GhostStat vs Adobe Analytics: enterprise suite or quick answers?

Adobe Analytics is one of the most powerful analytics suites on the market, built for large organisations with analysts, implementation teams and a contract to match. GhostStat is built for founders, marketers, shops and agencies who want to know why visitors convert or leave, without cookies and without a sales call. This comparison of GhostStat vs Adobe Analytics shows where each one fits, and every statement about Adobe links to Adobe’s own pages.

Last checked: 11 October 2026. If something here is out of date, tell us.

Adobe Analytics vs GhostStat at a glance

What Adobe Analytics is built for

Adobe’s analysis tools guide lists Analysis Workspace, which it calls “a flexible browser tool that allows you to quickly build analyses and share insights”, plus executive dashboards, Activity Map, the Report Builder add-in for Excel and the Analytics APIs. It sits inside the wider Adobe Experience Cloud, next to Customer Journey Analytics.

For an enterprise that wants deep, custom analysis across many properties and has people to build and maintain it, that depth is the point. It is also why Adobe Analytics is usually introduced as a project rather than a script you paste in on a Friday afternoon.

Price: a quote, or a pricing page

Adobe’s pricing page does not publish prices. It describes packages “such as Select, Prime, and Ultimate” and asks you to get customised pricing, based on factors such as implementation scope, data volume, features, number of users, integrations, professional services and contract length.

GhostStat publishes every plan on the pricing page, starting with a Free plan for one site that includes every tool under a monthly view allowance. You can sign up with an email address and a password, without a card or a sales conversation, and upgrade when you need more sites, traffic or history.

Cookies and consent

Adobe documents its identifiers openly. The Experience Cloud cookie list describes the AMCV_ cookie as one that “is used to identify a unique visitor”, with a 13-month expiry, and the Analytics cookie list adds s_ecid, which stores the visitor ID for 13 months. Under EU and UK rules, analytics cookies like these usually need the visitor’s consent before they are set, so a consent banner and the visitors who decline it come with the setup.

GhostStat stores nothing on the visitor’s device: no cookies, no localStorage, no sessionStorage and no fingerprinting. The IP address is used in memory to look up an approximate location, then dropped; it is never written to disk. Visitors are counted with an identifier that is salted per site and rotates daily, and the data is stored in Dronten, the Netherlands. Our privacy policy lists exactly what is collected. Because nothing is stored on the device, GhostStat’s analytics need no consent banner, and every visitor is counted.

Answers without an analytics team

Adobe gives analysts a workspace to build almost any report. GhostStat starts from the questions a website owner asks and answers them out of the box. Every tool is available on every plan, Free included:

• Heatmaps for clicks, scrolling and movement, per device.
• Session recordings with every form input masked by default.
• Funnels, goals, form analytics and A/B tests.
• Ecommerce, cohorts and retention.
• Visitor intelligence: intent, friction and attention per visit.
• Public stats pages and counters to share your numbers.

On the Free plan each plugin has a monthly view allowance; paid plans remove it. The live numbers are on the pricing page.

Instead of building a report to find out why a checkout loses people, you open the funnel, click the step where people drop, and watch the sessions of the visitors who left. Visitor Intelligence scores intent, friction and attention for every visit, so the why is already there.

Questions to ask before you choose

• Who will run it? Adobe Analytics rewards a team that can implement and analyse. GhostStat is designed for people who have a business to run.
• Do you need cross-channel, enterprise-wide analysis? If you are already on Adobe Experience Cloud, staying in it has real advantages.
• Is a consent banner acceptable? Adobe’s visitor ID cookies usually mean consent in Europe; GhostStat stores nothing on the device.
• How fast do you need answers? A quote and an implementation project take time; GhostStat starts with one snippet.

Trying GhostStat next to Adobe Analytics

You do not have to switch in one go. Add the GhostStat snippet next to your Adobe Analytics code, leave both running for a few weeks and compare. Numbers will differ, because each tool counts visitors in its own way, so watch the trends rather than exact totals. Switch on one or two plugins, such as heatmaps on your most important page, to see what they add. If you decide to stay with Adobe Analytics, remove the GhostStat snippet and nothing else changes on your site. Setup help is here.

Adobe Analytics or GhostStat: how to choose

Choose Adobe Analytics if you are a large organisation with an analytics team, already invest in Adobe Experience Cloud, and need fully custom analysis across many channels.

Choose GhostStat if you want to know why visitors convert or leave, with heatmaps, recordings, funnels and visitor intelligence, published pricing and no cookies, without an implementation project. Start free.

Also compare GhostStat with Google Analytics 4, Mixpanel and Matomo.

Sources

• Adobe: Analytics tools guide
• Adobe: Adobe Analytics pricing
• Adobe: Experience Cloud cookies and Analytics cookies