In just a few years, Google has become a technology giant that, with its comprehensive free and paid tools, dominates the online marketing landscape. Organic positioning, SEM campaigns, cloud storage, creation of all kinds of documents, your own social network ... We can't live without Google, no matter how bad it is.
One of the essential tools to monitor any web page is analytics. Google Analytics is the preferred solution for many companies to measure and optimize the different indicators of the operation of web pages.
You may even think that Google Analytics is the only tool with which to analyze your page Animated Video Service. At least for free. However, there are alternatives, both paid and free. Some of them are freemium, that is, they have a limited free version that can be implemented at a cost proportional to the features you wish to purchase.
So shouldn't I use Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is an excellent tool to measure numerous indicators of a web page. In addition, it has two added advantages: it is free and Google is the great search engine for which we try to optimize results.
However, knowing alternatives to Google Analytics will allow you to assess which is the tool that best suits your needs and to choose with greater freedom.
On the other hand, although we cannot deny the advantages of Google Analytics to measure web pages, it is no less true that it has some weak points:
- Accuracy: Some of the data provided by Google Analytics is not completely accurate. One of them is the time the users stay on the pages. Another piece of information that is not very reliable is the one related to the use of mobile devices and social networks.
- JavaScript: Google Analytics relies on the JavaScript language to obtain its measurements. Many browsers are prepared to block it, so no data can be obtained from users who use plugins to block JavaScript.
- Privacy: Google stores data on user behavior on its servers through the use of cookies. Cookies are files that are used to collect information from Internet users. Spanish legislation is very restrictive in its use. Therefore, users can block cookies so that their behavior is not tracked.
Although Google Analytics is a free tool with many features, it is not infallible, so other possibilities should be considered.
Next, we are going to see 5 examples of alternatives to Google Analytics.
5 alternatives to Google Analytics
As we mentioned at the beginning, some of the alternative tools to Google Analytics are free. Others have a cost. Depending on the amount of data you want to measure or the number of web pages to analyze, paying a monthly fee may or may not be profitable.
On the other hand, some are easier to use than others. Therefore, it is best to compare the functionalities and ease of use of several of them and choose the most appropriate for your case.
1. Open Web Analytics
Open Web Analytics is a free open source tool. It works in a similar way to Google Analytics but with some added possibilities. For example, it allows generating heat maps, which is a very visual and simple way of having a global vision of the behavior of users on a web page. In addition, it provides conversion statistics, something especially useful for online stores.
2. Adobe Analytics
Adobe never ceases to amaze us with its ability to offer a wide range of solutions in everything related to design, cloud storage, and, also, to measure web pages.
Adobe Analytics is included in the Adobe Marketing Cloud suite and stands out for being one of the most complete web measurement tools, although it does not have a free version.
One of its main advantages is the ease of use, very intuitive, and through customizable panels. Among other things, you can test campaigns before launching them, it allows you to integrate measurement in social networks, it has functions to optimize the spending of advertising campaigns and it can be used to manage content.
3. Kissmetrics
Kissmetrics is a payment tool specially designed to analyze data from online stores with a large amount of traffic and sales. This implies that it is not economical, since it is focused on companies of a certain size that need to obtain a lot of information.
Among its advantages, the ease of use and its enormous benefits stand out. In addition, this platform allows very precise segmentation of the visitors of e-commerce. Analyze the sales funnel, costs, and benefits of each channel used in the marketing strategy.
4. Piwik
Piwik is the most widely used free and open-source tool as an alternative to Google Analytics. One of its main advantages is that it is installed on the hosting server of the web page that is to be measured, in such a way that it guarantees the privacy of the users. In addition, it has no limitations as regards the number of pages to be measured. The biggest drawback is that it is not as intuitive as other alternatives.
5. SEMrush
SEMrush is one of the most popular alternatives to Google Analytics. Although the free version is very limited, it is useful to get an idea of ??the global operation of the tool to decide if you want to acquire the license.
Its great advantages are the ease of use and the precision of the data it provides. Another of its possibilities, not negligible, is that it can be used to obtain information from the pages of the competition without just entering the address in your search engine. In addition, it provides very useful data about the keywords and pages of our website that Google indexes.