Ghost integrates very easily with all 3rd party analytics tools out there, which take just a few minutes to set up.
How to set up simple analytics for Ghost
Head over to your analytics provider of choice (eg. Google Analytics) and create a new property. They will provide you with a tracking code, which you can then paste into the "Foot" section of your Code Injection settings in Ghost Admin.
Save the settings, and you're all done! You'll now have full, detailed analytics for every page on your site.
Why doesn't Ghost have analytics built-in?
Because building analytics is an incredibly complicated thing to do, and even more complicated to do accurately, so we would really be fighting a losing battle. Google have tens of thousands of engineers, their product is completely free, and it's extremely good. We have 5 engineers, could not afford to build a secondary product this complex, and if we did - it would be demonstrably less-good than Google Analytics. So unfortunately the economics just don't make sense.
This is actually a good thing for users, though. When products have analytics built-in they're unanimously inaccurate and deceptive. You never know where the numbers are coming from or if you can trust them. Using a proper analytics service is a much better choice all round!