10 Ways Matomo is Better Than Google Analytics

Screen shot of Matomo interface

In recent years more and more people are less and less fond of Google. Not only does Google monopolize 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 main culprits.

Privacy advocates and website owners who don’t want to stalk their users and give away private data of their visitors to one of the most infamous big data corporations look for alternatives.


Why Matomo Beats Google Analytics Actually

You don’t need to look any further than Matomo for Google Analytics alternatives. 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. Once you use 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. Respects privacy. Google Analytics does send your data to the US where at least 40 different secret government agencies can access it.
  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. Simple goal tracking. The way Matomo organizes goal tracking is easy to grasp and implement compared to GA.
  6. Customizable. While GA is also customizable 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. Tracks Google Image Search. While GA didn’t properly track Google Image search traffic for years Matomo does with ease.​
  9. Full referrers. You have to perform bizarre workarounds to see the actual links people use to visit your site in GA. Once you have them you have to click several times just to see them. Matomo simply shows them after one click.
  10. Accurate. While Google Analytics data often relies on estimates for large sites Matomo counts visitors one by one as they visit.

Did I overlook something? I bet Matomo has even more advantages. I’ve been using Matomo for a while by now but may have overlooked some advantages. Add them in the comments.

I also have to ​admit that Google Analytics has some advantages over Matomo. I’d miss advanced segments for instance.

I won’t quit 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 they also offered hosted alternatives by now. There are more GA alternatives like

and other entry level paid web analytics tools have to look out.​ I used all of them but I basically stopped after I started using Matomo. Some of the 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.