MonsterInsights is one of the most popular Google Analytics Dashboard plugins for WordPress. You don’t need to hire a developer or know any code because it will help you connect to Google Analytics quite easily.
MonsterInsights will allow you to do sophisticated event tracking, eCommerce tracking, form tracking, custom dimension tracking, and more.
Is A Google Analytics Dashboard Plugin Really Necessary For You?
No doubt, Google Analytics is a powerful tool but the data can be overwhelming if you are not an expert. And without expert knowledge, it will be difficult to use the valuable data you are being provided with.
And what’s the point of analytics if you’re not using the data to improve your site?
Also, an efficient analytics plugin will help you understand-
understand what topics and formats your audience likes best, so you can create more of it
see how people find your site, so you can focus your efforts on the marketing tactics that work
set and track your conversion goals, so you know how to improve and optimize your site.
An expert Google Analytics user can do this work without a plugin, but an effective plugin will give you all that information at a glance, making analytics easy even if you’re a beginner.
Basic Features of MonsterInsights
Let us look at some of the powerful features of this plugin.
Quick and Easy Setup – Easily set up Google Analytics for WordPress with just a few clicks (no coding needed)
Real-time Stats – See real-time stats inside your Google Analytics dashboard.
Universal Tracking – Get better insights with Google Analytics’ universal tracking.
Google Analytics Dashboard Plugin – See the stats that matter from right inside your WordPress dashboard.
Ecommerce Tracking – MonsterInsights lets you add Google Analytics tracking for WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads store
Ads Tracking – Track your Google Adsense ads with Google Analytics
File Download Tracking – Enable file download stats with just a click
Link Tracking – Track your outbound link clicks with Google Analytics
Events Tracking – Track custom button and banner clicks with Google Analytics
Custom Dimensions Tracking – Enable Google analytics custom dimensions tracking for WordPress
Author Tracking – See who’s the most popular author with Author tracking
Popular Post Tracking – See which blog post and section is the most popular
Custom Post Type Tracking – Track the performance of your custom post types
Referral Tracking – See how visitors are finding your website to better focus your marketing efforts
Performance Tracking – Control the performance rate and sample rate for your Google Analytics report
Pricing Information
Apart from having a free version in the WordPress repository, it has three pro versions for the ones who want additional features. At the time of writing, they have cut down their pricing to about 50% on all their plans.
Agency
Pro
Plus
$399.50/year For marketing and web development agencies to speed up their flow.
$199.50/year For eCommerce sites and businesses who want huge results, fast.
$99.50/year For small businesses and publishers who want to do more.
MonsterInsights plugin Pricing
Some Pros & Cons of MonsterInsights- The Best Google Analytics Dashboard Plugin
Now, let us talk about the MonsterInsights Analytics plugin pros and cons.
Pros
You don’t need to know any coding to set up the plugin
Simple installation with WordPress
The free version has enough functionalities to get you through
The affiliate link tracking makes it easy for bloggers and affiliate marketers to track their affiliate links with Google Analytics
It has a Google Analytics tool.
Cons
The plugin does not place your WordPress analytics dashboard on the home page of WordPress.Instead, you have to find your new Insights tab on the sidebar and locate the dashboard there
You can’t get statistics on individual pieces of content
You will need the premium version to unlock all the relevant data to your sites.
MonsterInsights Plugin Lite vs Pro Version
If you are beginner then the lite version is ideal for you. Like we mentioned , the lite version has enough functionalities. It offers,
Audience Report that helps you get to know your visitors in a whole new way
Behavior Report that shows you exactly how people find your website, which keywords did they search for, who referred them, what did they click on your site
Content Report that will show you stats on exactly which content gets the most visits
ECommerce Report will show you all the statistics in one place
Search Console Report will help you know exactly how well your website is ranking in Google.
Whereas the pro versions offer Custom Dimensions tracking, Page Insights so that you will get all the relevant details regarding your site, Real-Time reports that will help you get the detailed reports in time.
The Pro and the Agency version offers Priority Support for their users.
Checking Performance Of MonsterInsights
As you know WP Hive has the ability to perform extensive tests on plugins to find out the performance of that plugin. So, we put MonsterInsights through the test and found out how it performs.
As you can see the plugin is latest PHP and WordPress compatible. Also, it has no activation and resource errors.
Also, it uses less memory than 81% plugins and also faster than 99% plugins on page speed. It only takes 0.07% seconds to load.
You can also view the overall statistics of the plugin from here also.
Getting Benefited from MonsterInsights As A Beginner or Professional Marketer
If you own a site like an e-commerce store or a marketplace then this plugin will help you greatly. With real-time stats and analysis, it will help beginners to understand their site performances without being an expert in Google Analytics.
Whereas for the experts, it will make the job more seamless and error-free as they can combine their expertise with the features of the MonsterInsights plugin to make the site more powerful.
MonsterInsights Behavior Report shows you exactly how people find your website, which keywords did they search for, who referred them, what did they click on your site, and more.
The content report shows you exactly which content gets the most visitors, so you can analyze and optimize it for higher conversions.
You can combine this with the search console report and custom dimensions, this will help you achieve good SEO score and higher rankings.
Final Verdict
We have covered most of the functionalities of the pro and the lite version. We can say the MonsterInsights plugin is one of the most popular Google Analytics Dashboard plugin for WordPress.
As we mentioned earlier it has the functionalities to take your website to the next level.Also,
Easy & simple set up and navigation: It has simple and easy navigation and installation so a person who doesn’t know to code can easily set up and use it. It helps especially the beginners
You don’t have to be an expert: It doesn’t matter if you are not an expert in handling all the data from the Google Analytics, this plugin will help you understand all the data to improvise on your site.
With all this together, this analytics plugin simply does a great job in maintaining your site performances.
The plugin scored great on our tests. Everything looks good!
Tests done by WP Hive test script Results
Minimal impact on memory usage The memory usage of this plugin is less than the average memory usage of other plugins on WordPress.org + 200KB. Check FAQ for more.
Minimal impact on pagespeed The impact of this plugin on PageSpeed is less than the average impact of other plugins on WordPress.org + 1000 milliseconds
No PHP errors, warning, notices WP Hive automated test found no PHP error while activating this plugin on our server
No Javascript issues WP Hive automated test found no JavaScrip error while activating this plugin on our server
Latest PHP 7.4.8 compatible WP Hive automated test found the plugin fully compatible with the latest version of PHP
Latest WordPress 6.0.2 compatible WP Hive automated test found the plugin fully compatible with the latest version of WordPress
Optimized database footprint The plugin creates less than 50 database tables
No activation errors WP Hive automated test found no activation error while activating this plugin on our server
No resource errors WP Hive automated test found no resource error/s while trying this plugin on our server
Frequently updated The plugin was updated at least once in the last 90 days
No problems were detected during tests.
All the plugins are tested on the same server with exactly same configuration via test script that automatically activates and logs the data WP Hive shows.
All the scripts run on a VPS with 8 CPU cores and 8 GB of RAM.
The test sites are hosted on Google Cloud VM instances, one site/plugin per instance. The machine type is n1-standard-1. The server is a 8 core CPU with 8GB of RAM.
The test sites are hosted on Apache/2 server and they are tested on PHP 7.4.8 & WordPress 6.0.2.
The database server is MySQL 8.0.21 and the default PHP memory limit is 256M.
Disclosure: When you buy through affiliate links on this site, WP Hive may earn a commission which we use to keep the site running. Learn more →
About Google Analytics for WordPress by MonsterInsights
Description
Google Analytics Plugin for WordPress We believe that it’s easy to double your traffic and sales when you know exactly how people find and use your website. MonsterInsights shows you the stats that matter, so you can grow your business with confidence. With over 2 million active installs, MonsterInsights is the most popular Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. At MonsterInsights,....
Google Analytics Plugin for WordPress
We believe that it’s easy to double your traffic and sales when you know exactly how people find and use your website. MonsterInsights shows you the stats that matter, so you can grow your business with confidence.
With over 2 million active installs, MonsterInsights is the most popular Google Analytics plugin for WordPress.
At MonsterInsights, we make it “effortless” to properly connect your WordPress site with Google Analytics, so you can start making data-driven decisions to grow your business.
Unlike other Google Analytics plugins, MonsterInsights allow you to enable all advanced Google analytics tracking features with just a few clicks (no need to hire a developer).
The best part is that MonsterInsights comes with a Google Analytics Dashboard for WordPress that shows you actionable analytics reports right inside your WordPress dashboard. We have created customized reports that eliminates the fluff and only show you the stats that matter, so you can see exactly what’s working and what’s not!
Simply put, MonsterInsights is the most complete Google Analytics plugin for WordPress that’s both EASY and POWERFUL.
That’s why millions of small businesses and top companies like Microsoft, Bloomberg, FedEx, Yelp, Subway, etc. use MonsterInsights to setup Google Analytics on their WordPress sites.
MonsterInsights Pro
This plugin is the lite version of MonsterInsights Pro plugin that comes with all the Google analytics tracking features you will ever need including events tracking, ecommerce tracking, custom dimensions tracking, popular post tracing, affiliate link tracking, and tons more. Click here to purchase the best premium Google Analytics plugin for WordPress now!
We took the pain out of installing Google Analytics in WordPress and made it easy. Here’s why over 2 million smart business owners, designers, and developers love MonsterInsights, and you will too!
Quick & Easy Google Analytics Setup
The old way of “properly” setting up Google Analytics was complicated. You had to either hire a developer or learn to add Google Analytics code in various different areas of your WordPress theme. The setup time would take days to weeks if you wanted to add powerful features like events tracking, eCommerce tracking, etc.
With MonsterInsights, we made it “effortless” to properly setup Google Analytics in WordPress. Yes, you can enable all advanced Google Analytics features with just a few clicks.
If you can point-and-click, then you can setup WordPress analytics and start seeing insights in under 15 minutes (no code necessary).
We keep up with all Google Analytics updates, so you can sleep well at night knowing that your website will always stay up to date with the newest features in Google Analytics.
See what one business owner is saying about MonsterInsights:
It just works. Really easy way to insert Google Analytics tracking code and keep it there when switching themes. No need to copy/paste code anywhere. This is the best way to handle Google Analytics in WordPress.
Steven Gliebe
Google Analytics Dashboard + Real Time Stats
Our goal at MonsterInsights is to make analytics easy and accessible for everyone.
We understand that Google Analytics has a steep learning curve which often prevents small business owners from making informed decisions to grow their business.
That’s why MonsterInsights comes with a built-in Google Analytics Dashboard for your WordPress site, so you can see all the useful information about your visitors right inside your WordPress dashboard.
We have created customized Google Analytics reports to help you filter through the noise and see the stats that really matter!
Audience Report helps you get to know your visitors in a whole new way. It shows you detailed insights like which country your visitors are coming from, what are they most interested in, which device are they using, their age, gender, and a whole lot more. You can use this demographics report and audience clues to tweak your website design and content accordingly.
Behavior Report shows you exactly how people find your website, which keywords did they search for, who referred them, what did they click on your site, and more. You can use these useful stats to identify low-hanging fruits, new partnership opportunities, and promotional areas to focus on.
Content Report shows you stats on exactly which content gets the most visits, so you can stop guessing and start creating content that gets more traffic and conversion.
Ecommerce Report shows you important store stats like total revenue, conversion rate, average order value, top referral sources, and more (all in one place).
Forms Report shows you conversion stats for various contact forms and lead forms on your website, so you can improve the conversions to grow your business.
Search Console Report shows you exactly how well your website is ranking in Google, so you can further optimize your SEO to grow your organic traffic.
Custom Dimensions Report helps you dig deeper by showing you useful stats like who are your most popular authors, what are the best publication times, which are your most popular categories or tags, how well are your Yoast focus keywords and SEO score performing, and more.
Our custom Google Analytics Dashboard reports are based on over 12+ years of online business experience. We built MonsterInsights to be the Google Analytics plugin that we wish we had.
We currently use MonsterInsights on all our portfolio companies which include both media sites generating tens of millions of pageviews and eCommerce sites generating millions in sales.
That’s why we can confidently say that MonsterInsights is the ultimate Google Analytics Shortcut for seeing the stats that matter and making data-driven decisions to grow your business.
I love being able to drill down into the analytics via the reporting feature. I have the PRO version and it makes a big difference what you can analyze. I’m glad that I can integrate with Pretty Links too!
Kim Beasley – MonsterInsights user
Google Analytics Enhanced Ecommerce Tracking Made Easy
Google Analytics Enhanced Ecommerce tracking is a powerful feature that lets you track user behavior across your online store starting from product views to checkout page to thank you page and beyond.
With MonsterInsights’ easy WooCommerce Google Analytics integration, you can setup WooCommerce analytics with literally 1-click.
Once you have enabled WooCommerce tracking, MonsterInsights will show you all important WooCommerce metrics in a single dashboard including WooCommerce conversion rate, top products in your WooCommerce store, total transactions, total revenue, average order value, top referral sources, and more.
Our WooCommerce analytics report also include other detailed WooCommerce event tracking data like total add to carts, total removed from cart, time to purchase, and sessions to purchase.
For those who want to go beyond our WooCommerce stats dashboard, you can easily open up the Google Analytics dashboard to combine WooCommerce Google Analytics data with other secondary dimensions and filters to find exactly what you’re looking for.
Aside from WooCommerce Google Analytics integration, MonsterInsights’ Ecommerce addon also offers seamless integration for the Easy Digital Downloads plugin.
Our Easy Digital Downloads Google Analytics integration allows you to setup Enhanced Ecommerce Tracking on your store with just 1-click.
Simply put, MonsterInsights’ Enhanced Ecommerce for WordPress feature is by far the easiest and most powerful in the market.
Google Analytics + GDPR Compliance
MonsterInsights helps make Google Analytics GDPR compliance easier for business owners.
Our EU compliance addon allows you to:
Anonymize IP in Google Analytics
Disable the Demographics and Interest Reports for Remarketing and Advertising
Disable UserID and author name tracking
Enable the ga() compatibility mode
Integrate with Cookie Notice and CookieBot plugins to collect user consent before tracking
Integrate with Google AMP Consent Box before enable tracking
Integrate with Google Analytics’s Chrome browser opt-out extension and built-in cookie opt-out system
Offer Easy Opt Out link for Google Analytics tracking
While no single plugin can guarantee 100% GDPR compliance in WordPress, MonsterInsights goes to great length in helping business owners with Google Analytics GDPR compliance.
For more details, see: GDPR and MonsterInsights – Everything You Need to Know.
Universal Tracking + Google Analytics for AMP and Instant Articles
MonsterInsights uses Google Analytics universal tracking, so you can track your users across devices and platforms.
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is a project by Google that helps you speed up your website. However if you don’t set it up properly, Google AMP can cause you to lose your website analytics. Our Google Analytics AMP integration allows you to have accurate Google Analytics tracking on all AMP enabled pages. It works seamlessly with AMP for WordPress plugin.
We also offer 1-click Google Analytics integration with Facebook Instant Articles.
At MonsterInsights, we always stay ahead of the curve in helping you integrate WordPress with the latest Google Analytics tracking features.
Analytics for PROs! This plugin brings it all, great features and helpful info to easily see what you are doing.
Frank van der Sluijs
Google AdSense Tracking and Affiliate Link Tracking
With MonsterInsights Ads tracking addon, publishers can easily track the performance of their Google AdSense Ads inside their Google Analytics dashboard.
Our affiliate link tracking makes it easy for bloggers and affiliate marketers to track their affiliate links with Google Analytics.
MonsterInsights uses event tracking for all WordPress outbound link tracking which is far more accurate than any built-in WordPress analytics solution.
Unlike other WordPress analytics plugin, our Google Analytics affiliate link tracking does NOT slow down your website because all events are recorded via JavaScript and sent straight to your Google Analytics account.
Most other WordPress stats plugin track data on your WordPress hosting server which slows down your website and does not scale for larger websites.
Since our affiliate link tracking use Google Analytics’ powerful servers, we can skip WordPress entirely and send data directly to Google Analytics.
MonsterInsights’ affiliate link tracking feature works with all WordPress affiliate link management plugins including Pretty Links, Thirsty Affiliates, and others.
Custom Dimensions Tracking, Custom Google Analytics Event Tracking, and More
Our Google Analytics event tracking feature for WordPress doesn’t just stop at affiliate link tracking.
You can use MonsterInsights custom Google analytics event tracking feature to easily add outbound-link tracking, file downloads tracking, call-to-action button tracking, hashmark tracking, telephone link tracking, and more.
Our powerful Forms Tracking addon uses Google Analytics custom event tracking feature to enable form analytics in WordPress. With just 1-click, you can enable form conversion tracking for your contact forms, lead generation forms, registration forms, surveys, and any other type of form in WordPress.
MonsterInsights’ Custom Dimensions addon allows you to push WordPress analytics even further. You can use Google Analytics custom dimensions to generate helpful WordPress stats for:
Author Tracking – see stats for each author to find which author’s posts generate the most traffic.
Post Type Tracking – see stats for WordPress post types to find out which sections are performing the best.
Category Tracking – see stats for your WordPress categories to find out which sections of your sites are the most popular.
Tags Tracking – see stats for your WordPress tags to find out which tags are the most popular.
SEO Score Tracking – see stats for your Yoast SEO score and see how it impacts your traffic.
Focus Keyword Tracking – see stats for Yoast focus keyword and see how it correlates with your traffic.
Logged-in User Tracking – see WordPress stats for what percentage of your users are logged-in.
User ID Tracking – see stats for each individual logged-in user’s activity through User ID custom dimension – great for Ecommerce and membership sites.
Published Time Tracking – track the performance of your posts based on their published time in Google Analytics.
Simply put, MonsterInsights allow you to take full advantage of all the powerful Google Analytics features.
I like how simple it is for client users and how I can turn on the advanced features for myself to get all the details right.
Skip Shean
Google Analytics Dashboard Plugin for WordPress Multisite Networks
MonsterInsights is the most popular analytics plugin for adding Google Analytics to WordPress multisite.
We have built-in all permissions and controls that you would need to successfully run Google Analytics on a WordPress multi-site.
You can control who has access to view the Google Analytics Dashboard report in WordPress. Our permissions setting allows you to hide Google analytics reports for specific user roles.
Similarly, we understand that some sites may want to exclude logged-in users from Google Analytics tracking. MonsterInsights gives you granular control to exclude admin in Google Analytics as well as other user roles.
Our performance addon allows you to adjust sample rate and site speed sample rates for Google Analytics.
By now you can probably see why MonsterInsights has become the most popular Google Analytics plugin for WordPress.
We understand Google Analytics better than any other analytics plugin for WordPress.
Full MonsterInsights Feature List
Quick and Easy Setup – Easily setup Google Analytics for WordPress with just a few clicks (no coding needed)
Real Time Stats – See real time stats inside your Google Analytics dashboard.
Universal Tracking – Get better insights with Google Analytics’ universal tracking.
Google Analytics Dashboard – See the stats that matter from right inside your WordPress dashboard with custom Publisher Report, Ecommerce report, and Search Console report.
Ecommerce Tracking – Add Google Analytics Ecommerce tracking to WordPress.
WooCommerce Google Analytics – Add Enhanced Ecommerce Tracking to your WooCommerce store.
Easy Digital Downloads Google Analytics – Add Enhanced Ecommerce Tracking to your EDD store.
Ads Tracking – Track your Google Adsense ads with Google Analytics.
Affiliate Link Tracking – Track your affiliate links and get stats that matter.
File Download Tracking – Enable file download stats with just a click.
Custom Link Tracking – Track your outbound link clicks with Google Analytics.
Events Tracking – Track custom button and banner clicks with Google Analytics.
Custom Dimensions Tracking – Enable Google analytics custom dimensions tracking for WordPress.
Author Tracking – See author stats and discover who’s the most popular author on your site.
Popular Post Tracking – See which blog post and section is the most popular.
Custom Post Type Tracking – Track the performance of your custom post types.
Referral Tracking – See how visitors are finding your website to better focus your marketing efforts.
Performance Tracking – Control the performance rate and sample rate for your Google Analytics report.
Enhanced Link Attribution – Get better analytics with enhanced link attribution.
Google Analytics for AMP – Add proper Google Analytics tracking for Google AMP.
Google Analytics for Facebook Instant Articles – Add proper Google Analytics tracking for Facebook Analytics.
Google Analytics GDPR Compliance – EU compliance addon helps you improve Google Analytics GDPR compliance by adding anonymize IP, cookie consent for Google Analytics, opt-out tracking, and more.
Form Conversion Tracking – Track conversions for your WordPress forms. Works with all popular plugins including WPForms, Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms, Formidable Forms, and more.
Google Optimize Tracking – Enable Google Analytics support for Google Optimize A/B Testing.
Google Analytics Tools – Helpful tools for Google analytics such as UTM link tracking builder.
Want us to add something else? Suggest a feature and we’ll get it added!
After reading this exhaustive feature list, you can probably imagine why MonsterInsights is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress.
Give MonsterInsights a try.
Want to unlock more features? Upgrade to our Pro version.
Simple, yet powerful. Amazing piece of plugin, does exactly what expected and even more.
Matt Jaworski
Popular Google Analytics Tutorials
How to setup Google Analytics with WordPress
How to Login to Google Analytics
How to Start a WordPress Blog (step by step)
Note for Beginners
Like all WordPress plugins, Google Analytics by MonsterInsights is only available for self-hosted WordPress sites. This means you will need to switch from WordPress.com to WordPress.org if you want to use this plugin on your WordPress site.
For more details, see this infographic on self hosted WordPress.org vs free WordPress.com
Credits
This plugin is created by Chris Christoff and Syed Balkhi with sponsorship from WPBeginner.
Branding Guidelines
MonsterInsights® is a registered trademark of MonsterInsights LLC. When writing about the Google Analytics for WordPress plugin by MonsterInsights, please make sure to uppercase the first letters of both word.
MonsterInsights (correct)
Monster Insights (incorrect)
monsterinsights (incorrect)
monsterinsight (incorrect)
What’s Next
If you like this plugin, then consider checking out our other projects:
OptinMonster – Get More Email Subscribers
WPForms – Best WordPress Contact Form Plugin
SeedProd – Most popular coming soon & maintenance mode plugin for WordPress
This plugin would not be possible without the help and support of WPBeginner, the largest WordPress resource site. You can learn from our free WordPress Tutorials like how to install WordPress, choose the best WordPress hosting, WordPress glossary, and more.
You can also learn about other best WordPress plugins.
Want to skyrocket the popularity of your plugin and reach millions of eager users? Look no further than WP Hive. Gain credibility through in-depth reviews, drive conversions with targeted email marketing, and boost visibility with strategic social promotion and exposure
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