Alternative to Google Analytics 4: Smarter, Privacy-Compliant Analytics

GA4 replaced Universal Analytics in 2023. It’s not the best option, but it’s widely used.

It’s completely free.

GA4 provides traffic stats on websites of any size or volume at no cost. With no barrier to entry, it’s attractive to startups, small businesses, and budget-conscious teams, even if the real cost is paid in data, complexity, and the lack of customer support.

TWIPLA also offers a free forever plan with access to all core features. It’s ideal for smaller setups and paid plans start at $2.39, which is less than the cost of the consent management you’d need to run GA4 legally. Plans scale with business growth, offering value through responsive support, flexible privacy settings, and integrated insights across tools.

There's also a Custom Enterprise Plan for businesses with complex analytics requirements.

Google Analytics 4 fits naturally into the Google ecosystem.

This makes it especially powerful for teams familiar with tools like BigQuery, Tag Manager, and SQL. Its deep integration with Google Ads, Search Console, Firebase, and Shopping makes it a go-to for performance marketers who need cross-platform data to drive campaigns.

TWIPLA isn’t part of Google's ecosystem by design.

It’s a complete website intelligence platform with over 20 tools that work together from day one. While GA4 relies on external integrations to plug feature gaps, TWIPLA provides website statistics, behavior analytics, and visitor feedback in a unified interface. What you lose in third-party connectivity, you gain in simplicity, coherence, and ease of action.

GA4 uses an events-based model.

Every interaction is tracked as a customizable event, enabling cross-platform, visitor-centric analysis. This approach supports custom events and BigQuery exports.

TWIPLA uses a hybrid data model: intuitive pageview-based stats backed by powerful event tracking. Marketers familiar with UA will feel at home, while still being able to track custom events GA4-style.

It supports custom reporting through Explorations.

GA4 lets teams build custom reports and dashboards using its Explore workspace, though this often requires technical knowledge and training.

TWIPLA provides custom dashboards and pre-set filters out of the box, so teams can segment data and uncover insights with zero ramp-up time or coding skills.

GA4 offers predictive analytics like churn and revenue forecasts.

These are most useful for high-traffic websites with clean, structured data and offer a way to anticipate visitor behavior and enable advanced audience targeting.

TWIPLA doesn’t offer predictive analytics, and that’s intentional. As a privacy-focused platform, it prioritizes real behavioral data over modeled assumptions. Instead of forecasts, TWIPLA helps teams fix friction points in real time through session replays, heatmaps, and funnels, and delivers actionable insights without compromising compliance or ethics.

GA4 combines app and web analytics under one property.

This benefits cross-platform teams and businesses that want a unified view of visitor behavior across websites, mobile apps, and other digital properties.

TWIPLA isn’t a dedicated app analytics solution, but it can track usage in web-based or hybrid apps by embedding the tracking code into the app’s webview layer.

GA4’s Consent Mode helps with legal compliance.

However, it still depends on cookie consent and has faced high-profile legal rulings in Europe that make it a risky choice for privacy-conscious businesses.

TWIPLA is cookieless, consentless, and fully GDPR, CCPA, ePrivacy, and PECR compliant by default.

Google Analytics 4 was introduced as a smarter, future-ready analytics platform. But there's no shortage of GA4 drawbacks that make it a daily source of friction for many teams. The switch from Universal Analytics brought a new data model, a redesigned interface, and a different mindset that left marketers, analysts, and product teams struggling.

The steep learning curve is one of the most common complaints. 

GA4’s interface is unintuitive, and generating insights often means building custom Explorations: a process that’s slow, rigid, and frequently frustrating. Even simple tasks like using OR filters or running year-on-year comparisons in Explore aren’t supported, and key data views are capped.

Its underlying structure creates additional friction:

• High-cardinality data is withheld or aggregated.
• Client ID exports require setup through BigQuery.
• Sub-properties can’t be used with Google Ad Manager, Salesforce, and other integrations.

Configuration issues are also widespread:

• Enhanced Measurement is enabled by default, which can duplicate pageviews unless manually adjusted.
• Troubleshooting is difficult: users lack direct support, and documentation is fragmented or outdated.

The bigger issue?

In trying to unify app and web tracking, GA4 stripped out many website-focused features. What was once clear and structured has been flattened into a one-size-fits-all event stream, forcing teams to rebuild the reports they once took for granted. As one frustrated user put it, “It’s like using a car redesigned to also be a boat: you lose the trunk, but never needed the boat.”

Compliance adds further complications. GA4 still relies on cookie consent and has faced multiple legal rulings in Europe, including in Austria, France, and Italy. For businesses that need full visibility without risking non-compliance, that’s a critical blocker.

While advanced teams with technical expertise can get value from GA4, many simply want:

• Quick, usable insights
• Complete data visibility
• A privacy-compliant platform that doesn’t require workarounds

That’s why more and more businesses are actively looking to switch from Google Analytics.