Comments on: Five excellent free/almost free analytics tools

By: Tim McAlpin

Tim McAlpin — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

thanks for sharing your insights on this. Would you say that you select a tool depending on the type of website (blog, static, dynamic, shop) or by the specific need of the website?

By: Allen

Allen — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Jimmy – that's interesting, I would have thought that Disney would have a more robust corporate solution like the full WebSideStory, Omniture or Webtrends (yuk!)

I think Google Analytics is good as a "free" tool – remember you get what you pay for. I find it very limiting on the referrers. I love looking at where people come from so for me I need extremetracking for this.

By: Jimmy

Jimmy — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

We use hitbox at Disney Internet Group. It’s alright but the tracking codes are a downright pain.

For my sites I recently made the switch from Google Analytics to StatCounter.com. Google Analytics is more in depth and has a better interface, but StatCounter.com is real-time and fast.

I always ran into the issue of Google Analytics taking forever to load. That may be fine as far as loading the page, but it stalls on-load javascripts from executing (including event attachments which can be crucial for a web app). Also, that means it wasnt getting all my hits.

My hitcount went up by about 20% when I switched. :)

By: Pascal

Pascal — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I use the free web statistics http://www.phpmyvisites.us/ phpmyvisits it is very good imo! you control your data :-) Mint is very poor for websites with many visits the DB gets too big.

By: Henri van den Hoof

Henri van den Hoof — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I really like Clicky because of its strength in real-time analysis. I use it on my blog in combination with Google Analytics, which I now use more for trend analysis.