In recent years more and more people are less and less fond of Google.
Google monopolizes many industries!
It also mostly makes money by tracking people and selling their private data to advertisers.
One of the markets Google dominates is that of website analytics.
Google Analytics – a software called Urchin originally – is one of the market-dominating products.
Are you of those privacy advocates and website owners who don’t want to stalk their users?
Don’t want to give away private data of your visitors to one of the most infamous big data corporations?
Then Matomo is one of the most obvious Google Analytics alternatives.
Why Matomo beats Google Analytics
Yes, you don’t need to look any further than Matomo for Google Analytics alternatives. (I mention a few more below though.)
Never heard of it? It’s about time! It’s not only about privacy!
Matomo (formerly Piwik) is better than Google Analytics in many ways, at least 10 of them. It’s
1. Free.
It’s really free, you don’t pay with your data.
Unlike with Google Analytics.
You only pay for additional services like hosting.
2. Open Source.
Do I need to say more?
No big Google like corporation behind it or small business that could go bankrupt out of the blue.
3. Privacy-focused.
Google Analytics does send your data to the US where government agencies can access it.
Matomo hosts your data on your server, the same your site is on.
You can also use Matomo cookie-free and without consent overlays blocking your site!
4. Easy to use.
Once installed Matomo is a breeze.
GA is way too complex by now. You have to click several times to find some crucial reports.
5. Tracking goals easily.
The way Matomo organizes goal tracking is easy to grasp and implement compared to GA.
6. Highly Customizable.
Yes, GA is also customizable.
Yet you can make your Matomo dashboard show anything and everything you want.
7. Self hosted.
You control your data and they stay in the same country you’re in and nobody else can view them, not even Google employees.
8. Tracking Google Image Search.
While GA didn’t properly track Google Image search traffic for years Matomo does with ease.
9. German.
Unlike Google Analytics with Matomo there is a German company behind it.
The EU and German privacy and other always ensure more accountability and protection of user’s rights.
And as mentioned above, Donald Trump can’t look into your data.
10. Accurate.
While Google Analytics data often relies on estimates for large sites (sampling) Matomo counts visitors one by one as they visit.
Is there more to it?
Did I overlook something? I bet Matomo has even more advantages.
I’ve been using Matomo only for a while and may have overlooked some advantages. Want to add them? Write me by mail!
I also have to admit that Google Analytics has some advantages over Matomo. I’d miss advanced segments for instance.
I won’t quit using GA because clients use it. For my websites I already got rid of it. You’re not convinced yet?
You may switch in the future. Matomo gets developed fast. They have a large and active developer community.
More Google Analytics alternatives I tested
In case you’re not able or allowed to run a self-hosted tool like Matomo there are also many hosted alternatives.
There are more GA alternatives. I g´have tested a few of them over the years. Consider:
and other entry level paid web analytics tools.
I used all of them but I basically stopped after I started using Matomo.
Some of the above analytics tools also track you like Google Analytics.
Do you like for a very simple privacy focused Web statistics tool you can just plug in int WordPress?
Then Koko is your friend. I installed it on top of Matomo on the blog here and use both f them now.