free version is really this weak?

> all I get to see is four data points? No popular pages? No trend line.

First and foremost, sounds like you’re looking at the overview statistics on the admin dashboard widget. The full reporting is found in Insights -> Reports. The overview widget is designed to be something a person can look at and see quick numbers off of. It’s not designed to be a substitute for our full reporting area.

> you’re going to throttle it back like this to make a buck

Google’s website might be free, but they impose limitations and cost through their API. It’s impossible to fully replicate their website since some of their items are not even possible to be pulled through their API.

MonsterInsights’s functionality is split into three parts: tracking, integrations and reports. For each, we provide functionality that is not possible to get in the default GA setup. Nor are we intended to replace the GA dashboard. We make it better for our target end-users by simplifying and expanding both the integration of GA tracking and also putting the most important GA stats into their admin so they can make informed decisions in the place they check most often.

On the tracking side, for example, Google Analytics does not track things like outbound links, mailto links, tel links, email links, affiliate links, internal as outbound links, single page themes, (I could go on and on). We provide that. Without MonsterInsights, you would not be able to see these in the Google Analytics UI. They’re not standard to GA and have to be implemented by hand. The same goes in our Pro version for things like eCommerce tracking, Forms tracking, etc…

Not a problem!

It’s actually been good since we can use it to make it more clear to users the full report is in our area, so we’re adding a button called “View entire overview report” to our next version to make it more clear based on your feedback

-Chris