Google Analytics (GA) has two tiers:
- Standard (Freemium), free of charge
- 360 Suite (Premium), flat annual fee $150,000
Both have limitations, which I'd categorize under Data Quality and Technology:
-
Data Quality
-
Data Sampling
GA uses sampling in generating many of its reports. This sacrifies accuracy in favor of query performance.
-
Low Data Granularity
GA stores aggregated data, rather than atomic data at transaction level. This prevents from identifying individual user actions for the purpose of targeting marketing efforts specifically to that individual.
-
No Raw Data
In the standard tier, GA does not provide raw data, i.e. access logs. This limits the data scientists to perform custom analysis beyond what GA reports provide.
-
Data Privacy
Google collects all your traffic data and detailed visitor information through GA. However, it does not provide you with all the details, due to PII regulations. For example, in GA, organic keyword referrals are not provided.
-
Technical
-
Client-Dependent
GA relies on visitor's browser to transmit the collected data. If JavaScript or Cookies are disabled, and Web Beacon is not loaded, or an Ad Blocker is enabled, visitor data is lost.
-
Web performance
GA slow downs the speed of page load, because of the extra code that client needs to download.