NoGA project (SIDN fonds)
by Marnix Dessing
This post provides an overview of open source web analytics tools and tries to differentiate them from each other.
The table below displays the different open source web analytics tools. The maturity scores are taken from an earlier blog post that is dedicated to reviewing the maturity of a set of OSWA tools.
| Platform | Maturity score |
|---|---|
| Matomo | 100 |
| Open Web Analytics | 76 |
| Ackee | 58 |
| fathom | 63 |
| frequency | 26 |
| trackingco.de | 7 |
| picostats | 0 |
| GoAccess | 51 |
| Visitors | 11 |
| ELK stack | 100 |
| Plausible | 50 |
All products with a maturity score below 50 are excluded. Products with a score below or with 50 are:
We will not be taking into account log analytics tools as alternatives for web analytics tools. Log analytics tools provide different functionalities for a different user group. Mainly developers willing to gain insight in server performance rather than the marketing and communication department interested in KPIs.
We saw in the earlier tracking techniques post that log analytics tools also cannot give full insight into website usage. Another argument for excluding log analytics tools is the lack of pre-defined statistics and dashboards provided by web analytics tools. Constructing these from the ground up will require technical knowledge which not all target users possess.
A number of points to base the differentiation of the products on are listed below.
| Requirement | Ideal situation |
|---|---|
| Bot detection / filtering | Distinction between bots and normal users. |
| Features w.r.t. Google Analytics (more/comparable/less) | Depends on organization. Comparable is safe. |
| Tracking techniques exploited | JavaScript. No use of Cookies is a pro. |
| Unique visitor identification | Configurable |
| Cookie notice required | Ideally not. |
| Cross site solutions | Yes |
| Target group for product | Organizations with large web sites and infra. |
| Log import tool | Yes |
| Multiple users | Yes |
| Requirement | Ideal situation |
|---|---|
| Bot detection / filtering | Exclude traffic based on user-agent. |
| Features w.r.t. Google Analytics (more/comparable/less) | Comparable. |
| Tracking techniques exploited | JavaScript (access logs can be imported). |
| Unique visitor identification | Url params > Cookie 1st party > Cookie 3th party > Browser finger print. Read more |
| Cookie notice required | Not required if no cookies used. |
| Cross site solutions | Use of third-party cookies for synchronizing visitor ID over multiple sites. |
| Target group for product | Any site / app (by use of SDK). |
| Log analysis tool | Build in access log importation. |
| Multiple users | Yes |
| Requirement | Ideal situation |
|---|---|
| Bot detection / filtering | Excluded as mentioned here. |
| Features w.r.t. Google Analytics (more/comparable/less) | Comparable. |
| Tracking techniques exploited | JavaScript. |
| Unique visitor identification | Cookies. |
| Cookie notice required | Yes. |
| Cross site solutions | Use of third-party cookies for synchronizing visitor ID over multiple sites. |
| Target group for product | “As a generic web analytics framework, OWA can be extended to track and analyze any web application.” - OWA |
| Log analysis tool | No. |
| Multiple users | Yes |
| Requirement | Ideal situation |
|---|---|
| Bot detection / filtering | ? |
| Features w.r.t. Google Analytics (more/comparable/less) | Less. |
| Tracking techniques exploited | JavaScript. |
| Unique visitor identification | ? |
| Cookie notice required | No (no cookie used?). |
| Cross site solutions | ? |
| Target group for product | “Ackee is the right tool for you if Matomo offers more than you need and when you put a focus on the privacy of your users.” and “Ackee and Fathom are very similar.” More |
| Log analysis tool | No. |
| Multiple users | No. |
| Requirement | Ideal situation |
|---|---|
| Bot detection / filtering | No |
| Features w.r.t. Google Analytics (more/comparable/less) | Less. |
| Tracking techniques exploited | JavaScript. |
| Unique visitor identification | Cookies (other features in pro version). |
| Cookie notice required | Yes. |
| Cross site solutions | ? |
| Target group for product | ? |
| Log analysis tool | No. |
| Multiple users | Yes. |
Note: not all tools gave a clear indication of each high level requirement. Question marks are filled where the answer is not sure or not found.
As mentioned above log analytics tools were excluded from the functional comparison above. We can however compare the ELK stack to GoAccess. Where the main difference is that GoAccess provides a solution that interprets the log data based on the most common log formats. And provides features to gain insight in the data. While using the ELK stack those measures have to be configured and defined manually.
tags: NoGA - "Web - analytics"