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Independent Analytics vs. Google Analytics (GA4): Which is Best?

Not sure if you should stick with Google Analytics or try Independent Analytics?

We’ve put together a detailed comparison to help you decide.

In this comparison, we’ll go feature-by-feature, comparing how IA works vs. GA4. By the end, you should have a clear idea of which one is best for your site.

Now, let’s get on with the comparison!

Feature Comparison

This isn’t a comprehensive list of features offered by either tool, but rather, a condensed list of the most important features to consider when comparing Independent Analytics vs. Google Analytics (GA4).

Product/Feature
IA
IA Pro
GA4
Beginner-friendly
Yes
Yes
No
Stats inside WP admin
Yes
Yes
No
Privacy-friendly
Yes
Yes
No
Top pages & referrers
Yes
Yes
Yes
Geographic data
Yes
Yes
Yes
Device tracking
Yes
Yes
Yes
Save custom reports
Yes
Yes
Yes
Export reports
Yes
Yes
Yes
UTM campaign tracking
No
Yes
Yes
Real-time analytics
No
Yes
Yes
Click tracking
No
Yes
Yes
eCommerce tracking
No
Yes
Dev required
Form tracking
No
Yes
Yes
Email reports
No
Yes
Yes
IA = Independent Analytics. IA PRO = Independent Analytics Pro.

Independent Analytics is vastly easier to use

This is, perhaps, the biggest difference between the Independent Analytics plugin and Google Analytics.

Independent Analytics (IA) is easy to use, and GA4 is extremely complicated. You will see some mind-boggling examples throughout this article, but if you want an analytics tool that is easy to use and understand, Independent Analytics is going to be a better choice for your website.

See your analytics inside the WP admin

GA4 has its own dashboard that you can log in to and share access with other collaborators. Maybe that is your preferred option, but for many WP users, it’s an advantage that they can find stats from IA right inside their admin dashboard.

Independent Analytics dashboard in WordPress admin

In addition to the main Analytics menu, you can also see an overview of your stats in the dashboard widget when you log in. You can also see how many views each post has in the Posts menu, and there is a view count in the admin bar when looking at any page on your website.

These integrations with WP make it easy to find stats while you are using your site, which can be very convenient.

As for sharing access, you can give analytics access to any user role from the Settings menu. This makes it simple to share the analytics with shop managers and editors on the site.

“Google Analytics is too complicated and time consuming. This app does what it promises to do. Simple, intuitive and works on mobile too. Thanks!”

– Dotch, wordpress.org

Privacy-friendly

After the introduction of the GDPR, it became necessary for many European WP users to find a new analytics solution, with the risk of being penalized for using Google Analytics. In fact, it is illegal to use in some countries, including France, Austria, and Italy.

Countries where Google Analytics is illegal

With IA, you don’t have to worry about any corporations spying on you and your visitors. IA does not use any cookies, store personally identifiable information, or communicate with external servers. It creates and stores data entirely on your server, so you’re the only one with access.

For these reasons, it is not required that you display a cookie consent form before tracking visitors with Independent Analytics. With GA4, you can miss out on stats for 30% or even more of your visitors because they don’t agree to using cookies. These are all visitors that IA is able to track for you.

“Finally a great and useful alternative to do some serious tracking! (without the speed problems and all the other headaches coming with external services which you have to pay every month)”

– Svenni, wordpress.org

Popular pages and traffic sources

The info that most website owners want to see first is a list of their top pages and top traffic sources. This is easy to find in IA in the Pages and Referrers reports.

Referrers report

This data is, of course, available in GA4 as well. The top pages are listed when you first log in, and you can find the referrers in the Traffic Acquisition menu. It groups the traffic by the type of referrer by default, so you just need to customize the first column to show the name of each site instead.

Geographic data

Geographic data is another feature available in both IA and GA4. In Independent Analytics, there is a dedicated Geographic report with a world map showing where your traffic is concentrated.

Geographic menu

The data table below shows traffic from each individual country and/or city.

The visitor’s geolocation is approximated based on their IP address, and this means that city locations are not always accurate. GA4 uses a mix of technologies to find their geolocation, and it is more accurate than IA when gauging the city a visitor is in.

Device tracking

In Independent Analytics, there is a Device report that will show you a breakdown of traffic from each device type.

Devices table

You can also modify the table to display traffic by browser or operating system as well.

This same data is available in GA4, plus a few additional options like screen resolutions and individual device models.

“This is what I really need. I can now see my website performance in a very clean, clear, correct and continuous manner. It’s superb.”

– Epaper, wordpress.org

Save custom reports

In Independent Analytics, you can customize various elements of the report, such as the visible stats, the date range, filters, and more.

If you want to revisit a report in the future, it only takes a couple of clicks to save it as a new report. You can then find it readily accessible from the sidebar.

Custom report

GA4 also allows you to greatly customize your reports and then save them to revisit in the future. It also has an option to create a summary card of the report for display on an overview page.

Export any report

Another feature that both IA and GA4 include is the option to export any report to PDF or CSV.

With IA, this is as easy as clicking a button in the toolbar and choosing which format you want:

Download options

The CSV report includes all of the data included in the data table, and the PDF is a visual replica of the current report.

UTM Campaign tracking

In GA4, you can visit the Traffic acquisition report, switch the first column to display the source/medium, and then show another column with the campaign name.

GA4 UTM data
Source: MeasureSchool

This works well enough but is confusing because the source and medium are included in a single column and can be overwritten by UTM data if found.

In IA Pro, this data is more straightforward in the Campaigns report. It simply lists each unique campaign, including a column for each of the five UTM parameters.

Campaigns dashboard

Using the filtering system, you can easily narrow down the results to see traffic for one particular campaign, source, or medium.

“This plugin covers all of the data that I need to make informed decisions. Since it resides on the server, the accuracy is 100%. Great support as well!”

-Ted Goeltz, NationalSafetyGear.com

Real-time analytics

Independent Analytics Pro includes a basic real-time analytics report that shows you how many people are on the site, how many different pages they’ve looked at, which referrers they came from, and more.

Real-time analytics dashboard

It’s great for getting a quick overview of your site’s current traffic and can be especially useful for investigating any traffic spikes as they happen.

A major difference in the real-time report provided by GA4 is that it includes a world map showing where all of your visitors are currently coming from. There is also a segmentation tool that lets you see the results for visitors from specific countries or cities and other criteria.

Click tracking

Click tracking in Independent Analytics Pro is both simple and scalable. From the Click Tracking menu, you can configure link patterns to choose which links to track on your website.

For example, you can track all clicks pointing to a specific domain or using a certain protocol (like email links or phone number links). You can also define custom classes to track, which you can then add to any button or link on the website.

Click Tracking menu

It’s designed to work effortlessly when adding classes to elements created with Gutenberg, Elementor, Beaver Builder, or any other page builder you enjoy using.

Once you’ve chosen which links you want to track, you’ll see all of your clicks show up in the Clicks report.

Clicks report

The table lists all of your clicks, including the link pattern and the target URL of the clicked link. Using the filters, you can easily narrow down the results to individual URLs or link patterns.

In GA4, you can track many different types of events, including clicks. It’s really versatile but very cumbersome to implement and create reports. Here is an 18min tutorial if you want to learn how it works:

eCommerce tracking

IA Pro has an eCommerce integration with WooCommerce and SureCart that tracks your sales automatically. You’ll see orders, refunds, conversion rates, and five other metrics show up in the Analytics menu without spending a second on configuration.

WooCommerce analytics

It makes it easy to see how many sales you’ve generated from each traffic source, landing page, country, and more.

WooCommerce sales data

With GA4, you have to run a custom Javascript code snippet on the PHP hook fired by your eCommerce plugin when a sale is completed and another when a refund is processed. You’ll need to hire a developer to do this for you or purchase another WP plugin just for this one feature.

“I bought the pro version for an e-commerce site. It‘s a perfect match, works well and does anything we need. Keep up the good work!”

– Rob Scharrenberg, AllYouNeat.com

Form tracking

Form Tracking is available in IA Pro and works automatically with 18 different form plugins, such as WPForms, Contact Form 7, and Gravity Forms. As long as your forms are created with one of those plugins, the submissions will be tracked automatically.

The form submission data can be found in the Quick Stats, the chart, and the data table. For instance, here’s an example showing form submissions and conversion rates for a site’s top referrers:

Referrers form submissions

GA4 can track form submissions too, but it’s… complicated. Here is a flow chart someone created to explain which form tracking technology you should use in GA4.

Google tag manager form tracking flow
Source: Analytics mania

Sounds fun, right?

You could read that flowchart and try to begin to understand it, or you could install IA Pro and have form tracking implemented instantly for you.

Email reports

Lastly, the Independent Analytics Pro plugin adds a simple email report feature that can auto-deliver reports every day, week, or month. The email report includes an overview of your stats from the previous period, and you can customize the colors to match your brand.

Html email report heading

This is another feature where GA4 offers more advanced functionality, allowing you to schedule up to 50 different emails. The email attaches a PDF generated from whichever report you decide to send.

“This is significantly better and easier to understand than the top dog Google. I was so impressed with Independent Analytics that I bought a lifetime license.”

– Peter Bernau, DarkWolfCave.de

How to choose between Independent Analytics and Google Analytics

As you’ve seen, there is a major theme in this comparison: Google Analytics can do more, but Independent Analytics is much, much easier to use.

In many cases, there are features in IA that work automatically and can be understood almost immediately, whereas the same feature in GA4 will require watching numerous tutorials or even hiring a developer for help.

Furthermore, you should ask yourself if you need the additional functionality provided by GA4 or if the features in IA are advanced enough for your needs.

And lastly, it’s important to understand the privacy implications of using GA4. It comes with the added requirement that you display a cookie consent form, which means a large number of visitors will go completely untracked because they do not agree to sharing personal data.

If you want to give Independent Analytics a try on your WordPress website, it’s entirely free to use! You can install it on as many sites as you want and record an unlimited number of visits.

Click here to download

If you’re interested in Independent Analytics Pro for its advanced functionality, you can check out the pricing page here:

Click here to view pricing

Thanks for reading this comparison of Independent Analytics vs. Google Analytics (GA4). We hope it makes your decision easy, but if you have any uncertainty, please reach out to us via our contact page or the button at the bottom right of the screen.