Comparison of free Web Analytics tools

There are many Web Analytics tools & the following bunch are free -
  • Google Analytics 
  • StatCounter 
  • Piwik 
  • Woopra 
  • Clicky
  • SiteMeter
  • Simple Analytics (free for hobby projects but not part of the comparison table)
Each of them has something unique. The Clicky website compares all the above across some 40 odd parameters. (updated broken link on 1/Oct/2013)
click to enlarge image

Except for Google Analytics & Piwik, the rest have limitations on features with their free editions. They restrict the data retention size & period.

Simple Analytics claims to overcome the following limitations of Google Analytics -
  • With the default settings of Google Analytics you are required to use a cookie banner for your European visitors.
  • While Google Analytics can be GDPR compliant it’s very complicated to have it setup like that. Its defaults (which are used most often) are not privacy-first and do require consent from your visitors. This is not a viable way to collect data about all your visitors.
  • With Google Analytics you don't own the data. You basically give the data of your visitors away to Google.
  • Google uses the data from Google Analytics for its other products. If you’ve accepted their terms (which you do when you use GA) they are allowed to do this and their privacy policy explains they do.
  • Google Analytics is a very popular analytics tool. Because of that there are a lot of ways to block Google Analytics in your browser. Websites are missing around 1-10% of their visits because of ad-blockers. Simple Analytics has a feature where it by-passes ad-blockers. You basically run our script from your domain. This prevents most ad-blockers from blocking your visits.
  • Google has data centers all over the world. They host your data within those datacenters. This can be in your continent or anywhere else.
Piwik is a downloadable, open source (GPL licensed) real time web analytics software program that uses PHP & MySQL. It needs to be installed on your server, so you own your data.

The number of hits captured by each of the tools for the same site could vary. This could be because some tools like Google Analytics use JavaScript & a user may disable it in their browser. Some of these may not count bots and some register hits based on user's visit length.

Also see:
HOW TO generate a Heat Map with Google Chart API

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