Is there a real alternative to Google Analytics?

Sure it is easy enough to get started and connect your site to GA, but afterwards it is quite tricky to get going and just to view the basic statistics takes a lot of clicking and guessing. I started to read the help docs and I just got tired. I want to create and build web sites! Not spend my time in GA and setup roll-up trackers and think about tracking strategies. Much of the information is also quite vague and you need Google Search to find out all the answers you need. Nope, this is not for me.

I fully understand that there is a huge need for this kind of in-depth tracking and close relation with other Google services. There is a lot of people making lots of money thanks to Google and their services from both using and charging clients to help them out. I understand the eco-system and the incentives to use GA, but it is not for me, not anymore. I just want some basic statistics, not think about how to maximize AdWords profits or campaigns or setup complex funnel goals.

So what alternatives are there to Google Analytics? There is quite a lot of them and has been since forever. What made GA great was the great charts and balanced level of details that is no more. Which no one of the other solutions had. Also a winning feature of GA was that you didn’t need any server knowledge to set it al up.

After looking around on various blogs and few Google searches later I decided to go with GoSquared that I had seen referenced here and there. Why GoSquared over for example Mint, Woopra, W3Counter, Chartbeat or Clicky? GoSquared, as I see it offers the right kind of price / feature balance to get started and to scale up if the service is great for the right price.

So far so good, as most of the tracking services it was just a matter of pasting in a script with a tracking code, refresh and behold the first stats. The GoSquared dashboard tells me what I want to know and it is easy to extend with other widgets. I’ve signed up for the small price plan, $9 USD a month, it is okay, i would prefer to pay less, maybe $5 and then only have 1 site but all the features.

I’ll see how long I stick with GoSquared, I might try some of the other services out as well. Next on the agenda is to find a nice open source app that can parse my log files in a beautiful way and use that information as a complement to the data I get from GoSquared.

If I would replace GoSquared I would most likely go with Mint or maybe even roll my own home grown statistics app. So, yeah, there are plenty of alternatives to Google Analytics. However, GA still wins in many ways, mostly since it is free to get started and you can have multiple sites and domains connected with no extra charge.

The downside with GA is the complexity, it has just to many features and settings to track some high level data that is a bit more meaningful than the vanity stats most folks are interested in. It’s here the competition gets in with real time analytics and the possibility to track both campaigns and funnel goals without getting to complex.

In the end I think the market will open up and more solutions and companies will be crammed into to the so called SEO market. GA will most likely have the larger part of the market for a foreseeable future. But how knows, maybe Yahoo will take up the fight or Microsoft will awake, they are up and coming. My bet is that on one of the upcomers like GoSquared will be the main competitor to GA and then a handful of other services, both hosted and self hosted.