Google Analytics has been there for over a decade, but recently more and more users are switching from Google analytics to other platforms. If you are tired of complicated GA4 experience, or your business cares about user privacy and doesn’t align with how Google treats the user data, then here’s the good news: there are plenty of GA4 alternatives and classic Google analytics alternatives.

In most cases, a professional web design agency will suggest you to use an alternative instead of Google. But if you’re a small business owner and have not appointed a digital marketing agency or web design agency, here we have listed, some of the best Google analytics alternatives. These are just as good with a wide range of features, yet maintaining their commitment to GDPR privacy policies and respecting users’ private data.

Before getting into that, it’s important to understand, Why is Google analytics harmful to businesses

Is Google analytics bad for business

Well not bad really. But how is can Google analytics be harmful to businesses and why are more and more users moving to alternatives? Here’s why:

1. Google Analytics data tracking policies

Google analytics tracks a lot of identifiable information for users who visit your website. Such as their IP address, which is equivalent to tracking their exact location. As a business you might want to get a general idea of where your users are visiting from, which city, country etc. But tracking exact location via IP is invasive to a user’s privacy, which is why GDPR laws started to come into place, to protect user privacy.

Businesses have faced thousands of dollars of fine, when they didn’t display their data and privacy policies correctly. Causing extra stress for business owners.

2. Data is owned by Google and can be sold without your consent

The data collected via your website is owned by Google, and not just that they can sell it to the highest bidder.  If you as a business care about your users’ privacy, you might want to consider an alternative that doesn’t sell your users’ data.

Remember what they say, “nothing is free” and if a product or service is free, then you’re the product.

3. Complicated User experience

Over the years, Google analytics has brought in so many features that it’s gotten itself tangled within. An everyday user can barely understand and use Google analytics for their small business with all its overwhelming features.

So what are the best alternatives to Google analytics

Let’s look at the top 5 Google analytics alternatives that are widely used and have similar features to Google analytics.

1. Usermaven

Our personal favorite is Usermaven. We discovered it from a Reddit forum and gave it a try. It ticks all the boxes and is privacy-focused. User maven has detailed features such as seeing user journeys, creating anonymous profile of your visitors, seeing user visit data, creating reports and even creating funnels for your SaaS app.

Usermaven offers a free trial, and multiple integration options. The paid plans start from $14 per month at the time of writing this article.

Usermaven also allows you to create multiple workspaces (if you want to create that for managing your client sites separately) and add multiple websites under a workspace.

2. Fanthom

Similar to Usermaven, Fanthom is a great Google Analytics alternative that’s simple & privacy-focused. Fanthom has a clean and simple to understand user experience and design, the pricing is clear in the pricing table and has a generous 30 day free trial period.

The pricing for Fanthom starts from $15 per month with all features included and up to 50 websites.

3. Umami (Free)

Umami is easy to setup, privacy focused Google analytics alternative. Using Umami means you do not need to have any cookie banners because the data processed by Umami is in alignment with GDPR privacy policies. The dashboard and usage of Umami is simple and very easy to use.

If you are small business owner, Umami can be a great analytics tool to start with because it’s free to start with and up to 3 websites can use it for free. The free plan tracks up to 10K visits.

4. Hotjar

Hotjar has a free tier, which is hard to believe. As Hotjar has been leading the market when it comes to a very special tracking feature: Heatmaps. What is heatmap integration and what are heatmaps? With heatmaps you can see which parts of your website or application did the users look most at. Hotjar is one of the best heatmap tool available in the market. Not only that Hotjar also has other tracking features such as click maps, scroll maps, user session recording and much more.

Hotjar offers a free plan, that allows you to track 35 sessions per day.

5. Matomo

Matomo is a popular choice as an alternative to Google analytics. Matomo was one of the first analytics platform offering user-privacy-focused analytics solution. The best part, Matomo can be used in two ways. You can user Matomo cloud, which is hosted and managed by Matomo you simply have to paste a script in your website to start tracking or you can self host Matomo analytics program on your own hosting, this way you own not only the data but entire hosted plaform.

Matomo has a bit of outdated user interface compared to other analytics platforms mentioned above, nevertheless it has all the features one may require for basic analytics and tracking. 

Regardless of which analytics tool you use, to maintain user privacy, you must ensure no other cookies are tracking your customers’ identifiable data. If you have questions, or would like to learn more about privacy-focused digital experience, get in touch with us and we’ll be happy to share any useful resources and information

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