10+ web analysis tools to help you understand your users [including 5 Google Analytics alternatives]

And if you’re like more than 29 million other website owners in the world, you’re probably using Google Analytics to try to figure things out.

Google Analytics has been around since 2005 and is the most-used web analytics solution in the world. But even with all of its popularity (and functionality), you’re still searching for an alternative solution—or a complementary tool—to help you understand your users.

In this piece, we’ll help you decide which web analytics tools might be best suited for you based on the type of data you need. We’ll include possible alternatives, and tools to complement the web analysis giant (Google Analytics); we’ll cover:

• 5 popular Google Analytics alternatives for traditional data

• 5 behavior analytics tools that work as complements (not alternatives) to GA

• 2 additional data tools you might find useful

• FAQs

10 best Google Analytics alternatives

TL;DR: GA is the most well-known web analytics solution in the world, but even with all of its popularity and functionality, you might still be looking for an alternative solution or complementary tool to help answer your questions about how to improve the user experience.

In this piece we’ll give you details on 10 GA alternatives—5 alternatives for traditional data, and 5 tools that work with GA. To summarize, here’s a quick list of the 10 best Google Analytics alternatives to grow revenue and help you understand your users:

1. Woopra

2. GoSquared

3. Matomo

4. Clicky

5. Mixpanel

6. Hotjar

7. Mouseflow

8. Contentsquare

9. Lucky Orange

10. FullStory

5 popular Google Analytics alternatives for traditional data

While GA is great for capturing and tracking traditional data—like traffic, time on site, top content, and bounce rates—it can’t cover every use case as a standalone tool. For example, if you:

• Want to be able to narrow your focus to individual user data

• Are looking for real-time analytics to give you instant insights

• Need to capture all user data (instead of samples or snippets)

• Want to be able to send targeted, automated messages to visitors

you’re going to need a different solution (or at the very least, you might need to pay for the premium version of GA, which comes with a hefty price tag). Below are five of the most popular GA alternatives for collecting traditional data:

1. Woopra

IMAGE SOURCE: HTTPS://DOCS.WOOPRA.COM/DOCS/WHAT-IS-WOOPRA-PRODUCT-CAPABILITIES

What it is: Woopra describes their software as a “customer journey analytics” platform for teams to track user information across journey touchpoints. Their tools work with over 50 integrations, including Intercom, MailChimp, and Slack. Woopra lets you target and connect with individual users to take real-time action while the customer is still on your site.

2. GoSquared

IMAGE SOURCE: HTTPS://WWW.GOSQUARED.COM/ANALYTICS/

What it is: GoSquared offers real-time user analytics with automation and in-app messaging, and describes their platform as “web analytics without the training course.” User data is anonymized by default, and their software integrates with tools like Slack, Segment, and Zapier. Key data is represented in dashboards for real-time analytics, trends, and ecommerce analytics.

3. Matomo

IMAGE SOURCE: HTTPS://MATOMO.ORG/MEDIA-ANALYTICS/

What it is: Matomo calls their product an “all-in-one web analytics platform.” They collect 100% of user data, and offer 100% data ownership and user privacy protection. Matomo lets you evaluate the entire user journey by tracking key data and more, with tools like media analytics, CRO features, historical visitor profiles, and SEO metrics. Their software integrates with over 100 other tools, like WooComerce, WordPress, and Confluence.

4. Clicky

A SNAPSHOT OF CLICKY’S DEMO PAGE: HTTPS://CLICKY.COM/STATS/?SITE_ID=32020

What it is: Clicky’s tools can be used to “monitor, analyze, and react” to traffic in real time. Their software tracks traditional key data and individual users’ actions, and includes features like heatmaps, an on-site analytics widget, and uptime monitoring. Clicky lets you customize the platform based on what you want to see and how you want to see it.

5. Mixpanel

IMAGE SOURCE: HTTPS://MIXPANEL.COM/BEHAVIORAL-ANALYTICS/

What it is: Mixpanel describes their software as “self-serve product analytics.” Their tools analyze and measure user behavior by tracking key data, and let you create user profiles to understand individual users’ pain points in their customer journey. Features like web and mobile messaging and behavior targeting let you narrow your focus, and Mixpanel’s Flow feature displays users’ paths from one event to the next.

Note: we use Mixpanel at Hotjar to understand how people use our product. For example, we use it to see how many users click on a certain feature, and to get a better understanding of the user journey from point A to point B.

5 behavior analytics tools that work as complements (not alternatives) to GA

Whichever traditional analytics tool you end up using, you may still find yourself with an incomplete understanding of who your customers are and what they need. That’s where behavior analytics tools come in: behavior analytics tools fill in the gaps left by ‘traditional’ data you commonly get out of Google Analytics, and help you figure out how to give your website visitors their best possible user experience.

Each of the following tools has been designed with user behavior and conversion rate optimization (CRO) in mind, and has its own elements of traditional and behavior analytics:

1. Hotjar

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE FULL RECORDING!

Hotjar (that’s us! 👋) is an easy-to-use, industry-leading behavior analytics solution that helps your team understand what’s actually happening on your site. Hotjar helps you learn directly from your visitors: with tools like heatmaps and session replays, and voice of customer (VOC) widgets like Incoming Feedback and on-site surveys, you can identify what needs to change on your website so your visitors can have the best possible online experience.

From our Free Forever plan and onward, you can share insights with an unlimited number of team members, which makes Hotjar perfect for teams of all sizes, including UX and CRO professionals, marketers, and analysts.

Founded in 2014 as a fully-remote company, today we are trusted by over 560k users worldwide.

SOME OF THE HOTJAR TEAM AT OUR 2019 WINTER MEETUP

2. Mouseflow

SOURCE: HTTPS://MOUSEFLOW.COM/STATIC/MOUSEFLOW_BROCHURE_1.PDF

Mouseflow describes their product as a tool primarily for marketers. With features like heatmaps, session replays, funnel and form analytics, and feedback polls, Mouseflow can help you understand user behavior and learn how to improve the user experience.

Read our full comparison of Hotjar vs Mouseflow so you can decide which tool is best for your team.

3. Contentsquare

SOURCE: CONTENTSQUARE PRESS KIT 2019

Contentsquare’s tools help enterprise companies improve the online experience for their users. Their digital experience analytics platform (DXP) tracks large volumes of user behavior and delivers data that can be used to increase conversion rates and revenue.

Read our full comparison of Hotjar vs Contentsquare so you can decide which tool is best for you.

4. Lucky Orange

SOURCE: HTTPS://BIT.LY/2MNLMAZ

Lucky Orange describes their product as realtime analytics and usability software. Their software captures 100% of user data with tools like live chat, co-browsing, and ‘Keep me tracking’ (a feature that automatically upgrades your plan based on number of pageviews), and is good for real-time intervention and individualized support.

Read our full comparison of Hotjar vs Lucky Orange so you can decide which tool is best for you.

5. FullStory

SOURCE: HTTPS://WWW.JOTFORM.COM/BLOG/INTERVIEW-WITH-FULLSTORY-FOUNDER/

FullStory designed their software as a digital intelligence platform to help companies fine-tune their customer experience. FullStory captures and indexes 100% of user behavior with tools like heatmaps, session recordings, bug tracking, and funnel and form analytics.

Read our full comparison of Hotjar vs FullStory so you can decide which tool is best for you.

2 additional data tools you might find useful

In addition to the insights you can get from the tools we’ve already mentioned, here are a couple of tools designed to help you manage, store, and analyze large amounts of business and customer data:

1. Stitch

IMAGE SOURCE: HTTPS://WWW.STITCHDATA.COM/BLOG/CHOOSING-A-BUSINESS-INTELLIGENCE-TOOL/

Stitch is a cloud-based extract, transform, and load (ETL) solution for data teams. Stitch collects your business data and moves the information to multiple destinations where it can then be analyzed and organized by business intelligence (BI) tools like Tableau, Python, and the Google Data Studio.

2. Segment

IMAGE SOURCE: HTTPS://YOUTU.BE/WQNN3V3KKE4

Segment is a customer data platform (CDP) that collects raw user data and creates customer profiles from multiple touchpoints. Segment captures, organizes, and moves your customer information to data warehouses without extra configuration or additional integrations.