I’ve been using Mint for a long time now (I would guess about a year), and I found out about it in the first place because it was recommended to me by a friend. My time using Mint has been very enjoyable as I used to use a website called StatCounter to monitor my website usage statistics, and the large jump to Mint was the best decision I ever made. You can hardly compare Mint with a free service like StatCounter, but Mint is just something different. I think everybody with a website in the whole wide world should be using it, and here’s why.

1. Mint effortlessly tracks your site’s visits.

Your unique and total hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and yearly site visits are recorded in a single pane, so when you visit Mint all of the statistics you want to see are in front of you. Referrers, search engine results, the most visited pages of your website - you name it, Mint records it. Your visitor data doesn’t necessarily stay as text, you can also view beautiful graphs displaying the data in an easy to read format. Even the installation is easy, and you can find videos documenting exactly what to do on the Have a Mint site.

2. It’s sexy.

Mint looks amazing. Period. It is the best looking statistics software out there by far, mainly because the creator is one of the best web designers that i’ve ever seen. Looking at the Mint homepage and ShaunInman.com you can see that Mint is the offspring of a designing genius. Every single thing in Mint looks good, and with the ability to make and install custom styles for the software, users and designers can take advantage of its look to suite them. The preferences panel is just as good looking as the front end - what other software can you say that about?

3. The Preferences Panel.

You can control your entire mint installation from a single page. You have control over your statistics, everything from what you want to call you Mint installation to what order the different panes go in - it’s highly configurable, and is easy to configure. The simplicity of everything Mint is evenly matched with functionality, meaning that you have the ultimate control over your statistics software without it being too complicated.

4. Salt doesn’t mix, but Pepper does.

There are lots of amazing “plugins” for Mint, called Pepper, that are downloadable from the Peppermill. Pepper enable third party developers to increase the functionality of Mint, without having to modify the way Mint works. Pepper can be installed and removed using the easy to use section of the Preferences page, meaning that even an inexperienced user can install and use them. It’s not just third party developers though, Shaun Inman has also created 15 official Pepper to offer even more functionality - for free.

5. It doesn’t cost the earth.

Mint only costs $30 per website. That’s only £15.13p (as of the exchange rates today blaa blaa) here in the UK, which is an amazing price for a product that is worth much more. You can even get it with PayPal.

6. It’s lightweight.

Mint uses JavaScript to track visits. That means that none of the spambots get through and recorded, and all you need to do is add 1 line of JavaScript to your header, or a line to your .htaccess file to have Mint track your entire website without you even having to modify any files. It’s lightweight to the user too - even with all of the pepper that I use installed the Mint JavaScript is only about 4KB.

7. Mint Adapts to you.

Mint works with virtually any resolution, and also has a single column mode for small resolutions such as for use with Mobile Safari. In large resolutions, instead of stretching panes or leaving spaces between them, the panes either resize or jump up or down to fill space, so you can always access Mint efficiently anywhere at any time with any browser. The funky animated scrolling also makes the experience of using Mint an extremely enjoyable one.

8. It’s small.

Mint is tiny - it only takes up about 3 Megabytes of my webspace up with all of the Styles and Pepper are installed. On its own, Mint is about 1 Megabyte. This means that you don’t have to worry about how much space it will take up, because it’s virtually non-existent space wise.

9. There is a massive support base.

There are FAQ’s and Forums packed with information regarding how to setup Mint and what to do if you have problems with it, you’re never on your own. Not that you will have any problems with Mint anyway.

10. It’s just simple.

Want to disable something? Just drag its pane around in the preferences page. Want to uninstall a Pepper? Just hit the uninstall button in the Preferences panel. Want to uninstall Mint? Just click the uninstall button in the Preferences panel. The whole thing is clearly laid out, and everything is simple to find. most actions just require a single click, and everything has an explanation. There’s even a “Check For Updates” button, which checks all of your Pepper and the Mint installation itself for updates, and shows what needs updating and where to get it.

I think this shows my solid appreciation for mint, and I hope after reading this article people may consider using it. (If they’re not already.)

*cough* have a Mint.