I’ve been blogging since before Google bought Blogger, but am not even close to knowing all the ‘inside’ workings involved in a ‘web content management system’. 🤔

Right now, I’m starting the second year of a 4-year Hostinger WordPress plan – intro price was onetime price of $107.56, and the 4-year renewal price will be a onetime price of $335.52 (works out to about $83.88 a year). New subscriptions may be a tad higher. There is also a 1-year Domain renewal cost of $16.17 each year.

Not a big follower of my blog’s stats, but do check out some of them daily. Also, am not even close to being an expert on what stats are important to other basic bloggers like me. Most of my previous blogs just showed some kind of a chart, with maybe a dropdown type of menu, and as I recall it was usually provided by Jetpack.

Never purchased any kind of a Stat app or Analytical app until a couple of weeks ago. I had been using the free Independent Analytics plugin for about a year, and liked it so well that I purchased the Independent Analytics Pro Lifetime version.

Jetpack Stats and Independent Analytics both have advantages, but over the year of using the free Independent Analytics plugin I found their stats to be more concise & accurate.

Jetpack Stats vs Independent Analytics

I am going to show just one day of stat info from Jetpack Stats & Independent Analytics – 12/7/2023.

Here is my WordPress Dashboard’s look at Jetpack Stats & Independent Analytics:

Jetpack Stats condenses its Post & Pages, Referrers, and Countries info onto one page:

Independent Analytics uses separate pages for each item – Title (Posts & Pages):

Referrer:

Country:

Results

Note how thorough the info is on each of the Independent Analytics pages.

Under Post & Pages or Title: Jetpack Stats shows 1 post – Independent Analytics shows 4 posts.

Under Referrer/s: Jetpack Stats shows 0 Referrers – Independent Analytics shows 3 Referrers. I know blogger Orca of the orcaflotta.blog viewed the ‘archinstall – easily automates installation of Vanilla Arch Linux’ post on 12/7/2023, but Jetpack doesn’t mention that.

Under Countries/Country: Jetpack Stats shows 1 Country (United States) – Independent Analytics shows 3 Countries (Russia, United States, and South Africa). Orca of the orcaflotta.blog lives in South Africa.

Conclusion

Both Jetpack Stats & Independent Analytics have a lot more info in other sections.

Jetpack Stats has a section for All-time views, which is useful info, but best I can tell Independent Analytics only shows up to This Year & Last Year. However, as the above pics show, Free Jetpack Stats may not be very accurate on its views. 🤔

Independent Analytics has more info than I know how to setup or use, and the info that I do use under this new Pro plan is the same I was getting under the Free plan. Real-time analytics is included in the Pro, but I don’t use it much. Mainly moved to the Pro plan because their support was always immediate, and I liked the Free version more than I liked Jetpack Stats Free version. Would not have purchased it if they didn’t offer the Lifetime option

The Device data comes with both the Free & Pro, and shows info for Devices (Desktop and Mobile), Browsers & OSes. I check its interesting info occasionally. 👍

I have tried some other stat & analytical plugins, but they were either questionably accurate, had no Free versions, or were just too difficult for a novice like me to work with.

Example: when I first started searching (Nov of last year) for something a little better than Jetpack Stats, I came across the MonsterInsights plugin. It was just too complicated for a novice like me—I am just a simple blogger who enjoys blogging, but am not interested in trying to set up technical plugins.