15 ms·

Matomo: Open-source analytics platform

183 points by AbdHicham 6y ago

kerng 6y ago
I switched to it about a year ago to get rid of Google Analytics. Quite happy with the decision.
- XCSme 6y ago
  Where are you hosting it and how much do you pay for it? Do you have a lot of visitors?
  - input_sh 6y ago
    Any cheap Hetzner dedicated (~30€/month) can handle tracking thousands of daily visits without breaking a sweat. If we're talking about 10s of thousands, you're gonna need to invest in some SSD (€50-70/month probably). If we're talking about dozens of sites, some of which have millions of yearly visitors (and a bunch of plugins and reports that need to be generated), then you're gonna encounter some issues and have to spend a considerable amount of time optimizing every part of it, and hardware cost will rise to a hundred or two per month.
    - y42 6y ago
      To add another level: To track millions of requests per day for a couple of sites, it will probably cost around 1k - 5k per month, hosting on AWS. It's advised to use not the cheapeast hoster here, because any little outage directly affects every site that implements your tracking technology.
      - zerkten 6y ago
        > It's advised to use not the cheapest hoster here, because any little outage directly affects every site that implements your tracking technology. I guess it depends on how essential your tracking is, and how you've implemented it. It shouldn't be added in a way that can take out your site unless there is some business critical reason to track. Then I'd ask, just how critical is the tracking? If losing a few hours of data is going to throw off your product development, do you have enough data to be making decisions? My experience is that bugs and misconfiguration of experiments is common in most orgs, so even if the system is up to capture all data, product managers check an experiment a week later to find they have only 50% of the data.
      - celsoazevedo 6y ago
        While it makes sense for some projects to use AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, etc, you could track the same number of requests on Digital Ocean, Vultr or Linode reliably and for less money.
- FriedrichN 6y ago
  My anecdotal experience is that people liked it better than GA. I also really like how easily you can extend it. In one case (a webshop) we added the currently logged in user so we can track what they look for specifically so we can improve the search and categories.
XCSme 6y ago
Is 1.7k open issues something to worry about or is it normal for a project of this size? PS: I have also been building something similar, but not completely open-source: https://www.usertrack.net https://www.usertrack.net
- AbdHicham 6y ago
  It's normal for a project of that size, never had any major issues with it, it's in active development so it's good to see issues are being reported
- AbdHicham 6y ago
  Which parts are open source in usertrack ? you say not completely open-source
  - XCSme 6y ago
    I say it's not completely open-source mainly because it's not free and people usually expect open-source to equal free. Once you purchase it you get full access to the original server-side code (PHP, MySQL). For the client-side part you only get the bundled JS/HTML/CSS (the original client-side source code is TypeScript, React), mostly because otherwise I would have to provide all the build tools and document better the code, tooling, building, releasing, etc.
    - AbdHicham 6y ago
      I understand now, thank you for clarifying :)
    - viraptor 6y ago
      > people usually expect open-source to equal free. Open source has a specific meaning - is the Software released on an open source license. (https://opensource.org/licenses https://opensource.org/licenses) For example if you pay enough, you get ms windows source as well - that doesn't make it "not completely open source". Your project doesn't seem to be open source at all.
mox1 6y ago
Formerly known as Piwik, been around for a long time.
- AbdHicham 6y ago
  Thank you :) I didn't know that, found it here as well https://piwik.com/ https://piwik.com/
villgax 6y ago
A startup I worked with used Piwik(now Matomo) & defrauded investors with fake visits by tampering with the DB. Any VC should actively be involved & knowledgeable of analytics that is presented to you in order to avoid being ripped off.
- viraptor 6y ago
  I'm not sure if this is specific to Matomo. You could use headless agents over web proxies around the world to inflate Google Analytics as well. It just costs less to do it in your own DB.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Galanwe 6y ago
As a non-web developper, I always wondered: Are these alternatives fully able to replace Google analytics? I sort of thought Google analytics would tell you more about your visitors since with Google cookies, they could map them to other visited websites, centers of interest, age group, etc. Are you loosing all that when switching to a less intrusive analytics platform such as this, or is Google analytics not leveraging their ability to disclose more about the visitors?
- dustinmoris 6y ago
  Due to the amount of people blocking Google Analytics with browser extensions, Pi-Holes and other tools I find GA increasingly lacking good analytics.
  - wartijn_ 6y ago
    I assume most tools will block Matomo as well. I know uBlock origin with the default blocklist does.
    - mattmcknight 6y ago
      This is why you self host it, to avoid a third party cookie.
      - y42 6y ago
        Still not help if you consider GDPR et al. rules, at least in the EU.
        vntok 6y ago
        In some countries (eg France), there are exemptions for tracking purposes if the tracking is done only to the benefit of the site's editor.
        XCSme 6y ago
        I think that using a self-hosted platform where you don't store any PII or cookies allows you to store visitor statistics without explicit consent.
viraptor 6y ago
I've tried to use it and... they could work on improving the installation guide. I gave up after an hour or so of failing to provision the database and create configuration in a way that gets me to the initial setup screen. I was using their docker setup for this. It's kind of my job to take random apps, deploy them and manage properly, so I'm not a clueless user here. I could press on and figure it out with more time, and I understand they'd be happy with people using the cloud offering / paid support instead. But I also feel like a working docker-compose (or comparable) setup is table stakes these days for an open-source service. See Loki+Grafana for a good example: https://grafana.com/docs/loki/latest/installation/docker/#install-with-docker-compose https://grafana.com/docs/loki/latest/installation/docker/#in... - it's not a production setup, but it's a valid "play around with it in 2min" setup.
- typhonius 6y ago
  I’ve found that using geerlingguy’s Ansible roles for MySQL, Nginx, and PHP, most random PHP applications can be deployed with default configuration. I’ve had them in production with Matomo for the past year or so and had no problems so far. A lot of the challenges faced with a ‘from scratch’ install will revolve around which PHP version and extensions to install and how to get Nginx to talk to FPM. Neither of which are trivial for someone wanting to test/evaluate without much prior knowledge.
- cxcorp 6y ago
  It was pretty easy to get up and running with Docker Compose: version: '3' services: mysql: image: mysql:8 environment: MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: root MYSQL_DATABASE: matomo matomo: image: matomo:4 ports: - 4000:80 This lets me in at localhost:4000 and I just enter "mysql" as the DB host, "root" as the username & password and "matomo" as the database name, and it's basically done. Of course, I probably have to point it out or someone else will, that it's a bad idea to be using the MySQL root user, instead of creating a user with the rights that Matomo needs: https://matomo.org/faq/how-to-install/faq_23484/ https://matomo.org/faq/how-to-install/faq_23484/
- crstin 6y ago
robertlagrant 6y ago
Would recommend Countly. Not affiliated.
junon 6y ago
No screenshots, no examples in the readme, builds failing. Nah.
- tadzik_ 6y ago
  There's some of that on https://matomo.org/ https://matomo.org/, not sure why OP linked to github instead.
samuell 6y ago
Installed it on some websites recently. Quite pleased with the UI and the functionality. Pretty spot on in terms of the right level of information about users - providing useful info without stalking people inappropriately. The new version (4.0) seems to improve on some earlier stability issues.
- XCSme 6y ago
  Is the performance better than Google Analytics?
  - samuell 6y ago
    It is definitely clearly snappier, yes. There is some sub-second loading times, which should not be surprising, but not the sometimes multi-second lags I have seen in Google Analytics.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
deepstack 6y ago
Any one know a node alternative to GA? Matomo is great, but for something like GA, node would be best option for handling large amount of http requests.
- codyogden 6y ago
  I started using Umami (Node/Next) to replace GA on my major site (70k/30days). It provides the data I care about seeing, and nothing more. Public preview: https://analytics.kbg.rip https://analytics.kbg.rip Project: https://umami.is https://umami.is
  - fbnlsr 6y ago
    This looks really good. Kudos!
  - pabe 6y ago
    I'd also recommend this one. Relatively "basic" data but it's GDPR compliant and easy to install and update. Big thanks to the author!
  - AbdHicham 6y ago
    That's also a really cool alternative.
- looperhacks 6y ago
  Why would you need node to handle "large amounts" of http requests?
  - capableweb 6y ago
    Of course you don't have to have nodejs to handle large amounts of http requests, if you spend enough time you can get any language/framework to handle the amount you need :) But, seems that at least in the TechEmpower framework benchmarks, es4x (JS) ends up on position 9 while the closest PHP framework ends up at 13. Now it's just a small benchmark with specific tests, but I do think it's easier to make NodeJS handle large amount of requests than PHP. Although again, you can definitely do large amounts of requests with PHP too. I've spent about 5 years on each, found that getting good performance out of V8 is easier than out of PHP.
sneak 6y ago
Does anyone know how to get it to show the full referer URL? I use a self hosted Matomo and it only shows the referer domain.
- XCSme 6y ago
  I don't think that's always possible as it's a browser security limitation. The referring domain can decide to pass on only the domain, not the full URL. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Referrer-Policy https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Re...
kooparse 6y ago
It's pretty easy to make your own analytics. It's not famous, but I open-sourced mine; it's called Bast, written mostly in Rust, and it's easy to deploy it. https://github.com/kooparse/bast https://github.com/kooparse/bast
- marvinblum 6y ago
  I did the same for my Go library [0], but I don't think it's "pretty easy" if you want to do it right. Especially filtering out bots is a constant hassle, it needs to be tested, maintained, just like any other software. So, paying something like $4 is worth it, if you don't want to think about it as much. You have a very good looking UI there. I really love the simplicity. [0] https://github.com/pirsch-analytics/pirsch https://github.com/pirsch-analytics/pirsch
bravura 6y ago
29 euros a month for the managed, on-cloud version. Does anyone know inexpensive Google Analytics alternatives for small sites, that are hosted for you?
- marvinblum 6y ago
  https://pirsch.io/ https://pirsch.io/ $4/month if you pay annually or $6 to pay monthly, but free during beta. We are actively working on it right now, but the core is working well and is open-source: https://github.com/pirsch-analytics/pirsch https://github.com/pirsch-analytics/pirsch
ddevault 6y ago
Open source does not make it okay. Do not spy on people. It's just that simple.
- XCSme 6y ago
  So, you shouldn't be allowed to know the conversion rate on your page?
  - ddevault 6y ago
    It's easy enough to run $nconversions / $nrequests without spying on anyone.
    - XCSme 6y ago
      But $nrequests is not accurate as it can be 10x or 100x more than the number of visitors, so your conversion rate will be 10x or 100x off.
- hertzrat 6y ago
  What do you use to track whether your site is growing or shrinking in popularity? Server logs? If so, I’m curious whether not being able to filter out bot visits is a problem
cmg 6y ago
Worth noting that they also have a WordPress plugin that handles all of the installation and related setup: https://wordpress.org/plugins/matomo/ https://wordpress.org/plugins/matomo/ I use it on a personal project site and it works very well.
francoisp 6y ago
a slightly different angle, also opensource: mautic
rilut 6y ago
Have anyone evaluated Matomo vs Countly vs PostHog?
l1am0 6y ago
I use Matomo for years now and it works quite reliably. (A few updates failed the automatic update, but nothing serious) Only thing that bothered me is that most Ad Blockers are blocking Matomo as well. I did build a little Script to circumvent that, you might find it handy as well: https://gumroad.com/l/matomo_circumvent_adblock https://gumroad.com/l/matomo_circumvent_adblock I use it on my website. Check if your ad blocker is capable of blocking it: https://simon-frey.com https://simon-frey.com
- lightswitch05 6y ago
  Its pretty disgusting to track people against their consent, even more so to circumvent their protections against tracking. I added your domain to my blocklist: https://github.com/lightswitch05/hosts/commit/bb2cd77c9ec02824be0604099b217e422395162d#diff-97fcc9e7f471368140c9d4c8b58cca4167163c807c7261f03f26d1dd23d064d1R265850 https://github.com/lightswitch05/hosts/commit/bb2cd77c9ec028...
  - vntok 6y ago
    It's pretty disgusting to access creators' content for free while blocking their attempts to monetize it.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - necovek 6y ago
      Why not block access to the content then? You can't watch Netflix streams without paying for them, that's trivial to implement. Ah, right, creators want their content to show up for my search keywords, Google won't let them have pages only visible to Google bots (though even that is changing with the rise of paywalled sites), and they want the money from that same Google showing ads from their ad network. Google initially promised to deliver a search for the open web unencumbered. It has become a sort of paywall itself (accept our ads or our search results will be useless pointing you to pages that only work if you have ads enabled). Sure, it would be fair if they haven't pushed out the competition acting entirely differently ("we have no ads", "our ads are clearly marked" to current "see if you can tell a difference between an ad and your search results").
nagbava 6y ago
About data protection and GDPR, a good thing with Matomo is that, if configured properly, it can be used without requiring to collect the user's consent (since Matomo doesn't use the data for its own purpose). Of course there are less information collected but at least you don't have to display a form as soon as a user enters your website. The French data protection authority issued a piece of code (JS) which must be used to avoid collecting the user's consent. I don't know about other data protection authorities in the EU but it shouldn't be much different.
- iamacyborg 6y ago
  > it can be used without requiring to collect the user's consent (since Matomo doesn't use the data for its own purpose) This is not how the GDPR works. If you are collecting personal data, or if you are dropping analytics cookies on someone's device, you need consent. No ifs or buts.
  - nagbava 6y ago
    You should apply to the CNIL since you seem to know GDPR better than they do. (https://www.cnil.fr/fr/cookies-solutions-pour-les-outils-de-mesure-daudience https://www.cnil.fr/fr/cookies-solutions-pour-les-outils-de-...) I never said no personal data were collected but, if configure properly, the processing of data falls within the legitimate interest basis.
    - iamacyborg 6y ago
      I believe that page may be out of date, or they've updated their github repo prematurely. https://github.com/LINCnil/Guide-RGPD-du-developpeur/commit/faecd769ba0c6adac760d6249c6f8f36b352580a#diff-6a1b5137ac955cffdd75c28075ab3f07345518c962ab99e86394a8cc12f7242e https://github.com/LINCnil/Guide-RGPD-du-developpeur/commit/... /edit Ignore me. I appear to have misunderstood the changes when I last read this. Sorry
    - nagbava 6y ago
      It is true that an opt-out system must be installed on the website (Matomo gives that piece of code) but - as noted on the github link you posted - that very is different from an opt-in system (which is the standard GDPR requirement).
solarkraft 6y ago
I used it a bunch back when it was Piwik (why did they change the name, it was great!) and have been quite satisfied. Yet, though at least it isn't cloud based, it's still quite scary what kinds of things it will tell you about your visitors.
- brnt 6y ago
  I'll bite: what kinds of things did you learn about your visitors?
RocketSyntax 6y ago
maybe website analytics is more appropriate? the word analytics is taking on a new meaning these days
matomo-report 6y ago
I have setup a load balancer with 3 instances of matomo connected to one mysql database to handle tracking on a website with around 7000 visits a day. It could all probably be handled by just one instance but that is sort of the standard setup we have for things. matomo is very comparable to google analytics in terms of reports. matomo has some things that seem a little easier to get to; like visitor flows. However, matomo seems to just give up on big data, complex reports. Similar reports in google analytics take a long time to complete, 10 to 40 seconds, but they at least complete; eventually.
- XCSme 6y ago
  Isn't the performance limited my the MySQL database and not by the webserver? Wouldn't make more sense to have a cluster of three MySQL database instances and one matomo instance instead?
andrewzah 6y ago
I used to use matomo but I found goatcounter to be simpler to set up and maintain. I also like the UX more [0]. [0]: https://stats.arp242.net/ https://stats.arp242.net/
pachico 6y ago
I just wished it used Clickhouse as persistence layer.
hertzrat 6y ago
I used matomo once for a basic Wordpress blog (with cloudron) but for some reason it led to my site being flagged as distributing malware and I vanished from search engines. Apparently there is a Microsoft form you need to fill out to get unflagged where you explain what data your site is collecting but I just took the site offline because I was too busy to dig into it. Extremely annoying since the entire idea is to collect as little personal information as you can. It wasn’t matomo fault, its somebody’s dysfunctional web crawler bot auto generating reports
- XCSme 6y ago
  Offtopic: What is your experience with cloudron? Does it make it a lot easier to self-host apps, or the complexity/limitations it adds on top are not enough to justify using it?
enonevets 6y ago
Anyone here have experience comparing this against Open Web Analytics (OWA)?
dalu 6y ago
I started writing a backend in Go. So far it parses the request, turns it into a struct and saves it to mongodb. However 2 requests per page are recorded, no idea why that happens. One has 24 or 25 fields filled, the next 15-19 fields. Anyhow that's as far as I got. The next and largest step would be analyzing those records aka creating all those beautiful graphs. Also creating a management interface for sites and generation of tracking code. While it's open source (search for gopiwik) it still uses the mgo.v2 driver and I just yesterday added go module support and did some minor changes. I thought, why reinvent the wheel, let's just grab the piwik.js and build a receiver. Turns out it's a bit more complicated than that.

183 points by AbdHicham 6y ago

kerng 6y ago

I switched to it about a year ago to get rid of Google Analytics. Quite happy with the decision.

XCSme 6y ago
Where are you hosting it and how much do you pay for it? Do you have a lot of visitors?
- input_sh 6y ago
  Any cheap Hetzner dedicated (~30€/month) can handle tracking thousands of daily visits without breaking a sweat. If we're talking about 10s of thousands, you're gonna need to invest in some SSD (€50-70/month probably). If we're talking about dozens of sites, some of which have millions of yearly visitors (and a bunch of plugins and reports that need to be generated), then you're gonna encounter some issues and have to spend a considerable amount of time optimizing every part of it, and hardware cost will rise to a hundred or two per month.
  - y42 6y ago
    To add another level: To track millions of requests per day for a couple of sites, it will probably cost around 1k - 5k per month, hosting on AWS. It's advised to use not the cheapeast hoster here, because any little outage directly affects every site that implements your tracking technology.
    - zerkten 6y ago
      > It's advised to use not the cheapest hoster here, because any little outage directly affects every site that implements your tracking technology. I guess it depends on how essential your tracking is, and how you've implemented it. It shouldn't be added in a way that can take out your site unless there is some business critical reason to track. Then I'd ask, just how critical is the tracking? If losing a few hours of data is going to throw off your product development, do you have enough data to be making decisions? My experience is that bugs and misconfiguration of experiments is common in most orgs, so even if the system is up to capture all data, product managers check an experiment a week later to find they have only 50% of the data.
    - celsoazevedo 6y ago
      While it makes sense for some projects to use AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, etc, you could track the same number of requests on Digital Ocean, Vultr or Linode reliably and for less money.
FriedrichN 6y ago
My anecdotal experience is that people liked it better than GA. I also really like how easily you can extend it. In one case (a webshop) we added the currently logged in user so we can track what they look for specifically so we can improve the search and categories.

XCSme 6y ago

Is 1.7k open issues something to worry about or is it normal for a project of this size? PS: I have also been building something similar, but not completely open-source: https://www.usertrack.net https://www.usertrack.net

AbdHicham 6y ago
It's normal for a project of that size, never had any major issues with it, it's in active development so it's good to see issues are being reported
AbdHicham 6y ago
Which parts are open source in usertrack ? you say not completely open-source
- XCSme 6y ago
  I say it's not completely open-source mainly because it's not free and people usually expect open-source to equal free. Once you purchase it you get full access to the original server-side code (PHP, MySQL). For the client-side part you only get the bundled JS/HTML/CSS (the original client-side source code is TypeScript, React), mostly because otherwise I would have to provide all the build tools and document better the code, tooling, building, releasing, etc.
  - AbdHicham 6y ago
    I understand now, thank you for clarifying :)
  - viraptor 6y ago
    > people usually expect open-source to equal free. Open source has a specific meaning - is the Software released on an open source license. (https://opensource.org/licenses https://opensource.org/licenses) For example if you pay enough, you get ms windows source as well - that doesn't make it "not completely open source". Your project doesn't seem to be open source at all.

mox1 6y ago

Formerly known as Piwik, been around for a long time.

AbdHicham 6y ago
Thank you :) I didn't know that, found it here as well https://piwik.com/ https://piwik.com/

villgax 6y ago

A startup I worked with used Piwik(now Matomo) & defrauded investors with fake visits by tampering with the DB. Any VC should actively be involved & knowledgeable of analytics that is presented to you in order to avoid being ripped off.

viraptor 6y ago
I'm not sure if this is specific to Matomo. You could use headless agents over web proxies around the world to inflate Google Analytics as well. It just costs less to do it in your own DB.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Galanwe 6y ago

As a non-web developper, I always wondered: Are these alternatives fully able to replace Google analytics? I sort of thought Google analytics would tell you more about your visitors since with Google cookies, they could map them to other visited websites, centers of interest, age group, etc. Are you loosing all that when switching to a less intrusive analytics platform such as this, or is Google analytics not leveraging their ability to disclose more about the visitors?

dustinmoris 6y ago
Due to the amount of people blocking Google Analytics with browser extensions, Pi-Holes and other tools I find GA increasingly lacking good analytics.
- wartijn_ 6y ago
  I assume most tools will block Matomo as well. I know uBlock origin with the default blocklist does.
  - mattmcknight 6y ago
    This is why you self host it, to avoid a third party cookie.
    - y42 6y ago
      Still not help if you consider GDPR et al. rules, at least in the EU.
      - vntok 6y ago
        In some countries (eg France), there are exemptions for tracking purposes if the tracking is done only to the benefit of the site's editor.
      - XCSme 6y ago
        I think that using a self-hosted platform where you don't store any PII or cookies allows you to store visitor statistics without explicit consent.

viraptor 6y ago

I've tried to use it and... they could work on improving the installation guide. I gave up after an hour or so of failing to provision the database and create configuration in a way that gets me to the initial setup screen. I was using their docker setup for this. It's kind of my job to take random apps, deploy them and manage properly, so I'm not a clueless user here. I could press on and figure it out with more time, and I understand they'd be happy with people using the cloud offering / paid support instead. But I also feel like a working docker-compose (or comparable) setup is table stakes these days for an open-source service. See Loki+Grafana for a good example: https://grafana.com/docs/loki/latest/installation/docker/#install-with-docker-compose https://grafana.com/docs/loki/latest/installation/docker/#in... - it's not a production setup, but it's a valid "play around with it in 2min" setup.

typhonius 6y ago
I’ve found that using geerlingguy’s Ansible roles for MySQL, Nginx, and PHP, most random PHP applications can be deployed with default configuration. I’ve had them in production with Matomo for the past year or so and had no problems so far. A lot of the challenges faced with a ‘from scratch’ install will revolve around which PHP version and extensions to install and how to get Nginx to talk to FPM. Neither of which are trivial for someone wanting to test/evaluate without much prior knowledge.
cxcorp 6y ago
It was pretty easy to get up and running with Docker Compose: version: '3' services: mysql: image: mysql:8 environment: MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: root MYSQL_DATABASE: matomo matomo: image: matomo:4 ports: - 4000:80 This lets me in at localhost:4000 and I just enter "mysql" as the DB host, "root" as the username & password and "matomo" as the database name, and it's basically done. Of course, I probably have to point it out or someone else will, that it's a bad idea to be using the MySQL root user, instead of creating a user with the rights that Matomo needs: https://matomo.org/faq/how-to-install/faq_23484/ https://matomo.org/faq/how-to-install/faq_23484/
crstin 6y ago

robertlagrant 6y ago

Would recommend Countly. Not affiliated.

junon 6y ago

No screenshots, no examples in the readme, builds failing. Nah.

tadzik_ 6y ago
There's some of that on https://matomo.org/ https://matomo.org/, not sure why OP linked to github instead.

samuell 6y ago

Installed it on some websites recently. Quite pleased with the UI and the functionality. Pretty spot on in terms of the right level of information about users - providing useful info without stalking people inappropriately. The new version (4.0) seems to improve on some earlier stability issues.

XCSme 6y ago
Is the performance better than Google Analytics?
- samuell 6y ago
  It is definitely clearly snappier, yes. There is some sub-second loading times, which should not be surprising, but not the sometimes multi-second lags I have seen in Google Analytics.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

deepstack 6y ago

Any one know a node alternative to GA? Matomo is great, but for something like GA, node would be best option for handling large amount of http requests.

codyogden 6y ago
I started using Umami (Node/Next) to replace GA on my major site (70k/30days). It provides the data I care about seeing, and nothing more. Public preview: https://analytics.kbg.rip https://analytics.kbg.rip Project: https://umami.is https://umami.is
- fbnlsr 6y ago
  This looks really good. Kudos!
- pabe 6y ago
  I'd also recommend this one. Relatively "basic" data but it's GDPR compliant and easy to install and update. Big thanks to the author!
- AbdHicham 6y ago
  That's also a really cool alternative.
looperhacks 6y ago
Why would you need node to handle "large amounts" of http requests?
- capableweb 6y ago
  Of course you don't have to have nodejs to handle large amounts of http requests, if you spend enough time you can get any language/framework to handle the amount you need :) But, seems that at least in the TechEmpower framework benchmarks, es4x (JS) ends up on position 9 while the closest PHP framework ends up at 13. Now it's just a small benchmark with specific tests, but I do think it's easier to make NodeJS handle large amount of requests than PHP. Although again, you can definitely do large amounts of requests with PHP too. I've spent about 5 years on each, found that getting good performance out of V8 is easier than out of PHP.

sneak 6y ago

Does anyone know how to get it to show the full referer URL? I use a self hosted Matomo and it only shows the referer domain.

XCSme 6y ago
I don't think that's always possible as it's a browser security limitation. The referring domain can decide to pass on only the domain, not the full URL. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Referrer-Policy https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Re...

kooparse 6y ago

It's pretty easy to make your own analytics. It's not famous, but I open-sourced mine; it's called Bast, written mostly in Rust, and it's easy to deploy it. https://github.com/kooparse/bast https://github.com/kooparse/bast

marvinblum 6y ago
I did the same for my Go library [0], but I don't think it's "pretty easy" if you want to do it right. Especially filtering out bots is a constant hassle, it needs to be tested, maintained, just like any other software. So, paying something like $4 is worth it, if you don't want to think about it as much. You have a very good looking UI there. I really love the simplicity. [0] https://github.com/pirsch-analytics/pirsch https://github.com/pirsch-analytics/pirsch

bravura 6y ago

29 euros a month for the managed, on-cloud version. Does anyone know inexpensive Google Analytics alternatives for small sites, that are hosted for you?

marvinblum 6y ago
https://pirsch.io/ https://pirsch.io/ $4/month if you pay annually or $6 to pay monthly, but free during beta. We are actively working on it right now, but the core is working well and is open-source: https://github.com/pirsch-analytics/pirsch https://github.com/pirsch-analytics/pirsch

ddevault 6y ago

Open source does not make it okay. Do not spy on people. It's just that simple.

XCSme 6y ago
So, you shouldn't be allowed to know the conversion rate on your page?
- ddevault 6y ago
  It's easy enough to run $nconversions / $nrequests without spying on anyone.
  - XCSme 6y ago
    But $nrequests is not accurate as it can be 10x or 100x more than the number of visitors, so your conversion rate will be 10x or 100x off.
hertzrat 6y ago
What do you use to track whether your site is growing or shrinking in popularity? Server logs? If so, I’m curious whether not being able to filter out bot visits is a problem

cmg 6y ago

Worth noting that they also have a WordPress plugin that handles all of the installation and related setup: https://wordpress.org/plugins/matomo/ https://wordpress.org/plugins/matomo/ I use it on a personal project site and it works very well.

francoisp 6y ago

a slightly different angle, also opensource: mautic

rilut 6y ago

Have anyone evaluated Matomo vs Countly vs PostHog?

l1am0 6y ago

I use Matomo for years now and it works quite reliably. (A few updates failed the automatic update, but nothing serious) Only thing that bothered me is that most Ad Blockers are blocking Matomo as well. I did build a little Script to circumvent that, you might find it handy as well: https://gumroad.com/l/matomo_circumvent_adblock https://gumroad.com/l/matomo_circumvent_adblock I use it on my website. Check if your ad blocker is capable of blocking it: https://simon-frey.com https://simon-frey.com

lightswitch05 6y ago
Its pretty disgusting to track people against their consent, even more so to circumvent their protections against tracking. I added your domain to my blocklist: https://github.com/lightswitch05/hosts/commit/bb2cd77c9ec02824be0604099b217e422395162d#diff-97fcc9e7f471368140c9d4c8b58cca4167163c807c7261f03f26d1dd23d064d1R265850 https://github.com/lightswitch05/hosts/commit/bb2cd77c9ec028...
- vntok 6y ago
  It's pretty disgusting to access creators' content for free while blocking their attempts to monetize it.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - necovek 6y ago
    Why not block access to the content then? You can't watch Netflix streams without paying for them, that's trivial to implement. Ah, right, creators want their content to show up for my search keywords, Google won't let them have pages only visible to Google bots (though even that is changing with the rise of paywalled sites), and they want the money from that same Google showing ads from their ad network. Google initially promised to deliver a search for the open web unencumbered. It has become a sort of paywall itself (accept our ads or our search results will be useless pointing you to pages that only work if you have ads enabled). Sure, it would be fair if they haven't pushed out the competition acting entirely differently ("we have no ads", "our ads are clearly marked" to current "see if you can tell a difference between an ad and your search results").

nagbava 6y ago

About data protection and GDPR, a good thing with Matomo is that, if configured properly, it can be used without requiring to collect the user's consent (since Matomo doesn't use the data for its own purpose). Of course there are less information collected but at least you don't have to display a form as soon as a user enters your website. The French data protection authority issued a piece of code (JS) which must be used to avoid collecting the user's consent. I don't know about other data protection authorities in the EU but it shouldn't be much different.

iamacyborg 6y ago
> it can be used without requiring to collect the user's consent (since Matomo doesn't use the data for its own purpose) This is not how the GDPR works. If you are collecting personal data, or if you are dropping analytics cookies on someone's device, you need consent. No ifs or buts.
- nagbava 6y ago
  You should apply to the CNIL since you seem to know GDPR better than they do. (https://www.cnil.fr/fr/cookies-solutions-pour-les-outils-de-mesure-daudience https://www.cnil.fr/fr/cookies-solutions-pour-les-outils-de-...) I never said no personal data were collected but, if configure properly, the processing of data falls within the legitimate interest basis.
  - iamacyborg 6y ago
    I believe that page may be out of date, or they've updated their github repo prematurely. https://github.com/LINCnil/Guide-RGPD-du-developpeur/commit/faecd769ba0c6adac760d6249c6f8f36b352580a#diff-6a1b5137ac955cffdd75c28075ab3f07345518c962ab99e86394a8cc12f7242e https://github.com/LINCnil/Guide-RGPD-du-developpeur/commit/... /edit Ignore me. I appear to have misunderstood the changes when I last read this. Sorry
  - nagbava 6y ago
    It is true that an opt-out system must be installed on the website (Matomo gives that piece of code) but - as noted on the github link you posted - that very is different from an opt-in system (which is the standard GDPR requirement).

solarkraft 6y ago

I used it a bunch back when it was Piwik (why did they change the name, it was great!) and have been quite satisfied. Yet, though at least it isn't cloud based, it's still quite scary what kinds of things it will tell you about your visitors.

brnt 6y ago
I'll bite: what kinds of things did you learn about your visitors?

RocketSyntax 6y ago

maybe website analytics is more appropriate? the word analytics is taking on a new meaning these days

matomo-report 6y ago

I have setup a load balancer with 3 instances of matomo connected to one mysql database to handle tracking on a website with around 7000 visits a day. It could all probably be handled by just one instance but that is sort of the standard setup we have for things. matomo is very comparable to google analytics in terms of reports. matomo has some things that seem a little easier to get to; like visitor flows. However, matomo seems to just give up on big data, complex reports. Similar reports in google analytics take a long time to complete, 10 to 40 seconds, but they at least complete; eventually.

XCSme 6y ago
Isn't the performance limited my the MySQL database and not by the webserver? Wouldn't make more sense to have a cluster of three MySQL database instances and one matomo instance instead?

andrewzah 6y ago

I used to use matomo but I found goatcounter to be simpler to set up and maintain. I also like the UX more [0]. [0]: https://stats.arp242.net/ https://stats.arp242.net/

pachico 6y ago

I just wished it used Clickhouse as persistence layer.

hertzrat 6y ago

I used matomo once for a basic Wordpress blog (with cloudron) but for some reason it led to my site being flagged as distributing malware and I vanished from search engines. Apparently there is a Microsoft form you need to fill out to get unflagged where you explain what data your site is collecting but I just took the site offline because I was too busy to dig into it. Extremely annoying since the entire idea is to collect as little personal information as you can. It wasn’t matomo fault, its somebody’s dysfunctional web crawler bot auto generating reports

XCSme 6y ago
Offtopic: What is your experience with cloudron? Does it make it a lot easier to self-host apps, or the complexity/limitations it adds on top are not enough to justify using it?

enonevets 6y ago

Anyone here have experience comparing this against Open Web Analytics (OWA)?

dalu 6y ago

I started writing a backend in Go. So far it parses the request, turns it into a struct and saves it to mongodb. However 2 requests per page are recorded, no idea why that happens. One has 24 or 25 fields filled, the next 15-19 fields. Anyhow that's as far as I got. The next and largest step would be analyzing those records aka creating all those beautiful graphs. Also creating a management interface for sites and generation of tracking code. While it's open source (search for gopiwik) it still uses the mgo.v2 driver and I just yesterday added go module support and did some minor changes. I thought, why reinvent the wheel, let's just grab the piwik.js and build a receiver. Turns out it's a bit more complicated than that.