Google Analytics has been the default for over a decade. It is free, it is everywhere, and most teams set it up without questioning whether they should.
But the product you are using today is not the product you installed five years ago. GA4 arrived in 2023, and with it came a completely different data model, a new interface, and a learning curve that turned experienced analysts into beginners. Two years later, plenty of teams are still struggling with it.
This is not a hit piece. Google Analytics does things no competitor matches at zero cost. But “free” has conditions, and those conditions are getting harder to accept. Here are five reasons teams are switching, and one honest reason you might not want to.
1. The complexity tax is real
GA4 replaced a page-view model with an event-based model. In theory, that is more flexible. In practice, it means the simple questions got harder.
