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Rating

4.5/5

5/5

Summary

A customisable and free web analytics tool. Get insights into user behavior with an event-based tracking model, and know what drives sales and traffic with extensive attribution methods.

Lightweight and open source web analytics. No cookies and fully compliant with GDPR, CCPA and PECR. Made and hosted in the EU, on European cloud infrastructure.

Fullstory is a digital experience analytics platform that combines session replay, product analytics and AI-generated insights, with a permanent free plan.

Pros

GA4 is free to use
Many functionalities
The reports are customisable
Large community
Extensive documentation
GA4 is easily scalable

Lightweight
Open-source
Cookieless
EU cloud infrastructure

Permanent free plan with session replay
Choice of EU or US data center
SOC 2 and ISO 27001, 27701 and 42001 certifications
Warehouse sync to BigQuery, Snowflake and Redshift

Cons

Steep learning curve
Implementation can be hard
Inaccurate data sampling
UI is not easy to use

Limited features
No audience reporting features

Paid prices not published
Dashboards and StoryAI not in the free plan
Alerts and retention reports need an Advanced or Enterprise plan
Moving to the EU data center means opening a new account

Pricing information

Starting Price

Standard	Free
GA4 360	$50k+ per year

10k page views	$9 p/m
Enterprise	On req.
200k page views	$29 p/m
100k page views	$19 p/m
500k page views	$49 p/m
1M page views	$69 p/m
2M page views	$89 p/m
5M page views	$129 p/m
10M page views	$169 p/m

FullstoryFree	Free
Business	On req.
Advanced	On req.
Enterprise	On req.

Free trial period

Free plan

30 days

Free plan

Account Management

Trackable Items

100

1-10+ depending on plan

User Seats

Unlimited

1-10+ depending on plan

10 on FullstoryFree, paid plans not published

Account Security

Single Sign-on
Two-factor Authentication

Single Sign-on
Two-factor Authentication

Single Sign-on
Two-factor Authentication

Data Processing

Data Center Locations

European Economic Area (EEA)
United Kingdom
United States

European Economic Area (EEA)

European Economic Area (EEA)
United States

Software Hosting

Public Cloud
Private Cloud
On-Premise

Public Cloud
Private Cloud
On-Premise

Public Cloud
Private Cloud
On-Premise

Data Ownership

Google Analytics 4

You

Data Freshness

4-8 hours (most reports), up to 24-48 hours

Realtime

Data Retention

Customizable up to 14 months

3-5+ years depending on plan

12 months on FullstoryFree, paid plans not published

Data Sampling

Explorations might use sampled data

Limited data sampling in reports with over 20M pageviews

Data Import

Import cost, offline or user/client ID data

e.g. import GA data

Browser and Server APIs, Segment and Tealium integrations

Data Export

With sheets, BigQuery or API

Export your data to CSV

Anywhere Warehouse (hourly sync to BigQuery, Redshift, Snowflake), add-on

Compliance

GDPR
CCPA

GDPR
CCPA
PECR

GDPR
CCPA

Cookieless

Google Analytics relies on first-party cookies.

Plausible is cookieless by default.

Capture needs the first-party fs_uid cookie

Alerts & Automation

Custom Alerts

Custom insights, in interface or via email

Traffic spike notifications through Slack or email

Metric, segment and opportunity alerts by email, in-app, Slack, Teams; Advanced and Enterprise

Email Reports

Recurring shared reporting

Weekly or monthly email reporting

Reporting

Trend Reporting

Metric trends

Device Reporting

Device type, browser, OS and more

Device type, browser & OS

Device breakdown

Funnel Reporting

Customisable funnel exploration

Funnels and conversions

User Flow Reporting

Flexible Sankey chart exploration

Basic reporting by looking at Entry & Exit pages

Journey maps, page flows

Segmentation

Segment creation and overlap exploration

Use filters to segment your audience

User segments

Cohort Reports

Cohort exploration

Retention Reporting

Combined with CLTV metrics

Advanced and Enterprise

Attribution Reporting

Attribution models comparison

Ecommerce Reporting

Extensive e-commerce reports

Ecommerce revenue tracking

Order Completed and Product Purchased events

User Experience Features

Heatmaps

GA4 does not offer heatmaps

Click and scroll maps

Session Recordings

GA4 does not offer recordings

Session replay, included in FullstoryFree

A/B Testing

A/B experiments in Guides and Surveys add-on; Optimizely integration

User Feedback

Guides and Surveys add-on

Customizability

Custom Properties

25 user-scoped & 50 event-scoped dimensions

Custom Properties (Business plan and above)

Custom event and user properties

Custom Metrics

50 event-scoped metrics

Custom calculations

Custom Reports

All reports are customisable

Dashboards, paid plans

Custom Events

25 parameters per event

By means of adding CSS classes

Annotations

Notes feature added in 2024

Support

Support description

Support is available via chat and the support center.

Plausible offers extensive documentation which is the first place to find answers. Still haven't found what you're looking for? Contact their email support for knowledgable support.

Support is by email and support ticket during regional weekday business hours, with a help center and community forum. Free plan tickets have a 2 business day response target, paying customers 1 business day. A Premium Support add-on gives 24/7 critical support. The FullstoryFree help article lists email support as a paid plan feature, while the support hours article lists a response target for free plan customers.

Support Options

Phone
Email
Live Chat
Ticketing system
Knowledge base
Community

Phone
Email
Live Chat
Ticketing system
Knowledge base
Community

Phone
Email
Live Chat
Ticketing system
Knowledge base
Community