Web analytics platforms: five kinds, and how to choose
A web analytics platform measures how people find and use a website. They are not all the same kind of software. Some report traffic and marketing, some count visits with as little data as possible, some show behaviour on a page, some follow people through an app, and some say why visitors leave and what to change. Pick by the question you need answered first; you may end up running two.
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The five kinds of web analytics platform
| Kind | The question it answers | Examples | Watch for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Traffic and marketing reports | How many came, from which channel and campaign? | Google Analytics: Google Ads, Display & Video 360 and Search Ads 360 reporting, and export to BigQuery[1] | Sampling past a quota of 10 million events in a standard property[2] |
| Privacy-first counts | How much traffic, with as little data as possible? | Plausible, open source with no cookies[5]; Cloudflare Web Analytics, no cookies or localStorage[6]; Matomo, hosted on your own servers[4] | Counts and sources, little on why people leave |
| Behaviour on the page | What did people click, scroll and do? | Microsoft Clarity: recordings (session recordings) and heatmaps, free[7] | You watch and decide; few traffic reports |
| Product analytics | Which features do signed-in people use, and do they come back? | PostHog[9] and Mixpanel[8], which read mobile apps as well as websites | You plan and send the events first |
| Why visitors leave, and what to change | Where do visitors drop, why, and what do I fix first? | Convertlyft: funnels, every visit recorded, heatmaps, errors and speed, with one change named at a time | One website per workspace; no mobile apps |
Facts about other platforms as of 31 October 2026, from each one's own pages; each number in brackets links to the source below. Products change, so check their pages before you decide.
Questions that separate one platform from another
- Does it count every visit? Google Analytics may sample a report that needs more than its quota.[2] Microsoft Clarity's FAQ says it does no sampling.[7] Convertlyft's reports count every visit, none skipped.
- How long is the detail kept? In Google Analytics, user-level data can be kept 2 or 14 months.[3] In Convertlyft, what visitors did is kept 24 months and replays 90 days, on every plan.
- Does each number lead to the visits behind it? In Convertlyft, funnel steps, errors and clicks that did nothing link to the recorded visits that hit them.
- Does it say what to change, or leave that to you? Convertlyft's What to do names one change at a time, with the numbers behind it.
- Where is the data, and who runs the server? Matomo On-Premise runs on your own servers.[4] Convertlyft is hosted on Vercel, with application servers in Germany, and its database on Supabase in Germany.
- What changes the price? Some charge by events, some by visits, some by servers you run. Convertlyft is free up to 5,000 visits a month; its plans differ only in visits a month, and every feature is on every plan. See the pricing page.
Where Convertlyft fits, and where it does not
Convertlyft is a website analytics tool for one website: a shop, a lead-generation site or a marketing site. Paste one line, and every visit is recorded, your main funnel is set up from your site's type, and each Monday at 07:30 your time a report says what changed and what to do first. Rankings, a site audit by our own crawler and your Search Console searches sit beside the visits. See every report on the product page.
- Keep Google Analytics for Google Ads. It reports on Google Ads, Display & Video 360 and Search Ads 360[1]; Convertlyft has no Google Ads connection. Its line runs beside the Google Analytics tag and does not change it.
- Pick a product analytics tool for an app. Convertlyft has no mobile app SDK. See product analytics tools compared.
- No surveys. Convertlyft reads what people do on your site; it does not ask them questions.
Running two platforms
Two platforms that answer different questions can run side by side: a traffic report for marketing, and a platform that says why visitors leave. Starting with no budget? See free website analytics tools, or the jobs CRO tools do.
Questions
What is a web analytics platform?
Software that measures how people find and use a website: how many visits, from where, which pages they read, and where they leave. Some also show recordings and heatmaps, or say what to change.
Which web analytics platform is best?
The one that answers your main question. For Google Ads reporting, Google Analytics. For traffic counts with as little data as possible, a privacy-first counter. For how people behave on a page, a recordings and heatmaps tool. For an app, product analytics. For why visitors don't buy and what to change first, Convertlyft.
What is the difference between web analytics and product analytics?
Web analytics follows visits to a website: sources, pages and where people leave. Product analytics follows people through a product they use again and again, often signed in, including mobile apps.
Can Convertlyft replace Google Analytics?
For why visitors leave, yes. For Google Ads reporting, no: Convertlyft has no Google Ads connection. Many sites run both; Convertlyft's line runs beside the Google Analytics tag and does not change it.
What does Convertlyft cost?
Free up to 5,000 visits a month, with every feature. The plans above that are on the pricing page.
Sources
- Google Marketing Platform, Analytics features list, marketingplatform.google.com/about/analytics/features/, as of 31 October 2026.
- Google Analytics Help, “About data sampling”, support.google.com/analytics/answer/13331292, as of 31 October 2026.
- Google Analytics Help, “Data retention”, support.google.com/analytics/answer/7667196, as of 31 October 2026.
- Matomo, “Matomo On-Premise”, matomo.org/matomo-on-premise/, as of 31 October 2026.
- Plausible, home page, plausible.io, as of 31 October 2026.
- Cloudflare, Web Analytics, cloudflare.com/web-analytics/, as of 31 October 2026.
- Microsoft Learn, “Clarity FAQ”, learn.microsoft.com/en-us/clarity/faq, as of 31 October 2026.
- Mixpanel, home page, mixpanel.com/home/, as of 31 October 2026.
- PostHog, replays (session replay), posthog.com/session-replay, as of 31 October 2026.
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