Why I Switched from Google Analytics to Plausible Analytics

Like 75 million other website owners, I’ve been using Google Analytics for years to better understand my visitors and track my website’s performance. I even post my website statistics in my annual year-in-review articles.

But my loyalty to Google Analytics wasn’t exactly by choice — it was just the only decent option.

I only use a handful of its most basic capabilities and there’s no debating that it’s bloated and difficult to use. Perhaps Google Analytics’ most attractive feature is that it’s reliable and widely used. There just aren’t any free + respectable alternatives.

But in 2023, Google did something that I suspect enraged millions of people and put me on a mission to find and adopt an entirely new tracking software.

Mandatory Migration to Google Analytics 4

In July 2023, Google’s Universal Analytics stopped tracking data and was permanently deprecated.

This change required millions of website owners to create a new property in Google Analytics 4 and get a new tracking code — just to continue tracking data.

I get it — sometimes the websites and apps we use get upgraded. While we may not always like the changes at first, we acclimate to them over time. However, this was a particularly jarring experience as it was not only disruptive, but detrimental — requiring manual effort to continue using the product at all.

This alone is infuriating.

Years of historical data will now be left isolated and abandoned in a totally different part of my Google Analytics account — unable to be imported or compared with current and future data.

The only path forward? Start using Google Analytics 4 while my beloved data is left to rot in a digital tomb.

Google’s Failed UX + Communication

Like most unwanted mandatory upgrades, this aggravation is something that could have eventually been a distant memory.

For me, the bigger problem was how utterly alarming, frustrating, and downright mystifying Google made the migration process.

As far as I’m concerned, Google completely failed at helping users successfully navigate this disruptive experience, which I believe will ultimately result in them losing many thousands — or even millions — of users such as myself.

Problem #1 — Negative Framing

My first issue with the communication was that it was framed quite negatively. For many months leading up to the July 1, 2023 deadline, I was regularly exposed to terrifying messages warning me of the impending doom. None of the messaging (email or in-app) attempted to explain how easy the process was or what benefits I could look forward to.

Problem #2 — Confusing UX

Most of the messaging seemed to indicate that a new GA4 property had been created for me. But if that’s true…

• Why do I need a setup assistant?
• Why are none of these giant red banners dismissable (no matter how many times I complete the “optional” setup steps)?
• Why am I not seeing any new data flowing in GA4?

I had no idea if action was required or not. Nothing made any sense.

So I just closed the tab and decided to deal with it later knowing that eventually, I’d have to relive this nightmare in its entirety.

About a month before the deadline, I decided to get serious about figuring out how to migrate my account. Since no data was flowing in, I assumed the tracking code must not be working and that action was required on my part.

I installed the new tracking code on my website and waited 48 hours. That’s when I noticed that only a tiny fraction of my usual traffic showing in my account.

Surely a 95% decrease in traffic meant something was wrong, but I decided to poke around GA4 with the scraps of data Google left for me to explore.

Problem #3 — Google Analytics 4 is 🗑️

That’s when I discovered that all this frustration, time, and effort was rewarded with the most worthless analytics tool imaginable. It is actual garbage. The dashboard? Useless. The report snapshot? Worthless.

This is worse than just a confusing experience. None of the data you get out of the box is helpful in any way, except one graph that you can lightly customize.

Take a look for yourself:

The design of this interface is so poor I’m amazed someone from Google approved it. If you think it looks useful, take a closer look — it’s not.

There is a massive section of the page dedicated to useless shortcuts. There’s a huge tile dedicated solely to real-time users when it could have easily been a short line of text.

If you’re brave enough to scroll down the page, you’ll find more tiles that contain full page titles, all of which are truncated after a few characters — making it virtually impossible to understand what data you’re looking at.

It’s somehow showing too much data and too little data simultaneously.

What are views by page title and screen class? What are event counts when I haven’t set up any events? Why do I have to navigate 4 levels deep to find this worthless page?

What’s the only thing people want to see in Google Analytics? Useful data — tons of it. But that’s exactly what Google seemed to deprioritize in this new iteration.

Combine all of this with the questionable data-mining practices, the unnecessarily heavy scripts/page weight, and the clunkiness of the Google Analytics interface and it was time for a change.

Discovering Plausible Analytics

Thoroughly frustrated, I started researching alternative tracking tools. To be honest, I was so accustomed to using Google Analytics that I forgot Google isn’t the only company capable of making website tracking software.

As it turns out, there are quite a few options, but most of them look dated and clunky.

As a professional designer, I was looking for a tool that would not only display relevant data at a glance, but that was also aesthetically refined and provided an intuitive user experience.

It didn’t take me long to find Plausible Analytics and commit to them as my new analytics tool.

It’s worth noting that Plausaible Analytics is a paid tool (starting at $9/mo), which I think further underscores two things:

1. How infuriated I was with Google Analytics
2. How much I value a high-quality analytics tool

I realize not everyone will be able to justify a paid analytics tool (especially if you’re new to freelancing), but if you’re serious about getting more clients from your website, I think it’s a worthwhile investment.

Here’s a look at their one-page analytics dashboard:

Key Analytics Data at a Glance

Everything I want to see is available on 👏 one 👏 page 👏.

Plausible Analytics is a breath of fresh air compared to the dumpster fire hellscape that is Google Analytics 4. Here’s what I can immediately see at a glance:

• Unique Visitors
• Total Visits
• Total Pageviews
• Views per Visit
• Bounce Rate
• Visit Duration
• Realtime Visitors

I can also choose to view this data over a wide variety of preset date ranges (all without scrolling or running a damn report):

• Today
• Realtime
• Last 7 days
• Last 30 days
• Year to date
• Last 12 months
• All time
• Custom date range
• Compare dates

It also does smart things like remembering the last preset I was using instead of resetting it for every session. But it doesn’t stop there! I can also easily access the following information just below the key summary data:

• Top Sources (how is my audience finding me?)
  • All Sources
  • By Campaign
• Top Pages (what is my audience reading?)
  • Overall Top Pages
  • Top Entry Pages
  • Top Exit Pages
• Top Countries (where is my audience from?)
  • Countries
  • Regions
  • Cities
  • Map
• Devices (what devices are popular with my audience?)
  • Browser
  • Operating System
  • Device Size
• Goals (what tasks are people completing on my website?)
  • Trying to do this in Google Analytics requires a decade of development practice. Otherwise, the experience will cause you to age 10 years and turn your hair gray (or more gray in my case).
  • In contrast, it took me two minutes to set up goals in Plausible Analytics that make logical sense and will help inform positive changes to my website.

Plausible Analytics on Multiple Websites

Another feature that helped me justify a monthly payment was that I could easily install Plausible Analytics on multiple websites. It’s extremely simple to see data across all 5 of my websites and switch between them. This is another refreshing change compared to Google Analytics, which requires me to navigate a labyrinth of indecipherable menu items just to load a different set of analytics.

Plausible Analytics is just simple and it works the way you’d expect it to work.

Privacy-Friendly & Lightweight

Aside from the intuitive interface and helpful data, there are many other reasons why I love Plausible Analytics.

First, it’s open-source and the scripts are extremely lightweight — up to 17x smaller and lighter than Google Analytics.

It’s also extremely privacy-friendly. With Plausible, you keep 100% ownership of your website data and protect the privacy of your visitors at the same time. In fact, you can even self-host Plausible on your own server. From the Plausible website:

• Your website data is not shared with advertising companies or any other companies in general.
• Your website data is not sent to any third-parties at all.
• Your website data is not mined and harvested for personal and behavioral trends.
• Your website data is not monetized.

The platform is designed, built, and maintained by a small team of indie developers in Europe who aren’t beholden to the adtech industry. They don’t track any personal data whatsoever, don’t use cookies, and don’t play any part in the profiling of personal behaviors around the web.

Why is that significant? Plausible Analytics generally isn’t blocked by Adblockers, meaning you’ll see more complete and accurate data in your dashboard. It also means you won’t necessarily need to display that awful “accept cookies” modal to remain compliant with GDPR laws.

You can also import your historical Google Analytics data into Plausible. Lastly, the small monthly cost goes directly to the development team so they can keep the platform operational. I’d rather pay a few dollars a month for a tool like this than give more of my data to Google for free.

I could go on, but Plausible has written a great article here about what makes Plausible a great Google Analytics alternative.

Final Thoughts

I’m aware that I’m ranting a bit in this article, but I believe in the depths of my soul that Google not only made incredibly poor design choices with Google Analytics 4, but it also seems like they abandoned their basic users altogether.

In my opinion, Google Analytics 4 can no longer be used by freelancers. The tiny scraps of interesting data it does offer are scattered aimlessly around an interface that’s downright mystifying. You also need a PhD in software development to use it.

It’s like someone tossed a few old coins down an abandoned mineshaft and now you have to find them all to make any sense of what they’re worth. You have no flashlight and you are allowed to start your search without proper training and a tour guide.

So if you like wasting your time hunting for data like it’s buried treasure, Google Analytics might still be for you. But if you’d prefer a simple, privacy-focused tool that shows tons of valuable information on a single, intuitive screen, look no further than Plausible Analytics.