Why you should use alternatives to Google Analytics
One of the aspects of creating a solution on the internet is analyzing its traffic and visitor behavior.
Google Analytics is the most popular tool in this ecosystem. It is so big that we can think that it is alone. But we would be wrong to think that. In this article, we will discover that other solutions exist and they are doing a great job.
Why would we use an alternative?
Google Analytics is an excellent tool with many advantages. But it also comes with its share of disadvantages.
Data sampling
Google is getting a loooot of data from millions of websites. So they get a lot of data to process. To reduce this volume, they are doing data sampling.
To translate, they only use a sample of each website to realize their analytics.
Learning curve
If you never have used this tool, it can be challenging to get to the heart of the matter as there is a lot to learn.
If it is not your principal job, you may not have the time to learn the tool to use it efficiently.
Forget EU
Your website may be based in the European Union or operating inside her so you will have to complain to the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).
Unfortunately, it is hard to make the Google Analytics setup in compliance with GDPR.
What are the alternatives?
In 2023, every solution has its alternatives. They are not always as good as the initial solution but we will discover a few of them.
Plausible
Their website describes Plausible as a “Simple and privacy-friendly Google Analytics alternative”. Personally, I am using it because it is a light tool and it is compliant with GDPR.
Plausible is also open source and self-hostable on your server (They also provide hosting plans).
Matomo
Matomo is also a GDRP-friendly alternative to Google Analytics. It allows importing data from Google Analytics so the migration is made easier.
It is a simple-to-use solution. They are developing it in open source.
Wrap up
We didn’t list every solution here but you are now aware that other solutions exist and why you should change for them instead of Google Analytics.
You can find my other articles and follow me here. Thanks for reading, I hope you learned something new today 🚀
