Automattic's Free Stats Plugin for Wordpress Blogs Reviewed

There are practically hundreds of useful plugins and services that you can use to track your website's traffic-related statistics. Some are free and others you have to pay for. Automattic, the company behind the blogging software Wordpress, has now released their official version of a statistics-management plugin for Wordpress blogs.

With so many people already releasing software that does essentially the same thing, you may wonder, why would Automattic expend resources to add to the list? Their argument is that they are helping you sift through superfluous information and helping you save money by offering a free plugin that focuses solely on the most popular (and relevant/important) metrics from a blogger's perspective and displays it in an easy to read interface.

While all of that sounds good from a marketing perspective, in actuality I have found the wp-slimstat plugin to be much more extensive and much more useful. Have a look at the four states of this plugin before we move on.

The 'When' State

The 'What' State

The 'Who' State

The 'Summary' State

Compared to the above-mentioned, the Automattic stats plugin doesn't offer nearly as much detail and neither does it necessarily cover all the detail you might be interested in. There is one more gripe that I have, and most others who have self-hosted Wordpress blogs will also have. Because this plugin relies on your Wordpress API, which is linked to your Wordpress.com account, if you don't have an account, you have to make one. Furthermore, once you make an account, and setup your stats plugin, when you click the link to check your stats from your blog's dashboard:

Rather than being shown your stats right away, you are redirected to your Wordpress.com global dashboard, and if you're not signed into it, you have to sign into that to actually see your stats.

This is an unnecessarily long and complicated process compared to the wp-slimstat's one-click viewing setup.

The plugin does have one saving grace though. The reason why I am often put off by third-party plugins is that they can be too database-intensive and can cause trouble during times of high traffic (especially if you get Dugg). Where Automattic's plugin really shines is in terms of speed.

Finally, because all of the processing and collection runs on our servers and not yours, it doesn't cause any additional load on your hosting account. In fact, it's one of the fastest stats system, hosted or not hosted, that you can use.

The plugin is not for everyone. While it can be good for the novice who gives his statistics only a cursory glance, it won't suffice for the expert who really likes to get in to the numbers.

Enjoy the post? Here are some more that may interest you.

Freiheitsfreund, May 9, 2007: “SlimStat-Nachfolger SlimStat-Ex” — Wie ich heute auf mzungu’s weblog(de) gelesen habe, hat WP-SlimStat, dessen deutsche Übersetzungsdatei ich hier gestern noch online gestellt hatte, einen Nachfolger namens “WP-SlimStat-Ex”. Gestern schrieb ich noch: Fest stand f&...

Matt, May 7, 2007

Thanks for taking the time to write a review. I've been a stats junkie for years, using pretty much every system out there, however I found as my traffic went up two things happened: they all got slower and slower (even Google Analytics) and I stopped looking at them because there was just too much to sift through, or things went by too fast to be useful.

That's why we made our own stats system, and hopefully it jives with a few folks out there, I think especially with those that get a ton of traffic. I guess we'll see, I'd love to hear your thoughts again after using it for a few weeks.

Business research intelligence, May 7, 2007

The wordpress template designs are very cool and funny. The auto state systm information is more useful for me.

A Marques, May 7, 2007

As with Matt, I have a special fondness for statistics (some times even too much, as I spend a lot of time looking at them that could be used to write content). When your site is new, it's very useful to see the paths that your visitors take inside your site, most read pages, etc. so that you can tweak and increase performance. As a site grows, this things follow more or less a pattern and this level of detail becomes less useful and less meaningful. So, it might be interesting to "play" a bit with this new plug-in, but in the long run don't know if I'll keep using it.

Oh, and thanks for the review... :)

TeamTutorials, May 7, 2007

I have been looking for a good WP Stat plugin for a while. I will have to give this one a try. Thanks.

Community Building Blog, May 7, 2007

I was interested in the WordPress stats plugin, but having seen your comments about the wp-slimstat plugin this seems like a better option.

Me? I am sticking with Google Analytics for the time being!

Martin Reed

Jermayn Parker, May 7, 2007

Thanks for the comment, I also use Slimstat and find it very useful, thought of installing Automattic but with your review, probably wont as I dont have much time at the moment with clients etc. So thanks alot for reviewing it and saving me the time :)

Mikael Pittam, May 8, 2007

Not to sound repetitious, but thanks for the review. I have downloaded the Automattic plugin but I have not installed it. I have used SlimStat on a previous blog and loved it. To be fair, I will install Automattic's plugin and test it out. There might be a review in the future...

Chris Garrett, May 8, 2007

I know how hard it is to do a good blog stats system ;) Matt and the guys have done a grand job :)

It gives you what you need daily, anything else can be done as and when on a tactical basis, I wouldn't want to bloat it with stuff you hardly ever need.

gaman, May 8, 2007