Site stats program - which free one is best?

web site statistics

[spikedo55]

Everyone,

There are a lot of free web site statistics programs available on the net. Personally, I've used webstat and sitemeter. I would like to know what others are using and why. Which free program has the most stats reported?

I also have another question. Do you really need this program if your web host tracks stats for you?

Thanks.

[webdevsf]

I've been using analog. It works pretty well out of the box, it's free, and there are lots of tools for it.

www.analog.cx

[spikedo55]

I looked at that program. Seems comprehensive. But doesn't it save all the stats on your own site? After a few months, won't the size of these files, called server logs I think, get prohibitively large?

[ppg]

you can download your logs and run it on your desktop

added --> assuming your host gives you access to your log files that is

[BlobFisk]

Another free one is Webalizer [mrunix.net]. The stats from it seem quite comprehensive.

[Duke_of_Url]

Since Webtrends gave the freebie version the big elbow, I moved over to hitbox and, apart from having to have their banner on each page, I'm well happy with it

hth
DoU

[Brett_Tabke]

Faststats by mach5.

[chiyo]

is faststats free again?

[ppg]

not according to their site, free 25 day trial, $99.95 for the regular version, $199.95 for the gold

Just downloaded the trial

[benihana]

try funnel web from quest.com (i think)
they have a free version but you have to reinstall every 90 days. also, if you supply a phone number you get their marketing guys trying to sell you the 'full' version. that said, IMHO, Ive found the features in the freebie are comparable if not better then webtrends.

[spikedo55]

I appreciate your feedback. I don't think I want to reload software evry few months. I would like a stats program that provides good referral information - where are my visitors coming from. It seems like this information is only available in pay-for stat programs. Does anyone know of a free one that provides referral info?

[Brett_Tabke]

(my mistake, I didn't see the subtitle of FREE). no, faststats isn't free).

[spikedo55]

HitBox Central and Extreme Tracking look very promising. Unfortunately Extreme's free version allows anyone to see yoru site stats and HitBox places an ad banner where your counter would be. So close...

[rcjordan]

I use extreme-dm.com for some sites, like it a lot. The public viewing of stats can be a drawback, but I don't particularly care in the places I use it.

[chiyo]

spikedo, there are quite a few free programs that return referrer information, and very well.

Analog (which we use) is one. There are many others if your look under the counter or tracking categories of the PHP/Perl sections of hotscripts.com

[Os sorry, just saw that you said you didnt want the log files saved on your own server. Agrred its probably difficult to find a program that will give you in effect free disk space to store raw data, if they dont get a good branding/ad prescence in return. One other option is to delete your raw logs automatically or manually, or compress them.]

[Slud]

Analog.

Good reports out of the box. Excellent reports with a little tweaking. Read the docs, and don't be intimidated by the command line.

Fastest and most configurable by far.

[tbear]

I must be lucky, all my hosts provide raw logs and a choice of programmes to read them.
Of Awstats, Analog and Webaliser I definitely prefer Webaliser. Means I don't have to slow down and scar my site with a counter prog too.

[g1smd]

For something basic, done off-site, thecounter.com and nedstat.com are still good options.

[jamesa]

Another one is Weblog [awsd.com].

Though I must admit, awstats is looking real good.

[maccas]

I am now using the free LogFile Analyse [jan-winkler.de]. The only feature it is lacking is which file/s were spidered. But apart from that it is the best raw log file analyser I have come across.

[mubsy]

A couple that I have used in the past:

[sitemeter.com...]
[addfreestats.com...]

mubs.

[edited by: Woz at 2:30 am (utc) on Jan. 19, 2003]
[edit reason] no Sigs please - TOS#13 [/edit]

[spikedo55]

Thanks for for weighing in. I've decided to keep the sitemeter on my site, but am mostly relying on the stats provided by my web host. They seem fairly comprehensive, at least enough for me at this point. I appreciate everyone's input.

[nancyb]

I've had sitemeter for a couple of years and just took it off last night. It's nice for a quick look, but I've found that it misses a lot of referrers when compared to the actual logs.

Over the last few months I've found it was so slow sometimes that my pages would hang - not good! Last night when I couldn't get it to load on my pages, I did a trace and found it was going through a different server than the regular sitemeter.com.

My host provides access to the current raw log any time, so I'm going to stick with analog from now on although I know I'll miss being able to just click on that small counter to see who's on and where they came from quickly ;)

[nancyb]

aah just read the thread about the problems on the net last night [webmasterworld.com] . That may have been the problem with sitemeter last night. However sitemeter is often very slow and the referrers don't always match raw logs.

<edit>don't always match </edit>