Tracking visitors
posted by: Vlad AkilovA 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.
June 7th, 2006 at 12:42 pm
i just got my invite code yesterday too! haven’t had the chance to play with it though… maybe this weekend.
April 16th, 2007 at 8:17 pm
I just installed mint two days ago and I love it, couldn’t be more happier with a stats program. I have used others in the past and still use awstats alongside this. However mint gives a better idea of how my blog is being used, who by and where they came from.