MonsterInsights vs Google Analytics: What's the Real Difference?

MonsterInsights vs. Google Analytics – What’s the Real Difference?

Are you wondering what the difference is between MonsterInsights and Google Analytics?

Often, beginners confuse MonsterInsights and Google Analytics, thinking that they are two separate analytics services. That’s not true at all!

The difference between MonsterInsights vs Google Analytics is:

Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google to help you understand your website visitors, whereas MonsterInsights is a powerful WordPress plugin that makes it effortless to connect Google Analytics with your WordPress site and set up advanced tracking features that don’t come standard in Google Analytics.

MonsterInsights is the best WordPress Analytics plugin. Get it for free!

Since this is a common question that we get from beginners, we decided to write a complete article to explain, in-depth, the real differences between Google Analytics and MonsterInsights, how to use them, and the benefits of using them both together.

Get Started with MonsterInsights Today!

Table of Contents

    1. Video Walkthrough
    2. What is Google Analytics?
    3. What is MonsterInsights?
    4. 7 Reasons Why Website Owners Use MonsterInsights
    5. What if You Use Google Analytics Without MonsterInsights?
    6. MonsterInsights vs. Google Analytics: Which One Is Better?

Video Walkthrough

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free web analytics service from Google that tracks all your website traffic and provides you with useful information about your website visitors.

Here are some of the major questions Google Analytics will answer about your site:

  • How many people visit your website?
  • Who are your website visitors? (age, gender, location)
  • What technology are they using to visit your site? (browser, operating system, devices)
  • What are the sources of your website traffic? (search engines, social media, advertisements, or referral links)
  • What do your users do on your site?
  • Which pages are the most popular on your site?
  • How many visitors converted into leads or customers?
  • What is your eCommerce conversion rate?

The challenge is that to set up Google Analytics properly and see all of the above insights, you’d need to hire a developer or know how to write code.

Not to mention, you would have to spend time learning the Google Analytics interface, so you can actually find the stats that really matter.

As you can imagine, most business owners want to focus on growing their business, not learning how to code or becoming analytics experts.

That’s what makes MonsterInsights so popular.

What Is MonsterInsights?

MonsterInsights Home Dashboard

MonsterInsights is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress because it allows you to easily connect your WordPress site with Google Analytics (without hiring a developer or writing any code).

With the click of a button, you can set up sophisticated tracking features such as event tracking, eCommerce tracking, form tracking, custom dimension tracking, outbound link tracking, media tracking, and more.

In the past, you would have to spend money to hire a developer to properly set up all these tracking tools. Not anymore!

MonsterInsights makes it easy for you to see all the stats that matter in a single place inside your WordPress dashboard.

That way, you don’t have to spend months learning the complex Google Analytics interface.

7 Reasons Why Website Owners Use MonsterInsights

MonsterInsights makes it effortless to connect Google Analytics and WordPress. If you can point-and-click, then you can set it up.

That’s why over 3 million website owners use MonsterInsights to connect their WordPress websites to Google Analytics.

Our goal at MonsterInsights is to help you grow your business with confidence by making data-driven decisions from the stats that matter.

Below are the top 7 reasons why smart business owners use MonsterInsights:

1. Quick and Easy Setup

connect monsterinsights

With MonsterInsights, it’s really easy and quick to set up Google Analytics on your WordPress site. All you need to do is to create a Google Analytics account and connect it with your WordPress site.

It takes just a few clicks to complete the whole setup process.

And, you’ll be able to see your website reports in just a few minutes. Follow our step-by-step guide to get started.

Don’t have a budget right now? You can go through our post on how to get an unlimited free trial of MonsterInsights to get started.

2. Google Analytics Dashboard Inside Your WordPress Admin

MonsterInsights allows you to see all the important metrics right in your WordPress dashboard. Therefore, you don’t need to navigate away from your WordPress dashboard or log in to other accounts.

Navigate through the tabs to see in-depth traffic reports, reports for publishers, a Search Console report, eCommerce reports, a dimensions report, a forms report, realtime reports, a site speed report, and a media (video) report.

MonsterInsights Overview Report

The reports you’ll get access to will vary depending on which license level (or free version) you choose to use.

If you don’t use MonsterInsights, then you would need to open your Google Analytics account in a separate tab to view your website reports. Not to mention, you would also need to know where to look to find the right stats in Google Analytics.

Plus, some of the reports MonsterInsights offers don’t come standard in Google Analytics, like video tracking, eCommerce reports, form submission reports, and more.

3. eCommerce Tracking Made Easy

MonsterInsights makes eCommerce tracking easy. With a single click, you can start tracking sales from your WooCommerce or other eCommerce store (no coding necessary).

MonsterInsights also shows you overall conversion rates, top-performing products, coupons used, and other useful insights about your store right inside your dashboard.

Prior to MonsterInsights, Google Analytics users would have to hire developers or learn a complicated Google Tag Manager setup to properly use eCommerce tracking.

MonsterInsights has eliminated that aggravation for WordPress users.

MonsterInsights eCommerce Report - GA4

4. File Downloads Tracking

If you have a website offering file downloads, then it’s crucial to know whether your users are actually downloading them.

MonsterInsights makes it easy to accurately track your file downloads. Google Analytics, by default, doesn’t track downloads.

5. Forms Tracking

Forms are very important for business websites because they are your means of collecting leads and conversions. That’s why it’s extremely important to know how well your forms are converting.

The MonsterInsights Forms addon allows you to easily track your form views and conversions. It works well with WPForms and most other popular WordPress contact form plugins.

MonsterInsights Forms Report

6. PPC Conversion Tracking

If you run Google, Meta, or Microsoft PPC ads, you probably know what a headache it is trying to make sure you have the tracking pixel or code on the right pages of your site. With MonsterInsights, you can just copy and paste your snippet into our PPC settings and forget about messing with code!

MI PPC Ads Tracking Settings

7. Addons and Advanced Tracking

MonsterInsights also offers other advanced tracking options like affiliate link tracking, media tracking, author tracking, category tracking, custom post types tracking, custom dimensions tracking, and more.

It also comes with powerful addons like:

More importantly, you can install and enable these addons in just 2 clicks. If you wanted to set these up without MonsterInsights, you’d most likely need to hire a developer and/or learn Google Tag Manager.

monsterinsights-vs-google-analytics

If you want to know more benefits, explore all of MonsterInsights’ features.

What If You Use Google Analytics Without MonsterInsights?

Now you know the benefits of using MonsterInsights. What if you decide to use Google Analytics without the plugin?

Here’s what will happen:

1. You’ll Need to Set Up Analytics Tracking Manually

Without MonsterInsights, you’ll have to enter the Google Analytics tracking code manually into the header of your WordPress website.

This can be a challenge for beginners, as it requires editing code. If you make any mistake while entering the code, you could mess up tracking or even break your entire website. Plus, any time you update your theme, the code will be erased.

But with MonsterInsights, setting up Google Analytics in WordPress is a walk in the park.

2. You Risk Skewing Analytics Data

If you use Google Analytics without a plugin, there is a risk of skewing your data. That’s because Google Analytics tracks visits from logged-in users like administrators, authors, editors, and other user roles.

So, if you decide to update a blog post and then preview the changes, Analytics will record your visit as a real visit and add it to your total traffic.

This will lead to inaccurate reporting and you may even see a spike in pageviews. However, the sudden increase in traffic is because the data is skewed and it includes your own visits.

MonsterInsights ensures that you get accurate reports and your analytics does not skew. It allows you to easily exclude logged-in users and different user roles from tracking in Google Analytics.

3. You Won’t Likely Use Most Analytics Features

There are many features in Google Analytics you might not even know about or use because they’re not enabled by default. Some of these include affiliate tracking, eCommerce tracking, and more.

But MonsterInsights sets up advanced tracking features right out of the box and helps you uncover more insights about your visitors.

You get to track file downloads, affiliate link clicks, outbound link clicks, and much more without additional setup. Plus, you can also track the performance of your online store without having to edit code or hire a developer.

MonsterInsights vs. Google Analytics: Which One Is Better?

After reading this article and MonsterInsights review, you can probably see that it’s not one or the other. You need both solutions to properly enable analytics on your WordPress site.

MonsterInsights simplifies the whole process of setting up Google Analytics and viewing reports for WordPress sites. It’s undoubtedly a better option than manually adding code to your site. You can also go through our guide on is MonsterInsights worth it for more details.

Get Started with MonsterInsights Today!

If you want to grow your business with confidence, then you need to get started with MonsterInsights today.

We believe it’s easy to double your traffic and sales when you know exactly how people find and use your website. MonsterInsights shows you the stats that matter.

We’re looking forward to helping you take your website to the next level.

Want to see more about MonsterInsights reports? Check out Your Ultimate Guide to MonsterInsights Dashboard Reports.

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube for more helpful reviews, tutorials, and Google Analytics tips.

Want to Try MonsterInsights for Free?

Enter the URL of Your WordPress website to install MonsterInsights Lite.

Comments

  1. Can Monster Insights Light (Free Version) track e-commerce conversions and sales? Doesn’t seem like it. Why pay a premium price for Monster Insights Pro when Google Analytics already does this for free?

    1. Hi Myles,
      Thanks for reaching out!

      MonsterInsights makes extremely complex implementations of Google Analytics easy and available on WordPress websites in just a few clicks – without needing a developer to spend time making it all. With MonsterInsights, we do the heavy lifting so that you have the stats that matter the most for you. I think you’ll prefer MonsterInsights once you see our two biggest advantages (in my opinion) over just Google Analytics.

      1. MonsterInsights makes implementing tracking easy without hiring a developer or data analyst. With just a few clicks (and an active account) you have Forms Tracking, eCommerce Tracking, Affiliate and outbound link tracking, Logged in User tracking and a whole lot more. Here’s a longer list of available features so you can see what amazing insights you could have right out of the box.

      2. MonsterInsights puts your analytics dashboard right in your WordPress website. We take your most important metrics and put them right where you can see them every time you log into your website so that business owners and decision-makers like you have the information they need at their fingertips.

      If you want to give us a shot, we proudly offer a 14-day guarantee. This means if you give MonsterInsights a try, and over the first 14 days decide MonsterInsights isn’t a good fit, then we’ll happily refund 100% of your money. No questions asked.

      I hope this helps! Please let us know if we can provide you with any other details to help clarify things.

    1. Hi Jamie – Great question. MonsterInsights is a WordPress plugin, so it does not work on other websites.

  2. Hi, I am wondering why the data shown by Google Analytics and Monster Insights do not match. Does that mean I set up one of them incorrectly? MI shows much higher traffic and pageviews than GA.

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