Matomo: Open-source analytics platform

https://github.com/matomo-org/matomo

by AbdHicham • 6 years ago

183 126 6 years ago

github.com

kerng• 6 years ago

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

XCSme16• 6 years ago

Where are you hosting it and how much do you pay for it? Do you have a lot of visitors?

input_sh• 6 years 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.

FriedrichN• 6 years 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.

XCSme16• 6 years 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

AbdHicham5• 6 years 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

AbdHicham5• 6 years ago

Which parts are open source in usertrack ? you say not completely open-source

XCSme16• 6 years 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.

zufallsheld• 6 years ago

I also compare open issues to closed issues. If the numbers are roughly the same (or the open issues bigger than closed) I'd say that's a problem.

yread• 6 years ago

I think it's more a consequence of not tidying up. There are irrelevant issues open from 2008. On the other hand I prefer 1.7k issues to project where they aggressively auto-close tickets

mgkimsal2• 6 years ago

if projects are given the option to 'auto-close' tickets (which honestly, I don't mind - having loads of open stuff can hamper finding more recent/useful info), wouldn't it be helpful to have filter to view 'auto-closed' tickets vs 'closed' tickets?

Findus23• 6 years ago

While I agree that 1.7k issues are a lot, also keep in mind that there are 9.6k closed issues and they are bugs and feature requests over 11 years that never get closed as there might be someone else coming across some feature request one day who wants to implement it.

monkin• 6 years ago

Fun fact that should be point out: Most of those issues and pr’s comes from core team members. There is almost no community around it, but looking at these numbers you get the impression that it is otherwise.

mox1• 6 years ago

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

AbdHicham5• 6 years ago

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

villgax• 6 years 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.

viraptor3• 6 years 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.

Galanwe• 6 years 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• 6 years 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_• 6 years ago

I assume most tools will block Matomo as well. I know uBlock origin with the default blocklist does.

jeroenhd• 6 years ago

Google Analytics tells you more about your audience because it stalks people across the web. Matomo can never provide that without having a broad range of websites from which you collect data and writing custom code to annotate visitors with your own interest tags.

Matomo purely tracks analytics: who visited what page, for how long, from what device, from what location, from what inbound website, and what outbound links did they click. It also provides a log of pages requested per session so you can analyze people's flows through your website.

It's certainly not a replacement for Google Analytics if you use it to collect background information on your visitors. Even though Google's information is very broad (you mostly get ranges and the interests aren't that reliable), some marketeers use it to make decisions about their marketing strategies. Matomo won't help you there, your alternative would probably be Facebook or another big tech tracking solution.

It does provide a replacement for the type of tracking that I personally find acceptable, assuming the IP addresses are anonymized sufficiently. Matomo recommends shortening IP addresses to /16 after analysis, which I consider good enough, but that's a setting administrators can change.

XCSme16• 6 years ago

What information exactly does GA tell you from stalking people across the web? I don't think Google sharing with you accurate information about the people visiting other websites would be completely legal (GDPR). Where exactly do you find this information in the dashboard?

iamacyborg5• 6 years ago

Google Analytics tells you more about your audience because it stalks people across the web.

That data is mostly garbage and only getting worse.

marvinblum4• 6 years ago

Hey there, we are working on Pirsch [0] (another GA alternative).

If you can replace GA depends on your needs. GA collects more personal data, you get better insight of your audience. This is important if you do online marketing and like to see how well your campaigns perform. GA does track visitors across days and you can therefore see if someone came back after a week and made a purchase.

In case you don't do that or are simply not interested in specifics, all the alternatives are good enough right now, I think. You can still tell how visitors navigate your page, what content they visit most and all that stuff. We are currently thinking about what we can add to gain more insight for businesses, without invading privacy as Google does.

[0] https://pirsch.io/

johnchristopher• 6 years ago

The real kick is when you link both google ads and google analytics https://blog.littledata.io/2019/02/25/why-link-google-ads-ad...

Something you can't do when leaving google land.

viraptor3• 6 years 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/#in... - it's not a production setup, but it's a valid "play around with it in 2min" setup.

typhonius• 6 years 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• 6 years 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/

crstin• 6 years ago

I've did some research a while ago and found that https://github.com/crazy-max/docker-matomo dockerizes it the best.

robertlagrant• 6 years ago

Would recommend Countly. Not affiliated.

junon• 6 years ago

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

Nah.

tadzik_• 6 years ago

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

samuell2• 6 years 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.

XCSme16• 6 years ago

Is the performance better than Google Analytics?

samuell2• 6 years 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.

deepstack• 6 years 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• 6 years 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

Project: https://umami.is

fbnlsr• 6 years ago

This looks really good. Kudos!

pabe• 6 years 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!

AbdHicham5• 6 years ago

That's also a really cool alternative.

looperhacks• 6 years ago

Why would you need node to handle "large amounts" of http requests?

capableweb• 6 years 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.

Volrath89• 6 years ago

I've been using plausible, and don't miss a thing about GA so far

XCSme16• 6 years ago

I use a PHP analytics platform on a shared VPS hosting and it can track 1M+ monthly visits without any issues.

Why would node be able to handle so much more HTTP requests than Apache or Nginx? I think the throughput is mostly dictated by implementation.

dalu3• 6 years ago

Node? For handling large amounts of requests? What did I miss? lol sorry but I had to laugh.

I couldn't find any benchmarks. How many concurrent requests can it handle without errors, simple hello world.

Never mind I found a post. https://blog.rh-flow.de/2016/01/10/benchmark-helloworld-in-p...

As expected node is not a thing to handle large amounts of requests

sneak• 6 years 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.

XCSme16• 6 years 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/Re...

kooparse• 6 years 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

marvinblum4• 6 years 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

bravura• 6 years 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?

marvinblum4• 6 years ago

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

ddevault2• 6 years ago

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

XCSme16• 6 years ago

So, you shouldn't be allowed to know the conversion rate on your page?

ddevault2• 6 years ago

It's easy enough to run $nconversions / $nrequests without spying on anyone.

hertzrat2• 6 years 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• 6 years ago

Worth noting that they also have a WordPress plugin that handles all of the installation and related setup: https://wordpress.org/plugins/matomo/

I use it on a personal project site and it works very well.

francoisp• 6 years ago

a slightly different angle, also opensource: mautic

rilut• 6 years ago

Have anyone evaluated Matomo vs Countly vs PostHog?

l1am05• 6 years 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

I use it on my website. Check if your ad blocker is capable of blocking it: https://simon-frey.com

lightswitch054• 6 years 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/bb2cd77c9ec028...

vntok3• 6 years ago

It's pretty disgusting to access creators' content for free while blocking their attempts to monetize it.

samjmck2• 6 years ago

Ad blocking != block tracking. If you don’t want to get tracked, turn on Do Not Track in your browser. Matomo and most other privacy focused analytics scripts respect that setting.

aorth• 6 years ago

It's your call really, but a website owner tracking you with their own software on their own Matomo instance is not the problem. This is essentially the same as monitoring website logs... that's not disgusting at all.

vntok3• 6 years ago

Unfortunately your script still calls a third party domain, which is trivial to block using a generic AdBlock/uBlock rule. Instead, you should host the matomo script (under a different filename of course) on your own domain. That way it won't be as easily blocked.

I go as far as to send all the tracking parameters through a custom server script before they are proxied to GA and Matomo. That way, I can change the script and parameter names at will, making them much more difficult to block. For example, Matomo-related blocking rules are as follows:

/matomo-tracking.

/matomo.js$domain=~github.com

/matomo.php

/matomo/$domain=~github.com|~matomo.org|~wordpress.org

/piwik-$domain=~github.com|~matomo.org|~piwik.org|~piwik.pro|piwikpro.de

/piwik.$image,script,domain=~matomo.org|~piwik.org|~piwik.pro|piwikpro.de

/piwik./ping?

/piwik.js

/piwik.php

/piwik/*$domain=~github.com|~matomo.org|~piwik.org|~piwik.pro

/piwik1.

/piwik2.js

/piwik_

/piwikapi.js

/piwikC_

/piwikTracker.

l1am05• 6 years ago

If someone decides to explicit block my Matomo tracking server I am fine with that.

I experimented with tracking on the same site and the overhead is not worth it for me. Central solution for all my projects works quite reliable

huhtenberg2• 6 years ago

Unless I am missing something, that's trivial to block.

Any tracker can be made to work around ad blockers by making callbacks to the site itself and having a small shim there that forwards these pingbacks to the actual tracking service. But even then they still can be blocked based on the request contents.

PS. Here's how your website looks in Firefox - https://i.imgur.com/uFKEB4X.jpg. That's with uBlock off. No console errors.

l1am05• 6 years ago

Weird that you don't see any text. In FF on Linux it works as expected. What system are you on?

l1am05• 6 years ago

FYI: The gumroad link is to a support license.

You purchase a support license to help me to continue working on MCAB. MCAB itself is Open Source and can be found on Github: https://github.com/simonfrey/matomo_circumvent_adblock

nagbava4• 6 years 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.

iamacyborg5• 6 years 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.

nagbava4• 6 years 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-...)

I never said no personal data were collected but, if configure properly, the processing of data falls within the legitimate interest basis.

arp2423• 6 years ago

This is not how the GDPR works. It lays out several legal basis for the collection of personal information, of which consent is one. There are others as well.

I'd have to re-read it to be sure about analytics cookies, but I don't think it says a whole lot about that off-hand. This the the ePrivacy directive.

solarkraft• 6 years 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• 6 years ago

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

RocketSyntax• 6 years ago

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

andrewzah• 6 years 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/

pachico• 6 years ago

I just wished it used Clickhouse as persistence layer.

matomo-report• 6 years 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.

hertzrat2• 6 years 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

XCSme16• 6 years 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• 6 years ago

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

dalu3• 6 years 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.

Matomo: Open-source analytics platform

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