I’ve recently installed a new visitor tracking system called Mint and this post will compare Mint with Sitemeter which I have been using for over two years now.

Price
Mint: $30 one time fee per domain
SiteMeter: free (reduced features with advertising) or $59/year per site (for 25,000 or less page views) prices go up to $1799.00 per year.
Advantage: neutral

implementing
Both SiteMeter and Mint require you to add a bit of javascript code to your site which is very easy to do. The free version of Sitemeter requires that you add a small button on your page linking to your stats which you can make public or private as you choose. Mint on the other hand has no such requirement. Mint, however does require that you install it on your own server or hosting account. This means if you are using a hosted or free blogging service such as Typepad, Blogger, Blogsome, Edublogs, or Blogcity then you cannot use Mint. If you do have your own hosting or are considering getting your own hosting then do continue reading.

Browsers
SiteMeter works with all browsers while Mint works best with Firefox and is a little buggy in IE

advantage SiteMeter

The Stats
Both SiteMeter and Mint organize the stats in easy to use manner both graphically and textually. To visit all of your stats in Sitemeter you need to click different pages and it is not very easy to cross reference different aspects of the stats. You can look at the referrers but to see what page they entered on you have to click to view that and the same to see their exit page, ip/host, location, browser etc. The free version of Sitemeter also has several ads placed throughout the page. (click thumbnail for full-size image)

Mint has everything on one page for easy of use with javascript used to jump between panes. It is also possible for the Mint user to customize the order of the panes so that you can have different stats side by side or one on top of the other. Additionally since Mint is running on your own server there is no advertising or wasted space. (click thumbnail for full-size image)

Advantage: Mint

Free Sitemeter only allows you to keep track of the last 100 visitors. Paid SiteMeter allows you to track only the last 4000 visitors though with paid you can export to CSV format for record keeping or further analysis. Mint on the other hand keeps track of as many visitors as you want. The default listing is 18 records per pane, but that is easily changed in the admin page. Additionally since you have access to the database at any time it is very easy to export all data and analyze it in whatever manner you see fit.

I currently have my settings to display the last 50 records per pane since I check my stats often enough to never miss any and if my hits go up I can change this to a higher number. The advantage I have here is that each pane shows the last 50 records for that particular stat. With sitemeter you have access to only the last 100 visitors (free) or 4000 (paid) and that means if visitor number one clicked through from another page you can see the referrer page, but if they didn’t follow any links off of your page that stat is blank. Sitemeter ends up having many empty stats.

Advantage Mint

I’ve been talking about Panes in Mint, but what are they? A pane is a section that is used to contain the Data, if you take a look at the first mint screen shot above you will see three columns each of those columns will have different panes. When one pane finishes the next begins below it. The number of panes horizontally depends on your screen resolution, at home I get three panes (screen resolution 1280x1024) and at work I have only two panes (screen resolution 1024x768). Mint also gives you the option of fixing the pane height and using scroll-bars for each individual pane. I don’t use this setting, but I can see how some people would like it.

It is also possible to refresh panes individually without reloading the page. Additionally the session tracker and referrer aggregator will expand with extra info by clicking the little arrow next to each row of data. Click the thumbnail to the left and notice that there are nine hits and then each row shows the page views in order as well as any downloads or outclicks. The red circles indicate an active viewer on the site. In the mint preferences page you can choose how long a visitor remains active. SiteMeter does not have a session tracker feature.

advantage: Mint

Mint also has a download counter which as the name suggests allows you to keep track of how many times files are downloaded from your site. This is configurable to keep track of files based on extension. Another feature of mint that I enjoy is the pages pane. This pane keeps track of which pages on your site are viewed and can be viewed by most popular, Most Recent, or Watched. Watched pages are particular pages on your site that you want to keep track of how many views they are recieving. Finally the Referrer Aggregator will organize all your referrers into All, Websites, and Search engines - I’ve discovered that a good portion of my referrals are not coming from blogs on my ESL blog roll but from blogs based in Korea. It’s interesting to see the data organized in that manner.

Advantage: Mint

Other cool mint panes include Geomint which is similar to world map on SiteMeter but better because it uses Google Maps and allows you to switch from map view to satelite view and zoom right into the city/location of the hit. Where as SiteMeter only allows you to see points on the map. You also have all the same graphs and charts available to you that you would in SiteMeter including hits over 24 hours, past week, past month, past year, browser breakdown, o/s platform, resolution, and flash version. Additionally Mint allows you to view all of your visitors IP whereas SiteMeter only allows you to do that with the paid version.

advantage Mint

Errata
One of the reasons that I like Mint and SiteMeter is that they both allow you to ignore your own visits. SiteMeter gives you two options by cookies or by IP address. Ignoring by cookies is usually the best option as most home computers are on a dynamic IP. Mint only ignores visits by cookies. However by logging into your mint installation you can set it to ignore visits from multiple computers. With SiteMeter you are limited to ignoring visits from one computer.

advantage Mint

Just like SiteMeter Mint can be run so that visitors can see your stats or only the admin can see the stats. It’s entirely configurable in the control panel. Many of the features that I have discussed here in Mint are not included out of the box. They need to be added via a plugin structure. Mint calls plugins peppers and they are very easy to add as well as configure. All you need to do is upload the plugin folder to your mint installation inside the pepper folder and then visit your admin panel to activate it. Peppers as well as information related to Mint can be found at Peppermint Tea. The peppers I have installed are:

Default,  Backup/Restore, Referrer Aggregator, User Agent 007, Sparks!, Session Tracker, Fresh View, Outclicks, User Agent Pies, Download Counter, XXX Strong Mint, Geo Mint

There is additionally a support forum actively monitored by Mint Developer Shaun Inman.

I have compared Mint and Sitemeter as those are the two stat programs that I have used the most. I didn’t like the stats that came with my hosting and thus have looked elsewhere.  Just for the record, there are no referral kickbacks for Mint. I’m writing this just because I believe it is an excellent program that others may be interested in.At this point I have to say that Mint is perfect for me.