Snowplow Outperforms GA4 in GigaOm Comparative Evaluation

In the rapidly evolving e-commerce landscape, web analytics is crucial for understanding customer behavior and shaping business strategies. A report by GigaOm in August 2023 evaluated Snowplow and Google Analytics 4 (GA4), focusing on usability, performance, data scanned, and total cost of ownership (TCO). The findings indicated that Snowplow significantly outperformed GA4, being faster, more cost-effective, and user-friendly. Specifically, Snowplow queries were faster, scanned less data, and were less costly over three years. This evaluation suggests that Snowplow is a viable alternative to GA4, particularly for e-commerce companies using cloud data warehouses. The study highlighted Snowplow's e-commerce accelerator and dbt models, which aid in creating BI and AI-ready first-party behavioral data, speeding up insights for marketers, and reducing development cycles for data teams. Additionally, Snowplow announced a Snowflake-integrated application offering pre-built analytics components, enhancing ease of use and data ownership without compliance issues.