Maybe IDN (and some others, including myself when I first started using Mint) don’t clearly understand how Mint works, especially when the only “five weeks” figure is emphasized.
As Sam points out, the data most people want to keep, like total uniques/visits, is indeed kept. At least for a year — I’ve been using Mint since Feb 2007 and all the data for those figures are still there.
But why would you need to keep any other data? As Shaun suggests, if you absolutely need it, then you’re probably a bigger site and should invest in a serious stats package.
I use Google Analytics, which is free, in addition to Mint. Google seems to keep data forever. But Mint allows me to gauge GA’s accuracy and vice-versa. After tweaking the placement of their respective scripts, the current data numbers are remarkably similar. But I’m willing to pay the nominal fee for MInt because of the ease of use and pleasing eye candy. It’s also saved my butt numerous times — if I notice referrers dropping off or the hourly visits number dropping down beyond the norm, it almost always indicates a problem on my server, usually before Watchmouse or one of the other services sends me a warning email.
