Piwik / Matomo

Matomo (known until 2018 as Piwik) is an open-source web analytics platform for measuring site traffic and user behavior with an emphasis on privacy and data ownership. It is the most popular alternative to Google Analytics.

How Matomo works

Matomo comes in two flavors: self-hosted and the vendor's cloud. In the self-hosted edition the application, written in PHP, runs on your own server and stores data in a MySQL or MariaDB database. That is the crucial difference from cloud tools: raw visitor data stays entirely inside the site owner's own infrastructure.

Data collection works much like other analytics systems — you embed a JavaScript snippet on the site that records page views, sessions, traffic sources and conversions. Matomo also offers heatmaps, session recordings, funnels and behavior analysis, while supporting operation without cookies or with them minimized.

Practical application

Matomo appeals to organizations that value full control of their data and GDPR compliance — public institutions, healthcare providers, firms in regulated sectors and site owners who prize user privacy. Options like IP anonymization and cookieless tracking make it easier to meet legal requirements.

The self-hosted edition needs a server with PHP, a database and enough resource headroom — under heavy traffic the analytics database grows quickly, so a capable VPS or dedicated server is a good fit. Running your own Matomo instance grants independence but comes with responsibility for updates and backups.

For teams that would rather not administer a server themselves, the vendor offers a cloud edition — easier to deploy, though it gives up some of the advantages of full data control. Choosing between self-hosting and the cloud is usually a trade-off between independence and maintenance cost on one side, and convenience and speed of setup on the other.