Oribi vs Google Analytics — What’s The Difference?

You’ve probably heard of Google Analytics. What website owner, blogger, or editor hasn’t?

Oribi, a Google Analytics competitor, is not as well known. Indeed, most people have not heard of it, which is why it is harder to find reliable information about it on the web.

Today, I will be comparing Google Analytics and Oribi to see how they stack up. If you feel like Google Analytics is not meeting your needs and are looking for an advanced alternative, Oribi might be one of the options you’re looking at.

I will explain how Oribi works, what it is, what makes it different from Google Analytics, its pros and cons, and whether it is worth the price.

Let’s get into it.

What Is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a free web analytics software for websites and blogs. Launched in 2005, it is the most popular web analytics software; most webmasters are using or are at least aware of Google Analytics.

You don’t have to pay to use Google Analytics; it is entirely free. You can connect it to your site rather easily and start tracking live visitors, visitor behavior, where visitors are coming from, where they are landing on your site, and much more.

It also allows you to set up advanced tracking to track events and goals, but more on that later.

The main thing to keep in mind is that Google Analytics is a freemium software. While that makes it accessible to everyone, it also means that it is missing some advanced tracking features that premium tracking tools have.

That might not make it such a great choice for stores and sites with more advanced tracking needs.

What Is Oribi?

Oribi is a premium web tracking software that aims to make web analytics easier to understand and analyze. According to Oribi, Google Analytics is for “analysts” — you need to be a data analyst to truly understand the finer points of your data when tracking with Google Analytics.

Instead, Oribi aims to feed you your data on a spoon, so to speak. Their goal is to make even more complex data and event tracking understandable to everyone, even those without any data analysis skills.

Oribi vs Google Analytics: Main Features

Let’s quickly go over the top things you can do with either Oribi or Google Analytics.

Oribi

Oribi focuses on tracking each visit, click, and action on your site and turning it into a trackable event. It tells you what users are doing on your site, but more importantly, why they are doing what they are doing.

It shows you how users coming from different sources act differently and the percentage of users completing each step in a funnel. Oribi explains how making simple changes can alter the conversion rate of your funnel and gives you deep insights into the format of simple-to-read charts.

We’ll get into all that soon, but suffice it to say that Oribi will help you get a better understanding of what is going on and how you can quickly improve your conversion rates.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics focuses more on basic user behavior, without going so much into actionable insights. If you just want to find out what people are doing on your site, such as:

• Which pages they are visiting
• How long they are staying on each page
• The main traffic flows and user journeys on your site
• Where your visitors are coming from
• Which keywords they are using
• The geographic location of your visitors
• How many live visitors are on your site right now

Google Analytics will be perfect for you. However, that doesn’t tell you much in terms of how to optimize your funnels and website for better conversions.

You can still track goals, events, conversion rates, and audience segments, but it takes a bit more work to do that. Even the actionable insights are not presented in a clear manner, and you need to delve a bit deeper into your data to figure out what those data points are telling you.

Let’s explore a bit more how Oribi can help you get actionable insights quickly, even without knowing how to do any data analysis, starting with individual user journeys.

Google Analytics vs Oribi: User Journeys

Sometimes, you’ll want to track individual user journeys to see what specific visitors have been doing on your site.

Oribi

Oribi’s Visitor Journeys display every step a user took on your site. If you use the Email Integration feature, you can even see what each email lead you collected did on your site.

For example, you can see:

• The user’s email address
• Where they are (geolocation)
• How they landed on your site (traffic source)
• Which page they landed on
• How many times have they visited your site
• The device they are on
• How long their session lasted
• And more

You can see a full list of visitor sessions and filter for results based on things such as:

• CTAs they clicked on
• Number of times they visited your site
• Referral source
• Geolocation
• Platform
• Most active visitors

Tracking your most active visitors, for example, can let you see which traffic sources lead to the most conversions. You can also track users who clicked on specific CTAs to see the most common referral source, session duration, or country for that CTA conversion.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics lets you track user flows on your site. To track individual users and see what they’re doing, you will need to enable User IDs, which allows you to track users who are signed into their accounts.

Let’s say Sarah visits your site from her phone and then from her laptop. It will be counted as two separate sessions unless she is logged in, and you have User ID enabled, in which case it will be counted as a single person.

Another option is to activate cross-device reports, but it is still in beta mode via Google Signals, and it will only include users who have turned on Ads Personalization.

However, setting up a User ID is already a more complicated process, and Oribi makes it easier to see exactly which person is associated with each user account, what they are doing on your site, and so on. Therefore, Oribi wins.

Oribi vs Google Analytics: Funnel Tracking

Funnels allow you to guide users towards a desired end result. However, it can be hard to get your funnel right — sometimes, an extra, unnecessary page can cause users to leave the funnel without completing the desired conversion at the end, as an example.

That’s where funnel tracking comes into play.

Oribi

Oribi offers excellent funnel tracking features. You will see each step of your funnel and the percentage of people who entered the funnel who reached or completed each step.

For example, while 5,000 people might have entered your funnel by landing on a specific signup page, only 40 percent might have signed up, and only five percent might have reached the final step of the funnel, which might be a thank-you page after purchase.

Oribi can count each action as a step in your funnel. In other words, any event, including clicking on a button, can be a step in your funnel.

That allows you to break down your funnel analytics even more.

The really cool part about the funnel analytics in Oribi is that it gives you quick, actionable insights that are of value to you. For example, it might show that people on mobile devices are 25 percent more likely to complete the funnel, while people living in the US are 12 percent less likely to complete it.

It might also break down the likelihood of completing the funnel based on referral sources. For example, if you see that people coming from Facebook are 30 percent less likely to complete the funnel, you might want to think about not focusing on Facebook Ads as much.

In addition to the quick insights, you can compare the funnel’s performance, side by side, filtered by entry point, geolocation, source, campaign, and more! That allows you to see which steps of the funnel have better conversion rates based on those factors.

You can also compare the same funnel side by side for different time frames.

Another thing you can do is create a likelihood calculator. For example, enter a desired trigger and effect.

The trigger might be visiting the Help Center, as per the screenshot below. The effect might be clicking on the Request a Demo button.

Oribi will then tell you whether people who visit the Help Center are more likely to complete the desired effect/action, and by how much.

It also tells you unique insights about each page, such as how many visitors clicked on each individual call to action button you have on the page. You will also see how page visits and conversions vary by device type.

It will even tell you how many times it takes people to visit your website, on average, to complete a conversion. You will see the percentage of conversions coming from the first session, second session, and so on.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics also allows you to view user flows or to set up conversion funnels and track them. However, you are more limited in what you can track and the data you get.

With Google Analytics alone, funnel conversion tracking focuses on page visits as events, not on button clicks.

That doesn’t mean it’s impossible to track button clicks using Google Analytics, but you will need to use Google Tag Manager as well or set up button tracking with coding. It’s a more complicated process, as you will have to select click triggers, open your website in debug mode, and complete several other complicated steps.

While you can find guides to that online, such as this guide, it is still a complicated process that takes time and effort. You may find yourself getting frustrated if you are not a developer with experience using Google Analytics.

The main difference is event correlations. I showed you above how Oribi helps you figure out how different triggers correlate to the probability of different conversions/effects.

You can use that calculator to learn a lot about what makes users more likely to convert. If you see that users who view your help page are more likely to buy from you, for example, start linking to your help page more often and directing more users to it.

Google Analytics doesn’t have an equivalent tool.

Oribi also has much better filtering options, both for looking at individual user journeys and for filtering for funnel events. While Google Analytics does allow you to use filters, the options are more limited.

Finally, Oribi makes it a lot easier to track funnels across multiple domains.

Oribi wins here since they make everything a lot easier. They also give you better, easier to understand, actionable insights into your funnels, so you can make quick decisions, such as whether you should advertise more to people in a specific country or cut advertising on mobile.

Google Analytics vs Oribi: Campaign Tracking

Which is better for campaign source tracking, Google Analytics or Oribi?

Oribi

Oribi lets you see which source is contributing to the most leads and conversions, and the percentage of conversions based on medium. For example, you can see whether people coming from your email list, Instagram, or a specific ad campaign are buying more of your products.

You can start tracking visitors from the first source. In other words, if a visitor first finds out about you from Facebook but only ends up converting at a later point after clicking on a link you posted in a tweet, you can see their entire journey.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics also lets you set up UTM tracking. However, you are limited to the last source your user came from; the link they clicked on last (you add a UTM to each link to track sources).

That’s the main difference between Google Analytics and Oribi in this regard, and it is what makes Oribi superior.

Oribi vs Google Analytics: Reports

Which tool makes it easy to create custom, easy-to-understand reports, Oribi or Google Analytics? That’s what I will explore here.

Oribi

Oribi allows you to create simple-to-read reports showing trends and highlighting important data. You can add a description for each segment of your report and present it on your site or show it to your clients.

A number of report designs are available, and you can add your logo and otherwise customize your report.

Once you create a report template, you can have Oribi generate a new report automatically every day, week, or month. You can also have Oribi send the report to people on your team or your clients automatically.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics also lets you create custom reports, but they focus more on raw data as opposed to using beautiful graphics to get a few points across. However, you can be very detailed in your custom reports by choosing which dimensions (such as location) and metrics (such as bounce rate) to include.

You can learn more about building custom reports on Google Analytics here.

However, Google Analytics also has a gallery of different report templates users have contributed. The Solutions Gallery, as it is called, contains reports such as:

• Social Media Dashboard (see screenshot below)
• Content Analysis Dashboard
• SEO Dashboard — Finding Top Content and Keywords
• Enhanced Ecommerce Analytics

You can also see a list of the top contributors. You can click on any report and import it to use it.

These reports are also usually focused more on raw data than beautiful graphics, though that does depend on the report.

So, who wins here? It’s hard to say.

It would seem that Google Analytics has more dashboard and report templates available for showing different metrics. On the other hand, it seems like Oribi makes it easier to create simple reports with beautiful graphics that look nice and keep clients satisfied.

Google Analytics vs Oribi: Ease Of Use And Time/Effort Required

In this section, I will talk about the time and effort required to get the most out of either tool.

Oribi

Oribi is, without a doubt, an easier tool to use. Sure, Google Analytics isn’t that complicated, but that’s only for simple stuff, such as tracking visitors.

Once you want to do some more advanced stuff, such as track events or conversion funnels, things get a lot more complicated. Even if you know how to set up tracking for all of that stuff, it still takes more time.

For example, if you want to track events with Google Analytics, you will need to manually define which events you want to track.

Oribi, on the other hand, automatically tracks all events for you. You don’t have to do any additional work.

In addition, everything is counted as an event automatically, including button clicks. To track button clicks in Google Analytics, you will need to manually define them in Google Tag Manager (another option is defining them by code).

Even if you manually define events, Google Analytics will only start tracking those events from the moment you define them. You will get no historical data.

Since Oribi tracks events automatically, however, all event data will be tracked from the moment you install Oribi.

Oribi even gives you data highlights to showcase the most important data points gleaned from your tracking campaigns. They also automatically track trends by comparing different time phases.

Google Analytics

Overall, Google Analytics is harder to use and requires more time and effort for more advanced tracking. While much of what you can do with Oribi is possible with Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager as well, some features are not available, and many other advanced features can be complicated to set up.

Oribi vs Google Analytics: Customer Support

In this section, I will talk about customer support offered by each platform.

Oribi

When you sign up for Oribi, you will get a special conversion expert who will stand by your side and help you as you set up Oribi. Not only that, but they will give you tips and advice on how to use your data to optimize your conversions.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics does offer email support, and sometimes, live agents are available for chat. However, it can be hit or miss, which isn’t surprising given it is a free service.

However, there is a HUGE support center with articles on every topic related to Google Analytics, as well as tons of blog posts and YouTube videos all over the web to help you do anything in Google Analytics, as it is a very popular tool.

Pricing

Finally, let’s discuss the costs involved in using each platform.

Oribi

While Oribi is an awesome tool, it is not cheap. While a free trial is available, pricing starts at $450/month, billed annually.

Pricing depends on whether you own an eCommerce website, own a business website, or are a marketing agency serving clients. It also depends on the number of visitors you are tracking per month.

It can be as high as $1755/month for a business website tracking up to 300,000 visitors/month. Check the pricing page and use the slider to determine pricing.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics, on the other hand, is entirely free. There is also an enterprise solution, called Google Analytics 360, but it is extremely expensive (think around $150,000/year) and not necessary for most businesses.

Similarities And Differences

	Oribi	Google Analytics
Event Tracking	✓ (Automatic)	✓ (Add Manually)
Button Clicks As Events	✓ (Automatic)	✓ (Add Manually)
Funnel Tracking	✓	✓
Single User Journey Tracking	✓	✓
Better Filtering Options	✓	✗
Reports	✓	✓
Actionable Insights	✓	✗
Data Highlights	✓	✗
Original Source Attribution	✓	✗
Personal Conversion Expert	✓	✗
Free To Use	✗	✓

Wrapping It Up: Which Is Better, Oribi Or Google Analytics?

Yes, Google Analytics is free. However, Oribi is arguably better.

It makes tracking easier, provides better insights, and allows you to track a lot more than Google Analytics. If you can afford Oribi, I’d recommend you choose it instead of Google Analytics.