The Ultimate MonsterInsights Review + Bonus 2023

MonsterInsights Review

In this MonsterInsights review we will look at four key factors to the buyer’s decision making process. This includes “Ease of use, Features, Pricing and Support”. So if you just want the quick overview of how MonsterInsights performs here it is for you.

This WordPress plugin ranks highly across all four key metrics with ease of use being the main reason to choose this plugin.

It does lose some points on pricing certain 3rd party plugins like MemberPress and LifterLMS integration are not available on the basic plan. We always feel that all supported 3rd party integrations should be made available to all paying customers no matter your pricing plan.

To further understand how we came to these numbers below read the full review.

In this MonsterInsights review we will be looking at how to use this plugin and why viewing your Google Analytics from within your WordPress dashboard is such a big thing.

We will also compare MonsterInsights to some of its direct competitors.

And if you are looking to get the best deal on MonsterInsights, we will let you know what to expect in the way of MonsterInsight coupon codes.

MonsterInsights at the time of writing is the leading WordPress plugin (2M installs) for viewing website visitor data.

Specifically the plugin connects to your Google Analytics account to pull in data to your dashboard to quickly see how well your website is doing and what parts of your website are working best.

The main hallmark of this plugin as is the case with many plugins developed by Syed Balkhi is its ease of use which is a breath of fresh air when compared to the cumbersome reporting system Google developed for their Analytics platform.

Most website owners give up on Google Analytics because most valuable data is buried too deep in the user interface which is exactly what MonsterInsights aims to solve with their plugin.

See an overview of their key features and selling points.

• Universal Tracking
• Google Analytics Dashboard
• Real-time Stats
• Enhanced Ecommerce Tracking
• Page Level Analytics
• Affiliate Link & Ads Tracking
• EU Compliance (GDPR Friendly)
• Custom Dimensions
• Performance & Optimize
• Seamless Tracking Integrations with Your Favorite 3rd party plugins

First thing to know is that MonsterInsights is available as both a paid and free plugin. The free plugin for most will be a great start and all you need but power users will quickly come to appreciate the Pro features as your website grows. Pro features include E-Commerce Tracking, Ads Tracking and Author tracking.

Ok let’s get started by installing and activating the plugin which you do by simply hovering your mouse over plugins in the left sidebar of WordPress and clicking “Add New”.

Then search for MonsterInsights click install and then click activate.

Congratulations you have now completed the hardest part of this whole process as the MonsterInsights setup process will take over the rest.

You will now see a new menu option called “Insights” and when you click it the setup wizard will begin.

MonsterInsights setup wizard

The first thing you will see is that they ask you to choose a category for your website – select the one most relevant to you and click “Save and continue” button.

Before performing the next step make sure that you are logged into the Google Account that you setup Google Analytics on before.

Now click “Connect MonsterInsights” button

A popup now appears to take you to your Google account and select the relevant account or login if not previously logged in.

Now you must allow MonsterInsights to access your Google Analytics account – not agreeing to this will prevent the plugin from working and end the setup wizard.

Click on the ‘Allow’ button to continue.

Now we have arrived at the final step where you select the Google Analytics Profile you want to track. Select your website (you will only have one choice if this is your first time).

Now click “Complete Authentication” button to continue.

What MonsterInsights does now is in the background it adds the Google Analytics code snippet to each and every page and post on your website and after this it will ask you to select the recommended settings.

Don’t rush part this step as it deserves your full attention.

The default settings are fine for most but if you use affiliate cloaking plugin then you will need to select the path you use to cloak affiliate links usually something like “recommends” or “go”. This will allow your affiliate links to be tracked in Google Analytics and will give you fantastic reports within MonsterInsights on the success of your affiliate marketing campaigns.

Click on the Save and Continue button to save your settings.

Now its time for a bit of an upsell if you are on the free version where it will show you the paid add-ons available if you have a Pro subscription.

You can skip and simply click on “Save and Continue”.

Now another bit of cross promotion where they recommend their popular forms plugin called WPForms. (Read my WPForms comparison review)

You can install if you like or just click “Skip this step”.

Congratulations you are all setup and now you must wait a little bit before data starts to show. But just wait till you see the reports this plugin pushes to you. A real breath of fresh air compared to using Google Analytics directly.

To find these reports click on Insights and you will be presented with this screen which you will notice has menu options up top to dig deeper into the data including the always entertaining “Real Time” report.

Make sure to check your stats at least weekly to begin noticing trends on your most popular content, traffic sources and visitor interactions.

Before we move onto pricing and Pros and cons we want to highlight a specific feature that will be of interest to all our readers namely Popular Posts.

Feature Highlight – Popular Posts Module

We want to highlight this new feature today as every website owners wants to boost page views, lower bounce rates and increase user engagement and with MonsterInsights (version 7.13) they have now made this possible with a few clicks.

This feature allows you to display your most popular posts anywhere on your website in three ways.

• Inline Popular Posts – Display posts within the text of your content
• Popular Posts Widget – Show up to 10 articles anywhere on your site, such as your sidebar or at the end of the post
• Popular Products – If you have an eCommerce store, then make your popular products visible and boost your revenue

For example here is what one of your popular posts would look like in an article.

Boost online shop revenue with Popular Products

This is exactly the same process as popular posts with the same three embed options but this time you can expect significant boosts in online revenue and not just higher page views.

The example below shows you what this looks like and clever ways of implementing the below could for example be on the checkout page so people add more to their cart.

Design Popular Posts the Way You Like

It’s important that these widgets match your brand, so MonsterInsights offers a wide range of options to change the look and feel.

You can choose from different themes, edit the colors and change the font size to name a few options available to you.

Plus, you can change all these settings from inside your WordPress editor as you are browsing your website for quick and easy edits to the design.

Select Which Popular Posts to Display

MonsterInsights has three options to select which popular posts to show.

There’s even an option to combine automated and curated popular posts. If you have custom dimensions set up on MonsterInsights, then it will automatically adds the top 5 posts from the past 30 days.

Now that you know how good MonsterInsights is, the natural question is price and how it stacks up to the alternative WordPress analytics plugins.

In terms of pricing you have three options.

There is one notable direct competitor to MonsterInsights called Analytify which also allows you to view reports from within WordPress.

This is an excellent plugin and we would make the argument to check it out first before committing to MonsterInsights as you may prefer the way they layout the data.

That being said it’s an almost identical value proposition to MonsterInsights but you may miss these specific features.

• Search console reports
• Headline Analzyer
• Affiliate link tracking

View more about Analytify.

Another option to consider which is not direct competition to MonsterInsights as you have to login to an external website is called Clicky.

Clicky has this uncanny way of highlighting data you may never have seen before through its user interface and specifically its spy feature.

Many website owners swear by Clicky and they have a free trial to see it for yourself. But again please note that it does not integrate reporting natively into WordPress. There is a third party plugin that kind of gives you this feature but the reports you get are nowhere near as nice or easy to use as either Analytify or MonsterInsights.

That being said we have used Clicky for years and love how it gives us a 2nd set of eyes for interesting data compared to Google Analytics.

Setup your free Clicky Analytics account

Do we recommend MonsterInsights?

You will be hard pressed to find a better way to view your Google Analytics data from within WordPress.

The ease of use and reports you get from this plugin will have you quickly seeing opportunities and possibilities for your website that should far outweigh the comaparatively small $99.50 to $199.50 per year price tag.

It does have some stiff competition from the likes of Analytify so would definitely give that a look too as you may prefer how they layout the data compared to MonsterInsights.

That being said you will be in good company with over 2 million other WordPress webmasters using this plugin vouching for its effectiveness.

Get started with MonsterInsights.

Occasionally vendors share coupons, these will appear below (or blank if none).