Best Free Website Analytics Tools
Web designers are often website owners. If you fall into this category, you have probably already realized the importance of knowing and understanding who is coming to your site and what they are doing while they’re there. Whether you are running a blog or an e-commerce site, this information is vital. That’s why it’s key to have a good set of tools providing you with website analytics. There are lots of tools out there, all with different features and different prices. In this post, I’m showing you the best free analytics tools available.
Clicky
Clicky prides itself on providing real time analytics. The UI is very clean and functional, and there is also a dedicated iPhone version.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is probably the most popular free analytics tool available. One of my favorite features is it’s custom reporting.
Reinvigorate
Reinvigorate also provides real-time stat tracking and can alert you when a visitor performs a particular action on your site. It also features heat map technology that lets you see where visitors are clicking.
Piwik
Piwik is open source and is built with PHP and MySQL. To use it, you have to install it on your own server, which is a simple process and only takes about 5 minutes.
Yahoo! Web Analytics
Yahoo! Web Analytics is a free full featured enterprise analytics solution with powerful and flexible dashboards, segmentation tools, and campaign management features.
WordPress.com Stats
If your site runs on WordPress and your not crazy about being overwhelmed with too many features, then WordPress.com Stats might be right for you.
Woopra
Woopra claims to be the world’s most comprehensive, information rich, easy to use, real-time Web tracking and analysis application. Judging by the quality of it’s user interface, they might be right.
FireStats
FireStats doesn’t feature a lot of fancy graphs and charts, but some may find this refreshing.
GoingUp
With an AJAX-rich interface, GoingUp! combines powerful web-analytics with top notch SEO tools.
Mint
Okay, Mint isn’t exactly free. However, for only a flat fee of $30 dollars and considering all of it’s features, it might as well be free.
Blog Tracker
Blog Tracker is a light weight analytics tool for blogs.
76 comments
Sankar
July 30, 2009Where is statcounter? Isn’t it a Good analytic tool?
Thanks
Sankar
Zach Krasner
July 30, 2009Very useful!
M Lequick
July 30, 2009For quick visual diagnosis, Crazy Egg offers nifty “heat” maps: http://crazyegg.com/
Nikola Ovcharski
July 30, 2009Awesome, thank you
Ramiro Riox - rariox
July 30, 2009Incredible, awesome tools, thanks for sharing info. Greetings!
KPinomics Web Analytics Blogs
July 30, 2009There is a more comprehensive list of all web analytics tools at http://kpinomics.com/directory/companies/
Dan Grossman
July 30, 2009You’re missing http://www.w3counter.com
Jack
July 30, 2009Statcounter and w3counter are just “stats”. These are analytics. Big difference.
Hobbsy
July 30, 2009As Sankar mentioned above, I would also like to recommend:
Statcounter
http://www.statcounter.com/
Mirko
July 30, 2009Good article, but I’d love to get some recommendations about each, what are the specific functionalities. For example why should I pay for Mint when I’m using Google Analytics?
Raven Matt
July 30, 2009Excellent list. You might want to differentiate the difference between logfile analysis vs. page tagging analysis
Google analytics is page tagging where mint uses logfiles.
More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_analytics
Edgar Leijs
July 30, 2009Good list to try different systems…
It’s quite nice that there are more iPhone / smartphone apps available… Checking your stats on the fly!
Downloader
July 30, 2009Clicky is somewhat similar to PMetrics.
Dipali
July 31, 2009really awesome list. I would like to recommended for inclusion of Stat counter. and please eliminate Yahoo web analytics tools,as its not free tool.
Mark D'Onofrio
July 31, 2009I would recommend also http://www.koego.com, which suites well for bloggers and has integration with Twitter too.
rodolfo
July 31, 2009Thanks for the great list of websites analytics, will be of great help
Hirvesh
July 31, 2009Hey! Nice post! You might also want to check out: http://codefusionlab.blogspot.com/2009/06/45-excellent-website.html
gNcWebmaster
July 31, 2009Hi there is good list thanks.. Best of woopra..
Rob
July 31, 2009Always good to know of a few options. I’m a big fan of G’s.
Sam
August 1, 2009Great article, thanks for sharing this useful collection, I have always used Google Analytics, people have recommended Woopra to me, so I might check that out. I’ve had clients in the past who have used statcounter too and I would recommend you check that out.
Kaplang
August 1, 2009really good list of stat resources
thanks
Roddy
August 1, 2009Nice list.
I use http://www.statcounter.com and http://www.dacounter.com
joão
August 2, 2009Quite useful. Thanks
Dror Zaifman
August 2, 2009I tend to stick with Google Analytics for two reasons. One it does the same thing that very expensive software does for free while not costing anything.
Reason number two is because I was introduced to it early on and stock with it since them.
Although I worked with other analytics software, I just find Google’s software easiest to use and more user friendly.
Peter
August 5, 2009I would just like to acho what Dror said above, Analytics was introduced to me when I was starting out and I have just stuck with it since. On another note, there is a great Analytics app for the iphone (called Analytics) you should check out.
Joe
August 6, 2009Very good information. Thank you
Web Designing Company
August 8, 2009Nice sharing of tools really very helpful…
Doc4
August 9, 2009We have been using Woopra and Google Analytics. Both have noticeably different opinions on day to day stats often varying greatly. If anyone has insight into this we would be interested to hear it.
David Hagdahl
August 9, 2009Thanks for sharing. I like Google ANalytics, but it’s not realtime. Maybe I will give Clicky a try.
Malte Blättermann
August 9, 2009Hello,
nice Article! I always used google Analytics, but there seem to be some good alternatives…
Cheers Malte
erk
August 9, 2009thank you for this infos
Carl
August 9, 2009Interesting list but unfortunately, once you’ve chosen an analytics tool, it is hard to switch and lose all the history… Therefore, I’ll probably continue using Google Analytics.
James
August 10, 2009Mint should never be on this list… not free and no better than some of the other great products you listed above either.
Gavin
August 11, 2009These are some great free analytics tools man.
Thanks and keep up the good work.
web analytics
August 15, 2009This is a good list of free apps, but what about putting together a similar list for paid ones? I like my current solution, so for me that comparison would be helpful.
Bruno Lima
August 17, 2009Hi! Really cool blog, please visite my webpage to at http://www.4createwebsite.com. For Create Website. Thanks! Bruno
Wayan Parmana
August 18, 2009hat a great article..i need this one to improve my skill
Zeeshan
August 21, 2009great thanks
yahoo sucks like always
brian fidler
August 21, 2009While I love Google Analytics, the dark secret behind it and any other hosted analytics solution is that you don’t own the data, they do.
Piwik is very easy to install, i’ve never used Mint but alwasy kept up with it. I think having a solution, paid or not, that you maintain on your server and where you own the data is the most important aspect.
The Twitter analytics in Clicky is pretty intriguing as well, but it probably could be integrated into Piwik with a little effort.
Pay As You Go Websites
August 29, 2009Google Analytics has always been my usual choice for when I want more than just AWSTATS, but I didn’t know that they own the data – that’s a revelation to me. Can anyone confirm if its the same with Mint – or do you own the data as you’re paying for the service?
Alex
September 7, 2009Wow, great!! BTW: I love your site’s design
hannes
September 8, 2009YMA:
“Yahoo! Web Analytics is currently offered for free to all Yahoo! Small Business Merchant Standard, Merchant Professional and Store merchants, and all Advertisers that are supported by a Yahoo! Account Manager.
Unfortunately, if you do not meet the above criteria you are not currently eligible for Yahoo! Web Analytics.”
uhm, yeah its free, its a pitty nobody other than people who pay yahoo are allowed to use it but hey… its ‘free’ and btw. will Reinvigorates (closed) Beta Phase ever end? Nobody knows
Ian Bugeja
September 14, 2009I suggest Apache Logs Viewer. It’s a free windows application that allows you to view and analyze apache log files.
You can generate some good reports (bar/pie charts) and also compute some interesting statistics.
http://www.apacheviewer.com
encapsul
September 17, 2009Great list. I would also mention http://www.overstat.com which is a 100% Flash solution with real-time stats also.
Internet Marketing Consultant
September 30, 2009Great list of tools. We love woopra, works great.
Alex
October 12, 2009Nice post! Try this position, rank and website uptime monitoring service – http://monitor.mazecore.com
Andy Answers
October 12, 2009Thanks for sharing. I will try Woopra, I already attempted to register at http://www.reinvigorate.net but it seems to be an error on their page and sending new applications doesn’t work.
devi iriawan mulyono
October 13, 2009I get a lot of valuable information from your article. thanks
Claudio
October 15, 2009Can I run two web analytics in only one site?
Infiniti Magazine
December 7, 2009Great list, someone should come up with an ultimate features list we can submit to all these analytics companies. All of them lack in something or the other!