AWStats Features
Using AWStats, you can generate reports for whatever time period you specify: daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, or by a custom date range.
The Web reports generated show you details about who is visiting your site: their browser, operating system (OS), Internet Protocol (IP) address, time spent on your site, which files they viewed or downloaded, whether they favorited or bookmarked a page, and more.
You can get data on the number and frequency of hits, helping you discover what’s popular on your site — and what isn’t.
The application also has reports for your mail server (message time and date, messages sent and received, possible spam, server errors, etc.) and File Transfer Protocol servers (files accessed, country of origin and IP address of visitors, time spent browsing specific files, etc.).
Also, unlike many other popular Web analytics applications, the data shown is real-time, so there’s no need to wait until the next day to find out how your website is doing right now.
Looking for quality AWStats hosting?
A2 Hosting scored #1 in our speed tests of top hosting providers. Our readers can currently save up to 50% on their plans. Use this special discount link to get the deal.
Alternatives to AWStats
Having an objective and accurate analysis of your website’s performance is one of the most important tools any webmaster can have, so it’s not surprising that there are a number of competitors that offer similar features to AWStats.
With the rise of Software as a Service (SaaS), there are many offerings for web analytics that you can pay for on a subscription basis, such as Clicky Analytics.
Clicky is popular for presenting your site’s data in a very easily understandable way and giving you actionable data you can use without being an expert in data or analytics.
There’s also Google’s popular analytics service, Google Analytics, now one of the most popular analytics tools on the web.
On the other hand, one of the main appeals of software like AWStats is that it’s open source and free and that you can install the software on your own server to use your own data logs instead of relying on a separate third-party service.
With that in mind, here are the top two popular server-side analytics solutions that are popular alternatives to AWStats:
- Webalizer is an application that’s available under a GNU General Public License and is also free to use. After installing Webalizer on your server, it will be able to report statistics using your weblogs including your website’s number of visitors, their country of origin, and the amount of data downloaded. Unlike AWStates, Webalizer is written in C.
- Sawmill Analytics offers similar features to AWStats, but it’s not open source; users have to pay a one-time fee for a software license.
How does Awstats compare to Webalizer?
Awstats and Webalizer have a lot of similarities. For example, both tools report on activity recorded by your server log files, meaning a lot of the information presented by both tools will be the same.
However, there are some differences in how the tools interpret the data from your server log files, which can lead to some serious gaps in traffic volumes when you use one tool or the other.
When you are using Awstats, your visitors are defined based on IP address and user agent.
So, for the sake of example, if someone visits your site on one IP with a user agent that identifies a web browser, then Awstats is very likely to log that visit as being done by a human.
When a bot visits your website with a pre-defined IP and no browser associated with its visit, Awstats can also process that visit as a bot and not count it towards your human visits.
By comparison, Webalizer also interprets server logs, but it fails to tell the difference between bot visits and human visits.
Awstats will at least try to tell the difference between a human and a bot by keeping its bot definitions up to date.
It’s not practical to expect Awstats will be able to track every bot on the web – but hopefully, the majority of your bot traffic will be able to be scrubbed out.
Because Webalizer doesn’t try to tell the difference, many site owners who use it and then switch to another Analytics tool down the line are often very surprised to see a drop in traffic their site receives.
Be advised that it’s not your fault — or the fault of the software, either. The two tools just read your log files in a different way.
Another major difference between Awstats and Webalizer is the amount of time the softwares use to log a visit.
Many times these settings will lead to Webalizer showing more visits Awstats – as much as twice as many visits.
Server-based Analytics vs Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a fairly robust tool for website analytics – there is very little that other open source analytics tools provide that you can’t access from Google Analytics.
However, there are several reasons to be cautious about putting all of your website analytics eggs into Google’s basket. Let’s review a few of them.
Google Analytics is a remote-hosted tool for website analytics, meaning you don’t physically host its software on your server provided by your website host.
Because the data is remotely hosted — you don’t physically own it — Google does, giving them the ability to use that data however they wish.
As an alternative, when you use a server-based website analytics tool, your information is tracked in server logs or your MySQL database.
Having your data stored on your server allows you to maintain control over what is done with the information.
When you use a self-hosted tool for website analytics, you also know your data is not being used by or shared with advertising companies.
Note that we are not saying Google Analytics is using your site stats for that purpose, but the simple fact is that you can’t be 100% sure what a remotely hosted analytics tool is doing with your data.
AWStats Pros and Cons
If you aren’t sure whether AWStats is the right choice for your websites, consider the following:
Pros
- AWStats is 100% free and open source.
- Installation and setup is not complicated; it’s already included with most hosting plans.
- All your data is owned by you and stored on your server.
Cons
- AWStats may require more technical knowledge to understand how to use the reports.
- Other analytics services may provide more actionable data.
- A paid service will often include customer support.
Looking for a great deal on AWStats hosting?
Bluehost offers a variety of plans that support AWStats. You can currently save up to 65% on their plans. Use this discount link to get the deal.
Getting Started With AWStats
With its almost universal compatibility and customizable format, AWStats can be added to your server with minimal time and effort.
The software itself is offered as a statistics utility by many hosting providers, and can often be found in your cPanel menu.
If AWStats isn’t already included in your hosting plan, you can download it from the AWStats site. In order to be able to install the software, you will also need access to your server logs, and support for Perl modules and CGI scripts.
Most hosts enable this by default. If you’re unsure about whether AWStats is compatible with your server, check with your provider for details.
AWStats Frequently Asked Questions
- Is AWStats free?
Yes, AWStats is free and open-source software licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL).
- What programming language is AWStats written in?
AWStats is written in Perl.
- Who is AWStats intended for?
AWStats is a server administration tool intended for network administrators and others with the technical knowledge and expertise required to use the software and generate the reports.
- How do I use AWStats?
The program works as a CGI script, or from the command line. AWStats is often provided by web hosts, and can be easily enabled from your cPanel dashboard. Once the software is enabled, it will start gathering data from your website. After a period of time (usually about 36 hours), you will be able to generate reports with the data AWStats has gathered.
- Is AWStats compatible with my web hosting server?
AWStats can be deployed on most operating systems, including Windows and Linux servers. There are several packages available for different Linux distributions. AWStats works on any web hosting provider that enables Perl, CGI, and weblog access. These are standard features included with most web hosting plans. If you need to run AWStats, you may want to double check with the hosting provider before you purchase a plan to make sure your hosting plan meets the software’s minimum installation requirements.
- What kind of data does AWStats provide?
AWStats can generate reports that include the number of visitors to your website, the duration of their visits, domains and countries of visitors, search keywords used to find your website, your most viewed pages, your most common entry and exit pages, your busiest time of the day and day of the week, and even visitor data such as their ISP, the type of browser they’re using, and their screen size. AWStats generates reports that are graphical and easy to understand since the statistics are explained and illustrated.
- How does AWStats compare to Analog?
Analog is another free and open source web log analyzer, but unlike AWStats, it’s written in C. Analog hasn’t been updated officially since 2004. In comparison to AWStats, it uses fewer images in its reports. Analog doesn’t report on many of the advanced statistics AWStats does, such as entry and exit pages, session duration, screen sizes, and more.
- How does AWStats compare to Webalizer?
Webalizer is also a free, open source web log analyzer written in C. It generates reports that are more visually-oriented than Analog, but the reports are not as modern, user-friendly and easy to understand as AWStats’ reports. Like Analog, Webalizer is also missing some of the advanced reporting features AWStats provides.
- How does AWStats compare to W3Perl?
W3Perl is a web log analyzer that, like AWStats, is free, open source, and written in Perl. W3Perl offers a few more detailed statistics in addition to all the data AWStats provides. W3Perl also includes additional features such as daily automatic email reports.
- How does AWStats compare to Google Analytics?
Unlike AWStats, which is software installed on your web server that gets its data from your web log files (server side), Google Analytics is web-based software that gets its data via Javascript and cookies on your website (client side). The data gleaned from both will be different because of the way it’s gathered, so you may get very different reports from each. AWStats’ reported traffic tends to be much higher, since it includes bots and crawlers, while Google Analytics attempts to filter out non-human web traffic. While AWStats is meant primarily for server administrators, Google Analytics is targeted to a broader audience, though it can still require some technical expertise to use. Google Analytics has many more advanced features than AWStats, including goal tracking, measuring ad effectiveness, and more.
- What are the benefits of using server side analytics software like AWStats?
One advantage of server side analytics software is that it will count all users whereas if a visitor has blocked Javascript, they won’t be counted by Google Analytics and other Javascript-based analytics software. In comparison, web log analyzers track visitors via IP addresses and user-agents or session IDs, which will include all visitors to your website, even bots and crawlers, providing a more accurate picture of everything happening on your website.
- Are there any downsides to using server-side analytics as opposed to client-side analytics?
Since server-side analytics software counts all your website traffic, including bots, it can be difficult to sort out what your actual human visitors are doing. Many client side analytics provide more advanced data and more options to generate reports and display that data in a variety of ways.
- Should I use server side or client side analytics?
Web log analyzers (server side analytics) tend to be geared towards network administrators, while client side analytics are more for business and marketing purposes. In order to get the full picture of what’s going on with your website, as well as actionable, easy to interpret, and visually-pleasing reports, you can use both client side and server side analytics software, since their features complement one another.
Comments