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Compare Google Analytics Standard Vs Google Analytics 360

Do you know there are 2 versions of Google Analytics in the market for digital marketing purposes?
These two versions are – the standard version (free) and the Google Analytics 360 (paid).
Naturally, both the versions come with features that businesses can utilize and get along with their website analytics in an efficient manner. While the standard version is available to everyone without having to pay anything, the pricing of Google Analytics is tier-based

Pricing apart, it’s the features that differentiate the two and you can thus choose them based on the business requirements. The free version may be good for many use cases, but it’s the Google Analytics 360 that is better for companies looking for more data limits, advanced reporting, turnkey data integrations etc.

It’s also true that the Google Analytics 360 (or GA premium) is fit for only those companies that are ready to spend thousands of dollars on their analytics tool. So, it basically all boils down to how much you’re ready to pay to track and mine your data and get the best possible results with the website analytics.

Given below is an ideal comparison between the Google Analytics Standard and Google Analytics 360 –

Data Collection Freedom, Limits & Flexibility

Both the versions of Google Analytics are developed to help businesses gather and collect plenty of data not only from websites, mobile apps but also from custom data sources. Being a paid version, Google Analytics 360 will definitely provide more freedom and higher limits on the amount of data collection. They help business collect data in a tiered set of arrangements, according to the plan bandwidth.

GA 360 comes with more advanced features, including –

• There will be additional slots for custom data, custom dimensions and custom metrics
• It will deliver more flexibility in terms of organizing data through higher limits and views within an account
• GA360 also gives the option to combine data together from multiple properties

It’s quite clear the paid version is very helpful for big organizations as they can now get rid of multiple sets of GA code in order to roll up sites together.

Importing Data and Product Integrations

We know the standard version comes with a range of integration options with Google advertising platforms as the case with the Google Ads integration. In this two-way integration, it’s possible to import data from Ads to Analytics and vice versa. Even the free tool provides the option to bring in impression and cost data, and do the export of remarketing audiences through Ads and analytics data.
On the other hand, Google Analytics 360 not only offers these features for Ads but also for Display, Campaign Manager and Video 60. More so, the paid version tool also supports integrations with partners other than Google (in collaboration with Salesforce).

With GA360, there are amazing benefits of direct integrations and much more, including –

• It allows importing of data from custom data sources
• You can also get to look at historical data in reports
• You can also view the newly imported data despite changing or updating it after their original collection

Reporting Improvements

There is basically not much of different between the standard and GA360 versions in terms of the presence of the same table of contents of reports; however the paid version indeed offers some additional tools as well.

Businesses can this benefit from the enterprise versions in many ways, including –

• There is the Advanced Analysis tool, which will let simple drag-and-drop data exploration
• More flexibility will be there is spotting patterns in data
• The enterprise version comes with a data-driven attribution model in which an algorithm is used on the data to know the impact of different channels on the data
• GA360 clients can also expect superior custom funnel reporting options which ensures better flow reporting for actions across sessions and users
• It’s also possible to visualize and analyze multiple conversion paths through any site

Combating Sampling

Not only Google Analytics 360 gives the freedom to collect more data but it also helps manage large volumes of data and their smooth reporting. On the other hand, the standard version employs sampling to fetch results in cases where an ad-hoc report is requested and where the data exceeds a certain number of sessions.

• With GA360, you can always be confident that the limits of sampling will be higher, so there will be not waste in sampling when data is explored
• Plus, there is no website changes required when the need is to reduce sampling in the interface.
• The paid version has several tools to eliminate sampling and can generate reports that are completely un-sampled

APIs and Google BigQuery

Both the versions have a variety of APIs for reporting and configuration though the difference mainly lies in the way large amount of data are retrieved. Similarly, sampling will be reduced by implementing Custom Tables even when the need is to use the data in another platform after pulling it out of the Google Analytics.

For APIs and BigQuery, there are difference between the paid and standard versions of the Analytics including –

• With Google Analytics 360, it’s easy to pass data automatically from the Analytics into BigQuery, big data storage and querying tool.
• This automatic way to pass data means there will be ease to do more complex analysis of data
• It will also possible to report more granular data into any data warehouse

Apart from these, both the versions – standard and 360 have features that set them apart from each other and open the window of opportunities for business.

• While Google Analytics 360 gives the freedom to download unsampled reports via the API or user interface, no such option is available with the free version.
• Standard GA does not provide access to raw data but the GA360 does.
• Google Analytic standard is not greatly accurate and not capable of high amount of data processing however GA360 is reliable in both the aspects.

Clearly, the choices and features are there for the world to see and based on the budget and requirements you can choose either the paid or free version.