Google Analytics, the mother of all analytical tools, is popular with millions of users across the world, mainly because it’s free.
But there is a catch…
Google Analytics is free because it is part of Google’s strategy to acquire more data and user insights. By using Google Analytics, users are giving Google access to data that helps them understand user behaviour online. This data is valuable to Google because it helps them improve their products and services, including search results, advertising, and other offerings.
However, not all of us want to be sharing our data and privacy-friendly website analytics services may be a better alternative to using Google Analytics. There are also many alternatives that are easier to use, with some being free and others offering paid options.
Google Analytics Alternatives
Let’s take a look at Google Analytics alternatives for WordPress.
Clicky
Clicky is a web analytics solution hosted on the cloud that is aimed at supporting businesses in monitoring, assessing, and generating real-time reports about their website visitors. Its features include heatmaps, action tracking, customer segmentation, path analysis, split testing, engagement analytics, and data export.
Price: Free – $19.99 for 100,000 page views per month
Matomo
Matomo is an open-source web analytics platform that allows users to track and analyse website traffic and user behaviour. It provides real-time insights into visitor behaviour, including page views, bounce rates, and user actions. Matomo also offers advanced privacy features, allowing users to comply with data protection regulations such as GDPR. Overall, Matomo is a powerful alternative to Google Analytics, especially for users who value data privacy and control.
Price: Free (Self-Hosted) – £29 for 100,000 hits per month
Fathom
Fathom Analytics is a privacy-focused web analytics tool that does not collect personally identifiable information (PII) or use invasive tracking methods. It offers simple and easy-to-understand reports on website visitors, pageviews, bounce rates, referrers, and other key metrics. Fathom Analytics prides itself on being transparent, privacy-focused, and easy to use.
Price: $14 for 100,000 page views per month
Plausible
Plausible.io is another great web analytics tool that is a privacy-friendly alternative to Google Analytics. Plausible.io collects minimal data from website visitors, and all data is anonymised to protect the privacy of users. The tool provides website owners with useful insights about their website, such as the number of visitors, their location, and the pages they visit. Additionally, Plausible.io offers real-time analytics, goal tracking, and custom dashboards to help users monitor their website performance and improve their online presence.
Price: £19 for 100,000 page views per month
Simple Analytics
Simple Analytics is also a privacy-focused web analytics service that does not collect any personal data from its users. Simple Analytics uses a simple and easy-to-use interface and provides website owners with key metrics such as page views, referrers, countries, and devices. The service is fully GDPR, CCPA, and PECR compliant, and does not use cookies or collect any personal data such as IP addresses, email addresses, or user agent strings. Instead, Simple Analytics uses a proprietary algorithm to calculate pageviews and other metrics, which makes it a more privacy-friendly alternative to other web analytics services.
Price: £19 for 100,000 datapoints per month
Scale8
Scale8 is a fast, simple and privacy-friendly alternative to Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics. Scale 8 is a hosted GDPR, CCPA and PECR compliant Tag Manager solution combined with a privacy-friendly analytics product.
Price: £22 for 100,000 page views per month
Microsoft Clarity
Microsoft Clarity is a free web analytics tool offered by Microsoft that helps website owners understand how users interact with their websites. It provides data such as user session recordings, heatmaps, and click tracking to help identify areas of a website that need improvement. Microsoft Clarity also includes features like funnels and conversion tracking to help track user journeys and measure website performance.
Price: Free