Website analytics tools and who they suit

There isn’t one best website analytics tool, only the one built for what you actually want to know. If you just want visits, sources and a goal or two, Plausible, Fathom Analytics or Simple Analytics keep it to one page, and Cloudflare Web Analytics counts visits for free, without goals. If you want cohorts, retention and feature flags, PostHog and Mixpanel go further than a small site usually needs. If you want to watch how people use a page, Microsoft Clarity is free and built for exactly that. And if you answer your own support, Deacon, which is ours, does two jobs from one script. It’s an AI customer support agent that answers your customers from your own docs, and it counts your visitors, sources, goals and funnels, on a free plan that needs no card and has no end date.

Every price below was read on the vendor’s own pricing page on 27 September 2026, and each one links there.

Simple website traffic analytics

These count who came and where from, and most of them count your goals too.

Plausible, Fathom Analytics, Simple Analytics and Cloudflare Web Analytics all count without a cookie, by their own account. Google Analytics is free and goes much further, from key events to Google Ads links, which is more than a small site usually needs.

If you search for Fathom, check you’re on usefathom.com before you compare prices. Fathom Analytics is the traffic tool, and a separate product called Fathom, for financial reporting, ranks for the same name.

Product analytics

These track events per user, not just page views, so you can build cohorts and retention curves. Both also run feature flags.

Both suit a technical team that wants to segment users and watch what happens after the first visit, not just where traffic comes from. PostHog adds error tracking, and keeps events for a year on its free plan. Mixpanel’s free plan has no seat limit, so a whole team can use it before anyone pays.

Behaviour analytics: heatmaps and recordings

These show how people move on a page, rather than counting who arrived.

Microsoft Clarity is free with no limit on traffic, so you can start watching sessions without picking a plan. Contentsquare bought Hotjar and folded its heatmaps and recordings into its own plans. Hotjar’s pricing page now redirects to Contentsquare’s, which has a free plan with replays and heatmaps.

Free and self-hosted analytics

These are free to run yourself, with a paid cloud version if you’d rather not.

Matomo is the fuller of the two, with heatmaps, session recordings and A/B tests, though on the free On-Premise version those and funnels are paid plugins. Umami is the lighter of the two, and its free Hobby plan already has goals, funnels and retention reports.

Deacon

Deacon is an AI customer support agent for founders who handle support themselves, and it’s in the first table because the script that runs its chat also counts your visitors. One script tag answers your customers and fills Analytics › Website, so there’s no second tool to add.

Analytics › Website shows your visitors, sources, goals and funnels of two to five steps, with a card of the JavaScript errors your own scripts throw. Worth knowing writes up to five plain sentences on what stands out, such as a traffic spike or a source that converts better than the rest.

A recording shows you where a visitor stopped and leaves you to guess why. Deacon hears it from the visitors who ask. It answers them in seconds from your own docs, and when your docs don’t cover a question, it says so instead of guessing and asks for their email. Chatbot analytics counts the people who asked and the share Deacon answered, and once one page’s questions go unanswered more often than anywhere else, it names that page. Every answer you write becomes part of what Deacon knows, so it needs you less over time. Website visitor tracking covers the analytics half in full.

You pay for the chat, never for the counting. No plan limits page views, and every feature is on every plan, so the free plan’s analytics match Growth’s. The plans differ only in the chat’s answers, knowledge, pages from your website and seats, and Free gives 50 answers a month with no card and no end date.

Which one fits you

Pick the group before the tool, since each group answers a different question.

A tool from the first group is enough while your question is where visitors come from and whether they sign up. Plausible, Fathom Analytics and Simple Analytics answer it on one page, and Cloudflare Web Analytics covers the traffic for free. Product analytics earns its place once people log in and you want to know who comes back, and PostHog’s free allowance and Mixpanel’s free plan let you find out before you pay. Recordings help when you know which page loses people and want to see why. Microsoft Clarity shows you for free, and Hotjar’s tools now sit in Contentsquare’s plans, a free one included. If you’d rather run a server than pay a monthly bill, Umami and Matomo On-Premise are free to host yourself.

Deacon counts what the first group counts, and it does a job none of these groups do. It answers your customers from your own docs and shows you what they’re stuck on, and its free plan needs no card and has no end date. If you later want heatmaps or event cohorts, add a tool from another group, and it runs alongside Deacon without conflict.

Questions about website analytics tools

Is there a free website analytics tool?

Yes, and each group on this page has at least one. Deacon’s free plan has every feature, including goals, funnels and JavaScript errors, with no limit on page views, no card and no end date. Cloudflare Web Analytics counts traffic for free, PostHog’s free allowance and Mixpanel’s free plan cover product analytics, and Microsoft Clarity is free for recordings and heatmaps. Umami, Matomo On-Premise and Plausible’s Community Edition are free to host yourself, and Simple Analytics and Umami Cloud have free plans with limits. Plausible and Fathom Analytics offer trials rather than a free plan.

What’s the difference between website analytics and product analytics?

Website analytics such as Plausible, Fathom Analytics, Cloudflare Web Analytics and Deacon counts visitors, page views and sources, usually anonymously. Product analytics such as PostHog and Mixpanel tracks named or pseudonymous users across sessions, so you can build cohorts and see who came back. A small marketing site rarely needs the second kind. A UTM builder tags your links so either tool can tell you where a visitor came from.

Do I need a cookie banner for website analytics?

It depends on the tool and where your visitors are. Plausible, Fathom Analytics, Simple Analytics, Umami and Cloudflare Web Analytics all say they count without cookies. PostHog, Mixpanel, Matomo and Google Analytics set cookies by default. Microsoft Clarity does too, except for visitors from the EEA, the UK and Switzerland, where it waits for their consent. Whether counting without cookies avoids a banner in your visitors’ countries is a question for whoever writes your privacy policy. Deacon counts page views without a cookie, from a hash that changes daily, but its script sets a cookie, deacon_visitor_id, as it loads and keeps the same id in local storage, so treat it like any other script that stores something on a visitor’s device.

Does Deacon do product or behaviour analytics?

No. Deacon counts visitors the way the first group does. It has no heatmaps or session recordings, no cohort or retention reports, and it can’t tell you which company or person a visit came from. PostHog and Mixpanel have recordings and cohorts, and Microsoft Clarity is free and built around recordings and heatmaps.

Can I run more than one of these at once?

Yes. Each tool counts on its own, so they don’t get in each other’s way, and you can pair tools from different groups, such as Deacon for traffic and questions with Microsoft Clarity for recordings. Expect their figures to differ. Deacon counts a visitor once per UTC day and lists each source as it came, never grouped into channels, while a product analytics tool follows each user across sessions.

Why did Hotjar’s pricing page change?

Contentsquare bought Hotjar, so Hotjar’s pricing page now redirects you to Contentsquare’s. A banner there says Contentsquare includes Hotjar’s tools, and it offers a free plan and a 15-day trial of its Growth plans.