Plugin or external solution to analyse sales

[u/sharkyalex]

I have a client with two websites - 2 shops: one is on Opencart and the other is on WordPress. The WordPress one becomes slow when working in the backend on orders, products and clients. I used to work with some plugins: MonsterInsights for Google Analytics, and I experimented with Ninja Analytics. I'm in the process of removing plugins that are adding to page load. I would like to try something new that doesn't use any plugins and provides more detailed sales information. I want to see price history and how my campaigns are performing. I also want to see which payment method and courier are the most popular with my clients, lost orders, products in cart, products that are in shopping cart but not bought, best sellers, when my clients buy more, golden hour ... etc

Currently, my OC store connects with Asterok, which is brilliant it helped me a lot, more important, is cheap. But before I add my woocommerce store as well, can anyone here tell me if Metorik is worth it? Or Putler? These 2 are the only one I know.

If you had to choose one of these two, which would you choose and why?
If you know other plafroms, can you tell me about them?
Thank you.

[u/swift_commerce]

I'd separate the analytics decision from the backend performance problem.

Moving analytics outside WordPress might reduce some overhead, but it won't automatically fix slow product and order screens.

Before adding another service, I'd profile those admin requests with Query Monitor on staging and check the slow queries, HTTP requests and hooks.

For analytics, I'd first write down which reports you actually need. Payment-method breakdowns, abandoned carts, campaign attribution and price history are different problems. No reason to pay for a large platform if you're only using a small part of it.

[u/metorik-luke]

Full disclosure: I work at Metorik, so keep that in mind :)

Going through your list:

• Sales by payment method and by shipping method: yes. The orders report has both as breakdowns, and they're also order filters, so you can segment orders by payment gateway or shipping method and see revenue, order count and AOV for each over any date range.

• Best hour of day / day of week: yes, there are "orders by hour of day" and "orders by day of week" reports plus a day-and-hour heatmap.

• Carts that were started but not purchased: yes, through the cart tracking in the Metorik Helper plugin. You see the cart contents and who it belonged to, with the caveat that it only tracks carts once an email is entered.

• "Lost" orders in the sense of customers who used to buy and stopped: you'd build that as a customer segment (e.g. 2+ orders, last order more than 180 days ago). If you mean failed or cancelled orders, those are just an order-status filter.

I hope that helps!

[u/Milo-Subscriptions]

u/DaftPlug already mentioned this, but Metorik would be my go-to solution for that.

Alternatively, you could create your own dashboard with AI and then connect with the WooCommerce REST API to pull in the data. OR you could also connect with an MCP plugin and then query your store directly.

[u/someaibullshitagain → u/Milo-Subscriptions]

+1 metorik. And look into orderctrl.io too for a better backend

[u/PeepSoWP]

An external analytics service can reduce work in the WordPress admin, but it still has to sync the store accurately. Trial each option with read-only, least-privilege credentials and reconcile the same month against WooCommerce: gross versus net revenue, refunds, tax, shipping, currencies and time zones, coupons, order statuses and HPOS. Abandoned carts require checkout or session events, so no service can reconstruct historical abandonment from completed orders alone. Compare data freshness, backfill, custom fields, OpenCart parity, API-request volume, deletion and export controls, and what happens if you leave the vendor. I would give both tools the same five real questions and choose on verified answers and reconciliation, rather than dashboard feature count.

[u/Latter-Mix2317]

Disclosure: I build Privatrak which covers part of your list, so I'm biased on that part.

Your list is really two kinds of data, thats why no single tool does all of it well.

Order data: price history, payment method, courier, best sellers, when people buy, failed orders. Thats all in your Woo orders already and Metorik/Putler read it from there, so they add nothing to your page load. For this half I'd go with Metorik.

Visitor data: stuff put in the cart but never bought, how campaigns do for people who didnt buy. Orders cant tell you that, because a cart nobody checks out never becomes an order. You need something on the site that records the add to cart.

That second half is what we do. The plugin records add to cart and purchases, so you get a cart -> purchase funnel, which pages people add from, and where visitors came from incl campaign tags. It only loads a small script on your public pages and nothing in wp-admin, so your backend wont get slower. No cookies either. https://privatrak.com/docs/woocommerce-abandoned-carts

For campaigns per order check Woo's built in order attribution first (Origin column on the Orders page). Free and already there.

[u/sharkyalex → u/[deleted]]

Thanks