy issues, and a steep learning curve, you may feel a bit overwhelmed. The good news is that there’re a bunch of Google Analytics alternatives (both free and paid) that offer even more detailed data analysis and advanced features.

Why Consider Google Analytics Alternatives?

You might ask why you should consider using a Google Analytics alternative. There’re three main reasons why business owners decide to switch to similar tools:

1. Complexity. If you have never used Google Analytics, you will understand that it’s not super-friendly from the very beginning. The tool uses tons of filter names that don’t make much sense to the average user. On top of that, the new version of GA — Google Analytics 4 — is different in terms of interface and logic.
2. Missing data. To be GDPR compliant, you’ll need to ask for permission. It means that if some visitors decline to be tracked, you won’t get a complete understanding of your data.
3. Constant changes. Google constantly updates Google Analytics. This means metrics, menus, and features may be difficult to find even if you regularly use this platform. There were also a few cases when Google deleted data with little or no warning, especially when there was a system update.
4. Inaccurate data. Although Google Analytics provides valuable insights to collect information about the audience and their behavior, it doesn’t track everything on your website. Currently, it can track up to 200 metrics, including users, bounce rate, sessions, goal completions, page views, etc. But it doesn’t tell you who exactly visits your website or what pages they view in session.
5. Technical support. Google Analytics lacks technical support. There’s no dedicated team to help you resolve issues. So when you run into a problem, you’ll only have to visit a community forum, read online documentation, or get in touch with Google Analytics experts or agencies to fix your issues.
6. Reliability. Google Analytics is not the most reliable tool for marketing campaigns. In some cases, bot traffic can be reported as genuine traffic in the Google Analytics dashboard. Google can’t track websites individually. This means that the information provided should be taken as approximations.

These limitations can prevent you from meeting your business goals. Luckily, there’re a lot of Google Analytics alternatives you can try. This article will cover the seven best tools similar to Google Analytics.

• Mixpanel
• Statcounter
• Clicky
• Woopra
• Piwik Pro
• Smartlook
• Chartbeat

We’ll review each of Google Analytics alternatives in detail and compare them according to several criteria.

Further reading: Why Migrate to Google Analytics 4 in 2023?

Google Analytics Alternatives

Mixpanel

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This product analysis solution is designed to help product-based companies improve customer retention, user engagement, and conversions. Mixpanel uses an advanced event-based tracking system and powerful tools to collect data about its users. It allows business owners to build retroactive funnels, analyze conversion rates, understand their most prolific users, and find out where they’re dropping off. The solution can pull data from your warehouse, so there’s no need to install SDK or build processes. Mixpanel is HIPAA, CCPA, and GDPR compliant regarding data protection, meaning users can protect their personal data. Today, big names in the web and mobile app space widely use the tool, including Yelp, GoDaddy, Uber, DocuSign, and more.

Key features:

• Team dashboards and alerts. You can customize dashboards and get real-time updates and alerts.
• Data integration. You can enable interactive event analysis from BigQuery, Snowflake, or Redshift.
• Data transformation. You can create custom properties to conduct in-depth analysis using Excel-like formulas.
• Integration tools. You can integrate more than 50 favorite tools with Mixpanel.
• Interactive reports. You can get data within a few clicks and see visualizations in seconds.

Pricing

Mixpanel offers free and two paid options:

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Statcounter

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The tool is a good replacement for Google Analytics. It’s designed for smaller companies that don’t have an online marketing specialist on staff. Statcounter provides an intuitive way to keep tabs on such individual visitor statistics as average time spent on site, visits per day, pages viewed, bounce rate, referring sites, etc.

Key features:

• Traffic trends analysis. You can track the performance of your key metrics by comparing visitors, sessions, page views, and new visitors for any date range. Also, you can spot negative trends, react quickly, and see the results of your efforts.
• Paid traffic tracking & click fraud detection. You can monitor the performance of your paid traffic on Facebook, Google, and Twitter. Statcounter helps you to see how much of your budget is being eaten up by click farms and reduce the waste with Paid Traffic report.
• Alerts and notifications. You’ll be notified when a visitor returns to your website not to miss an important visitor again. You can enable this function by email or on your mobile device via the Statcounter app.

Pricing

Statcounter offers two pricing plans:

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Clicky

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This web analytics software provides real-time analytics about your website’s traffic. While the tool tracks all basic metrics like site referrers and visitors, it also offers advanced features, including uptime monitoring and heat mapping. Clicky can boast real-time traffic monitoring. With the help of their ‘Spy’ feature, you’ll have a real-time overview of every action visitors take on your website. Additionally, you can see the country of origin, the time of visit, how long visitors spend on your website, and more. Among other things, you’ll be able to see the number of actions they’ve taken, the user’s IP address, and the browser they’re using.
The tool also has a smart bot detection feature that helps you to remove all referral spam to see only data from real humans.

Key features:

• Heat mapping
• Uptime monitoring
• Mobile compatibility
• Backlink analysis

Pricing

Clicky offers free and four pricing options

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Woopra

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It was founded in 2012 to capture the entire user’s journey. Since then, the software has become a powerful analytics tool that deeply understands data. Woopra is a strong alternative to Google Analytics, with a more user-friendly interface and real-time features. Additionally, it provides one-click integration with other systems such as Google Ads, Salesforce, and more. This makes it easy to connect and track data across different platforms and properties seamlessly.

Key features:

• Behavioral segmentation. You can create dynamic segments of users based on any criteria.
• Cohort reports. You can measure patterns throughout the customer lifecycle and analyze growth trends.
• Retention reports. You can make decisions that make customers come back.
• Trends reports. You can discover how and why your product evolves to keep it growing.
• No SQL is required.

Pricing

Woopra offers four pricing tiers:

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Further reading: Learn with Google: The Best Practices to Follow Now to Feel Closer to Your Customers

Piwik Pro

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Piwik Pro is a great replacement for Google Analytics and a good choice for businesses that deal with sensitive customer data. The tool analyzes user journeys across websites and mobile apps and provides advanced features, including consent management, building customer profiles, and more. You see new and accurate data in the analytics dashboard and create detailed reports. Piwik Pro also includes a powerful Tag Manager that helps to collect data and store it safely. There’s also a consent management tool to manage all your consent tasks. The main difference between Piwik Pro and Google Analytics lies in three features:

• Data sampling. In Google Analytics, data sampling occurs automatically when the monthly limit of 500 000 sessions is reached. Piwik Pro provides unsampled data within each pricing plan.
• Data ownership. Piwik Pro provides its customers with 100% data ownership. Google Analytics uses your clients’ data to develop its advertising products later.
• Privacy compliance. In Google Analytics, information about users’ data is hosted in data centers dispersed around the globe. With Piwik PRO, you can store this information on your server (in a public or private cloud).

Pricing

There’re two main plans: Core and Enterprise.

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Smartlook

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Smartlook is among the best GA alternatives. It’s a user behavior tool that monitors visits to websites, mobile apps, and games. Its toolkit features both qualitative and quantitative analytics. You can filter recordings to focus on specific events, operate in a multi-user workplace, and enjoy other advanced features available to users. The only disadvantage is a steep learning curve, so you can feel slightly puzzled about using the solution.

Key features:

• Advanced filtering with over 30 filters
• Email reporting
• Ability to record user behaviors on your site or mobile app
• Qualitative and quantitative analytics combines
• Customizable analytics dashboards
• Heatmaps, funnels, events
• Integration with Intercom, Mixpanel, Shopify, and more

Pricing

Smartlook offers four pricing plans:

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Chartbeat

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Chartbeat is a good alternative to Google Analytics which allows you to track the performance of your website content and provides real-time data. The tool uses a Javascript snippet on your website that sends information about which links were clicked, what pages were visited, and how long they were viewed to the server. The server processes this data and creates charts.

Key features:

• Image testing
• Headline optimization
• Easy-to-use and customizable dashboards
• Multiple integrations

Pricing

Chartbeat doesn’t provide a free version. The paid version starts at $7,000 per year.

Is There the Best Google Analytics Alternative?

It depends on your objectives. If you want to replace Google Analytics with something completely different, go with Smartlook or Piwik Pro. If you’re looking for an alternative to try something fresh and new, choose any tool from the list above. Think about your budget and how much time you can spend on getting accustomed to a new Google Analytics alternative. Once you choose the right analytics tool, you can make informed decisions about your marketing strategies and grow faster.