AWStats is a powerful, open-source web analytics tool. It processes your website's server log files to generate detailed, visual reports about your visitors. Unlike many modern analytics platforms that rely on JavaScript, AWStats analyzes the raw logs created by your web server (like Apache or Nginx), making it a reliable source of data that tracks all visits, including those with scripts disabled.

This tool helps you understand your audience and website performance by providing key insights such as:

• Visitor Information: Number of unique visitors, returning visits, and countries of origin.
• Popular Content: Which pages, files, and entry/exit pages are most viewed.
• Technical Data: Browsers, operating systems, screen resolutions, and robots/spiders that crawled your site.
• Referral Sources: How visitors found you—via search engines, direct links, or other websites.

For hosting users, AWStats is often available directly from your control panel (e.g., cPanel). It runs periodically to update its statistics. The main advantages are its accuracy (log-based tracking) and privacy-friendliness, as it doesn't require cookies or user consent. While its interface may seem technical compared to tools like Google Analytics, it provides a fundamental, server-side view of your traffic that is crucial for any website owner looking to make informed decisions.