Category: Analytics

Analytics plugins answer a single question – who is on the site and what they do – but they split hard on where the data lives. The dashboard camp pipes Google Analytics 4 into the WordPress admin: MonsterInsights Pro, ExactMetrics, and Analytify Pro each render GA4 reports inline, with differing depth in e-commerce tracking and report customization. The independent camp measures traffic itself: Matomo Analytics runs self-hosted and keeps every event on your own database, Fathom Analytics trades detail for a lightweight privacy-first counter, and Independent Analytics Pro tracks site-wide stats without any external service. The real decision is not the feature grid – it is whether reporting should ride Google’s infrastructure or yours, and whether a consent banner belongs in the stack at all. Each review below maps that trade-off explicitly.