Switching to an Open Source Google Analytics Alternative

I am slowly but steadily trying to break away from the Google universe. After I had already replaced Google Drive with my own Nextcloud and my smartphone runs on CalyxOS, I now wanted to handle the tracking of my various websites without Google Analytics – ideally with an open source alternative.

The icing on the cake for making the switch now was the move from Google Universal Analytics to the new Google Analytics 4 Property using the Tag Manager, which had become necessary. It felt like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, since I really only need simple reports and had neither the time nor the desire for a lengthy setup. The very first steps alone already annoyed me. Besides, if I am going to track website usage at all, I wanted that data not to be sent “somewhere”, but to stay under my own control.

To my delight, there are not only a number of Google Analytics alternatives, but also many open source projects. Here is a short overview of (free) and open source Google Analytics alternatives:

1. Matomo
2. Open Web Analytics
3. Countly
4. Offen
5. Umami
6. Shynet
7. Ackee

After a short web search, matomo (formerly Piwik) and Open Web Analytics (OWA) quickly emerged as possible candidates. The others look good too, but some of them were too time-consuming for me to implement right now (setting up separate containers etc.).

Both Matomo and OWA offer free online demos to get a first impression:

• Matomo Online Demo
• OWA Online Demo

Since I always place enormous value on an appealing look&feel (which is often not the top priority in open source), I settled on Matomo fairly quickly. I do not need complex reports like the ones Google Analytics provides in combination with the Tag Manager. Still, with Matomo I would always have the option to extend the tracking.

Once again, I chose All-Inkl as my trusted host. By now I know the steps by heart: set up a subdomain, create a database and upload the on-premise package… done. The installation process that followed was self-explanatory.

Finally, all that was left was to add the tracking code to the website. I am not a fan of lots of WordPress plugins, so that the installation stays as clean as possible. However, if I write the tracking code into the header.php file myself, I will probably have to change it again manually with every theme update. So check whether your theme has a suitable setting where you can put the code.

Tip: Strangely, it did not work for me the first time. A look at the developer console then showed me that my theme automatically writes the HTML <script> element (green). The Matomo tracking code (orange), however, also writes the argument into the code itself. So you may need to insert the Matomo tracking code into your website theme without the opening/closing <script> elements.

I have to say that I already liked Matomo a lot in the first few hours of use. It fully meets my requirements for decent but not overly deep tracking. In addition, I can comply with the GDPR requirements very comfortably and even make them "tighter".

I have also already started moving some of my other websites to my Matomo installation. What I have not done – or rather, a topic I have not looked into at all yet – is how to import historical data from Google Analytics into Matomo. But maybe one of you already has some experience with that? On the other hand, I have never needed that data.

I will definitely use and test Matomo for a while now. So far, though, the free open source Google Analytics alternative has not disappointed me – quite the opposite.

By the way, if you do not want to or cannot do your own hosting, you can also buy a cloud instance for a small fee. However, I find the current price of €18/month still too expensive for small sites (<10k hits/month) – which is why I would definitely recommend your own hosting up to 50k hits a month. All-Inkl also offers a simple one-click installation for Matomo for anyone who does not feel confident setting up their own database, for example.