I’ve been using Mint, a self-hosted and extensible web analytics program for a few months now. Whilst Mint has been around for a few years and has slowly been building a strong reputation, I actually only came across it earlier this year when I was looking for an additional stats tool to run alongside Google Analytics.
I have come to use Mint extensively for monitoring the traffic on this site, so here is an honest and unpaid review of the product.
Psychologically well-priced
Mint is slightly unusual in the web analytics market in that it is a self-hosted application. Personally I quite like the idea of monitoring my site from my own server, and I found the installation a breeze. However, I’m also sure that this may put off some users or blog owners who aren’t so comfortable setting up a database and configuring Mint.
The other fundamental consideration is Mint’s price. At $30, Mint is psychologically well-priced - most people will be happy parting with that sort of cash to give something a try. However, the license only covers one site so if you want to monitor multiple sites you need to buy a license for each. Clearly the more sites you have, the less attractive Mint becomes.
Extensible functionality
Mint’s interface is very well designed - everything is available through one modular Netvibes-like screen. Each module is referred to as a ‘Pepper’, and out of the box Mint’s default Peppers provide basic analytics functionality: visits, referrers, page views and searches.
Mint sells itself as an extensible application, and sure enough if you visit the quirky-named ‘Peppermill‘, there is a diverse range of Peppers produced both by Mint developer Shaun Inman and third-party contributors and developers.
Some of the more useful Peppers include ‘Real Estate’ which tracks the size of users’ browser windows, the ‘Crushes’ Pepper which sets a cookie on users’ computers so I can see who is coming back for more time and again, and the iPhone Pepper which simply allows me to view my stats on my phone, where ever I am.
Easily-digestible statistics
I now use Mint every day, many times a day. Google Analytics on the other hand barely gets a look in these days. Why is this? Fundamentally it is down to the way the application is designed and the information is presented.
I can dip into Mint and in one glance ascertain all I need to. What might take me several clicks and page views to accomplish in Google Analytics, I can achieve in one quick view with Mint. That is what Mint excels at - excellent presentation of information.
Furthermore, Mint allows me to focus at the micro-level - something that just can’t be done with Google Analytics. It’s possible to look at one individual user, see how they found you, what they searched for and what pages they spent time on.
So what if you want to delve deeper and compare general trends and statistics over a longer period of time? Well, for me this is where Mint humbly steps aside and Google Analytics re-enters the frame. This just isn’t what Mint was designed for - Mint is for instant, accessible snap shots that you can quite literally carry in your pocket.
Conclusions
As I’ve said twice now, I’ve come to use Mint very regularly and I love it. I would recommend it in an instant to anyone looking for an analytics program to partner Google Analytics. The ease at which I can dip in and extract the data that I need to is fantastically refreshing.
It should be stressed that Mint doesn’t and shouldn’t replace Google Analytics or any other more detailed analytics program you may use. But Mint is great at what it does, which is provide an easily-digestible overview of how your website is performing at any given time.
I think the price of $30 is entirely reasonable. However, I haven’t been tempted to install it for any of my other sites yet and this is perhaps Mint’s biggest shortcoming - those looking for a solution to analyse the traffic across many sites using a consistent platform may well look at alternative solutions. But if you have one or two sites or a blog, then Mint is an great piece of software that allows you to really feel the pulse of your site without being overwhelmed with too much information.
6 fantastic comments
Cool post Aaron. What kind of difference (if any) do you see in your site stats when you compare Google Analytics and Mint? Obviously, G Analytics are java script based, and you are saying Mint is server side? I imagine there are discrepancies between the two.
Thanks for the post
Nice review, Aaron. I’ve previously wondered about Mint, and have so far been making do with Slimstat (a WP plugin).
Brian - I should have mentioned in the review that Mint uses a JavaScript include so is executed by the client. In fact with this site Mint’s numbers are very close to what GA reports. This is interesting but I’m unsure whether that is representative of Mint in general because traffic levels on this site are still relatively modest.
David - You should give Mint a try on one of your blogs. It’s closely related to Slimstat (Shortstat was Shaun Inman’s previous project) but a prettier, more refined option.
Aaron, thank you for the write up.
I’m with David on this one - I’ve also been using Slimstat for the blog portion of our site, and relying on Awstats for the rest of the site.
We are currently working with a client that runs a very successful sailing site, including forums (currently phpBB2 - moving to phpBB3 or possibly SMF soon), and Awstats and Webalizer, Google stats, etc just confuse him. Would I be correct in thinking that Mint could be exactly what we’re looking for?
If this is the case, how easy did you find it to set up?
Karl
p.s. I came across your post from David’s latest post re: ‘worthy subcontractors’.
Karl - Thanks for stopping by and commenting. You know, I honestly think Mint might be perfect for your client. Installing is relatively simple - you need to create a database and then put a line of JS in your clients’ site template. Installing all of the additional ‘peppers’ can be a bit fiddly but not difficult.
What’s more, you can create multiple logins to access Mint. I haven’t experimented with this, but I *think* you could create a login for your client and strip Mint down so it only shows the basics, and then for your own login have more detailed stats.
It’s certainly worth a try. 
Aaron, thanks for the feedback - appreciated.
The site gets about 30,000 unique visitors a month (well over 1.5m page views - both figures growing fast) due in large part to a very active community in the forums. David (who owns the site) is a sailor - he’s done well over 100 000 off shore miles, and has spent about a year of his life in a ‘real’ job as he puts it. He loves sailing and meeting people and all he really wants is the figures he can put in front of advertisers (of which they have quite a few). He doesn’t want to have to spend his time trying to figure out Webalizer (or anything else remotely technical), so I think by the sounds, it’ll be perfect too.
The installations will be our domain (ooh - bad pun) so fiddly is ok. We’ll be looking to do this 7 days from now (Saturday night here in New Zealand - the only quiet time on the forums) so once done, and David’s had a chance to give Mint a whirl, I’ll post back and let you know whether he liked the taste or not
What are your thoughts?
