What's the one thing more overwhelming than the volume of your analytics data? I'm willing to bet it’s the number of WordPress analytics plugin options.
Installing an analytics plugin for your WordPress site allows you to get all your site's data, metrics, and insights without leaving your dashboard. The majority of users choose Google Analytics, which, while powerful, can be daunting due to the sheer amount of data available. WordPress plugins aim to simplify the interface so users can easily get to the data they need.
With new plugins hitting the market monthly, it can be difficult to figure out which one is right for you. To help you out, we've compiled the best analytics for WordPress plugins in 2022. We'll explore basic differences as well as features and benefits of each option, so you can choose the right analytics plugin for your needs.
Best WordPress Analytics Plugins
- HubSpot
- MonsterInsights
- Analytify
- Crazy Egg
- GA Google Analytics
- WP Google Analytics Events
- Jetpack
- WP Statistics
- Matomo
- Slimstat Analytics
- Conversios.io
- Analytics Cat
- Clicky Analytics
1. HubSpot
Price: Free
WordPress.org rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars from 159 reviews
What we like: With the free HubSpot WordPress plugin, you’ll get the functionality of HubSpot CRM built into your WordPress dashboard, including analytics tools that can help you understand what marketing and sales actions are driving the most success for your business.
After installing, you’ll be given a holistic view of your site’s performance, with detailed data on the leads you collect, an in-depth understanding of which CTAs drive the highest number of sign-ups, and what marketing and sales actions are most successful. All of this information is automatically synced with your HubSpot CRM account.
Plus, HubSpot's WordPress plugin isn't just an analytics plugin — it also allows you to implement HubSpot's forms, email marketing automation, pop-ups, and live chat across your entire site. Accessing all of this functionality is as easy as clicking the HubSpot link in your WordPress dashboard menu.
2. MonsterInsights
Price: Free; $99.50/year for Plus plan; $199.50/year for Pro plan; $399.50/year for Agency plan
WordPress.org rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars from 2,507 reviews
What we like: Generally considered the king of WordPress analytics plugins, MonsterInsights is a great all-rounder. It's also the most popular Google Analytics plugin on WordPress, with over 3 million active installations.
Like many plugins in this list, MonsterInsights places your Google Analytics tracking code on your website with no coding required on your part. It then pulls your data into a user-friendly interface that runs inside your WordPress dashboard and offers flexibility for growing sites with both free and premium versions.
Even the free version is one of the best WordPress analytics plugins available. It offers all the Google Analytics data you would expect, broken down into audience and behavior metrics that are updated in real time. You get more advanced features like WooCommerce reports with the premium version.
Additional features of this plugin include Google AdSense and affiliate link tracking inside your dashboard, Google Analytics event tracking, compatibility with WordPress AMP (accelerated mobile pages) plugins, and the ability to track performance of forms, YouTube and Vimeo embeds, and referrals from other websites.
One limitation of this option is you can't get statistics on individual pieces of content like you can with Analytify, which we’ll be discussing next.
One more thing: If you do use Google Analytics, we have a comprehensive guide on How to Set Up Google Analytics for WordPress.
3. Analytify
Price: Free; $59/year for Pro plan; $99/year for Conversion plan; $299/year for Developer plan
WordPress.org rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars from 435 reviews
What we like: Analytify is another big hitter in the world of WordPress analytics and will install your Google Analytics tracking code for you, no coding needed from you. The interface allows you to access your data right from your WordPress dashboard and presents data in a clear and intuitive way.
Analytify is especially good for ecommerce businesses, since it offers enhanced ecommerce tracking features. The free version is fairly limited, but the premium versions of the plugin are substantially cheaper than MonsterInsights while offering similar functionality, plus the benefit of being able to dig into individual posts and pages.
With the free version of Analytify, you can monitor your site stats and you gain limited access to general reporting features. This includes tracking features like page views, top countries, social media statistics and top referrers. It also gives key page-level tracking metrics like bounce rate and time on page.
With the premium version, you gain additional features. You can view your statistics as they update real-time, see the progress of your marketing campaigns, and email notifications. It’s also worth noting the plugins geotracking feature — view your analytics reports as a map visualization, showing where your traffic is coming from and areas you can invest more into targeting.
4. Crazy Egg
Price: $24/month for Basic plan; $49/month for Standard plan; $99/month for Plus plan; $249/month for Pro plan; enterprise solutions available
WordPress.org rating: 3.8 out of 5 stars
What we like: Crazy Egg is a different type of analytics plugin and offers a different perspective on your website than others on this list. Crazy Egg is a service that creates heatmaps, snapshots, and screen recordings of your website.
Heatmaps are particularly useful, showing you which parts of our web pages get the most mouse clicks and which page regions users focus on the most. However, screen recordings can also give valuable insight into obstacles that visitors may run into on your website — identify and eliminate these points of friction and watch your conversion rate increase as a result.
This premium tool uses a free WordPress plugin to integrate with WordPress websites, and adds Crazy Egg’s tracking code to your site. This allows you to watch via heat maps and recordings of what users are doing on your site in real time.
The plugin also offers comprehensive A/B testing based on various content variables like color, copy and content placement, to improve the user experience and increase conversions. This is a good alternative to Google Analytics for users more interested in conversion optimization, and also comes in handy when building new pages or completing a website redesign.
5. GA Google Analytics
Price: Free; plans start at $20 for one site (one-time payment) or $10/year for one site
WordPress.org rating: 4.9 out of 5 from 139 reviews
What we like: The GA Google Analytics plugin is known for doing one thing and doing it well: It adds a Google Analytics code to every page on your WordPress site.
Many WordPress users may prefer the Google Analytics interface rather than installing a WordPress dashboard tool. If so, this is a good alternative to tools like MonsterInsights and Analytify. The plugin doesn't pull in or display any stats for you, so you’ll still be viewing your site stats inside Google Analytics.
GA Google Analytics is ideal for complex sites with hundreds of pages, since it saves you from having to manually insert tracking code on each page. If you're happy with keeping your Google Analytics off your WordPress dashboard but want to keep things lightweight and ensure the tracking code is on every page, this is the plugin for you.
Additionally, the premium version of GA Google Analytics enables a host of advanced features, like an opt-out for visitors and multiple tracking code configuration. It also supports custom code and lets you disable tracking on logged-in users, post IDs, user roles, and post types.
6. WP Google Analytics Events
Price: Free; $79/year for Personal plan; $149/year for Business plan; $199/year for Developer plan
WordPress.org rating: 4.9 out of 5 stars from 32 reviews
What we like: Designed to offer detailed behavioral analytics, WP Google Analytics Events digs deeper into your Google Analytics data and lets you create and fire Google Analytics events from inside WordPress.
For instance, just because a visitor landed on a blog post, that doesn't mean they scrolled down and read all the way through. WP Google Analytics Events can help you see what's really going on at the level of individual events like scrolling and viewing certain page content. Events can tell you in much greater detail how visitors are engaging with your website.
The downside of this plugin is that it's not the most user-friendly option here. The tool can be difficult to set up, so this one is ideal for more advanced users. Even so, you don’t need to write elaborate code to set up events — the plugin handles it for you, and does a good job of it.
WP Google Analytics Events is another freemium tool. The paid version comes with link tracking, support for embedded YouTube and Vimeo Videos, support for embedded audio, permissions management, and support from the team.
7. Jetpack
Price: $29.95/month
WordPress.org rating: 3.9 out of 5 stars from 1,745 reviews
What we like: Jetpack is a multi-functional, all-in-one WordPress tool for design, marketing, speed, and security — its Google Analytics integration is just one of its many features. Jetpack displays your site stats via a simple interface offering a handy overview of how your site is doing. However, don't expect to be able to drill down into the data on individual pages and posts.
Note that this integration is available as part of Jetpack’s Growth toolkit, which is only available in the Complete plan, the highest Jetpack paid plan available. Along with stats, this plan also gives you its complete suite of security, growth, speed, and design tools. In other words, Jetpack can do the work of several plugins in one.
As you would expect from a WordPress.com product, the plugin offers good support and detailed troubleshooting guides. Best of all, Jetpack offers a smiley face at the bottom of your page to show whether the JetPack analytics tools are working.
8. WP Statistics
Price: Free
WordPress.org rating: 4.1 out of 5 stars from 593 reviews
What we like: A powerful yet simple free plugin focused on stats, WP Statistic's interface is intuitive and displays graphs and charts beautifully.
This plugin puts an emphasis on privacy. You can be sure that the data is not being shared with the big boys. Additionally, you don't need to deal with any third parties to use this plugin — just install, activate, and go.
WP Statistics is particularly good when it comes to geographical data and content reports, and supports real-time stats on your site as well as the standard features you would expect. The best part? It's totally free with no upselling. In fact, this is one of the most popular free analytics plugins available.
9. Matomo
Price: from $9 per month
WordPress.org rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars from 88 reviews
What we like: Formerly Piwik, Matomo is an open-source analytics alternative which gives you detailed reports on your visitors, traffic sources, keywords, and many other common metrics. This plugin installs the Matomo tracking code and allows you to view the data within your WordPress dashboard.
Advanced features lets you follow visitors in real-time or in the visitors' log and manage multiple sites among many other features. Matomo also offers a mobile app to access reports on the go. You will need an existing Matomo account to access the data.
10. Slimstat Analytics
Price: Free; paid add-ons start at $12
WordPress.org rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars from 801 reviews
Slimstat is an alternative analytics solution sitting between WordPress and Google Analytics in What we like: terms of complexity. An open-source platform that stores all your data in your WordPress database, it allows you to track returning customers and registered users, and monitor Javascript events, detect intrusions and analyze email campaigns — all within your Wordpress dashboard.
The basic version is free but there is a range of add-ons allowing you to use as much or as little as you need.
11. Conversios.io
Price: Free; $19/month for Hustle plan; $29/month for Growth plan; $49/month for Leap plan
WordPress.org rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars from 154 reviews
What we like: The clue is in the title with this one. Conversios.io focuses on the new Google Analytics' feature for advanced ecommerce statistics.
Because it's so specialized, this plugin offers the most detailed insights into customer behavior as well as comprehensive product and sales statistics. All of it is accessible from the interface within your WordPress dashboard. However, you'll need the paid version to get any serious benefit from this plugin.
12. Analytics Cat
Price: Free
WordPress.org rating: 4.9 out of 5 stars from 11 reviews
What we like: Analytics Cat is a super simple, lightweight plugin. If you're looking to add a Google Analytics tracking code but don't want to weigh down your WordPress site with the dashboard integration, it can do it in minutes.
Analytics Cat offers a simple way to stop your data from becoming corrupted by your obsessive self-navigation, since it provides the ability to exclude logged-in users from your Google Analytics tracking. You can also exclude as many other user roles as you'd like.
13. Clicky Analytics
Price: Free; paid plans start at $9.99/month
WordPress.org rating: 4.6 out of 5 from 17 reviews
What we like: Aside from having an excellent name, Clicky offers a plain and simple view of your analytics, which is ideal for people who feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of options available within Google Analytics. Additionally, it installs its own Clicky tracking code into your site so you don't have to mess around with code.
Clicky provides detailed insights that are still simple enough for the average blogger to understand. Most of the functionality is available for free, but some features like video analytics and custom data tracking are only available with the paid version. It also has some quirky features like a live map so you can track your visitors in real-time.
What is the best WordPress analytics plugin?
You may want to choose more than one analytics plugin, since many of them are specialized for certain tasks.
If you're looking to bring the power of Google Analytics into your WordPress dashboard, go for a plugin like MonsterInsights or Analytify, which both have excellent free versions as well as comprehensive premium versions.
Alternatively, there are some plugins specialized in privacy, speed and reliability. There are also some simple tools to quickly set you up with a Google Analytics code.
The great thing about WordPress plugins is you can install them and play around with the free versions to see if they work for you without committing to anything. So give a few of these options a try and see what's the best fit for you and your analytics needs.
Editor's note: This post was originally published in July 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
