In short, Matomo (formerly Piwik) is an open source analytics tool that has been on the market since 2007. It comes in two different versions: cloud-based or hosted on your own servers (on-premise).
Why choose Matomo?
- Significantly improved data foundation (up to 99% better) than Google Analytics
- Cookieless tracking + annoying cookie pop-up banners can be omitted if you don't use other third-party tools that use cookies for tracking. Read more here
- No data sampling = accurate data
- 100% anonymized - Does not use fingerprint. Read more about it and here (for "tech geeks")
- 100% data ownership Read more about it
- 100% GDPR compliant - Read more about it
- Full flexibility - Own Tag Manager very similar to Google Tag Manager Read more about it
- WordPress plugin for easy setup in WordPress Read more about it
- It is possible to import historical data from Google Analytics (not moonlight in GA4)
Challenges of Matomo:
- Requires customization for interaction with Google ad platforms. Although Matomo offers many great features, some workarounds are needed to make it work with Google's solutions, especially Google Ads audiences, targeting and remarketing.
- No Google GTM setup is reusable and must be set up from scratch in Matomo GTM.
- Complex Ecommerce sites require some setup via Matomo Tag Manager
- UTM codes need to be adapted to optimally support the Matomo data structure. Read more about it
- Datastudio integration is a bit limited and works through paid third-party connectors. Read more about it
- There are relatively few user-friendly integration options for reporting tools such as PowerBI, Tableau, Databox, Klipfolio, Google sheets, etc. It can be done through data integration via API, but is quite complex.
How much does Matomo cost?
The cloud version costs as little as 145,- per month. The price varies depending on the amount of traffic. The on premise version is free, but does not include all modules. These can be purchased. See prices and specifications here: Matomo prices
Matomo vs. other tools
Matomo vs. Google Analytics
Matomo analytics is a good alternative or complement Google Analytics. Here is an overview of differences between the two.
Matomo vs. PIWIK Pro
Matomo (formerly Piwik) is the backbone of Piwik Pro, but are two completely separate entities. Piwik Pro is a clone of Matomo and is based on the Matomo base code. The Piwik trademark is owned by the owner of Piwik Pro and for this reason, Piwik had to change its name to Matomo. Read more about it
Matomo vs. Plausible Analytics
Plausible is a newer player in the market, launched in 2019. With an ultra-light tracking script and simplified analytics, Plausible is another popular privacy-centric web analytics solution. Read more about it
Matomo vs. Serverside tracking with Google Analytics
Google is working to make GA 100% legal through EU data agreements. Therefore, Google Analytics (GA) is not ruled out. In the short term, however, steps must be taken to make GA legal, and this is done by setting up Server side tracking. The downside of GA is that the data quality is still significantly worse than Matomo. This is because GA uses sampled data and is not cookieless. This means that on average 30% data is lost due to visitors choosing not to accept cookies.
Our recommendation
We recommend that you get set Matomo as a complementary tracking/analytics tool to ensure optimal data and performance insights.
