Replace Urchin Software

As long as you don’t change anything on your server, Urchin Software will run indefinitely. But as new web technology is released, Urchin doesn’t know about it. Below are Urchin versions & the year of the most recent update.
  • Urchin 7 – 2012
  • Urchin 6 – 2010
  • Urchin 5 – 2005
With each passing year, Urchin becomes more and more outdated. The outdated components include:

Mobile Devices

Urchin isn’t aware of mobile browsers, and classifies most Android traffic as “unknown.” This also means Urchin doesn’t differentiate between mobile and desktop devices,

Browsers

Urchin’s browser detection logic doesn’t detect current browsers like Edge, IE 11, Opera 15+, and more

Platforms

Urchin isn’t aware of the existence of Windows 10 or recent mobile OS platforms.

Ineffective IP+UA Tracking

The IP+UA tracking method only lets you specify a list of file extensions to exclude, e.g. jpeg, jpg, gif, etc. Any extensions that are not excluded are considered pageviews, and you end up with lots of false pageviews from font files and template pages or anything you don’t explicitly exclude.

GeoLocation

The country/region/city database hasn’t been updated in years. It’s highly inaccurate and the #1 result in the Geo Location reports is frequently “(not set).”

Referral Spam

Referral spam is an unwelcome reality on the Internet which makes web analytics reports almost unusable. Urchin doesn’t have a good way of deleting referral spam from the reports – first you have to notice the spam, then explicitly exclude the traffic with a Filter and reprocess your data.

Installation Errors

If you try to install Urchin on a recent operating system, the installer kicks out errors.

No Updates or Support

Google officially killed off Urchin in 2012 and “strongly encouraged” customers to move to Google Analytics. This means the issues listed above will exist indefinitely.

Licensing Issues

If you re-IP or rename your server or move the data directory, the license will invalidate itself. As of 2019 it’s almost impossible to unlock an invalidated Urchin license.
These are just the major issues – a multitude of smaller issues exist as well.

Alternative Solutions

There’s still a market for self-hosted / on-premises web analytics software. Like most software, there are open source and commercial options. If you’re looking to replace Urchin, we recommend looking at Angelfish Software. Angelfish lets you migrate your Urchin configuration info (Profiles, Log Sources, Filters, users, passwords, permissions, etc.) AND report data, so you don’t have to manually re-enter everything. The same data security you enjoy with Urchin is offered in Angelfish. Plus, Angelfish contains new reporting and admin features that don’t exist in Urchin.
Replace Urchin with Angelfish