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Are you looking for the best Google Analytics alternatives? Don’t worry. We’ve got you covered!
If you have been a Google Analytics user, you know that this tool has proven to be extremely effective for tracking and analyzing websites. After all, it is easy to use and integrates with most websites, and most importantly, it is free.
But while it is an efficient and cost-effective tool, you can’t use it to analyze user behavior. In this article, we are going to discuss the limitations of this conversion rate optimization (CRO) tool. In addition, we have a list of the 10 best Google Analytics alternatives that can help you find a reliable one.
Wanna instantly start with the best free alternative to Google Analytics? WatchThemLive is the most efficient choice that can turn your website performance around!
Let’s get started!
Why Should You Consider Google Analytics Alternatives
As a website traffic checker, Google Analytics can help you reach valuable insights and resolve technical issues. But, there are some shortcomings as well. So, let’s find out the answer to “What is wrong with Google Analytics?”
Google Analytics provides various reports on website traffic, traffic sources, geographic and language information of your visitors, page views, and more. However, the main questions are:
Is it enough to have this information about incoming traffic? By these statistics, can you make the best decisions for your business? Absolutely not.
Let’s see how GA falls short and point out the reasons why you need alternatives for Google Analytics. Shall we?!
1. User Interactions on Your Website Are Not Clear in GA
Despite all the helpful information Google Analytics provides us, it is still unable to describe accurately how the user interacts with your website. So, you will need an analytics alternative that offers a session replay tool and similar features with which you can watch how your users behave!
2. GA Does Not Show Heatmaps
The heatmap tools show users’ actions (such as clicks, and scrolls) on your website with different colors. That is, the warmer colors displayed on a heatmap of your website dispalys that specific sections got more user interactions, and the other way round!
For example, red color shows the most users’ interactions and purple shows the least users’ engagement. But how does a heatmap help you?
Using and analyzing your website heatmap, you will find out which section needs to improve and which ones got the most users’ attention. In other words, heatmaps offer a summary of what has happened on your website’s sessions over a while.
3. It Is Not Possible to Figure Out The Reason for Events in GA
Google Analytics can only show you what your visitors do and the numerical (quantitative) data about customer journey, but it does not determine the reasons for their actions (qualitative information). In simple words, in Google Analytics, you will deal with the numbers, but not the reasons for these numbers.
However, understanding why something happened is much more important than just knowing that it happened. That’s why using Google Analytics might not be in the best interest of your company.
How To Choose A Google Analytics Alternative
Choosing an alternative better than Google Analytics should be a decision that suits your business’s priority and needs.
First, you should take into consideration your highest priorities. And secondly, You should consider the level of data you need.
Paid or Free Google Analytics Alternatives
Want to use a free analytics tool like GA? Well, you should choose one of the free alternatives (like WatchThemLive) that are enlisted in this article. Keep in mind that there are other paid options that offer more than GA features.
Are you tired of looking for Google Analytics alternatives? You are not alone. Finding the best and most effective alternative for Google Analytics can be a little challenging. But, in this article, we enlisted the best analytics tools like google analytics which can help you to overcome GA’s limitations.
10 Best Alternatives to Google Analytics
Are you willing to find the best Google Analytics competitors? Well, here is a list of the analytics tools that are better than Google Analytics and will bring you closer to your goals.
1. WatchThemLive: The Best Google Analytics Alternative
WatchThemLive is a behavioral analytics tool that can cover all GA limitations. For Example, its user tracking feature can gather your visitors’ behavioral analytics information. In addition, WatchThemLive collects information like how many pages your customers visit, how many activities they perform, and more.
Interested to learn more?! Keep reading to get familiar with its other impressive features.
WatchThemLive Website Analytics
Want to measure your website’s success? Well, using WatchThemLive’s website analytics helps you in this regard. This tool enables you to develop your website optimization and digital marketing strategies to improve UX. Moreover, it helps you measure the performance of your website campaigns.
In addition, it can provide valuable information such as the number of visitors, page views, session length, traffic sources, your visitors’ countries, referrers, and more.
WatchThemLive Heatmap
Heatmap is an analytics tool used for making complex data easily understandable. It helps you make sense of numerical data quickly.
This conversion optimization tool (CRO) shows information by the data visualization method. Unlike GA, WatchThemLive offers heatmaps to clarify data. But how? Well, Website heatmaps use colors to show the most and least engaging elements on your webpage.
WatchThemLive Session Replays
Want to figure out the reason for an event on your site? WatchThemLive’s session replay tool is one of the most significant features that help you boost your CRO. It is an efficient solution to detect any UX problem your site faces. But how?!
Well, Session replays (also called session recording feature) provide a real-time video from your visitors’ screen. It enables you to watch every movement of your visitors, such as mouse movement, clicks, scrolls, and rage clicks.
Using this tool, you will access your customers’ entire journeys and find out what attracts your customers’ attractions and what makes them drop off, and so much more. Pretty straightforward, right?!
Let’s take a look at other features!
WatchThemLive Goal Tracking
Using this feature, you will be able to measure the success of your marketing efforts on your site. It refers to setting goals (or actions) that you desire your visitors to take. For example, your desired action can be signing up for your newsletter, buying a product, etc.
This tool is essential as it shows how effectively your visitors are engaged to convert them. Additionally, you will find out why some visitors do not take your desired goals/actions.
If you want to know more about this tool, Read our comprehensive WatchThemLive review.
2. Clicky: Alternative for Google Analytics
Looking for a real-time traffic tool? This tool is one of the Google Analytics alternatives that allows you to monitor your website activities in real time through a relatively simple interface. It often describes itself as an alternative to Google Analytics with many of the same features but with a clearer view of the data.
This tool has both a free and paid version, and the difference between them is the number of websites you can add and some other special features like the heatmap tool. In contrast to WatchThemLive, Clicky does not offer heatmaps on its free version or even its Pro plan.
Clicky Pros
- It provides information including country, company, referral URL, and keywords,
- You can use it daily to get data about your website visitors.
Clicky Cons
- Some things are hard to customize like there are only set features for history (Last 90 days),
- It needs to refresh the UI,
- It might not be value for money (because even its pro plan does not offer data visualization features like heatmaps).
3. Smartlook: One of Google Analytics Alternatives
Want an analytics tool to analyze your mobile app? Smartlook is a behavioral analytics tool for websites and mobile app that can track visitors’ activities across devices. As you know, understanding customer behavior is beyond just looking at raw numbers, which GA offers.
According to its official website, it has 4 key analytics features, including session recordings, events, funnels, and heatmaps. Let’s take a look at its pros and cons now, shall we?!
Smartlook Pros
- It has an intuitive UX,
- It offers lightweight session recording.
Smartlook Cons
- Its recordings playbacks are not clean and maneuverable,
- It offers limited configuration options,
- It has minimum API online support.
4. Kissmetrics: An Alternative to Google Analytics
Kissmetrics offers features such as ‘Funnels’ and ‘Path Report,’ so it can be an option for you if you want to increase the number of customers on your website and services.
But keep in mind that you must pay at least $299 per month (billed annually) to use this service. Moreover, You are not able to use it for free. There is only a free trial for each paid plan. Therefore, it is not an affordable option for startups with low budgets.
Kissmetrics Pros
- It has real-time insights and heatmaps,
- It offers social media integration (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, and Pinterest).
Kissmetrics Cons
- It has limited support,
- It offers only paid services,
- There is no mobile application.
5. Matomo (Formerly Piwik): Open Source Google Analytics Alternative
Matomo is one of the Google Analytics alternatives that provide quantitative analytics data like what’s offered by GA. This tool shows how to avoid analytics cookie consent pop-ups without breaking any laws.
Are you willing to know about its pricing packages? Well, Matomo has a free version (self-hosted) and one paid version, which is a delivered SaaS tool. Moreover, its paid version has more advanced analytics features, customer support, and A/B testing.
Matomo Pros
- It is easy to set up,
- It is available on mobile,
- It offers segmentation and filtering,
- No third party can access your data.
Matomo Cons
- It lacks a user-friendly plugin,
- Only the Enterprise plan has unlimited tracking abilities,
- You cannot cross data with a secondary dimension via the interface.
6. Woopra: An Alternative to Google Analytics
It is one of the alternatives for Google Analytics. It claims that you can use proprietary technology to get detailed information about your customers. In each visitor profile, you can see the entire user journey for each of them, which can help you get real user feedback on your website.
Although it is one of the free Google Analytics alternatives, certain features ( such as behavioral segmentation, custom metrics, dynamics journeys, and more) are not available in the free version.
Woopra Pros
- It has a simple interface,
- It offers Plugins for CMS platforms ( like Zemdesk and Salesforce).
Woopra Cons
- It has limited customization options,
- It doesn’t offer psychographic segmentation,
- It offers limited data storage,
- Its price packaging offers the minimum number of features and tools.
7. Heap: Free Google Analytics Alternative
If you are looking for Google Analytics alternatives, Heap service is one of them! This service is designed in a straightforward and practical way and provides a variety of information in its dashboard. To sum up, you can track various events by using this marketing analytics tool.
In terms of customization, it will give you control over the dashboard. That is, you are able to customize the look of your dashboard and add new reports or widgets as you need.
Heap Pros
- It has a free plan (you can use its services for 14 days, but after that, you will be required to pay),
- It provides real-time insights into user actions.
Heap Cons
- There is a learning curve to configure and forge reports,
- It requires basic knowledge of HTML tagging,
- Its integration is so limited.
8. Fathom: Google Analytics Alternative (Open Source)
This service is an online analytics tool that cares about users’ privacy. Neither cookies nor other technologies are used to authenticate the users. Therefore no additional data is stored on the user storage.
Fathom claims to provide more detailed insights into your website traffic and performance than Google Analytics. In addition, it segments your traffic and examine data to see how different groups of users interact on your website.
Fathom Pros
- It has no cookie banners,
- It is easy to use,
- It offers a light script of less than 2 KB.
Fathom Cons
- It only has a paid version,
- It offers a lite version that is not PECR compliant.
9. GoSquared: One of Google Analytics Alternatives
Well, GoSquared is an intuitive software for you. This service asserts that it can allow you to see what is working and what needs improvement.
According to its official website, It also offers an array of tools to track conversions, measure ROI, and analyze website traffic sources.
As for pricing, it has a unique pricing package and offers three tiers. Each tier’s price depends on your chosen features and usage volume.
GoSquared Pros
- It has decent customer service,
- You can easily manage multiple sites from one dashboard.
GoSquared Cons
- There are technical limitations,
- It has limited support,
- It is not compatible with all web browsers.
10. Statcounter: One of the Analytics Tools like Google Analytics
Are you tired of using Google Analytics?! Well, Statcounter service can be a decent option for you. It offers a basic plan for free with only analyzing recent 500-page views and no monthly recording.
Using Statcounter service, you can access information such as top keywords, the number of visitors, the path visitors take on each page (customer journey), etc. Therefore, we can call it one of the alternatives to Google Analytics.
Statcounter Pros
- It offers a user-friendly dashboard.
Statcounter Cons
- It provides only basic functionality,
- You will require additional software for more in-depth reports.
Final Verdict on Best Google Analytics Alternatives
Which marketing analytics tool surpasses GA? What is the best alternative to GA?
A better approach than picking a tool blindly is comparing different tools. To help you save time, we selected 10 of the best alternatives for Google Analytics.
Therefore, if you are curious about the final winner, you can subscribe to WatchThemLive. It does everything you can expect from a behavioral marketing tool. It is easy to install and get started with.
In general, WatchThemLive is a great tool and if you are using it already, there is no reason to switch it to any other tool. Because, it helps you understand how your website visitors behave, what they need and how they are feeling.
Moreover, It also provides session replays and heatmaps which are the most useful options. Don’t miss out and Sign up right now! This is an enormous opportunity for you.
FAQs on Google Analytics Alternatives
So far, we have enlisted the 10 best alternatives for Google Analytics that are free or offer a free plan or trial. Now let’s take a look at other frequently asked questions about this topic.
1. Is Adobe Analytics Better Than Google Analytics?
Adobe Analytics is a component of Adobe Experience Cloud that enables you to apply detailed segmentation and real-time analytics across several marketing channels. It allows users to track visitors’ journeys over a variety of devices.
Although users often choose Adobe Analytics for its robust user pathing and reporting, Google Analytics is the more potent tool in multi-channel attribution. So Google Analytics could be a much better tool compared to Adobe Analytics.
In the following we prepared the advantages of GA vs. Adobe Analytics:
- GA is a popular free of cost tool that can be connected with a Google Ads account,
- The Custom goals let you track eCommerce platforms,
- It helps beginners with in-depth information about the platform,
- You can easily create custom reports to track particular data based on a specific sector.
2. Is Google Analytics Free Forever?
If you are a small business owner, you can use this service for free without paying a monthly charge. But if you need more advanced features that require recurring fees, you will have to pay.
3. What Are the Limitations of the Free Version of Google Analytics?
GA is a useful free analytics tool that is used to gather information about visitors and web traffic. But there are some limitations to web analytics that should be considered.
Accuracy: For many reasons, Google cannot track every user’s behavioral analytics and entire event on your website, so any numbers on its reports should be treated as approximations.
Unwanted information: It offers two types of undesirable information that lead to over-reporting: firstly, Google Analytics provides traffic analysis, including from internal users. Secondly, GA’s method to track user activity includes most robot activity. So, there is no guarantee that robot visits will not be on your reports.
Conclusion
Whether you want to automate your marketing process or get personal information about the people who visit your website, the mentioned tools offer a variety of options beyond what you get from Google Analytics. So you just need to list your goals and then determine which services might work best for you.
In this article, we tried to list the top 10 Google Analytics alternatives that can cover GA’s limited features. We recommended WatchThemLive as the best alternative to Google Analytics to get perfect and valuable recording data to promote your user experiences on the website.
Don’t miss your chance, and sign up now to reach the best free Google Analytics alternative!
Author: Najmieh Sarmadi
