9 Best GoSquared Alternatives

Website analytics enables website owners to improve their websites and make them more attractive to visitors. GoSquared is a web analytics tool that provides metrics such as page views, visitors (and their characteristics), real-time visitors, and time on page, etc., to help website owners improve their website experience.

GoSquared is a popular web analytics tool, but it has its drawbacks. In this article, we'll dive into GoSquared and showcase a few alternatives that might suit you better.

Let's dive in!

1. What is GoSquared used for?
2. GoSquared Pricing
3. GoSquared Reviews
4. GoSquared Alternatives
   1. Simple Analytics (easy to use and predictable pricing)
   2. Plausible
   3. Adobe Analytics
   4. Fathom Analytics
   5. Pirsch
   6. Matomo
   7. Piwik PRO
   8. Umami
   9. Visitor Analytics
5. Things to Look For in an Analytics Tool

What is GoSquared used for?

GoSquared Analytics is a London-based privacy-friendly Google Analytics alternative that is also GDPR complaint. It’s one of the few analytics tools that is actually good and comes with fair pricing that suits everyone.

Everything with GoSquared is fine except one thing. If you are someone who loves to have deep analytics with the help of event tracking and goal analytics, then it may not be the best solution for you as this is a part where the feature set is a bit lacking.

GoSquared Pricing

The pricing of GoSquared Analytics starts at $9/month for three projects (websites) and up to 100,000 pageviews. Their plans have standard features such as unlimited team sharing, email reports, event tracking, etc.

You can choose from various pricing options based on your website's number of page views.

Features included on All Plans:

• Unlimited team sharing
• Email Reports
• UTM Campaign Tracking
• Event Tracking
• Email support.
• GDPR Compliant
• Strong Privacy Controls
• Unlimited Data Retention

GoSquared Reviews

GoSquared Alternatives

Although GoSquared is a reliable analytics tool, it has some drawbacks. For instance, it lacks sophisticated functionality like segmentation and specific event monitoring.

Given these limitations, looking for an alternative that provides a straightforward, privacy-conscious solution with transparent analytics is a good option.

Let’s go through some of the best alternatives.

Simple Analytics (easy to use and predictable pricing)

As the name goes, Simple Analytics is a simple and easy-to-use analytics tool. It's also one of the few analytics tools completely GDPR-compliant with EU-hosted servers. It is cost-effective, privacy first, easy to use, and real-time data collection oriented. What more do you need?

Now let's review a few benefits of using Simple Analytics over GoSquared Analytics.

Pros of using Simple Analytics

1. Simplified UI - Using tools that are easy to navigate around is always preferred over complex ones. Simple Analytics offers a straightforward user interface that makes analysis easier. Working with it is, therefore, a smooth activity.
2. Affordable Pricing- Simple Analytics is exceptionally cost-effective. They offer both product and web analytics tools at a reasonable price. They have plans starting at $9/month. It packs the tools and features from the most expensive tools for a friendly price.
3. Automated Event Collection- Another feature that makes Simple Analytics stand out in its product category is automated event collection. While you must manually set additional tags for other tools, Simple Analytics does the job for you. Once you link it to your website, it lets you track the metrics of all action buttons just by hovering over them.
4. Mini Websites- As a business with an online presence, you often get featured in the conversation of your users. You might get a mention on Twitter or a feature on a website. While most tools let you know where you got a mention, they don’t deliver the specifics. Simple Analytics stands out here. It gives you the specifics of your feature and helps you track it through a mini website.

Cons of using Simple Analytics

The user interface of Simple Analytics is made to look simple and easy to understand so everyone, be it the founder or marketing teams, can use it easily. The Product Manager may need a few more screens, but that is something that can be quickly built with goals.

Pricing of Simple Analytics

Simple Analytics is one of the most cost-efficient tools available in its segment. The product is perfect for businesses. It caters to companies and has plans for individuals and businesses of all sizes. Therefore it ensures that the best features are available at a very reasonable price.

The pricing of Simple Analytics starts at a low $9/month, making it a pocket-friendly tool for businesses of all sizes.

Plausible

Plausible is a lightweight and privacy-focused web analytics tool that provides website owners insights into visitor behavior. It was founded in 2019 and is based in Estonia.

Plausible offers a clean and straightforward user interface that makes it easy to use.

They do have a focus on privacy, but according to many independent researchers and thought leaders, it may not be as privacy-friendly as they state. More can be read in this article, which was popular on HackerNews.

Pros

• Provides detailed reports on visitor behavior.
• Privacy-focused, which means it doesn't use cookies or collect personal data.
• Offers a clean and straightforward user interface.
• Provides customizable dashboards and reports.
• Offers a free trial.

Cons

• Limited features compared to other paid options.
• A lower degree of in-depth reporting.
• Other solutions are more privacy-friendly.

Pricing

Plausible’s pricing starts at $9/month when paid monthly or $7.5/month when paid annually. Though this is indeed affordable, you’ll have to keep in mind that this is the pricing for websites with less than 10,000 page views.

The next tier starts at $19/month when paid monthly or ~$15.9/month when paid annually for websites with less than 100,000 pageviews.

Adobe Analytics

Adobe Analytics is a small part of Adobe’s giant Marketing Cloud. It’s a tool meant to be a complex web analytics tool that also comes with Business Intelligence (BI). Also, Adobe Analytics works best when you have the other Marketing Cloud tools.

If you are just looking for a simple yet powerful analytics tool, Adobe Analytics may not be the right choice as it’s complex, needs other tools to function properly, and is expensive too.

You should only consider it only if you have specific feature requirements such as predictive analytics but be ready to shed a ton of money.

Pros

• Adobe Analytics has been in business for many years, making it a mature tool with many features.
• Apart from just web analytics, it also doubles up as a marketing analytics tool with features like ad hoc analysis and multichannel data collection.

Cons

• Adobe Analytics is a sales-led product, and you would often need an implementation partner. It’s a very complex analytics tool.
• The cost of Adobe Analytics, along with the fees/charges of the implementation partner, makes it an expensive affair.
• It needs to work with many other Adobe products to give businesses all the data it can, but then it makes it very complex.

Pricing

Adobe Analytics provides three different plans along with many add-ons. The plans “Select,” “Prime,” and “Ultimate.” The pricing of all the plans is hidden behind a “Get Pricing” button, which makes you contact the sales team to get pricing info.

Though the pricing info isn’t public, however according to Nabler, the pricing is somewhere between $48,000 on the lower side and $350,000 on the high side.

Paying and justifying this much for an analytics tool is only justifiable when the revenue is in multi-millions, and even then, you can find better options.

Fathom Analytics

Fathom Analytics, Plausible and Simple Analytics started at nearly the same time when there was a need for a Google Analytics alternative that is not only privacy-friendly but also easy to understand.

Fathom Analytics is built by Jack & Paul, who have been running it successfully since 2018. It’s been marketed as a simple and privacy-friendly analytics tool, but some reports suggest it may not be as privacy-friendly as it claims. In addition, their event-setting and goal-tracking capabilities are limited.

Apart from providing web analytics data, it also doubles as an uptime monitoring tool, an added feature by Fathom Analytics.

Pros

• Simple and easy-to-use dashboard
• Provides uptime monitoring as an added feature
• Supports event tracking (e.g., tracking the number of PDF downloads, Newsletter signups, etc.)

Cons

• Some users have said that the UI requires improvements.
• Other options are more privacy-friendly
• It’s event-setting, and goal-tracking features are limited

Pricing

Fathom Analytics has multiple pricing plans (10+), but the good thing is that all plans have the same feature set, with the only capping on monthly pageviews.

The pricing starts at $14/month for up to 100,000 pageviews and goes to $274/month for up to 25,000,000 monthly pageviews.

Pirsch

Pirsch Analytics is a privacy analytics tool based out of Germany. It’s an affordable and simple-to-use analytics tool with all the features such as event tracking, goal tracking, and much more. In addition to that, it’s a pretty affordable tool to start.

Pros

• Simple and easy-to-understand dashboard.
• Budget-friendly option.
• Easy to install.

Cons

• Proxying is very tricky and needs some technical knowledge (used to bypass adblockers)
• They have not been in business for long and have less track record than other solutions.
• Event-setting and goal-tracking features are limited

Pricing

Pirsch Analytics is a pretty affordable tool, especially for low-traffic websites. The pricing for Pirsch Analytics starts at $5/month when paid annually for 10,000 pageviews. The next pricing tier supports websites for up to 100,000 pageviews and costs $10/month.

Matomo

Matomo, formerly Piwik (not to be confused with Piwik PRO), is a Google Analytics alternative that provides both cloud and on-premise versions. The cloud version is recommended for those who don’t want to go through the hassle of setting and managing the server, whereas the self-hosted version is for those with deep technical knowledge.

Apart from web analytics, Matomo can also provide services such as collecting form inputs, SEO vitals checker, A/B testing tool, etc.

Pros

• The self-hosted version is free to use.
• Feature-rich.

Cons

• Payment is required to unlock additional features in the self-hosted version, and the cloud version lacks certain features.
• The UI might feel complex to some.
• Cloud plans are expensive compared to other tools.

Pricing

The pricing of Matomo depends on whether you are on the self-hosted or cloud plan. Also, based on add-one, the price might change. Currently, the self-hosted plan with no add-ons is free, and the cloud version costs ~$35/month (changes based on your local currency).

Piwik PRO

Piwik PRO and Matomo (formerly known as Piwik) evolved out of an open-source project known as Piwik.

Piwik PRO is now an enterprise-focused analytics tool built on the open-source project. It offers web and product analytics and a few other helpful additions, such as tag manager and consent manager.

Pros

• Provides detailed reports on visitor behavior, including location, device, and more.
• Open-source, which means it's free to use.
• Offers customizable dashboards and reports.
• Provides privacy-focused options.
• Offers a cloud-hosted solution.

Cons

• Complex analytics tool that requires training
• Piwik has problems with loading, data retention, and an exponential increase in disk consumption.
• Primarily meant from enterprise, hence an expensive solution.

Pricing

Piwik PRO is an enterprise solution and is expected to be expensive. If you try looking up the pricing on their site, you won’t be able to, as it requires contacting the sales team.

Though the pricing isn’t public, but according to Optimize Smart, the pricing plans start at $419/month for 1,000,000+ actions. Note that this info was shared in 2022, so the pricing is highly likely to be updated.

Umami

Umami is an open-source web analytics tool that provides website owners insights into visitor behavior. It was created by three brothers Mike, Brian, and Francis Cao.

Many devs love it as it’s easy to install and get started, but remember that this can be challenging for non-developers. Umami also has event tracking, but users have reported it to be very limited.

Pros

• Open-source, which means it's free to use if self-hosted.
• Simple and easy dashboard.
• Lightweight web analytics and doesn’t slow the website.

Cons

• Limited support options
• Limited data retention options.
• Limited features compared to other paid options.

Pricing

Umami Analytics was initially only open-source but recently launched a hosted cloud version. The pricing starts at $9/month for 100,000 pageviews. One major issue with all the plans is their limited data retention policy unless you switch to a custom plan.

Visitor Analytics

Visitor Analytics is a website analytics tool that calls itself a website intelligence platform as it comes with several other features, such as session recording, polls, surveys, and much more.

It’s a comprehensive solution for anyone who needs more than just web analytics, but at times, this can get overwhelming, too; with more features, the dashboards keep getting cluttered.

Pros

• Offers wide range of features.
• Simple and easy to install.

Cons

• Slightly expensive for small and medium-sized businesses.
• You may have to pay for features you won’t use in a higher plan.
• Uses fingerprinting and is not GDPR-compliant

Pricing

Visitor Analytics multiple pricing plans. The Basic package is priced at $10.39 monthly and includes heatmaps and website analytics for up to 10,000 page views. The Advanced plan, available for $19.99 per month, offers everything the Basic plan features but with higher limits.

Similarly, they have Pro, Pro Plus, and Pro ++ plans which are over the same as the other plans do with even higher limits. They also give access to “Company Reveal,” which lets you know if you are getting traffic for any organizations.

Things to Look For in an Analytics Tool

Selecting a tool for product analytics is a crucial decision. Therefore, be sure to go through this checklist before making a choice. You're good to go if the tool provides these:

• Ease of Use: Regardless of your chosen product, it must be simple to use. You shouldn’t spend your precious time on a complex web analytics tool that takes time and experience to get familiar with.
• Accuracy: Getting an accurate picture of what’s happening on your website is important. Inaccurate data might lead to misjudged decisions that impact your business.
• Straightforward UI: Most of the time, you don’t need 75 custom dashboards (looking at you, Google). A straightforward overview of what’s happening on your website will give you the insights you need instantly. Look for a tool that gives you the insights you need without too many distracting bells and whistles.
• Lightweight: Your website is your storefront on the internet. Providing the best possible experience to your visitors matters. Installing an analytics script has an impact on your page speed. Choose an analytics tool that doesn’t slow your website down. This not only affects your visitors’ experience. Google will notice this as well.
• Privacy: The world is moving in a direction where privacy is becoming increasingly important. Google Analytics has been declared illegal in multiple EU countries. You don’t want to get caught up in this mess. Take privacy or compliance with regulation into account.
• Integration: To get a complete picture of your business, the tool should be able to integrate with other devices you use, such as your CRM or dashboarding tools.
• Pricing: Consider the tool's pricing and ensure it aligns with your budget. Take advantage of some companies' free trials or basic versions to ensure the product suits your needs before committing to a paying plan.

Although this checklist can assist you in getting started, there may be other factors for your organization that you need to consider.

Feel free to try Simple Analytics if you want a tool that checks these boxes. It provides the insights you need in a straightforward dashboard while being 100% GDPR compliant. Check our live analytics dashboard to see for yourself.