I know many of you look at your free services and are a bit skeptical of them. Google Analytics is a great example, many people love Google Analytics because it is free but they are wishing to branch out into the zone of paid analytics, and see how they are. A new analytics that sprouted up is called ChartBeat. Let's start at the most basic level, installation. Installation of analytics is very wide-spread; all you have to do is copy and paste a JavaScript code and put it in the head and the end of the body section and that is it. No need to install it onto your servers, like Mint or others that may provide that option. Unlike Google Analytics, ChartBeat is a bit faster to load, possibly because of the less amount of data that is taken and the sheer amount of raw code each has. ChartBeat is a neat way to get your Analytics. Their main idea is to provide "Real-time data analytics and performance alerts for your website." When you first log into your account after installation, you notice 2 columns with different widgets. These provide your basic data found in many analytics, but in a different way. Want to know how many people are idle on your site? Want to know how many people are reading an article that you wrote? You don't have the simple "How many people are on my site?" You pretty much have a microscope on your visitors to watch their every move in real-time. But, many people aren't able to watch all these cool statistics right at their computer at that exact time; therefore they have playback, just like picking a time in a video player. Pick a time and date and it will play it for you. Watch as your visitors count dances, or rides a roller coaster. It even has Twitter integration, so you know what was going on at that time to maybe cause that huge peak. However, even with all these interesting features, ChartBeat is still a developing service. The data provided is a bit limited to what most analytics services provide: geolocations, visitors, load times, referrers, etc. If you are looking for lots of data, you might want to go the route of a more developed application. With the price of around $10 a month, it is a great way to provide your analytics in real-time. The Internet is not about the past anymore, it is all about what's happening now. The verdict: if you are looking for a way to stalk your visitors and see their exact actions, it's a great way to see what's going on and now. However, if you are a bit tight on cash, stick to Google Analytics, or another free analytics service. I hope this review was useful to you all. Thanks for reading!
I'd have to say, comparing ChartBeat and a new review that I am reviewing ( Clicky ), ChartBeat is a bit lacking. It's still a great one to try out.