Matomo Analytics Hosting

Matomo Analytics is an open-source web analytics platform that tracks website traffic, user behavior, and performance metrics while emphasizing privacy and data ownership.

Formerly known as Piwik, it serves as a popular alternative, or addition, to Google Analytics, allowing users to install and run the software on their own servers for full control over data without sharing it with third parties.

Some of the core features include real-time reporting, customizable dashboards, e-commerce tracking, and compliance with regulations like GDPR and HIPAA.

As a self-hostable solution, Matomo comes with numerous advantages over services such as Google Analytics, including:

• Complete and unparalleled levels of security and privacy.
• HDPR, HIPAA, and CCPA compliant. - Don't let big corporations use your private data.
• You can use your Matomo server to host multiple websites, open-source password-sharing and file-sharing services, chat software, and much more, cutting costs.
• Having managed Matomo analytics hosting gives you a virtual IT team to assist you when you need help the most.

Matomo is primarily used to track the success of your website. However, unlike more commonly known alternatives, it is self-hosted, which means that you own the data. This, combined with the fact that there is no data sampling, means that your Matomo analytics tracking is as accurate as can be.

Data sampling is something most other analytics software do to save processing power. An unwanted side effect of extrapolating data from a sample is the loss of accuracy. In extreme cases, the random sample can vastly misrepresent your actual audience, and lead you to make poor decisions based on inaccurate information.

Matomo Analytics is a free open-source platform that you host on your own server. As you don't have to worry about storage and computational power for millions of accounts, you don't have to resort to data sampling. In fact, because you're utilizing server-side tracking as opposed to user-side tracking, which may not capture a visit for a number of reasons, you're guaranteed to have the most complete picture possible.

Google Analytics is a proprietary software offered as a free service. The nature of this offering includes numerous stipulations, including data sampling to minimize processing power and the use of your private data for advertising purposes. What's more, Google offers premium products that let your much larger competitors use the data you provide to advertise to your potential customers. Matomo Analytics, on the other hand, is open-source, meaning that the source code is available to anyone for free. It is also self-hosted, meaning that no one but you has access to your data.

The most cost-effective solution, then, is to host Matomo yourself. The downside of hosting open-source software yourself is that smaller businesses may lack an IT team capable of installing and integrating it with third-party tools they might require. Regular backups and updates are also mandatory to retain the highest level of security. Thankfully, our fully managed Matomo analytics hosting offers you the best of both worlds. Your very own 24/7 white-glove virtual IT support team is ready to install, optimize, transfer, back up, and update your software for you, all at a flat fee for the server. This means we can install as many websites, staging sites, and Matomo analytics tracking instances for you as you'd like, without the need to purchase additional servers. The only limitation before upgrading to a larger server is the physical resource capacity of your current server.

In short, in addition to Matomo analytics, you would also host your website, databases, business email, and any other software and apps you require in a secure environment available exclusively to you. Moreover, as all of our services are fully managed at no additional cost, you have full access to a 24/7 Linux admin support team, ready to handle all the heavy lifting for you.

There are many similarities between Matomo and Google Analytics, but the two also have several differences. The most obvious difference is that Matomo is open-source, allowing you to host it yourself without data sampling, among other benefits. However, as Google Analytics is free to use, there are many benefits to hosting and using both analytics tools at the same time:

• Beyond the difference in data sampling, all analytics tools have unique tracking methodologies. As an example, server-side analytics capture all traffic sending a request and then remove the bots, while client-side relies on JavaScript loading on a user's machine to send data. This method minimizes bot traffic, but also misses a lot of legitimate traffic, particularly with users who utilise ad and script blockers or use privacy-featured browsers. Combined with Google Analytics data sampling, the two sets of data can look very similar or wildly different. A good reason to run both, however, is that if there is a spike or drop in traffic on one platform, you can easily check the other to see if there is just a methodology bug or if your site experienced a significant change. This saves you time by not having to investigate false positives and allows you to more easily find reasons behind surges or decreases in traffic and conversions.
• While the two platforms are similar in many aspects, they each have niche features that the other does not. The combination of data across the two might reveal insights that you wouldn't have otherwise, by just using a single platform.
• If you're worried about protecting your customers' privacy, you can run Google Analytics to gain insights on how user traffic moves throughout your site, but for any sensitive areas, such as your customer portal section, and conversion information you can choose not to give that information to corporations like Google and keep them on your own private server only, where you can utilise insights, without compromising privacy.