The day has finally come. Universal Analytics, GA3, has officially sunsetted and GA4 is here!
And yes, we have heard all of the analytics dialogue about how much Google Analytics aka GA4 sucks.
So, let’s look at the list of Google Analytics 4 (GA4) alternatives that you might want to consider for your business or website.
Piwik Pro Analytics
Ease of installation: Easy. Copy and paste Custom HTML within Google Tag Manager and submit. There are other options as well but for those familiar with GTM, this was incredibly easy.
Capabilities:
- Track Scroll Depth (without tag manager setup)
- Internal Search Monitoring
- Google Search Console / Google Ads Integration
- Many More
Straight out of the box, Piwik Pro has a very intuitive and easy-to-navigate dashboard. Monitor your site’s performance and start building custom reports immediately. Alongside these features, start slicing your data into desired segments and you might be choosing this as your next Google Analytics 4 alternative today!
Things I like so far:
- Onboarding & Education – Daily emails sent to inbox to educate and learn the tool faster.
I will continue to update my thoughts on this tool as more data continues to flow into the dashboard for a more comprehensive review in the near future! Stay tuned.
Pricing: Free for core users.
Find more information and try for yourself at the Piwik Pro Analytics website now
Matomo Analytics
Ease of installation: Easy. Another GTM install, that is pretty straightforward.
Capabilities:
- Create Heatmaps
- Experiment with A/B tests
- Explore custom reports
Things I like so far:
- Reports overview sent automatically to an email
- Simple Goal Setup is relatively issue free
Pricing: $23/month up to 50,000 hits per month is the cheapest pricing option for a monthly sign-up.
After your trial is over, users will have the option to upgrade and start paying for monthly access.
Explore Matomo’s 21-day free trial to get a sense of this platform is for you. Interestingly enough, you can elect to use a demo website if you don’t feel like adding any extra scripts to your site. Out of the box, this is another strong candidate for those looking for a GA4 replacement.
Fathom Analytics
Fathom Analytics is another alternative to GA4 that some might have already some use with but if not, might want to take a look here.
Clicky
Ease of installation: Another pretty straightforward setup
Capabilities: Out of the box, Clicky isn’t as intuitive or have as clean as interface as the previously mentioned tools. The dashboard is much less involved but seems to be designed for presenting data without focusing on the design.
Capabilities are abundant with things like:
- Setting up custom goals
- Analyzing funnels
- More
To get the most out all of these features, users will have to signup for a tier outside of the free plan. For basic website traffic analysis, it looks like Clicky can do the job just fine!
Pricing: Clicky Pricing is shown below for users who want to manage multiple sites or upgrade to premium features.
There are plenty of more tools to consider but at the moment these are the only two that I have managed to dabble with.
Please let me know if these alternatives are likely contenders for replacing the all-and-mighty Google or if this is just a temporary learning curve. Until then, I will keep reviewing alternatives and regularly updating what I find to be useful and what is fool’s gold!
In the meantime, improve your SEO presence with any of my additional resources below!