Best way to log stats? Why?

How do you log website statistics? If you, for example, use Google Analytics, do you use a different account for each site you have? Or do you keep all your sites within one account? I've always been using a different account for every site, whenever I would use Google Analytics, but this is quite time consuming. Are there any better alternatives? I've heard that many people use StatCounter? What would you recommend and why? I need to find something that I would be able to stick to, preferably away from Google.#

PS. I've taken a look at StatCounter and it looks quite promising. To anyone that uses it, are you allowed to have multiple accounts? As long as they are paid and you don't have more than one free one?

Have you looked at the stats your host offers?

Cpanel offers several stats packages built in, I prefer AW stats but try them & see what you like.

If you don't want to share your stats with third party, you can use logs from your server. There are several tools to process them and generate stat pages.

I'm not too much of a fan of AW Stats. Seems rather basic, but then again I haven't really looked in to it. I don't mind sharing my stats with third party sites, it's Google that I don't want to share my data too much with.

piwik and getclicky

I never use google analytics for any of my sites. I have noticed alot of the sites that use them seem to be harder to rank. Could be BS but thats how I feel.