Chartbeat FAQs
Learn about chartbeat
How does chartbeat work?
After you install chartbeat on your site, your users will begin pinging chartbeat every 15 seconds. The ping acts as their heartbeat, and tells us who is on a page and what they are up to (Are they reading your content, or do they just have it open in a tab?). See this blog post to learn more.
Will it slow down my site?
Absolutely not. The chartbeat ping happens silently and in the
background (asynchronously). This means that the code that waits for
your content to load before doing anything and is extremely
lightweight even after that. It has no impact on your page load time
or the browsing experience of your visitors. Learn
more here.
How many websites can I install chartbeat on?
Chartbeat's cheapest plan at $9.95/month enables you to install chartbeat on five websites. You can purchase additional domains as described on our plans and pricing page. If you already have an account, change your settings on your plans page.
Do you cap the number of page views allowed? Is my site too big for chartbeat?
Chartbeat is used on some of the largest sites on the web and we have tested the system up to hundreds of thousands of simultaneous users. However, our $9.95 plan caps the amount of traffic it will show to 1,000 concurrent users. If your site has more than 1,000 users online at a single point in time, the dashboard will only reflect 1,000.
If you are hitting the 1,000 limit and want to see all your traffic, you can purchase additional domains as described on our plans and pricing page. If you already have an account, change your settings on your plans page. Then e-email us and we'll set up your new limits.
How much does chartbeat cost?
Chartbeat is completely free to try for 30 days. If you cancel within 30 days of signing up, you will not be charged. After that, chartbeat costs from $9.95/month, depending on the plan you chose, and can be cancelled at any time in two clicks.
How do I cancel?
Cancelling is simple and easy. Just log in and go to http://chartbeat.com/cancel or click on the Cancel link at the bottom of your dashboard.
What changes do I have to make to my site?
We give you a few lines of code to copy and paste into your site, and your dashboard becomes available right away. Plugins and instructions are also available for some common platforms like Typepad, Wordpress and Drupal.
Do you support HTTPS sites?
Yes, HTTPS is supported. The code from http://chartbeat.com/code will automatically adapt to being on an SSL website.
Where can I get answers to my other questions?
You can email us at We love to hear from you, and we strive to respond in less than 1 business day.
Setting up chartbeat
How can I install chartbeat on my content management system or hosting provider?
Chartbeat has two code snippets that need to be pasted in. You can find them at http://chartbeat.com/code or by clicking on the 'Add New Site' Button on your Dashboard.
The first snippet should be pasted in just before the </head> tag on each page that you are planning to track.
The second, larger code snippet should be copy and pasted into the bottom of your content, immediately before the </body> tag of each page you are planning to track. If you use a common include or template, you can enter it there.
If you use Wordpress, you can install our plugin by searching for it on the Plugins tab of your Settings. We're sorry, but you cannot yet add chartbeat to wordpress.com blogs.
Why do you say you have not received any pings from my site?
There are a few common reasons for this:
- Are you trying to put the code on a subdomain? If you are using chartbeat on a subdomain, you need to make sure you type in the full subdomain instead of just the domain when you generate the code. For example, type in blog.nytimes.com instead of nytimes.com.
- Did you press the Activate button on http://chartbeat.com/code after pasting in the code on your site? This is the third step in making sure your site shows up in the Dashboard.
- Is the code we gave you actually in your site? Double-check by using "View source" in your browser.
- Have you made an error while copying and pasting? Please make sure that nothing has gotten split between two lines and that nothing extra has been introduced. (This can sometimes happen if you email the code to somebody)
- Is there an unrelated Javascript error? If there is an error in your browser's Javascript console, this may be preventing our very-conservative loading process from starting. Try to fix the error or contact us for alternative loading code.
- Make sure you have visited your site since correcting the code.
If you're still having issues, send us email.
Why does my dashboard say awaiting data?
The dashboard may take a minute or two to collect needed statistics before it first works, after which you may need to reload. However, the most common cause of this problem is that there is nobody on your site. Remember that the dashboard only shows who is on your site right now.
Understanding your data
Hey! Why don't these numbers match my Google Analytics numbers?
Please see this blog post to learn more.
What exactly is an active visit?
Active visits are every page open by every visitor to your site right now. This means that one user who has two pages open in windows or tabs will count twice. A visit ends when we have not heard from a user in 45 seconds or so, which is why the count may take a while to decline.
What exactly is a new visit?
A new visit is the first visit from a user who has not been to your site in the past 30 days. This is determined by using a (first-party) cookie set by chartbeat. If the user then goes on to another page on your site, they become a returning visitor.
What do server load time and user load time mean?
Server load time is the time it takes to load the HTML of your front page, as measured by our own servers in one location in the East Coast.
User load time is the mean average time it takes to load all your pages, weighted for traffic, as reported back by users, and including images and other resources. It does not include the initial latency of your server (before your user receives the first bytes). This will help you to tell if there is a widget or piece of content you have embedded that is slowing down your site.
How are reading and writing measured?
Chartbeat is able to measure not just when someone clicks on and off your page but also what they are doing on that page.
'Reading' means that the user is actively engaging with your content and this is calculated by using a combination of metrics including scrolling and mouse movement.
'Writing' takes those visitors that fall into the 'reading' category of those actively engaged with the content of your site and measures whether they are using their keyboard (for example to write a comment or search for something).
'Idle' visitors comprise the remainder of your visitors, they might have opened your page in a tab but be working on something else right now.
What do these sources mean?
The sources widget only shows information about visits that did not start on another page on your site, i.e. visits that did not start with an internal link.
For those visits, we list the top domains and searches that drove visits. (For very large sites, we only consider the top referring URLs.)
Direct traffic comes from a variety places, but it's hard for an analytics service to know exactly where. This could be users clicking on links from email, chat, and Tweets, using bookmarks, or typing directly into their browser's address bar.
Other common questions
How can I share chartbeat with my co-workers?
The easiest way to share chartbeat is by using the semi-private URL that you can find above each site's real-time analytics dashboard or in your Settings under Share Sites. This link can be revoked at any time by simply deleting and regenerating your API key in the Settings.
Can I send alerts to multiple or different email addresses?
At the moment, you have two options. You can have your current alerts go to an account in which you have set up forwarding rules so that you can send them to whomever you want. Or you can set up additional users.
How do I switch back to the old version of chartbeat?
The old version is no longer supported and new features will only be added to the new version, but you can switch back. If you're on the old version, it's easy to upgrade.
Can I keep chartbeat from removing the www. from my site's URLs?
Instead of http://chartbeat.com/dashboard/?url=X.com go to http://chartbeat.com/dashboard/?url=www.X.com and it should work. We cannot treat the data from www. and not-www as separate, though.
Can I block internal IPs?
This has come up a few times, but is surprisingly hard for us to do. It's on our list - watch our twitter account or blog for future support.
Why isn't the chartbeat Javascript GZipped?
Unfortunately, Amazon CloudFront does not support gzipping - this is a well-known issue. The problem is that some logic is required to decide if the client supports gzipped responses, and Amazon has decided not to implement that.
In the end, we decided that the speedy responses CloudFront provides by being close to your users around the world outweighs any win from gzip, especially given the very small size of the chartbeat JS. We may revisit this in the future, though.
Can we pay annually via invoice?
Sorry, we cannot do invoices at this time unless you have a very large account. However, you can get receipts.
How much does it matter where in the page I put the code?
You can put the portion for <head> lower in the page, but your page load time data will be less accurate. And you can put the portion for the bottom of the page higher - we just recommend putting it at the bottom to reduce clutter and to help your content load as fast as absolutely possible.
How can I share my chartbeat stats with my users?
There are several options! You can...
- ...use our site widgets to show specific bits of information
- ...use our API to write your own widget
- ...link to your dashboard from any of your pages
- ...use an iframe to embed the shareable dashboard in one of your pages
