Ask HN: I'm a beginner, who should I use for analytics on my site?

Google Analytics, as others have said is a no brainer - go for it. Invest in some time to learn it because it is _way_ more powerful than it first appears. Thins you should investigate are 'event tracking' 'conversions' and 'goals'

As a second analytics app I would use Woopra - it is more basic but it gives you real time analytics, and it's free for up to (i think) 10,000 visits a month.

Stick with google analytics and only 1 or two other analytics programs. You'll know when you need more, or something more specific.

The most important thing I heard(I can't remember where I read it) is to _build your own dashboard_ - that is, code a custom dashboard that shows you stats that are relevant to your site. For me it's a few lines of code that shows me the 20 most recently added users and comments. For you it might show you free and paid signups, and maybe a conversion ratio. This will evolve over time to be far more important than any analytics program - paid or free.

Google Analytics is fine for now, it's easy to use, reasonably accurate and free. a little further down the road you might want to consider other analytics services besides google, because the results can differ quite a lot. But for now, focus on GA.

Google analytics is by far the easiest to use, and its free. Dont over-complicate with choices on analytics right now, focus on your core product.

I have used Google Analytics in the past and just tried Mixpanel. It is great. Love the visualization. You can try out both pretty easily.

Quantcast is pretty good as well. I tend to use them and Google (both free)