November 18, 2024
12 min
4 Best GA4 Alternatives for 2023 - Sustainable Website Analytics Tools
JLJustyna Labadz
Lead
If you are a conscious creator of web solutions, you know that analyzing website traffic and website data is inevitable. Users may be reluctant to any attempts to investigate their activities on the internet. Still, even the smallest amount of data allows us to adapt better with our offerings and message, to follow their real needs and interests, improve the user journey, and make it much more pleasant. And it can still be done by respecting their privacy right.
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Analytics for websites means constantly crafting and improving your product as a whole, as also provided by it its content, functionalities, and user experience. Check how by choosing the best web analytics software, you can make it both benefit from visiting your website and make your product work even more efficiently, and thus achieve the desired business success.
- The time of Google Analytics is irrevocably passing away. But that there is life beyond Google, you can choose a better alternative than GA4.
- 4 sustainable alternative analytics to consider: Plausible, Cabin, Fathom, and PIWIK Pro will make your website lighter, faster, and more user-friendly, reducing your digital carbon footprint.
What can you get with alternatives to GA4? Fast-performing, easy-to-use, privacy-focused analytics, GDPR-compliant tools that make your website user-friendly and sustainable.
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Today it’s not about ‘get the traffic’ — it’s about ‘get the targeted and relevant traffic.’
Adam Audette
July 1, 2023, is a date that keeps many growth marketers, data analysts, and SEO specialists awake at night. This is the day when one of the most popular tools in the history of analytics - Google Analytics, also known as Universal Analytics, will stop collecting data from users and go down in history. The closure of this tool was caused by changes in both European GDPR and international law regarding the method and amount of data collected from users, tracking them online, and analyzing vast amounts of data, not necessarily with their knowledge and consent.
Currently, many marketers and business representatives are looking for a solution. Many of them will probably turn to GA4, a new proposal from the tech giant. It allows you to migrate data from its older version but offers completely different possibilities and functions, requiring learning the new tool. However, this moment can become an excellent reason for all of us to look for the best alternatives to Google Analytics or even switch to different solutions than Google Analytics 4.
So if you still haven't made a decision, or you just made one, but you are not satisfied and feel that you can offer something more to both yourself and your users, our article about the best Google Analytics alternatives can be a good start to make your digital product much better, user-friendly and sustainable.
Why consider Google Analytics alternatives?
Many people may ask this question, why look for other analytics solutions? After all, the existing advanced analytics met our expectations, gave us a full view of what is happening on the website, who your website visitors are, what is the traffic source, user behavior, the entire customer journey they go through, factors such as bounce rate or page views. Despite the restrictions and changes in the dashboard, we expect that the new tool from Google will still offer us an extensive and complex web analytics tool for more efficient organization of our marketing campaigns or ordering Google ads.
So how can we benefit from the alternatives to GA:
- Privacy and Data Ownership: Nowadays, users are much more aware of the unfair tracking of our personal data and behavior when using the web. With these increasing concerns about data privacy and evolving privacy regulations such as GDPR and CCPA, businesses that explore web analytics alternatives provide their user with reliable products showing their commitment to prioritize data ownership, respect their privacy, security, and compliance with international regulations.
- Innovations and Adaptability: Searching for alternatives to traditional web analytics can show us that analytics platforms with evolving technology allow us to get much more features like real-time analytics, advanced reporting capabilities, and insights not only related to user tracking but also to web performance, website carbon footprint, or SEO insights. All to enhance the decision-making process.
- Cost-effectiveness: The free version of Google Analytics doesn't offer advanced features, which may be necessary for some businesses. If you explore alternatives, you may find options that provide similar functionality for a lower price or a better return on investment.
- Simplicity: for many businesses, complex dashboards with vast and vague data can overwhelm web creators. Alternative analytics allows you to measure what matters without needing a Ph.D. in web analytics or simply taking courses to understand it. In many cases, advanced web analytics is unnecessary, and with simple qualitative data and basic analytics, we are ready to improve the quality of the designed user experience.
- Sustainability: As you could learn in our manifesto, 20 kB makes a difference. Google Analytics script weights 17kb. The lightest scripts mentioned in the article website analytics tool weigh even less than 1 kB. Implementing them is a good start to making your website more lightweight, faster, and sustainable.
Can we leave this "analytical comfort zone" and look a little wider at solutions that can bring us much more benefits? Dive into our comprehensive guide on analytics alternatives for your websites, and check which great alternative to Google Analytics we recommend that will make it more user-friendly and save tons of CO2 released into the atmosphere. Each makes it easy to use, help you understand what is happening on your website or mobile app, and thus allows you to make a data-driven decision. Ready to open your eyes and check what alternative web analytics can offer to us? Let's go!
How to choose the right analytics tool?
There is a high number of Google Analytics alternatives. Of course, among others, many popular Google Analytics alternatives like Adobe Analytics, Matomo Analytics, and GA4 itself exist. With them, indeed, you can get a significant amount of insights into quantitative and qualitative analytics. But that's not the case. It is good to start with several questions that will point us to the proper alternatives that fit our needs, collect data, and show analytics and reports that matter.
- What are your business goals and objectives? Can you identify specific metrics you need to measure and KPIs that align with your objectives? Each analytics tool may specialize in different areas, such as eCommerce, content management, and mobile app analytics. By carefully choosing them, you can effectively measure and analyze data and insights that matter to your business.
- What features do you need and functionalities? Do you have any events as newsletters or contact forms in your product analytics to track? Would you like to integrate it with other tools you use? Does it provide advanced analytics features, and do you need them, or are they redundant?
- Does chosen web analytics platform user-friendly? How does it impact your website performance? Is it super-heavy, causing increasing the loading time? Can their cookies discourage users from visiting your website?
- Does it represent privacy-friendly web analytics software? Is it compliant with current regulations on privacy in your country? Does it collect cookies? Does it affect the user journey and impact conversion and bounce rate with a high drop-off rate after visiting your website or app?
- How much time do you have to learn it? Do you have to spend many hours on courses and tutorials that teach you about its functionalities? Is it simple analytics or complex ones? How its user interface looks like, and does it offer clear and comprehensive reporting, visualization, and dashboards? Does it provide clear documentation written in plain, human language everyone understands? Does its complexity force you to hire additional specialists to analyze its metrics or teach your team?
- How much does it cost, and what it provides in comparison to its price? Does it have a free plan that is compatible with your basic needs? How much cost its premium analytics for your growing needs? Does it have a demo or trial version that could help you convince you that it is the right tool for you?
- Is it future-proof, scalable, and flexible? Will this be able to handle your changing business, follow your needs, and will it be able to integrate with other platforms? Is it predictive analytics that looks at the bigger picture, including possible future upcoming regulations and growing awareness and expectations of the customers?
- Does it provide data that are accurate and reliable? Can you count on real-time analytics, or do you have to wait 24 hours for the update?
- Does it provide support? Are users left only with a set of FAQs, or do they have a chance for quick support in case of problems with using analytics? How much time do you need for help from support staff?
By answering these questions, you can start to understand your business needs in terms of marketing analytics and accordingly analyze the best analytics platform for you.
Plausible Analytics
Plausible, as its name indicates, is plausible. It is currently the most popular privacy-focused web analytics tool that provides essential insights into website visitor behavior without compromising user privacy. It aims to offer a more straightforward and transparent alternative to traditional analytics platforms. Its privacy-focused approach prioritizes user privacy by collecting only essential data to generate accurate website analytics. It avoids cookies and does not track personally identifiable information (PII). It respects visitors' privacy choices, such as honoring Do Not Track (DNT) preferences. Plausible can synchronize with Google Search Console, enabling you to identify the search keywords that generate traffic to your website.
It should be mentioned that Plausible Analytics only offers some of the extensive functions and detailed information provided by more comprehensive analytics tools such as Google Analytics. Nevertheless, its straightforwardness, emphasis on confidentiality, simple and intuitive dashboard, and transparent pricing make it a fitting option for people and companies requiring fundamental website analytics while retaining a cautious approach to privacy. It is an open-source web analytics platform built openly on GitHub that encourages users to check their reliability by sharing complete documentation.
Best for:
- eCommerce and SaaS Start-ups
- Freelancers and agencies
- Bloggers and content creators
Tracking method: JavaScript tracking code.
GDPR compliance: Yes.
GA Data import: Yes.
The weight of the script: Starts from 1kb.
Top Features
- Privacy-focused approach, CCPA, and GDPR-compliant.
- Simple and intuitive dashboard.
- Real-Time Analytics.
- Monitoring visitors metrics: unique visitors, page views, bounce rates, average visit duration, countries, sources, devices, and browsers.
- Goal tracking: monitoring specific interactions such as CTA, contact forms, and newsletters.
- Comparing data from custom periods.
- Lightweight tracking method supporting sustainable websites and reducing website carbon footprint.
- Its open-source code is available and accessible on GitHub so that anyone can check it out.
Pricing
Free Plan: No (only 30-day unlimited-use free trial).
Paid plan: starts from $9/ month for a maximum of 10k monthly pageviews.
Cabin Analytics
Cabin is a privacy-first, carbon-conscious web analytics solution. It's lightweight and compliant with all known privacy laws. It doesn't store visitors' unique identifiers or personal data and also doesn't sell or pass it to anyone. It is a tool also focused on reducing energy and always looking for ways to save energy. Their owners run four small servers which use custom software to be highly CPU and memory friendly, so they can leverage low-resource, low-energy servers while maintaining a high traffic throughput. It provides its users minimalistic, straightforward, and clear dashboard that shows the most critical metrics for its users.
Cabin helps users stay more cautious about the website's carbon footprint by measuring each page's CO₂ usage over time. In the dashboard, they highlight high-energy-consuming pages and provide insights and improvements to be made. The tool homepage provides a website carbon calculator to inspect each website to estimate its carbon footprint and energy impact.
Best for:
- Start-ups and small businesses
- Freelancers and agencies
- Bloggers and content creators
Tracking method: JavaScript tracking code.
GDPR compliance: Yes.
GA Data import: No.
The weight of the script: Starts from 1kb.
Top Features
- Privacy-first approach, no cookies, and consent banners.
- Complaint with all privacy laws.
- Monitoring visitors metrics: unique visitors, page views, bounce rates, top pages, countries, sources, devices, browsers, OS, and Screen Sizes.
- Lightweight script.
- Planet-friendly approach by reducing our electricity usage and leveraging resource-saving serverless technologies.
- Tracking website carbon footprint and providing insights and improvements.
- Goal tracking: monitoring specific interactions such as CTA, contact forms, and newsletters.
Pricing
Free Plan: Yes. Limited to 1 website and basic tracked metrics.
Paid plan: $19/month
Fathom Analytics
It allows you to check all website metrics with the all-site view. With Fathom, it is also easy to keep coworkers or customers on track with analytics because it allows generating and sending reports for single or multiple websites. This tool is also SEO and planet-friendly because it is much smaller than Google Analytics' script.
Best for:
- From small to large businesses and corporations
- European companies
- Freelancers and agencies
- Bootstrappers
Tracking method: JavaScript tracking code.
GDPR compliance: Yes.
GA Data import: Yes.
The weight of the script: 1.2 kB.
Top Features
- Simple and user-friendly dashboard.
- Privacy-focused approach, no cookies and tracking personal information.
- Real-time analytics.
- Complaint with main privacy laws such as GDPR, CCPA, and ePrivacy.
- Monitoring visitors metrics: unique visitors, views, average time on site, bounce rates, event completions, top pages, countries, referrals, devices, and browsers.
- Lightweight script.
- Data export and API access: the ability to export data, reports and integrate analysis with other tools and systems.
- Setting up custom goals and events, measuring the effectiveness of marketing campaigns or users specific interactions.
Pricing
Free Plan: No. Only 30-day free trial.
Paid plan: from $14/month
PIWIK Pro Analytics Suite
Piwik PRO Analytics is a top-of-the-line web analytics tool that offers businesses thorough analytics and data privacy solutions. The platform is crafted explicitly for large companies and enterprises that seek high-level analytics functions and reliable data management. With Piwik PRO Analytics, companies can access various customizable features that generate in-depth reports and visual representations, enabling them to fully grasp their website's performance, audience demographics, traffic origins, and more.
For many, it can be treated as a great alternative to Universal Analytics because it contains many features of Google Analytics without breaking the law of user privacy and data security. For example, it uses a built-in tag management system, similar to Google Tag Manager, to streamline the deployment of marketing and analytics tags on websites without manual coding. One of its huge advantages is also the integration of analytics data with other business systems, such as CRM platforms, marketing automation tools, or data warehouses.
Best for:
- Large businesses and corporations
- Industries with strict data governance and compliance requirements
- Digital marketing agencies
- Organizations with data integration needs
Tracking method: JavaScript tracking code.
GDPR compliance: Yes.
GA Data import: Yes.
The weight of the script: 38 kB (so, unfortunately, it is not as lightweight as other tools)
Top Features
- Dashboard for more advanced users,
- Comprehensive analytics: tracking and analyzing various metrics, including page views, unique visitors, conversion rates, and custom events,
- Privacy and security-focused approach,
- Advanced reporting options for customers and co-workers,
- Tag manager,
- Data integration with other business systems and platforms,
- Customization and segmentation for analyzing specific subsets of data and gaining deeper insights.
Pricing
Free Plan: Yes. Up to 500,000 monthly actions.
Paid plan: customized.
Web Analytics Beyond Universal Analytics and GA4
Conclusion
As web creators, we all face finding Google Analytics alternatives for 2023. By habit, many will use GA4 as Universal Analytics will disappear, not thinking that there are many GA4 replacements. While many doubt that it is impossible to find suitable solutions like Google Analytics, with this overview of alternative solutions, we want to show that many other site analytics tools can serve us with the same results and even bring more benefits to our business.
Comparing GA4 vs all analytics tools collected here can bring us surprising conclusions. GA4 lacks of many features that we would like to use while our awareness is growing and users need changing. You don't have to compromise on creating sales funnels, more-informed marketing campaigns, and so on because, in most cases, you still will be able to do it. Switching from GA and GA4 to more sustainable quantitative analytics tools can improve our website performance and create a reliable image of our brand that cares not only about the privacy and security of its users but also about the whole planet's future.
