I've used Google Analytics for years, but recently tried Simple Analytics in February. Below is a comparison on ease of use, understanding the numbers, goal setup, transparency, and privacy.
Intro
- For the last 8 years, I've used Google Analytics to track my website stats for stick-on phone wallets, tech blogs, and now a birthday reminder app.
- This February, I tried Simple Analytics for the first time.
- Sidenote - when logging into GA (to take article screenshots), I got this screen.
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Ease of Use
- Simple Analytics is easy to install.
- They detect your site's tech stack, and provide a quick-install guide like below (they also support Webflow, Ghost, Wordpress, WIX, Squarespace, and others).
- In contrast, below is the setup on Google Analytics.
Advantage: Simple Analytics
Understanding the Numbers
- Simple Analytics is intuitive. I get a quick summary of my birthdays app—how many new users, birthday reminders, early reminders, etc.
- If you've ever used Google Analytics (I'll assume you have), you'll know it's nothing like above.
Advantage: Simple Analytics
Goal Setup
- Creating goals on Simple Analytics is so easy.
- To track any custom event (for example - new user), you install the below JavaScript.
sa_event("new_user")
- After this JavaScript fires once, it auto-populates in your Simple Analytics dashboard.
- You can then make any event into a goal, or combine 2 events into a percentage goal (for example - page visit to new user percentage)
- In contrast, below is the GA version of this experience.
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Transparency
- Simple Analytics is remarkably transparent. They openly share:
- live website analytics for their own website
- monthly profit statements for the business, with detailed costs per month
- The way this small team does business makes them easy to root for.
Advantage: Simple Analytics
Privacy
- Simple Analytics is GDPR compliant and does not require a consent popup.
- How? Because they don't use cookies or similar technologies in your tracking.
- They also never track the IP address of your visitors, which could be used to identify them.
- Google Analytics tracks in many different ways (including cookies and IP address tracking).
Advantage: Simple Analytics
Drawbacks
- Google Analytics is free, yet Simple Analytics is $20 a month.
- Simple Analytics has less raw features. The only app you'll get a side-menu like below is Google Analytics.
Recommendation
- It's easy to build every feature under the sun and make the user search for the needle in the haystack.
- What's hard is making things simple. Understanding the essence, so you know what to keep and what to remove.
- As Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said—“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
- Simple Analytics has removed all but the essence, leaving a product that's remarkably easy—from installation, to setting up goals, to understanding the numbers.
- Combine that with how transparent the team is and it's a no-brainer.
- Install Simple Analytics Here.
Note - sign up with our link to get your first month free and give us a bonus for referring you.