Matomo started as an open-source alternative to Google Analytics, and in 2012 the core team joined a team of developers to work on a paid version (now known as Piwik Pro). The two teams separated again after a while, and the free version was rebranded to Matomo. Piwik Pro and Matomo are now separate companies, with different teams working on both.
Before founding Simple Analytics in 2018, we knew Matomo as a privacy-friendly Google Analytics alternative. However, we still felt the need to build something better or at least privacy-friendly and simple.
Simple Analytics is a privacy-friendly and simple Matomo alternative. In the next part, we’ll show the differences between the two tools.
Let's dive in!
- Privacy-friendly out-of-the-box
- Simple vs. Complex
- Lightweight vs. Heavyweight
- Data interoperability
- Cheap vs. Expensive
- Small independent vs. Large Enterprise
- Event Tracking
- Goals
- Final Thoughts
Privacy-friendly out-of-the-box
Matomo is privacy-friendly but not privacy-first. It tracks far more metrics than Simple Analytics; to do this, it collects personal data. At Simple Analytics, we never collect personally identifiable information (PII) in any way. Storing anything remotely related to PII is a big no-no (even anonymously).
By default, Matomo uses cookies and is not compliant with GDPR out of the box.
However, it is possible to make Matomo more privacy-friendly, but it takes quite some work on your end. Following steps that Matomo outlines on their website makes your website (semi)-compliant with privacy regulations. I'm using the word ‘semi’ since Matomo anonymizes data. This is better, but it’s still considered personal data.
In comparison, Simple Analytics is compliant out-of-box. We don’t make any concessions regarding the privacy of your visitors, and by default, you are fully compliant when using Simple Analytics. You also don’t need to display annoying cookie banners on your website.
Simple vs. Complex
We believe analytics should be simple (what’s in the name). We provide a one-page dashboard with important metrics. In addition, it is also possible to collect events and create goals and funnels in our ‘Goals’ dashboard.
To make things even easier, our AI assistant is here to help. Accessing the information you need is a simple as typing "show me my Google referrals for Belgium over the last two weeks".
Matomo is more complex. It has a Google Analytics feel with multiple charts, many features, and reports. Matomo displays hundreds of different website metrics, and while some might be relevant for a few most will confuse 95% of the users.
One of our customers who switched from Matomo told us his take:
You need to roll up your sleeves to install Matomo properly. They guide you through the process, but you will need some experience to complete it and troubleshoot
Lightweight vs. Heavyweight
Page speed is important. A faster-loading website provides a better user experience. Also, search engines like Google consider page speed as one of their ranking factors.
If you want to use an analytics tool, you must install a script on your website. Scripts come in different sizes, and adding “heavy” scripts will have more impact on your page speed than “light” scripts.
Our script is seven times smaller than Matomo's (3kb vs. 22kb).
To see the impact of scripts on page load times, we conducted a test comparing page load times
We didn’t perform the test directly with Matomo, but this shows us that bigger scripts have a bigger impact on your page speed.
Data interoperability
Simple Analytics has many ways to get your data out. We believe the data is yours, and you should be able to use it your way. We offer many APIs, including raw-level data. For example, to use your data to build your own dashboards.
We also built many integrations with website platforms and Google Tag Manager (GTM). We understand the importance of GTM and created an integration. If you have always used GTM for your events, you can still use it to install Simple Analytics events.
In addition, it's also possible to import your Google Analytics data with our GA importer to ensure you don’t lose your historical data. This works for both Universal Analytics as well as GA4.
Matomo does offer a way to import Universal Google Analytics properties (no sign of GA4 properties yet).
Cheap vs. Expensive
Matomo provides two options: Self-hosted and cloud-hosted.
Self-hosted is the free version of their product (although you need to pay for your servers and have a lot of technical expertise). In addition, if you want to add more features, you must pay extra.
The cloud-hosted version is similar to what Simple Analytics offers. Both companies charge based on the number of ‘datapoints’ (page views + events).
By comparing both cloud-hosted solutions, we can see the following prices:
| Based on yearly plan | 100K Visits | 1 Million Visits | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Simple Analytics | 20 Euros | 50 Euros | ||
| Matomo | 38 Euros | 172 Euros |
For a small plan Matomo is twice as expensive and for larger users three times.
Small independent vs. Large Enterprise
At Simple Analytics next to being privacy-first, providing the best user experience is our top priority. We know we are tiny fish in a pond dominated by a few big whales. This makes us appreciate users who believe in our small team and product.
To show this, we want to build Simple Analytics together with our users. We've created a community page for our users to view and interact with. Our users have a say in which direction we are heading and can express their views directly to the founders.
Event Tracking
At Simple Analytics, we have created an automated events script to automatically collect the most important events. It collects events for outbound links, downloads, and clicks on email links.
In addition, you can also get your hands dirty and add your custom events and add Metadata to your events.
Goals
We created our ‘Goals’ dashboard as an extension of our Events Explorer. It allows you to create funnels between events (or pageviews).
You can add multiple steps in the funnel and filter for specific characteristics such as “referrer” “path” and much more. Adding your most important KPIs to your visitor dashboard as a mini-dashboard is also possible.
By clicking the mini-dashboard like in the image below, you can immediately see how the KPI performs over time and see metrics like “time on page,” “browser type,” “country,” and whether users prefer mobile or desktop.
Final Thoughts
Matomo is one of the largest web analytics tools out there. At least 1% of all the websites on the internet are using Matomo. It's a great success and paved the way for other tools like Simple Analytics to take on Google.
Choosing Simple Analytics, you are choosing for simplicity, compliance and privacy-friendly website analytics. We believe in an independent web that is friendly to website visitors. If this resonates with you, feel free to check us out