Bitly vs Google Analytics

What users are saying about

Score 7.8 out of 10

Based on 78 reviews and ratings

Score 8.7 out of 10

Based on 2980 reviews and ratings

Pros

Very easy to use. Anyone with even limited tech knowledge would be able to begin using the service from day one.
Managing and tracking links is very straightforward and offers you exactly what you need.
Can use for free and even without signing in, so it's very open and available to everyone.
Has been around long enough for it to be a trusted brand, so people feel secure in clicking on it.

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Jessica Meadows Rich

Curriculum Coordinator

GCFLearnFree.orgE-Learning, 11-50 employees

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Tracking in detail the traffic on the website.
The new interface is easy to sort out and the dashboard has all the main points that you need.
There is not need for an extensive introduction or course, easy to set up and start with it.

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Joanna García

Social Media Manager

Edén AguaFood & Beverages, 1-10 employees

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Cons

One thing I've noticed is that if you're shortening a link that you didn't create - for example shortening the link to a news article that you then want to share on Twitter - the analytics will continue to pull data from the original URL as a whole, and not just your unique Bitlink. It would be nice to be able to pull out the traffic that just my efforts are pulling to the site, and not every single source of traffic that site is getting.

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Corinne Aherne

Social Media Coordinator

CarahsoftComputer Software, 201-500 employees

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Data sampling is somewhat inaccurate on the free tier - this is addressed in premium but is expensive.
Some of the UI is very similar in naming when presenting different data, some in-situ information might be useful.
Gotchas around filtering and data validation.
Implementation can be tricky, it can take a lot of time and expertise to get a full, accurate picture of your metrics.

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Verified User

Professional in Engineering

Retail Company, 201-500 employees

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Likelihood to Renew

Bitly 8.0

Based on 1 answer

Bitly helps us determine how many people are clicking on our links and where they are finding these links.

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Holland Pintarch

Marketplace Manager, Happiness Hero

Growth GeeksMarketing and Advertising, 1-10 employees

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Google Analytics 9.8

Based on 50 answers

We will continue to use Google Analytics for several reasons. It is free, which is a huge selling point. It houses all of our ecommerce stores' data, and though it can't account for refunds or fraud orders, gives us and our clients directional, real time information on individual and group store performance.

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John Laudisio

Associate Director of Marketing

MusictodayMarketing & Advertising, 51-200 employees

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Usability

Bitly 10.0

Based on 4 answers

Using Bitly to create shareable, trackable short links for social media couldn't be easier. Bitly is super easy to manage and offers easy monitoring of short links. Even with the few shortcomings or cumbersome features, Bitly is ranked number 1 for shortening links for our organization because of how simple it is to use.

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Stefanie Cash

Digital Marketing Manager

Caradonna AdventuresHospitality, 11-50 employees

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Google Analytics 8.5

Based on 7 answers

Google Analytics provides a wealth of data, down to minute levels. That is it's greatest detriment: find the right information when you need it can be a cumbersome task. You are able to create shortcuts, however, so it can mitigate some of this problem. Google is continually refining Analytics, so I do not doubt there will be improvements

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Victor Campos

Web Developer

PmD InteractiveInternet, 1-10 employees

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Reliability and Availability

Bitly 9.0

Based on 1 answer

I've witnessed very little availability issues with Bitly. This includes very rare occurrences of application errors and unplanned outages, of which I very much appreciate. When there are application errors or outages, Bitly does a great job of handling the issues in a timely manner and I am rarely out of the site for long at all. This is great, considering I was using Bitly for nearly every link that was posted to our social media accounts.

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Holland Pintarch

Marketplace Manager, Happiness Hero

Growth GeeksMarketing and Advertising, 1-10 employees

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Google Analytics 10.0

Based on 5 answers

There are rarely any outages or application errors. If there are errors, the vast majority of the time it is user error and not the fault of Google.

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John Laudisio

Associate Director of Marketing

MusictodayMarketing & Advertising, 51-200 employees

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Performance

Bitly 9.0

Based on 1 answer

I have used Bitly's service on a variety of computers, systems, and browsers. With this being said, I have not noticed much of a change at all between the browsers and computers, and Bitly's performance is top notch. Reports are also completed in a reasonable time frame, and I have had very little problem with lag time on loading different pages on the site. Pages tend to load quite quickly.

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Holland Pintarch

Marketplace Manager, Happiness Hero

Growth GeeksMarketing and Advertising, 1-10 employees

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Google Analytics 8.0

Based on 1 answer

When creating segments, sometimes Google Analytics will take a bit or more than likely slow down older computers a bit. That said, in general google analytics is extremely reliable and is there when you need it.

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John Laudisio

Associate Director of Marketing

MusictodayMarketing & Advertising, 51-200 employees

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Support Rating

Bitly 8.3

Based on 11 answers

For us, Bitly is a Godsend an an almost perfect solution. I have no complaints and would recommend them to almost anyone. I guess I would hold back from a 10/10 because short URLs can sometimes look spammy. For us, and what we need it for, it's just about perfect!

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Verified User

General Manager in Other

Music Company, 11-50 employees

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Google Analytics 6.6

Based on 83 answers

The Google reps respond very quickly. However, sometimes they can overly call you to set up an apportionment. I'm very proficient and sometimes when I talk to reps, they give beginner tutorials and insights that are a waste of time. I wish Google would understand my level of expertise and assign me to a rep (long-term) that doesn't have to walk me through the basics.

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Sarah Hoffman

Media Director

Studio FlightMarketing & Advertising, 11-50 employees

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In-Person Training

I did not receive any in-person training, as I felt that I didn't need this type of training in order to understand and learn Bitly. It was quite easy for me to explore Bitly and learn the features myself without needing a person to give me a demo or tutorial. Kudos to making a platform that is very straightforward.

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Holland Pintarch

Marketplace Manager, Happiness Hero

Growth GeeksMarketing and Advertising, 1-10 employees

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No answers on this topic

Online Training

Bitly 7.0

Based on 1 answer

I haven't experienced direct online training - However, several times while learning Bitly by myself I went to the main Bitly page to answer a few questions I had. This includes determining exactly what features I was receiving and then I would explore the website and find these features. Also, I went to the Enterprise tab when both deciding to purchase that upgrade, as well as after I purchased this upgrade. It was very helpful in learning exactly what came with that package and after the upgrade, I was able to look there and learn some of the aspects of the upgrade that I was missing

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Holland Pintarch

Marketplace Manager, Happiness Hero

Growth GeeksMarketing and Advertising, 1-10 employees

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Google Analytics 10.0

Based on 2 answers

love the product and training they provide for businesses of all sizes. The following list of links will help you get started with Google Analytics from setup to understanding what data is being presented by Google Analytics.

How to Use Google Analytics for Beginners – Mahalo’s how-to guide for beginners.
A beginner’s guide to Google Analytics – A free eBook walking you through Google Analytics from setup to understanding what data is being presented.
Getting to Know Your Google Analytics Dashboard – The title says it all! This is a brief post with one goal: to introduce you to the Google Analytics dashboard.
Google Analytics for Beginners: How to Make the Most of Your Traffic Reports– This guide doesn’t cover setup, but it does a great job of helping you to better understand the data being presented.
Google Analytics Video Tutorial 1: Setup – A video presentation that walks you through Google Analytics setup.
Google Analytics Video Tutorial 2: Essential Stats – A video presentation that introduces you to some of the most important data being presented in Google Analytics.

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Roy Morejon

President

Command PartnersOnline Media, 11-50 employees

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Implementation Rating

Bitly 8.0

Based on 1 answer

Very excited to use bitly for link tracing - I was very excited to begin using Bitly for this company, and I've had very favorable impressions of using Bitly in the past for a variety of different jobs. Knowing the amount clicks on each link is important for our overall strategy.

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Holland Pintarch

Marketplace Manager, Happiness Hero

Growth GeeksMarketing and Advertising, 1-10 employees

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Google Analytics 9.0

Based on 13 answers

I think my biggest take away from the Google Analytics implementation was that there needs to be a clear understanding of what you want to achieve and how you want to achieve it before you start. Originally the analytics were added to track visitors, but as we became more savvy with the product, we began adding more and more functionality, and defining guidelines as we went along. While not detrimental to our success, this lack of an overarching goal resulted in some minor setbacks in implementation and the collection of some messy data that is unusable.

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Joshua Van Horsen

Marketing Manager

Drury HotelsHospitality, 1001-5000 employees

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Alternatives Considered

I use Hootsuite for scheduling social media posts, but it also offers a link shortener, which serves the same purpose as Bitly but with additional features like scheduling posts and monitoring your brand. If you're looking for something a bit more complex than Bitly, I would recommend Hootsuite as a great alternative.

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Mark Anderson

Digital Marketing Specialist - Team Lead

Select BlindsRetail, 51-200 employees

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Google Analytics is really unique so it's hard to have competitors - especially when Google Analytics is free (unless you are part of a huge company so in the case you will need the Premium version). Other products like Semrush are good as third party tools and figure out the analytics of competitors

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Verified User

Director in Marketing

Marketing & Advertising Company, 201-500 employees

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Scalability

Bitly 9.0

Based on 1 answer

Bitly's scalability is great. When I began using it, I only used it once in a while to promote blog articles from our WordPress site on Twitter. This was due to Twitter's character limit and URL shortening was necessary. However, once I became more familiar with it and started seeing the benefits of many of Bitly's features, I began using it for nearly every link I posted across all of our social media accounts. This increased the workload I filtered through Bitly, and we also upgraded from free to a paid account. This growth was handled very well by Bitly and I was very pleased with its ability to scale so easily.

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Holland Pintarch

Marketplace Manager, Happiness Hero

Growth GeeksMarketing and Advertising, 1-10 employees

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Google Analytics 9.0

Based on 1 answer

Google Analytics runs 24 hours a day and rarely do we see any issues with going down or missing particular data

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John Laudisio

Associate Director of Marketing

MusictodayMarketing & Advertising, 51-200 employees

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Return on Investment

Made links more attractive for marketing purposes.
Value add to partner relationships be able to customize links.
We had a bunch of links that needed to be redirected that we sent out to our partners, and I have no idea why my account is telling me I do not have any redirects left. As I was left with no other option, I upgraded my account 2x to gain access to more redirects.

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Verified User

C-Level Executive in Corporate

Retail Company, 1-10 employees

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It has helped us gain understanding of what is going on on our website.
It has helped us determine areas that need fixing (i.e. pages with extremely high bounce rates may need to be redone).
It has helped us understand our biggest avenues for bringing traffic to the website and business in general.
It has helped guide our website redesign.

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Heide Rembold

Director of Marketing & Analytics

SocialVenturesNon-profit Organization Management, 1-10 employees

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Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

Bitly Editions & Modules

Edition

Free	Free
Basic	$35²
Customized	Contact sales team

per month

Additional Pricing Details

—

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

Yes

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

Google Analytics Editions & Modules

Edition

Google Analytics	Free
Google Analytics 360	$150,000²

per year

Additional Pricing Details

—

Bitly

Google Analytics

Likelihood to Recommend

Bitly

Google Analytics

Pros

Bitly

Google Analytics

Cons

Bitly

Google Analytics

Likelihood to Renew

Bitly

Google Analytics

Usability

Bitly

Google Analytics

Reliability and Availability

Bitly

Google Analytics

Performance

Bitly

Google Analytics

Support Rating

Bitly

Google Analytics

In-Person Training

Bitly

Google Analytics

Online Training

Bitly

Google Analytics

Implementation Rating

Bitly

Google Analytics

Alternatives Considered

Bitly

Google Analytics

Scalability

Bitly

Google Analytics

Return on Investment

Bitly

Google Analytics

Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

Free/Freemium Version

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Entry-level set up fee?

Bitly Editions & Modules

Edition

Additional Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

Free/Freemium Version

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Entry-level set up fee?

Google Analytics Editions & Modules

Edition

Additional Pricing Details

Add comparison