Are You Looking For A Free Alternative to Google Analytics?

Clicky Web Statistics - Both Free & Paid Versions

One of the first things I do every morning is I log into my Google Analytics account, and review the statistics for the previous day. Because Google isn't 'real-time', it's the best I can do. Fortunately, I recently  ran across a really great free service for web statistics called 'Clicky' - that offers real-time statistics. I no longer have to wait until the following day before I know what my stats are for the website, I can look at the stats anytime of the day or night.  As I use iGoogle for my home page, I even have a Clicky gadget that appears on my homepage - you can see an example to the right. 

This gadget is a lifesaver - it not only has most of what Google Analytics has - but it's in real-time - I can watch the traffic to my site throughout the day - and almost instantly know if there's a problem.  I can spot new links that are sending me traffic, and see where the traffic is coming from, country, state, & city.  I can view what articles people are reading each day, and any searching that they do on my site.

Clicky offers several plans, the first plan is totally free - but you must have less than 3,000 page views per day in order to make use of it. The price goes up from there. They also include an affiliate program, so you can even earn money by sending people to Clicky. Here are the different price levels:

There's also additional features added as you move up the paid pricing scale. One of the more interesting features is the automatic emailing of reports on a daily or weekly basis. Unfortunately, you can get used to it during your 21 day free trial - as the free membership automatically gives you 'Pro' membership for the first 21 days - then you lose the email feature if you wish to remain on the free plan. Pretty sneaky marketing tactics, I'd say!  Get you used to great features, then drop you back to fewer features available with the free plan... but even the free plan has much to recommend it.

Both Wordpress, Drupal, and Joomla  have Clicky add-on modules - which make it incredibly easy if you run any of these three CMS's... but Clicky can also work with Blogger, Typepad, and Myspace. Of course, being merely a bit of Javascript you add, any website that you can add code to can utilize Clicky.  The three CMS's mentioned merely make it incredibly easy to do.

When you first begin - they offer you the paid "Pro" account for the first 21 days - a sneaky bit of marketing to get you to upgrade to paid service - but as their own site reveals, over 90% of their customer base are free users. If you're feeling a bit paranoid about how much Google knows about you - Clicky seems to be a very solid competitor - particularly if you qualify for the free service by having less that 3,000 page views per day.

The only complaint I have so far is their website - it's not well designed - someone needs to take a look at it, and redesign it.  For example, if I want a Clicky Widget - the only place you can find a link to it is to log into your account, click on your website stats, on the Home Page tag, click "Site Preferences", then "Widgets"... that's not particularly easy to find. I spent quite a bit of time tracking that down, and it's mildly irritating.  Websites should be intuitive and easy to maneuver through.

If you're interested in further information, just Click Here for Clicky!