How to choose a Google Analytics alternative: 6 questions

Question 1: do you depend on Google Ads?

This one comes first because it can end the search. Linking Google Ads to Analytics lets you create conversions from your key events and re-engage people based on what they did on your site. Independent tools can tell you which ad clicks brought visitors, but they don't feed Google's remarketing the same way.

If that link matters to how you spend, keep GA4 for that job. Nothing stops you running a second tool beside it for everyday reading.

Question 2: must your old numbers come with you?

Be honest about how often you open them. If you only need last year's seasonal shape, a spreadsheet will do, as we explain in moving away from GA without losing your history. If you want old and new on one chart, you need an importer.

That "No" is a real reason to choose someone else. Imported history also keeps Google's definitions, so it won't line up with what the new tool counts from then on. Why numbers don't match explains the gap.

Question 3: what counts as a customer on your site?

Many tools assume a checkout or a sign-up form. Plenty of businesses have neither: the customer calls, or sends a WhatsApp message.

A test you can run on any trial. Write down the three actions that make you money. Do each one yourself on your site, on your phone. Then look for them in the tool, and note what you had to set up.

• Did it appear with no setup? That's what you'd get on every future page.
• Did it need a goal in the dashboard? That's fine, if you know which goal.
• Did it need code on your site? Then ask who will write it, and who will check it after your next redesign.

MetricMind counts taps on phone, WhatsApp and email links, and buttons labelled like "Contact the seller", without setup. It records the channel only, never the number. Plausible and Fathom can both measure these things as goals or events, which is less work if you only have one or two.

Question 4: does your setup still need a consent banner?

Don't take "cookieless" as the answer. Fathom's own compliance guide says it well: being cookie-free doesn't automatically put you outside device-access rules. Ask each vendor three things:

1. What do you store on the visitor's device? Our default stores a random ID in the site's storage. Plausible says it uses no cookies, cache or local storage. PostHog uses a first-party cookie by default, with a cookieless mode you can turn on.
2. Where does data go? Plausible says it stays in the EU. Fathom processes EU visitors in the EU and stores anonymized analytics in the US. MetricMind hosts in Germany, and analyst answers also use an AI model provider.
3. What else on your site sets cookies? Ad tags and embedded widgets can need a banner whatever your analytics does.

Your lawyer or regulator decides what applies to you. This isn't legal advice.

Question 5: what will it really cost at your traffic?

Pricing units differ, so a headline price means little. Work out your own number. Look up your monthly pageviews, then read the table.

What our own unit counts. MetricMind counts page views and the events you send yourself, much like Fathom. Speed measurements, errors, exit events, click summaries, contacts, searches and forms are free. Across the three sites we checked in the 30 days to 2 November 2026, each page view made between 1.06 and 1.35 counted rows: our demo site with sample data, a marketplace, and our own site with about 100 page views. So our free plan's 10,000 cover roughly 7,400 to 9,400 page views, and Hobby's 30,000 roughly 22,000 to 28,000. That's a small sample. If you send an event of your own on every page, count two per page view.

Question 6: who will read it, and will it slow your site?

If nobody opens a dashboard, the prettiest one is worth nothing. So ask who looks, and how often. Then ask how the tool reaches them: an email summary, an alert, a question they can type. Many tools send email reports. MetricMind has an analyst you can ask, on every plan, and alerts you write yourself. Morning investigations of what changed start with Pro, at 3 a month, and every new site gets one free first report.

For speed, we downloaded each default script on 2 November 2026 and measured it gzipped. Real properties and plugins can differ.

Ours isn't the smallest, because it carries Web Vitals, errors, frustrated clicks, forms and contacts. If speed and simplicity are your main concerns, Plausible and Fathom win this row.

So which one?

How do you decide between the last two?

Add both next to your current tag for two weeks. Cover a normal week and any campaign. At the end, answer these:

1. Did each one find your three money actions?
2. Pick a real question from last month, such as why a week was slow. How long did it take in each?
3. Do the top pages and sources agree? They won't match exactly, and they shouldn't look like two different sites.
4. Which did you open without being reminded?

That last answer usually decides it. For details of the switch itself, see our migration guide.