
The writer’s views are totally his or her personal (excluding the unlikely occasion of hypnosis) and will not all the time replicate the views of Moz.
The adage is that if you happen to’re not paying for the service, you’re the product. Sadly, this rings very true within the analytics world.
The analytics area is altering, although, and there are a lot of alternate options — each free and paid — that keep in mind privateness, cookie-less monitoring, GDPR compliance, core net vitals, and extra. The present chief within the analytics area is Common Analytics (UA), which has been monitoring net knowledge since 2005. However Google goes to cease monitoring any new knowledge in UA as of July 1, 2023 (Joyful Canada Day?).
It is a transfer to get customers emigrate to Google Analytics 4 (GA4), which is an entire new means of monitoring and navigating. In a transfer from classes to an occasion mannequin, GA4 would require some information and familiarity to stand up and working, as there’s fairly a bit altering.
When you haven’t but arrange GA4 but, or are on the fence, now’s the time to try what else is on the market and the way the panorama has modified. We have damaged the alternate options up into three classes:
How authorized is Google Analytics?
The brief reply is: is determined by the place your guests are from.
With out getting too deep into authorized jargon, the person has management over the choices now and though there are just a few lawsuits on the market I am positive Google will make the correct changes to make sure that everybody utilizing it is going to be principally lined, finally.
This is not taking place proper now and beneath GDPR there are necessities that Google Analytics is not passing. Additionally, by utilizing a product that is built-in into different merchandise I doubt they’re going to ever see 100% protection.
Even if you happen to’re planning on putting in Google Analytics 4, you may run another to make sure that you’re getting the proper knowledge and check as you go
Internet Analytics
Greater than a customer counter, however usually simplified, net analytics suppliers concentrate on giving providers to small companies, bloggers, and small web sites. Their metrics are additionally the closest to Google Analytics. Many of the net analytics instruments beneath are straightforward to keep up, fast to put in, and do not want self-hosting. Nevertheless, some will supply self-hosting along with their common providers.
Fathom Analytics
Launched in 2018, Fathom Analytics is a cookie-less, privacy-focused Google Analytics different that’s actually easy to make use of. They care about person privateness and pioneered proprietary routes in compliance with the EU for EU guests. Calling the route “EU isolation”, Fathom Analytics can be GDPR, PECR, COPPA, CCPA, and ePrivacy compliant.
Options of Fathom Analytics embrace:
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Seven-day free trial
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Costs begin at $14 per 30 days for as much as 100,000 web page views
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Can embrace as much as 50 websites
- Reveals reside guests and the place they’re navigating
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Gives uptime monitoring, occasion filtering, e-mail experiences, advert blocker bypassing, reside customer data, and far more from a bootstrapped firm
Being privacy-focused, Fathom Analytics has an exquisite interface and affords limitless CSV exports of your knowledge obtainable at any time. This lets you conveniently join it to different knowledge sources. As well as, Fathom is predicted to launch a backup possibility for GA knowledge within the close to future.
Matomo
Beforehand named Pikqwik, Matomo (“preserve your knowledge in your individual fingers”) is an open-source, cookie-free monitoring, and GDPR-compliant analytics device providing a search engine and key phrases part the place you may join with Google Search Console knowledge.
Further Matomo options embrace:
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Customizable dashboard.
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Actual-time knowledge insights (pages visited, customer abstract, conversions, and so on).
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E-commerce analytics.
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Occasion monitoring (analyzes person interplay on apps or web sites).
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Measures CTR, clicks, and impressions for textual content and picture banners in addition to different web page components.
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Customer geolocation (stats will be seen on maps by metropolis, area, or nation).
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Web page and web site pace experiences.
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Web page efficiency (variety of views, bounce charges).
You may host Matomo by yourself servers without cost. In any other case, their cloud pricing begins at $29/month after a 21-day free trial for 50,000 hits (as much as 30 web sites).
Cloudflare
When you’re already utilizing Cloudflare’s CDN answer, then there is no setup required. You may merely authorize the net analytics to start out monitoring inside your account. You may add as much as 10 web sites without cost, and there is no want for a cookie banner, since they don’t accumulate private knowledge.
Along with monitoring customary metrics — web page views, visits, load instances, bandwidth, and so on. — Cloudflare has included Core Internet Vitals metrics. These are measured every throughout your tracked web sites, and may e-mail you weekly with updates — very helpful.

Cloudflare set up is mild on web page load, since you may proxy it by your Cloudflare setup. Alternatively, you may set up their light-weight Javascript code (or “beacon”, as they name it).
Though Cloudflare does not say they’re GDPR compliant, what they do say is that they’re thought-about an “Operator Important Providers” beneath the EU Directive on Safety of Community and Info Techniques. You may assume that Cloudflare is monitoring one thing alongside the best way, with a free price ticket and with different choices obtainable the place knowledge might be shared.
Cloudflare is closest to server analytics with out going on to your server. It is solely obtainable in particular areas, so that you may need to pay for this.
Adobe Analytics
Adobe Analytics is a well-liked evaluation platform that gives instruments important for amassing related knowledge regarding buyer expertise. Firm analysts and on-line entrepreneurs often rely on it for bettering buyer satisfaction.
Making use of Adobe Analytics to your corporation web site may also help you identify what results in conversions. For instance, did altering content material or the CTA improve conversions? Did including extra visible aids improve the variety of inquiries a few sure service or product?
Adobe analytics is marketed as an enterprise analytics answer with viewers insights, promoting analytics, cohort evaluation, buyer journey evaluation, remarketing triggers, and far more. It actually may suit your net analytics or product analytics relying on how your crew deploys it, and it has been round for fairly some time identical to Google Analytics.
REQUEST A DEMO FOR ADOBE ANALYTICS
Clicky
Privateness-friendly net analytics device Clicky is simple to navigate and affords metrics much like Google Analytics. Nevertheless, Clicky embodies the texture of server analytics instruments whereas making their interface easy and fast-loading, because of minimal graphics.
Options of Clicky embrace:
Clicky additionally gives a developer API and white labeling of their answer, the place you may create your individual theme for higher model integration beginning at $49/month as a part of their hosted service. In addition they supply a free tier if you happen to’re trying to strive it out with restricted options.
Simple Analytics
EU-hosted, privacy-based Easy Analytics affords instruments to make use of for checking your web sites day by day. Easy Analytics doesn’t accumulate cookies, IP addresses, or any distinctive identifiers. Their bundle gives a bypass of advert blockers, hides referral spam, and contains an iOS app. You may even embed a widget to get public net statistics.
This GA different affords some nifty occasions which are gathered by default for ease of use. These embrace e-mail clicks, outbound hyperlinks, and information to streamline monitoring. All of Easy Analytics options come collectively in a UI that is a easy dashboard offering fast “out and in” instances — a lot faster, in reality, than it will take to get to the right property utilizing Google Analytics.
Easy Analytics affords a free 14-day trial. When you determine to maintain Easy Analytics, you will pay $19/month, or $9/month if you happen to pay a yr upfront.
Pirsch
An open-source, cookie-free net analytics different to Google Analytics, Pirsch seamlessly integrates into web sites and WordPress with plugins. A developer-friendly analytics providing a versatile, spectacular API, server-side integrations, and SDKs, Pirsch gives Golang (Go), PHP SDK, JavaScript, or a community-provided code to embed snippets. Pirsch additionally works with Google Search Console.
You may carry out any perform you need from the Pirsch dashboard, like viewing statistics or including web sites.
Get began by viewing Pirsch’s reside demo or opting in on their 30-day free trial. Paying for Pirsch is barely $5 per 30 days if you happen to select annual billing. If you wish to make month-to-month funds, the fee will increase to $6 per 30 days.
Plausible
A privacy-friendly, open-source net analytics platform, Believable is cookie-free and totally compliant with PECR, CCPA, and GDPR. Believable is a well-liked different to Google Analytics due to its simplicity, light-weight script, and skill to cut back bounce charges by expediting web site loading.
You may simply phase knowledge into particular metrics, analyze darkish site visitors through Urchin Monitoring Module (UTM) parameters, and monitor what number of outbound hyperlink clicks you get.
Believable affords a 30-day free trial possibility that gives limitless utilization of its options with out requiring a bank card. As soon as your free trial has ended, you may pay $9 per 30 days for as much as 10,000 web page views. When you select yearly billing, you get two months of free use. Limitless knowledge retention, slack/e-mail experiences, and occasion customization are additionally supplied with a paid subscription to Believable.
Umami
Umami is GDPR-compliant, open-source, cookie-free, and doesn’t monitor customers or collect private knowledge throughout web sites. By anonymizing any data collected, Umami prevents the identification of particular person customers. As well as, you will not want to fret about staying compliant with consistently altering privateness lawsi.
Options of Umami embrace:
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Cell-friendly so you may see stats in your cellphone at any time.
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Because you host Umami beneath your area, you will not see any ad-blockers such as you see when utilizing Google Analytics.
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Public sharing of your stats is out there utilizing an solely generated URL.
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Umami’s light-weight monitoring script masses virtually immediately and will not decelerate the loading of your web site.
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A single set up of Umami allows monitoring of a vast variety of websites. You too can monitor particular person URLs and subdomains.
Since Umami is an open-source platform and self-hosted, it is free to make use of. Umami says a cloud-based model of its analytics is coming quickly.
Product (conduct) analytics
Though product analytics usually are not all the time GDPR-compliant, they supply highly effective analytic instruments that embrace invaluable components like segmentation and deeper ranges of customization. For that cause and others, product analytics include the next upkeep price. Listed here are a number of product analytics instruments which are glorious Google Analytics alternate options for monitoring buyer conduct.
Hubspot Analytics
The site visitors analytics device offered by Hubspot Analytics affords distinctive evaluation knowledge for breaking down web page views, new contacts, and even entrance/exit data relating to how lengthy guests remained on particular net pages. You too can set up a monitoring code to exterior websites so you may monitor site visitors stats.
Further options embrace:
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Bounce price percentages.
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Variety of call-to-action views/variety of CTA clicks.
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Conversion charges of holiday makers who click on in your CTA.
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Entry to particular URLs or nation stats.
A subscription to a starter Hubspot Analytics platform is $45 per 30 days. You may select month-to-month or annual billing, which is $540.
An expert subscription to Hubspot Analytics begins at $800 per 30 days ($9,600 for one yr). This subscription offers you multi-language content material, video administration and internet hosting, cellphone help, and A/B testing.
An enterprise subscription begins at $3,600 per 30 days ($43,200 per yr). You get 10,000 advertising and marketing contacts with this subscription, with extra contacts obtainable on the market in increments.
Kissmetrics
Kissmetrics affords analytics for e-commerce and SaaS web sites. Kissmetrics for SaaS offers you deep insights into the kind of content material and options which are fueling conversions, changing trials into conversions, and lowering churn.
Kissmetrics detects traits that drive conversions and retain common consumers, so you may alter web site components appropriately. This distinctive analytics device additionally streamlines checkout funnels and integrates with Shopify.
Pricing for Kissmetrics SaaS entails three tiers:
Heap
Heap Analytics works on cellular and PC gadgets, rapidly captures practically all behavioral parameters, and helps first or third-party set up. You too can create particular person identities for customers over quite a few classes and augmented product data to buy/gross sales occasions.
Heap options embrace:
FullStory
The makers of Fullstory state that if you know the way to repeat and paste, you will haven’t any hassle setting it up. This analytics platform additionally affords “private-by-default” talents that ensures masking of textual content components at their supply.
Their options embrace, however usually are not restricted to:
Mixpanel
Mixpanel affords a free subscription that provides entry to core experiences, limitless knowledge historical past, and EU or U.S. knowledge residency. Mixpanel will be sliced and diced to suit so many conditions, it’s versatile and moldable for a lot of companies at many ranges.

For $25 per 30 days beneath their development plan, you get all of the free options, plus knowledge modeling, group analytics, and experiences detailing causal inference. Mixpanel additionally contains options equivalent to:
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Segmenting customers based mostly on actions
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Combine with Slack to share experiences, even when they don’t use Mixpanel
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No limits on the quantity of occasions tracked
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Crew Dashboards with Alerts
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Establish high person paths and drop-off factors
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Understanding of conversion factors throughout the funnel
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And far far more.
It is utilized by 30% of Fortune 100 SaaS firms and if you happen to want customized pricing and plans,
Amplitude Analytics
Based on a report obtainable here, Amplitude is persistently ranked as #1 amongst different product analytics platforms, high software program merchandise, and buyer satisfaction. You may analyze collected knowledge with quick self-serve analytics that don’t require SQL.
You should utilize Amplitude to…
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Discover behavioral knowledge
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Measure buyer engagement
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Use product intelligence to construct quicker
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Perceive channel efficiency
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Reply questions between, product, advertising and marketing, engineering & analytics
The Begin Amplitude bundle is free and affords limitless knowledge locations, customers, and knowledge sources. You additionally get 10 million occasions (streamed or unstreamed) per 30 days.
Their paid plans begin with customizations on high of that together with superior behavioral analytics & customized occasion values.
CONTACT SALES FOR GROWTH OR ENTERPRISE PACKAGES or if you happen to’re a startup you may apply for a free yr of Amplitude Scholarship!
Segment
Phase which was acquired by Twilio in 2020 affords superior e-mail onboarding and intuitive insights in SMS marketing campaign and e-mail efficiency & that’s only one arm of what it does. Phase makes use of just one API to gather knowledge throughout all platforms. In addition they have SDKs for Android, iOS, JavaScript, and over 20 server-side languages. They’ve been written as a know-how startup that lets organizations pull buyer knowledge from one app into one other & they’ve as of writing over 300 integrations!
Phase has prospects throughout industries together with media, medical, B2B, retail and from startup to enterprise. As nicely you may add your buyer knowledge into their knowledge warehouse to maintain your knowledge there so they might match into the information warehousing class beneath too.
To get began utilizing Phase, merely make a free account which permits for 1,000 guests from two sources and entry to their 300 integrations or their paid tiers begin at $120/month the place you may join a team account.
Rudderstack
Rudderstack gives builders all they should get began instantly with this product/conduct analytics. Options of Rudderstack embrace figuring out nameless cellular and net customers, customizing locations by the applying of real-time modifications to occasion payloads, and robotically occupying warehouses with occasion and person report schemas.
The free model of Rudderstack offers you 5 million occasions per 30 days, over 16 SDK sources and greater than 180 cloud locations. Like Phase you should utilize Rudderstack as a knowledge warehouse in your buyer knowledge and so they’ve constructed their platform as warehouse-first and constructed for builders.
The Professional model begins at $500 per 30 days. You get the free options, plus e-mail help, a technical account supervisor, and even customized integrations within the greater tiers. Request pricing for the Enterprise model of Rudderstack here.
Information warehousing options
It is all the time good to have your knowledge backed up and in case you have lots of historical past in Common Analytics it will be a very good place to start out. There are even providers to attach all these options collectively seamlessly, equivalent to Funnel. Whereas these have extra prices, it can save you all of your knowledge for a few years with out a drawback developing so you may consult with them when want be.
Google BigQuery / Google Cloud
Obtainable with a simple connection to your GA4 knowledge if you happen to’re leaning that means. Google lists BigQuery as enterprise and there shall be limits to how a lot knowledge you may ship to BigQuery earlier than paying. They provide real-time analytics with built-in question acceleration and with the size of knowledge that Google handles we will be fairly positive that they’ll have the ability to deal with it. Google Cloud Storage affords customary, nearline, coldline, and archive storage choices.
One suggestion is if you happen to’re utilizing Google for backups to make sure you have a secondary account connected to it in case your main account loses entry, which I’ve seen occur every now and then. They supply a migration from some instruments and their pricing relies on knowledge, so it’s free as much as 10GB. They created a billing calculator for simple price evaluation when you get into the paid aspect.
Amazon – AWS
AWS states that they help extra compliance certifications and safety measures than all different cloud suppliers. They permit for backup of all knowledge varieties and have redundancy inbuilt that you’d anticipate on the Amazon stage.
Like Google they’ve a calculator to estimate a pricing mannequin in your crew as they’ve lots of different providers built-in into this which you can make the most of there.
Snowflake
Snowflake gives a knowledge cloud and isn’t Google or Amazon, which can enchantment to some. It helps knowledge science, knowledge lakes, and knowledge warehousing on the three high clouds with their totally automated answer.
They’re HIPAA, PCI DSS, SOC 1 and SOC 2 Kind 2 compliant, and FedRAMP Licensed and have a 30 day free trial with all plans you may take a look at in addition to a “pay for utilization” possibility or a “pay for utilization upfront” possibility too.
Recap and proposals
On July 1, 2023, Common Analytics will cease monitoring any new knowledge, after which by EOY 2023 all UA knowledge shall be eliminated by Google — so again up your knowledge! Take into consideration warehousing your knowledge long run in your Common Analytics and transferring ahead.
Then, make a plan for a way you’re going to be monitoring transferring ahead. Discuss choices and ideas with stakeholders.
Set up GA4 now (or yesterday!) or strive the choices above out, as none of those are created equal and lots of have free trials.