A couple of months ago I subscribed to the google analytics program that tracks the number of visitors your site/blog gets. But you can’t subscribe automatically they need to send you an invitation code, so I waited and waited until I got tired of waiting and decided to get another program called mint, which costs $30, and google analytics is free. And just my luck the mintute I bought mint I get an email from google saying I got the invitation code, how ironic is that?

But I have to say I am very please with mint and the many plugins there are, I already installed 3 new plugins for mint, a way to find out the visitors IP address, a map of where they came from, and a statistical graph.

However, these type of features are already included in google analytics, but here with mint you have more control over your plugins, and there are much more that I didn’t get to install.

The one drawback to mint is that it is hosted on your own server so it might be slow at times when their is traffic at your site. Unlike analytics which is hosted with google, all you need to do is just add a line of javascript code to your site. However, being locally hosted that mint is it might be a nice feature because what if for some reason google’s servers go down then you’re out of luck, so this can go both ways.
Mint Pros

• Fast
• great user interface
• plugins
• locally hosted
• good support
• Get your tracking via RSS

Mint Cons

• locally hosted
• price ($30)
• Doesn’t work with IE
• Buggy

Google Analytics Pros

• Free
• In depth tracking
• Graphs
• Remotely hosted

Google Analytics Cons

• Wait for an invitation
• Remotely hosted
• No third party plugins

Another great alternative tracking service is sitemeter which is free, until you want a more indepth tracking service which wouldn’t make all that big of a difference. Good alternative fast and free, might not have all the bells and whistles of the other services but worth a mention.

Final Thoughts

Overall these services are for the site owners to find out about their visitors and know how to improve their site for future visitors. If this is not the reason you want these tracking services than you should probably just use sitemeter. But if you are more serious and are willing to pay up $30 for mint for the features its a great investment, if you are willing to wait for it, I would defiantly say wait for the google analytics service, the main difference between them is the price and the wait. The features are pretty much the same, just a little differnce in presentation, all in all both great services.

Filed under: Article, Reviews, Software