Compete is well respected and highly thought of by many professional digital marketers that I know but, if it wasn’t for that knowledge I wouldn’t give it a second look – and that’s a shame.

Anyone who knows me knows that I have an instant aversion to sites that do not publish their pricing. Compete do not, you have to contact them. My contacts tell me that the entry level “Pro” plan is $499 monthly and in the absence of any other information on their website, I have to take that as being correct.

Leaving money to one side for the moment, although if the service really does start at $499 then we are going to have to come back to it later, Compete does seem to offer a versatile and full featured alternative to Google’s Analytics but that, of course, is free of charge at the entry level – which is fine for most small to medium sized businesses.

The problem I have with Compete, and their website, is that they treat their product as if it were a secret. There’s precious little to see there and you certainly couldn’t make a buying decision based on what is on there so if you really were serious you’d have to fill in the form and have a chat with them.

As I said earlier, that’s a shame because I know that Compete is a comprehensive and in-depth analytics and reporting system that goes well beyond anything you’ll get for free from Google or anywhere else for that matter. They maintain their own historical web traffic database and are therefore able to offer information not only about your own site but those of your competitors too.

I will try to get access to Compete for a while so that I can undertake a proper in-depth review. At the moment I can neither recommend it or advise against it. I can just tell you that it is there and I know people who love and adore it so it should probably be on your shortlist if you are looking for serious industrial strength analytics.