Google Analytics Alternatives: A Guide to Navigating the World of Options Beyond Google

Description

Google Analytics Alternatives is an independent evaluation of 15 of the leading analytics tools that could function as Universal Analytics replacements. The book is a learning guide, providing readers with a framework for better understanding the marketplace and tool methodologies. It's aimed at analysts and implementors, but is informative to any web professional. What's Different About This Book? There's plenty of free lists of GA alternatives out there, why should you pay for my book? Truly independent research. Many existing lists of alternatives and their features are done by the vendors themselves, their affiliates, or agencies that specialize in one of the alternatives. I have no dog in this fight and give a balanced assessment of each tool. I'm not selling anything other than this book. A comprehensive, rigorous approach. Long product lists without context make decision-making even harder. Instead of a big feature matrix, the first half of the book will help you narrow down what you need. The second part focuses on features that best distinguish each product. Based on real-world usage. I didn't just read someone else's list, read a vendor's marketing page, or sit through a product demo. I installed all 15 options on live websites with real user traffic — collecting data over multiple months to better understand each product. Part One The state of the industry as well as general background from a technical perspective. Some of the questions addressed: - Should I self-host my analytics? What about open source? - What's the difference between product analytics and traditional web analytics? - How do privacy and compliance issues affect my choice of tool? Part Two Individual product evaluations include: Matomo Cloud, Piwik Pro, Clicky, Cloudflare Web Analytics, Statcounter, Chartbeat, Fathom, Plausible Analytics, Visitor Analytics, Google Analytics 4, Mixpanel, Snowplow, Amplitude Analytics, Heap, and PostHog. These evaluations focus on the best use case for each product and highlights features and approaches that are most representative and unique to each. About the Author Jason Packer is owner and principal consultant at Quantable Analytics. He has over 20 years of experience in web analytics, and has also been a Unix systems administrator, web programmer, network engineer, and SEO specialist. Praise of Google Analytics Alternatives from Industry Experts “This book is a must-read for anyone who ever has ever considered the question, ‘What options do I really have besides Google Analytics?’ Jason Packer provides an in-depth guide to what the key considerations are for answering that question, as well as a detailed explanation of how those considerations apply to 14 different platforms — eschewing the 'feature comparison matrix' for a much, much more valuable assessment and explanation based on hands-on implementation and exploration of each platform.” –Tim Wilson, Senior Director of Analytics, Search Discovery “This guide is thorough, thoughtful (and in some cases, thought-provoking), and a wonderful way to get familiar with the many tools out there. It comes at a great time, as many companies are re-evaluating their analytics tool right now. As a consultant with experience with only a few toolsets, I learned a lot about all the potential tools my clients have thought about (or not known enough to think about).” –Jenn Kunz, Principal Architect, 33 Sticks “This book is a great way at viewing the web analytics ecosystem as a whole - worth every cent.” –Brian Clifton, Director of Analytics, Verified Data and author of Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics