What’s the difference between Snowplow and GA?

Google Analytics (GA) was for a long time the go-to tool for digital analytics. In recent years, however, GA has been plagued by compliance issues and was declared illegal in several European countries. To add to these issues, Google’s latest offering, Google Analytics 4 has ceased to be competitive in a market that is increasingly leaning towards a full customer view using first-party data.

Snowplow was created warehouse-first from the ground up. Unlike GA, Snowplow gives you the flexibility to shape and evolve your data to fit your business. This data arrives AI- and BI-ready in real-time and is first-party to avoid tracking limitations.

Thousands of customers globally use Snowplow.

What can we help you achieve?

Snowplow has traditionally been a favored tool of data teams, but our latest solution, Snowplow Digital Analytics, is made for marketers. All the dashboards and metrics you built your GA reporting on are available in Snowplow. These are real-time, more compliant, and fully warehouse-first. You can build on top of these GA-style dashboards with full flexibility as you evolve your advanced analytics and AI use cases. This is not just another Google Analytics alternative, it’s a step change.

Clearer Customer Insights

Get a detailed and accurate view of your customers' actions across different platforms and devices, helping you understand their behavior better.

Real-Time Data

Access fresh, real-time data so you can make decisions quickly, without the wait. This immediate insight ensures your strategies are based on the latest customer behaviors and trends.

Accurate Attribution

Understand the true impact of your teams efforts across the customer journey, not just the last click before conversion.

Consistent Data Across Teams

Create a unified set of data definitions that everyone in your company can rely on, making your marketing efforts more efficient.

Top 5 reasons to choose Snowplow over GA

1st-party cookies live longer
While GA tracking is limited to 7 days, Snowplow tracking circumvents ITP restrictions so you can track for up to 2 years. This means you get more data on Apple, Mozilla and other users to build a complete customer journey and avoid incomplete data sets.

Compliance first means future security
Snowplow has always championed a compliance-first approach with private SaaS deployment and respect for customer privacy, including PII pseudonymization and cookieless or anonymous tracking. This allows you to future-proof your data stack and avoid unexpected costs or reputational damage in the future.

Power more real-time use cases
Real-time stream data from Snowplow lands within 2-5 seconds and we guarantee delivery to the warehouse within a strict SLA of 30 minutes. Ultra-low latency data allows you to create dynamic use cases, such as real-time personalization and recommendations.

Warehouse-first data connects all touchpoints
Snowplow data lands in a unified event stream, a log of all the actions that have occurred across your digital platforms. You can create a cross-device and multi-platform view of customer journeys for every department by pulling in data from multiple sources.

Unparalleled data richness answers more questions
Snowplow offers 130+ out-of-the-box properties captured with every event. You have access to limitless drill-down options for your analytics to uncover new trends. With richer data, you simply have more answers to more questions and better fuel for AI and BI use cases.

Technical issues with Google Analytics

Lack of advanced user privacy controls
Visibility of data cannot be restricted across organizations, limiting governance measures.

Vendor lock-in to Google BigQuery for raw data
Companies are forced to use BigQuery as their only warehouse in order to access all their data. They are also locked into Google Cloud Platform.

Limitations in data collection
This can be #fields, length, types, etc. Fewer events can be tracked, reducing the value of your data products and the potential value of your entire data stack.

Lack of complete real-time streaming & analytics
You cannot stream in real-time to most destinations, use cases such as real-time recommendations limited or impossible.

No built-in data quality control/monitoring
Poor business decisions based on low-quality data without any form of alerting.

No versioning of tracking plans and events
Once tracking is implemented, you cannot easily change it. Too much time is spent throwing out past work to make minor changes.

Restricted data access (raw + API)
Your data is not truly yours to export and use as you wish, meaning a primary business asset is not fully under your control.

No direct support access to Google
Without easy access to support, technical problems can take a long time to resolve, costing your business by creating data downtime.

Cookie tracking ITP limitations
Google’s 3rd-party data restricts your cookies to just several days with Apple, Safari, and other browsers using ITP, creating an incomplete customer view.