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Why I chose Splitbee as replacement of Google Analytics

Google Analytics has its pros & cons. With its concerns, I found Splitbee as GA replacement. It even replaces Google Optimize. Checkout all the reasons.

Pankaj

Feb 10, 2021 • 4 min read

I have been a long term Google Analytics user. Though I was (and still am) also concerned with the Privacy around google analytics.

Above issues & poor UX on the Analytics Dashboard made me start the search for an alternative

Problems with Google Analytics (GA)

Privacy
Heavy Client

Privacy

Google is always in news and getting fines from governments because of Privacy Violations.

All tracking from GA contributes to data for Google. All Google products contribute to Google's advertising and targetting capability. For this reason, I have been trying to part ways from Google.

Heavy Client

GA’s JS Client is Heavy. And this adds to the performance of the site.

Of course, it is not noticeable on fast machines. Though, because any cutdown would deliver and render content faster. This cutdown is helpful to achieve faster renders as JS Parser will be busy for less time.

Currently it is 47.1kB (19.2kB gzip)

GA Alternative Services

Splitbee:

Simple and Fast
Doesn’t offer session duration and Bounce %
Offers Automation
- to send email
- to get alerts with telegram bot
Offers Experiments like
- A/B Test
- Split URL
- Custom Experiments
Funnels (same as Goals from GA)

Fathom Analytics:

Simple and Fast
GDPR Compliant
Offers everything Google analytics would offer

I chose to go ahead and try splitbee for reasons and now after a week when I look back, I don’t miss google analytics

Why Splitbee?

? Pricing

For a small scale blog with fewer views, Splitbee has a free plan and offers the extension on the needed area.

Want to add more team members, upgrade only for that. Need more PageViews tracking, upgrade only for that.

I see it as not very different from Pay-as-you-go pricing model which suits my needs much better

? Dashboard

Being Clean and Fast, it gives the necessary info and gets out of the way.

I care about top-performing posts and Referers to the blog. This helps in having a better understanding of where I get my visitors from.

? Event Tracking

Event tracking API is very simple. It allows auto-tracking with data-splitbee-event as well as with JS functions.

This tracking can allow to make better funnels of user flow and automate some onboarding.

From Blogs perspective, it is already more than needed.

One more thing, you can track Form Submission by adding data-splitbee-event=‘xxx’ to form. It will redact any sensitive info like Passwords (from input[type=‘password’] etc.

⚙️ Automation

This part is awesome. Automation from Splitbee can deliver more value for different use cases.

For Blog, I have automated splitbee to get alert on Telegram when there is new email subscriber.

And for products with deep user flows, it provides automation with email and webhooks.

? Experiments

I tried running some A/B tests with Google Optimize and it is a lot to configure.

If you are coming from tools like VWO, you will enjoy using Experiments in splitbee.

I get to do some experiments on Blog form the same analytics Dashboard. It’s awesome ?.

Lightweight OpenSource JS for integration

As compared to Google Analytics, Splitbee’s integration is 6kB (~3kB gzip) from CDN.

And it is open source. Check it out here: GitHub - splitbee/splitbee-js

Bounce Rate

I was always looking at Bounce Rate on the GA dashboard to see if people are staying or not.

But after starting to use splitbee, I realise that I don’t need it from Blog Point of view.

People are looking to learn something or want some solution. And that’s why they landed on a Post from Blog. As soon as the problem is solved, no reason to hang around.

And with Event tracking, I checked if visitors are going to some external link and what that link is.

I found out that visitors are following the links I have added in the post. And most of them are the demo URLs which I have included to see the working prototype.

Hence, I can live without Bounce Rate ? in my Analytics

Session Duration

Session duration is similar to Bounce Rate from my point of view.

Once the need to visit the post is satisfied, no need to stick around.

If they like what they read and wanna stick around for new things, they will subscribe via email. And I added some events on Subscribe Form.

Speaking of Subscribe form, you can subscribe to receive new updates from Time to Hack.
I will be delighted to see you on my Splitbee dashboard ?

Special Thanks

Special Thanks to @linstobias (Splitbee’s CEO) for reaching out via Twitter DMs.

He was helping me get onboard and provided quick answers to my questions on Splitbee's features.

Checkout the public dashboard for react-hot-toast (library from Splitbee devs) at https://app.splitbee.io/public/react-hot-toast.com

Conclusion

These were my 2-cents on finding a good alternative to Google analytics as Splitbee.

What do you think about Splitbee? And are you using any other alternative to Google Analytics?