10 Promising Free Web Analytics Tools
Web analytics is the process of gathering and analyzing your web content’s data in order to glean meaningful information about how your site is being utilized by your users. There are plenty of Web analytics applications out there, and you probably already know the big guns such as Google Analytics, Crazy Egg, and remote-site services such as Alexa and Compete.
We go off the trodden path and explore a few lesser-known Web analytics options. In this article, you’ll find 10 excellent and free tools and applications to help you gather and analyze data about your web content.
1. Piwik
Go to Live Demonstration of Piwik.
Piwik is an open-source Web analytics application developed using PHP and MySQL. It has a "plugins" system that allows for utmost extensibility and customization. Install only the plugins you need or go overboard and install them all – the choice is up to you. The plugins system, as you can imagine, also opens up possibilities for you to create your own custom extensions. This thing’s lightweight – the download’s only 1.9MB.
2. FireStats
Go to Live Demonstration of FireStats.
FireStats is a simple and straight-forward Web analytics application written in PHP/MySQL. It supports numerous platforms and set-ups including C# sites, Django sites, Drupal, Joomla!, WordPress, and several others. Are you a resourceful developer who needs moar cowbell? FireStats has an excellent API that will assist you in creating your own custom apps or publishing platform components (imagine: displaying the top 10 most downloaded files in your WordPress site) based on your FireStats data.
3. Snoop
Snoop is a desktop-based application that runs on the Mac OS X and Windows XP/Vista platforms. It sits nicely on your system status bar/system tray, notifying you with audible sounds whenever something happens. Another outstanding Snoop feature is the Name Tags option which allows you to "tag" visitors for easier identification. So when Joe over at the accounting department visits your site, you’ll instantly know.
4. Yahoo! Web Analytics
Yahoo! Web analytics is Yahoo!’s alternative to the dominant Google Analytics. It’s an enterprise-level, robust web-based third-party solution which makes accessing data easy especially for multiple-user groups. It’s got all the things you’d expect from a comprehensive Web analytics tool such as pretty graphs, custom-designed (and printable) reports, and real-time data tracking.
5. BBClone
Go to Live Demonstration of BBClone.
If you’re looking for a simple, server-side web application that doesn’t rely on third-party services to monitor your data, check out BBClone - a PHP-based server application that gives you a detailed overview of website traffic and visitor data. It supports language localization for 32 languages like English, Chinese, German, and Japanese. It easily integrates with popular publishing platforms like Drupal, WordPress, and Textpattern. Since it’s logfile-based, it doesn’t require you to use a server-side relational database.
6. Woopra
Woopra is a Web analytics application written in Java. It’s split into two parts which includes a desktop application for data analysis/exploration and a web service to monitor website statistics. Woopra has a robust user interface, an intuitive management system that allows you to run it on multiple sites and domains, and even a chat feature so that you can gather non-numerical information by talking to your site users. Woopra is currently in beta and requires you to request for a private beta registration.
7. JAWStats
JAWStats is a server-based Web analytics application that runs with the popular AWStats (in fact, if you’re on a shared hosting plan - AWStats is probably already installed). JAWStats does two things to extend AWStats - it improves performance by reducing server resource usage and improves the user interface a little bit. With that said, you can’t go wrong with just using AWStats either if you’re happy with it.
8. 4Q
A large part of Web analytics deals with number-crunching and numerical data. Raw numbers tells only part of the story and it’s often helpful to perform analytics by way of interacting with actual users. 4Q developer Avinash Kaushik puts it perfectly when he said: "Web analytics is good at the ‘What’. It is not good at the ‘Why’".4Q is a simple surveying application focused on improving your traditional numerical Web analytics by supplementing it with actual user feedback. Check out this YouTube video on how easy it is to set up 4Q.
9. MochiBot
MochiBot is a free Web analytics/tracking tool especially designed for Flash assets. With MochiBot, you can see who’s sharing your Flash content, how many times people view your content, as well as helping you track where your Flash content is to prevent piracy and content theft. Installing MochiBot is a breeze; you simply copy a few lines of ActionScript code in the .FLA files you want to monitor.
10. Grape Web Statistics
Go to Live Demonstration of Grape Web Statistics.
Grape Web Statistics is a simple, open-source application geared towards web developers. It has a clean and usable interface and has an Extensions API to extend and customize your installation. It uses PHP for the backend and you can run it on any operating system that runs PHP.
Let’s talk about it.
What Web analytics software do you use, and why? Do you have any extensive experience in using any of the above application? Share it with all of us in the comments!
Further reading
- Read the definition of Web analytics according to Wikipedia.
- Interested in the topic of Web analytics? Check out The Web Analytics Association.
- Learn more about the launch of Woopra from this Mashable post which includes a video interview.
- Read more about Piwik from this Read Write Web article.
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- 15 Tools for Monitoring a Website’s Popularity
- Graphing/Charting Data on Web Pages: JavaScript Solutions
- 10 Tools for Evaluating Web Design Accessibility
- 6 Tools to Help You Analyze a Web Host
92 Comments
Chris W.
January 2nd, 2009
Hot. I solely use GA simply because I started out with it and it shows me all my sites at once. Plus I don’t want to bog down my pages with a bunch of external JS calls.
Ben Ho
January 2nd, 2009
Thanks for the great list. Most of them I don’t know about. I’ve been using Mint - http://www.haveamint.com but it’s a paid web app. But what I like about Mint is the elegant design and usability. I can see everything at one glance, you can also optimise Mint for the iPhone’s screen so that you can check your stats on the go.
Raymond Selda
January 2nd, 2009
Wow! Never knew there were a lot of analytics software around. Thank you for this post. I’ve heard interesting features on Woopra on BoagWorld.
Jacob Gube
January 2nd, 2009
@Chris W.: Google Analytics is very hard to beat. It’s got a great user interface, great reporting tools, and is very easy to install. A downside I see with with GA is that it’s a third-party application. Piwik and FireStats, for example, is hosted on your server. That not only improves the accuracy of the results (because GA is JavaScript-based, it can be blocked by the user), but also makes sure you have a better control with your site’s data. With that said - I do use Google Analytics on Six Revisions - it’s convenient, especially with multi-site tracking (like you’ve mentioned) and reduces server load.
@Ben Ho: I’ve heard a lot of great things about Mint, and the design/usability of the app is what most people also mention. Would you say it’s worth the cost? And what are the features that free applications like Google Analytics or Yahoo! Site Explorer don’t have that Mint has, other than those that you’ve mentioned?
Scott Petrovic
January 2nd, 2009
great post!! Web analytics is a great tool that I don’t think most web designers know enough about. The 4Q tool works really well. Nothing better than a free ongoing on-exit survey.
Chris W.
January 2nd, 2009
I use GA for more accurate/advanced tracking and reporting without having to customize a script that resides on my own server. For example, the WordPress Google Analytics script allows me to exclude any hits from a logged in administrator (me) and also tracks downloads automatically so I don’t have to use an external file host or write something myself.
GA = quick, easy, pretty, well-supported. Woot woot.
Jonny T
January 2nd, 2009
I’ve always used Google Analytics, but I can’t wait for Yahoo! Web Analytics to open up.
Advice - Everyone needs to install the 4Q survey on their website.
Decent Weblog
January 2nd, 2009
Very nice list of web analytics tool. I only use Google analytics on all my sites, I find it very easy and accurate than any other tool.
Ben Ho
January 2nd, 2009
@Jacob Gube - I must say the pricing for Mint is a little steep, when most free analytics tool provides the same features and more. But I guess it really depends on the individual’s needs. What I am attracted to Mint is it’s aesthetics and how it lets me spend less time by looking at all data at once in one page. One other feature for Mint is that it’s much like Wordpress where it lets you install plugins which they refer to it as “Pepper”, which means the possibilities are endless. Ultimately I would use this for myself but I won’t recommend it to my corporate clients.
Josh
January 2nd, 2009
Great post, but you forgot Clicky:
http://getclicky.com/
The paid version is better than the free version, but the free version is very useful too…
Mo
January 2nd, 2009
Yahoo Web Analytics is formerly known as Indextools .It is a paid service and is currently undergoing some work under the hood to fit into Y!OS
Walter
January 2nd, 2009
I’ve been using Mint for a while now and I’m very satisfied with it. I’m also currently trying out StatCounter.com but I’m going to stick with Mint.
Advantages are the layout, the usability, the extensibility and, of course, that all collected data remains on your server (I consider the information about visitors on my sites private). But Mint hasn’t been built for long term analysis, see their FAQ at http://www.haveamint.com/faqs/miscellaneous/ups_and_downs However, it suits my purposes very well.
John Wang
January 2nd, 2009
I have been using Google Analytics and Woopra. I would like to try out Yahoo’s version but still nothing from them.
Woopra is nice as you get to see real-time data. Whereas Google makes you wait a day.
Dan Gaul
January 2nd, 2009
Interesting list. However, Yahoo Analytics is closed to the public right now, and has been for some time.
Glenn
January 3rd, 2009
I think obligatory mention of http://awstats.sourceforge.net/ is necessary here.
Chris
January 3rd, 2009
Any good tools for analyzing IIS logs for internal intranet sites? i.e. SharePoint sites?
SE7EN
January 3rd, 2009
Now I’m using GA, clicky, Reinvigorate, W3Counter, GoingUp
Just added Woopra and Microsoft Analytics
I know these will make my site slow, but I’m just want to try them all. lol
Saad Kamal
January 3rd, 2009
How about Mint? Its pretty cool.
John Cisco
January 3rd, 2009
Must admit that only free program we use is Awstats for just a quick overview.
However for real analytics we are stick to webtrends, it offers an extremly rich feature set that cant be matched by anything for free, GA included.
Happy New Year all.
Keith
January 3rd, 2009
Well done on the list of 10 promising free web analytics tools. I do use Google Analytics a lot nonetheless, which is strangely not included here. Apart from that, I do like FireStats.
geekTips
January 3rd, 2009
I also used GA for all of my sites, but for a real-time visitors report I sometime used motigo.com or w3counter.com
Jacob Gube
January 3rd, 2009
@Glenn: I think AWstats is pretty known. But I agree, the obligatory mention is important, that’s why I mentioned it along with the JAWstats entry.
@Keith: I wanted to focus on lesser-known web analytics apps in this article. Google Analytics was mentioned a couple of times though.
Holly
January 3rd, 2009
Woopra looks really good, but has TOO MANY bugs. Tried to used, but ended up giving up on it.
stelt
January 3rd, 2009
Which one of the above has SVG output?
stelt
January 3rd, 2009
of course “have”, not “has”
david orozco
January 3rd, 2009
I’will try one of those open source scripts, to manage my own analytics, and see how it works, btw now i just use wordpress plugins
astraea
January 3rd, 2009
i use tracewatch
http://www.tracewatch.com/
the tool enable me to track visitor ;)
UrAdGinny Incorporation
January 3rd, 2009
I have a website which is dot net coded, can any of the above be suitable for my website.
SOS Media Web Design
January 3rd, 2009
Thanks for the info. I’d love to check out each of these and compare to my Google Stats…
Tom Collinson
January 3rd, 2009
I’ve tried a few but GA stands head and shoulders above the rest. I use it to track clients websites as well as my own and the ability to connect Google Adwords to track efficiency and success is vital for anyone dealing in PPC.
Nicodemas
January 3rd, 2009
Don’t forget about GetClicky!
George Fragos
January 3rd, 2009
I’ve been using Google Analitics for some time. I tried some others whose names escape me that didn’t use cookies and in some instances inconsistently extended the load times for my pages. Cookies insure that all your recorded vistors are human and not crawlers. I also like that I can exclude all the computers I use from my statistics. GA provides a lot of information that is very helpful in understanding the traffic to my and my clients sites. I don’t feel a need to look elesewhere and free is always a great price.
Andy Gongea
January 3rd, 2009
Nice article Jacob. Cheers!
Pemo Theodore
January 4th, 2009
I’ve been using FireStats since I started my blog & find that their stats are really helpful. I paid initially as the blog is my business.
Jon Combe
January 4th, 2009
Thank you very much for the link to JAWStats.com, I really appreciate it.
This is a good article and it is good to see so much healthy competition in the free web stats market, especially as such tools seemed quite thin on the ground as recently a couple of years back.
Finally, thank you for sixrevisions.com. I apologise to say that I hadn’t come across this site before today, but I have spent a good chunk of this morning going through the articles. Keep up the good work, I’ll be a frequent visitor in future.
Malcolm Bastien
January 4th, 2009
Nice list, I actually didn’t find nearly as many when I tried to do a search for free or open source ones a few months ago.
insic
January 5th, 2009
cool list. i only know Google analytics. lol
Asif Ejaz
January 5th, 2009
Yahoo! Web Analytics is not free.
Kika
January 5th, 2009
I used to rely on GA, which I think is great, but felt the need to move to a server side solution to have real time stats and I recently installed Piwick, a pretty good solution IMHO. I tried Mint too, and I must admit it’s an excellent product, definitely worth its price, especially for websites with high traffic.
Jacob Gube
January 5th, 2009
@Jon Combe: Thanks and keep up the great work with JAWStats.
@Kika: I tried Piwik too, I’m liking it so far. It doesn’t require much server resources either.
Adam Covati
January 5th, 2009
You should also consider tracking your social engagement efforts. Tools like http://idek.net allow you to capture analytics for the links you place in your twitter stream or other social engagement that may be off of your site.
Sites like idek.net help you to understand the value of your contributions to these new and growing channels.
Note: I created and maintain idek.net. Even if you don’t like idek.net there are other url shorteners that will give you some analytics as well.
Branica
January 5th, 2009
I think PiWik is great and has a great API for easy integration for multiple applications such as Google Docs Spreadsheets.
I did a quick tutorial on how to integrate PiWik with Google Spreadsheets here:
http://www.branica.com/forums/web-analytics/459-piwik-google-spreadsheets-more-integration.html
Jamison
January 5th, 2009
I’m a huge fan of Google Analytics however I’m seriously looking into Mint at the moment.
Jacob Gube
January 5th, 2009
@Adam Covati: You’re absolutely right, you can gain a lot of information about people who click on your Twitter feed and you’re app is very helpful indeed. Along those lines, I currently use tr.im to shorten and track links (and conversations about those links) on Twitter.
@Branica: Thank you very much for sharing (and writing) your Piwik + Google Spreadsheets tutorial.
Chris W.
January 5th, 2009
Well, as long as we’re talking about other cool analytical tools, check out ClickTale. It records your users’ actions on the site throughout a site visit, provides heat maps that show how long parts of the page were in view, and a lot more. You can set it up to record infrequently or as often as you want. Obviously, you can’t read people’s minds, but you can combine this tool with your other analytics to get a better idea of what’s going on.
Farid Hadi
January 6th, 2009
Nice list. Haven’t heard of quite a few of them that you have listed. I used to just go with whatever was installed by the host, i.e. Webalizer and AWStats, but started using Google Analytics a while back and kind of like it. The only downside to it is that it’s an external JS and that kind of slows your site down a bit, but since you’re supposed to include it just before the end of your document it doesn’t cause much damage.
tuzruhu
January 6th, 2009
Googlye analytics is the best i think
Jim Jamesson
January 8th, 2009
Piwik is pretty neat from what I have seen of it… but mostly I still find myself using Google Analytics. Seems to jive the best with clients, especially with the whole ‘google’ mystique added to it.
GoingUp! Web Analytics
January 8th, 2009
http://www.goingup.com/ has real promise. It’s still a ways from being completed, but I really like the interface. I hope they finish it soon. It has SEO features tied in. So far, it’s free too. I have access to their keyword tracking and it’s amazing.
Abdel
January 9th, 2009
What happened to Google Analytics?
Pinny Cohen
January 14th, 2009
Google Analytics just makes the most sense given who’s behind it, the cost (free), the amazing features, and ease of setting up.
Dim
January 18th, 2009
http://www.logdy.com
Brian Rowe
January 19th, 2009
We have been using GA, but find it disappointing. I was surprised how many people like it so much so maybe I don’t know how to use it well.
Some problems I see so far are the following:
- I don’t get reverse DNS lookup for the name of the IP at my site. I don’t even see the IP. This one is big for me, so we put webalizer on our apache server to get this. I want to know who was at the site.
- The update time on the data is delayed
- Integration with other tools isn’t there.
- Most of the UI is eye candy not information.
- My Ad words account, doesn’t link properly, always shows 0 in GA but in Ad words I get a bill. Not sure what’s going on there.
Dorajiab
January 27th, 2009
Which one will show me if the visitors visit my site using the links they bookmarked?
Dorajiab
January 27th, 2009
Which one should I use in order to know if the visitors are from the links they bookmarked?
ATV
February 5th, 2009
ehh i think i’ll stick with google analytics for now.
Anoj Kumar
March 2nd, 2009
Thankyou for publishing such a useful list of free web apps.
mani
March 11th, 2009
I did not know about a lot of services in the list.
Thanks mate!!
Jay Philips
March 13th, 2009
What about Clicky & StatsCounter? Both of those are great too.
@jayphilips
eleventh.attempt
March 17th, 2009
Slimstats, http://wettone.com/code/slimstat, looks good but only for PHP pages.
Erick
March 23rd, 2009
Guys, GA and all the other JS includes are nowhere close to “accurate analytics”. Many users have JavaScript disabled. You’re getting nothing from those users.
Ahmer
March 24th, 2009
Ummm, is there a way that i can load the statistics data in my database, for performing, mining operations?? Is there a tool, that would support this feature? Piwik, is good. But doesn’t feel like stable for me..
K Irizawa
April 15th, 2009
Great digg! I use Google Analytics. I heard great stories about the Yahoo!’s analytics tool. I’ve also used 4Q Iperceptions for survey (user satisfaction analysis), but didn’t know they were coming out with web analytics solution.
Vikram
May 6th, 2009
I have Firestats installed in Wordpress and have google analytics account too both show different reading. i think Google don’t count the crawls from other search engines or search directory sites
Mat
May 12th, 2009
Any recomendations for which tools are best for analysing RESTfull web service apis including custom http headers?
Jacob Gube
May 13th, 2009
@Mat: Not sure if any of them could analyze RESTful API’s, good question. Do you have an API that you’d like to keep stats on?
jkl
May 30th, 2009
Dorajiab: Use awstats (remember it will just give an estimation)
All: Don’t use bbclone; it has not been updated since a while and Google Chrome is not detected.
jean
June 6th, 2009
Most of those solutions are server side and it’s hard to believe that with their budget they can hire enough people to beat GA. I’m using Google Analytics on the server side and I often use Expert Data Miner on my desktop ( http://www.expertdataminer.com ). The first one gives me the cities and some nice charts, with the second one I have the click trail of any visitor and it does support GA’s cookies. I will probably try Piwik soon.
crawler
June 11th, 2009
Hello, I didn’t knew about all that. I guess piwik is cool but it sucks from some reasons. The geoip plugin is buggy and it’s own system/plugin for location of visitors is not accurate at all, so you don’t know where everyone came from. It surely needs more work and an important problem like that, shouldn’t be left for “tomorrow”. Great interface, but for what use, if you don’t know the visitors location..!? It renders it pretty much useless.
I guess you also, forgot OWA - http://www.openwebanalytics.com/
deepak
July 2nd, 2009
Is there any free tool that can allow me to run the Web Analytics on the intranet web site also?
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