Analytics tools are essential for businesses to track and analyze their website traffic, user behavior, and other important metrics. Matomo and GA4 are two popular analytics tools that provide businesses with valuable insights into their website visitors and help them make data-driven decisions. In this blog post, we’ll compare and contrast Matomo and GA4, examining their features, capabilities, and advantages.
What is Matomo?
Matomo is an open-source web analytics platform that provides businesses with a wide range of features and capabilities for tracking and analyzing website data. Some of its key features include real-time visitor tracking, customizable dashboards, and heat maps that show where visitors are clicking on a website. Matomo also offers powerful reporting tools, including conversion tracking and A/B testing, that enable businesses to optimize their website and improve their ROI.
What is GA4?
GA4 is the latest version of Google Analytics, designed to provide businesses with a more flexible and intelligent way of tracking and analyzing website data. GA4 comes with several new features, including advanced machine learning capabilities, cross-device tracking, and event-based tracking, which allow businesses to gain a deeper understanding of their website visitors and their behavior.
What are the advantages and disadvantages?
One of the biggest advantages of Matomo is that it gives businesses full control over their data, as all data collected by Matomo can be stored on your own servers or Matomo’s own servers. This means businesses can ensure the privacy and security of their data, while also avoiding potential data-sharing issues with third-party analytics platforms. This is very useful when it comes to data privacy topics such as GDPR. Additionally, Matomo offers a flexible pricing model, with both free and paid options available depending on the size and needs of the business.
One of the key advantages of GA4 is its easy integration with other Google products, such as Google Ads and Google Marketing Platform, allowing businesses to track the entire customer journey across multiple channels. GA4 also offers powerful reporting tools, including custom reports and data visualization, that make it easier for businesses to uncover insights and make data-driven decisions.
Matomo is self-hosted, which can be time-consuming and requires technical knowledge. On the other hand, GA4 doesn’t have hosting issues, but it has a limited data retention policy. The free version of GA4 only retains data for 14 months, and after that period, the data is deleted. To overcome this limitation, users can export their data to BigQuery, a cloud-based data warehouse. However, using BigQuery requires technical expertise and can be costly.
The user interface of Matomo has been criticized by some users for being less intuitive and user-friendly compared to other web analytics tools. On the other hand, GA4 has made efforts to improve its user interface and is considered to be slightly more intuitive by some users. However, like any analytics tool, there is still a learning curve involved, and some users may find the interface more challenging to navigate than others. Overall, the ease of use of both Matomo and GA4 will depend on the user’s familiarity with web analytics and their specific needs.
What is the pricing?
When it comes to pricing, GA4 offers a powerful free version but the paid version can be expensive. On the other hand, while Matomo also has free and paid versions, the free version requires self-hosting, which can come with additional costs. The paid option from Matomo is still a lot cheaper than the one from GA4 and great for businesses with lower budgets.
Conclusion
In conclusion, both Matomo and GA4 are powerful web analytics tools that can provide valuable insights into website and app usage. While they have their respective advantages and disadvantages, the choice between them ultimately comes down to the specific needs and preferences of the company or the user.
At our company, we have experience with setting up and using both Matomo and GA4, and we can help you choose the best solution for your business. If you would like our assistance in setting up either of these analytics tools, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We are always happy to help.
