How we review web analytics tools

Who runs this site

Analytics Alternative is run by SwissOps Sàrl, a company in Renens, Switzerland. SwissOps also makes WireBoard, a web analytics tool reviewed here alongside its competitors.

That is a conflict of interest, and we would rather say so plainly than hide it. It is why every review, WireBoard's included, follows the method on this page, and why the scores are explained criterion by criterion: you can check each one against the facts we list.

What we score

Each tool gets a score from 0 to 5, in half points, on seven criteria. The overall score is their average, rounded to one decimal. Tools with the same overall score share a rank. Among them, WireBoard is listed first because it is our own product, then the others by name. It is always labelled "Made by us".

• Features: what you can measure. 5 is a full suite (events, funnels, segments or cohorts, retention, ecommerce, an API and integrations); 3 is the core (pages, sources, goals or events, campaigns, an API); 1 is pageviews and sources only.
• Reporting: how you can look at the data. 5 means custom reports, segmentation everywhere, scheduled exports and BI connectors; 3 means clear standard reports with filters and email reports; 1 means almost none.
• Real-time data: how fresh the data is. 5 is live within seconds, with pages, sources and events; 3 is a live view refreshing within a minute; 0 is nothing live.
• Ease of use: setting it up and reading it. 5 is set up in minutes and readable by anyone; 3 is a real learning curve; 1 is hard even for specialists.
• Design: the quality of the interface. 5 is polished, fast and customisable; 3 is clean and functional but rigid or dated in places; 1 is hard to read.
• Privacy: what the tool does with visitors' data. 5 means no cookies or persistent identifiers by default, no personal data, EU hosting or self-hosting, and open source or independent audits; 3 means a cookieless mode you can switch on, with real control over the data; 1 means broad tracking with data used for advertising.
• Pricing: value and transparency. 5 is a useful free plan or a very low entry price, published openly; 3 is a mid-range entry price or a narrow free tier; 1 is quote-only or very expensive.

We score what the product does today for a typical website owner, not what it promises or what one large customer could get.

We review 19 tools and rank 18. A tool that is no longer sold keeps its review, with a notice, but leaves the ranking, the lists and the averages. Today that is Smartlook, which Cisco stopped selling in May 2026 and will switch off in September 2027.

Where the facts come from

Prices, plans, limits, hosting locations and privacy claims come from each vendor's own website: its pricing page, documentation and privacy pages. Every review lists the date we last checked them and the pages we used.

When a fact is the vendor's claim rather than something we can verify, we say so ("Plausible says it sets no cookies"). We never call a tool compliant with the GDPR: compliance depends on how a site uses a tool, not on the tool alone.

How often we update

We re-check every review at least once a year, and sooner when a vendor changes its prices or plans. Every review was rewritten from scratch in October 2026, and several scores changed when we applied this method to them for the first time.

Spot a mistake?

Prices and plans change often. If something on a review is out of date, tell us and we will check it against the vendor's site and correct it.