Are you looking for the best analytics solutions for your WordPress website?
An analytics tool allows you to learn how many visitors are coming to your website, where they come from, and what they do on your site.
Many beginners rely on their best guesses when starting a new website or blog. You don’t have to do that when you can collect data and make informed decisions to grow your business with these analytics solutions.
In this article, we have hand-picked the best analytics solutions for WordPress users. We will take a look at each one of them and their pros and cons.
Why Do You Need Analytics for Your WordPress Site?
Website analytics help you get detailed insights into your website visitors. Here are just a few things you can learn from your website analytics:
- The number of visitors coming to your website.
- Which sources are sending you traffic? For example, search engines, social media, advertisements, or referral links.
- What are your most important pages?
- What do users do when they are on your website?
- Which products do people buy the most?
- Where do your visitors click when they are reading your blog posts?
- Which post types perform the best?
- How are your marketing campaigns performing?
A good WordPress analytics solution presents all this data in an easy-to-understand report. This enables you to make informed decisions about your website, which ultimately helps you get more traffic, customers, conversions, and sales.
That being said, let’s take a look at the best analytics solutions for WordPress.
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1. MonsterInsights
MonsterInsights is the best WordPress plugin for Google Analytics. It allows you to easily install Google Analytics in WordPress and shows you helpful reports in your WordPress dashboard.
The best part about using MonsterInsights is that you can add the Google Analytics tracking code without editing the code or hiring a developer.
It adds a website stats dashboard in your WordPress admin area, showing your top traffic sources. MonsterInsights also displays the top-ranking articles, pages, and more, so you can better understand user behavior and grow your business with confidence.
With the Site Notes feature, you can easily record key changes to your website in order to track how those events impact your traffic.
For example, you can add annotations when you update your WordPress blog, publish a new landing page, or run an ad campaign.
MonsterInsights comes with powerful features to help set up advanced tracking in Google Analytics out of the box. For instance, you can track outbound links, affiliate link clicks, contact form conversions, file downloads, scroll depth tracking, and more.
It also offers addons that help you get more insights about your visitors. For example, it comes with enhanced eCommerce tracking, which makes it super easy to track WooCommerce users in Google Analytics. You can also use this Google Analytics data to reduce cart abandonment on your website.
Besides helping show analytics data, MonsterInsights has unique features like Popular Posts. It helps you display your most popular content and products anywhere on your website.
Other than that, you can even use MonsterInsights to find out how fast your WordPress website loads. Using its Site Speed report, you get insights about improving your site’s performance and boosting your search engine rankings.
Note: There’s also a free version of MonsterInsights that you can use to get started.
2. ExactMetrics
ExactMetrics (formerly Google Analytics Dashboard for WP) is one of the top Google Analytics plugins for WordPress. Many beginners find Google Analytics reports a bit hard to understand.
ExactMetrics makes them easy to understand and shows beautiful reports right inside your WordPress admin area. You can track important metrics like pageviews, session duration, bounce rate, and conversions, and view your site’s performance at a glance.
It includes demographics reports, enhanced link tracking, affiliate link tracking, real-time reports, and more. Plus, you can also use the EU Compliance addon to ensure that your site complies with GDPR and other privacy regulations.
3. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is the most popular analytics solution available. It is free, and you can quickly get started by creating a Google Analytics account or signing up using a Google account.
However, you will need to write code to add the tracking ID code to your site. An easier way of doing this and making sure nothing breaks is by using a plugin like MonsterInsights.
You can use a single account to install it on multiple websites and view all your reports under one dashboard. It’s a must-have for all types of small businesses, eCommerce stores, bloggers, large organizations, and nonprofit organizations.
It not only shows you the number of visitors, but with advanced reports, you can track links, perform A/B testing, get real-time traffic insights, track user engagement, and more.
You can also connect Google Analytics with Google Search Console and view keywords that people use to find your website on search engines.
4. Heap
Heap is a powerful WordPress analytics tool that allows you to codelessly capture data for every click, tap, change, swipe, and page view.
It comes with advanced behavioral data that allows you to deeply analyze your website traffic. Made for people who love data, analytics, and stats, Heap makes it possible to generate custom reports, views, and tracking.
For eCommerce websites, Heap offers advanced attribution, conversion rate optimization, faster reports, and user tracking for not just acquisition but long-term value.
5. WP Statistics
WP Statistics is a WordPress analytics plugin for your site. It displays tracking stats with simple graphs in your WordPress admin area.
The plugin helps in tracking redirects from search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, and more. You can manage user roles to display these stats in the WordPress dashboard.
WP Statistics allows you to filter data according to browser versions, visitor’s country, search keywords, IPs, pages, and more. It can also automatically email reports for all statistics.
The downside is that it stores all the data on your WordPress site. After a period of time, this may increase your WordPress backup size.
6. Crazy Egg
Crazy Egg shows you where your visitors are clicking on your site. This technology is called heat mapping, and it allows you to visualize how your users interact with your website.
Other than heat-mapping, it shows you how far the users scroll on your pages, so you can analyze the content of your website. Their Confetti tool allows you to segment the clicks into referrals, sources, search terms, etc.
It offers an A/B testing tool to pick the right color, font, and image based on user stats. This helps you make data-driven actions for your website’s design and landing pages.
7. Mixpanel
Mixpanel helps you add real-time event tracking for your campaigns. It is available for websites as well as mobile apps.
It comes with powerful user-level targeting and helps you build user retention by sending push notifications and emails to your users.
It also allows you to create funnels to track customers and increase conversions. The pricing is based on actions people take on your site/app, so this could go higher than your expectations.
8. Matomo
Matomo (formerly Piwik) is a free self-hosted open-source analytics solution for your websites. It has a premium cloud-hosted version too. Matomo offers user-centric insights, data protection, custom and extensive analytics reports, and more.
You can use it on an enterprise level. Matomo’s support team actively helps you configure the analytics platform on your site. It has a mobile app that can display statistics on your phone.
9. Woopra
Woopra is another web analytics solution that offers real-time stats and tracks users at the individual level. It focuses on customer trends, retention, segmentation, and more.
You can create funnels and monitor what’s stopping your users from taking action on your site. Woopra has a WordPress plugin that makes the integration easy.
10. StatCounter
StatCounter is a plugin that allows you to connect your WordPress website to the StatCounter service. It is a cloud-based site stats counter service that offers a basic website statistics service.
You can see easy-to-follow reports for your traffic sources, visitor locations, browsers, and more.
The WordPress analytics plugin is easy to use but lacks the advanced features that you get from other analytics solutions. For example, eCommerce tracking, affiliate link tracking, goals and event tracking, and more.
11. Jetpack
Jetpack by WordPress.com displays basic stats in your WordPress dashboard. You can use this plugin on any self-hosted WordPress site to track your visitors.
It is free to use and a good option for small blogs, offering simple and easy-to-understand traffic reports. You will need a free WordPress.com account to connect your website to WordPress.com servers and run Jetpack on your site.
Which Is the Best Analytics Solution for WordPress?
Our top pick is MonsterInsights because it lets you set up Google Analytics in WordPress without editing code. The plugin shows your site’s performance inside the WordPress dashboard, so you can make data-driven decisions.
Plus, it automatically sets up advanced tracking right out of the box. For instance, you can track affiliate link clicks, file downloads, outbound links, scroll depth tracking, and more.
You can also use its popular post feature to show your best content anywhere on your site, add annotations to note down key changes to your website and use addons to set up eCommerce and form conversion tracking.
We hope this article helped you find the best analytics solutions for WordPress. You may also want to see our expert pick of the best WordPress SEO plugins to boost your rankings and learn how to track the customer journey in WordPress.
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WPBeginner Support says
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Admin
James D Davidson says
Just a little feedback concerning Google Analytics and the companies that use them.
I have had no success with Google Analytics.
It says one person goes to my site, but when I had analytics from Cloudflare, I had 3k per day.
WPBeginner Support says
There are differences between tracking tools as some exclude things that others don’t, there is a chance the visits could be from crawlers or other tools for your site that Google is filtering out.
Admin
David Gates says
I enjoy StatCounter along with Google Analytics. It makes it nice seeing real-time stats inside your dashboard.
WPBeginner Support says
Thank you for sharing your preferred tools from the list
Admin
David Riewe says
So many users have ad blocking software these days that blocks requests to googles analytic servers. Do any of these operate server side?
WPBeginner Support says
Most would not, have that option as that has a large chance of giving inaccurate data compared to using something like Google Analytics.
Admin
SAEEDU MUHAMMAD says
Nice Post. I kind of wish to reach the sky like you guys. I am dedicated to building my new blog which you guys encourage me to do so. Thanks #wpbeginner…..
WPBeginner Support says
Glad our articles could encourage you to get started
Admin
Bishal Aryal says
Such a great Article
WPBeginner Support says
Thank you
Admin
Helen Butler says
Thank you for the list! Analytics is my weak spot on my site. Next step in the process.
WPBeginner Support says
You’re welcome, glad our article could be helpful
Admin
Norm Braedt says
I am so glad that I can learn how and what would be the smartest direction to take, as this is all new to me. With all the scams out there this will help me immensely. Thanks so much.
WPBeginner Support says
You’re welcome, glad our guide could be helpful
Admin
umar says
Thanks for sharing the best analytics solutions.
WPBeginner Support says
You’re welcome
Admin
Akash Chauhan says
I am confused with wp statics. Its show me very different stats from the google analytic. I am not sure which one is showing correct data. for example wp statics show me 2000 visitors for a day and google analytic show me 1200 visitors a day I am not sure which one is more trusted
WPBeginner Support says
They use different detection methods for tracking users visiting your site. We normally use Google Analytics as that is what Google sees about your site.
Admin
mojtaba says
Hi everyone.
I have a question: If i install analytic plugin like jetpack or wp static, does it reduce overall speed of website?
WPBeginner Support says
It should not have a large effect on your site’s speed, you may want to take a look at: https://www.wpbeginner.com/opinion/how-many-wordpress-plugins-should-you-install-on-your-site/
Admin
erik lee says
When you see plugins with dashboard and graphical display of website metrics.. where do they get this data from. Is that from your own Analytics data stored at google or is it from the plugins data within wordpress?
WPBeginner Support says
Hi Erik,
This data is collected from your website’s traffic. These Analytics plugins track your website visitors and then display this information in easy to understand graphs, charts, and reports.
Admin
Jayanta says
I think Quantcast Measures should get a mention here. I don’t know how you could leave that.
ado davis says
Is there any way of telling where users of my site come from?
prince frank says
Please wpbeginner.com, can one use 2 or more analytics plugins @ same time? i love kissmetrics so much but would also love to have google analytics too.
PLEASE guide me on how to go about this.
WPBeginner Support says
Yes you can. Just paste the tracking code of both solutions on your website.
Admin
Alex says
such a great post i would like to use these plugins.
Grace says
My all time best Plugin to get Analytics data will be Google Analytics Counter Tracker just because of the convenience it gives and so easy to use not or little tutorial needed to use this plugin.
Yogesh Rathod says
I never started to use another option for Analytics.
Well! Google analytics it’s always my favourite and will be always. but surely gonna try another platform as well!
reg says
After mucking around with many programs and services I always end up at statcounter. It’s free but simple
Robert Thompson says
Thank you! Statcounter is totally awesome. It’s features are perfect for my WordPress site. There’s Statcounter and then all the rest of the analytics programs. I love Statcounter.
Furkan says
It’s free at 500 logs. If your site generates mor than 500 logs, pricing starts from 7$. This means Statcounter isn’t free
Arash says
Google analytic gets spam everyday by ghost servers, I know I can filter it everyday, by I think this is not cool at all. the weird thing is that these servers never hit your website and they all spam you by your tracking id!
I filtered my data but I have more important things to do, and this is just Google’s problem, add this to cons!
Justin Bivens says
I am just glad Yoast SEO did not make THIS list. I know it gets a lot of praise. But every time I have used it. My analytic account keeps on getting unlinked. My content does not seem to get indexed right either.
Patricia says
Good list, maybe you should add a few though. I have used gostats for a long time and I am quite satisfied with their service and it’s also easy to use. I’ve tried others like Google Analytics or Kissmetrics but gave up on them.
Sven-Mark says
Good list. Quite some underdogs. But honestly spoken, never in my life I would have put Google Analytics on rank 1. Much better stuff in the market…
Matt says
Good list, my personal favourite is Piwik in terms of having total control over the data. BTBuckets could be on the list too but is more of an advanced segmentation tool.
karen ratte says
Wow, you missed a big one. Clicky.
Tim Stringer says
Another vote for Clicky. I’m a big fan of this solution and use it to monitor all of my WordPress sites.
Jeff Cope says
I enjoy StatCounter along with Google Analytics. It makes it nice seeing real-time stats inside your dashboard.