Matomo vs Google Analytics: Should You Self-Host Your Website Stats?

Google Analytics is the default choice for website stats – but it is not the only one, and since GA4 replaced Universal Analytics, plenty of site owners have found themselves squinting at an interface they no longer understand. Matomo (formerly Piwik) is the leading alternative: open-source analytics you can run on your own hosting, with your data in your own database. Here is an honest comparison of the two for a typical UK website.

The fundamental difference: who holds your data

With Google Analytics, your visitor data lives on Google’s servers, processed under Google’s terms, and your access to historical data depends on Google’s product decisions – as anyone who lost years of Universal Analytics history in the GA4 transition knows. With self-hosted Matomo, the data sits in a MySQL database on your own hosting account. It is yours: exportable, backupable, and immune to a vendor retiring the product or changing the interface underneath you.

Accuracy: the ad-blocker effect

A practical difference many site owners miss: roughly three in ten internet users now run ad-blockers – 29.5% globally and 28.5% in the UK, rising to 41% among 15–25s (Backlinko ad-blocker statistics, 2026) – and most blockers stop Google’s tracking scripts by default. Those visitors are invisible in Google Analytics. Matomo, served from your own domain, is blocked far less often – so it typically reports noticeably more of your real traffic. Neither tool is perfect, but if you have ever felt “my stats look lower than my enquiries suggest”, this is often why.

Ease of use

GA4 is powerful but genuinely hard work for non-specialists: event-based reporting, custom explorations, and terminology that changed wholesale from the old version. Matomo’s interface looks more like classic analytics – visits, page views, referrers, real-time – which most small business owners find quicker to read. If your reporting needs are “how many people visited, from where, and what did they look at?”, Matomo answers faster.

Features and integrations

Google Analytics wins on ecosystem: free, deep integration with Google Ads and Search Console, and unlimited scale. Matomo’s core is free and covers everything most sites use – visits, acquisition, behaviour, goals, ecommerce tracking, WordPress integration – with some advanced features (heatmaps, session recordings, funnels) as paid add-ons. If you run serious Google Ads campaigns, GA stays hard to beat; if you don’t, you may never miss it.

What self-hosting Matomo actually requires

Matomo is a PHP/MySQL application, so it runs on the same kind of hosting as WordPress: a modern PHP 8 environment, a MySQL database, and a little disk space that grows with your traffic history. On Switchweb it is available as a 1-click installation, and a small business site’s analytics data sits comfortably within a standard plan. Two practical notes: include the Matomo database in your backups (it is now the only copy of your stats), and let Matomo’s built-in auto-archiving run so reports stay fast as data accumulates.

Side by side

FAQs

Can I run Matomo and Google Analytics together?

Yes, and it is a sensible way to trial Matomo: run both for a month, compare the numbers, and see which reports you actually use. The visitor-count gap between them is itself informative.

Will Matomo slow my website down?

The tracking script is comparable in weight to Google’s. The analytics application itself runs server-side; on decent hosting with PHP 8 it has no visible effect on your site’s speed for visitors.

Does Matomo work with WordPress?

Yes – either as the separate self-hosted application (recommended for busier sites) or via the Matomo for WordPress plugin, which runs everything inside WordPress. Both connect to standard WordPress sites in minutes.

The short version

Choose Google Analytics if you depend on Google Ads or need its advanced modelling for free. Choose self-hosted Matomo if you want stats you own outright, more complete visitor counts, and reports you can read without a training course. If you would like to try it, Matomo is a 1-click install on every Switchweb hosting plan – set it up alongside GA and let the numbers make your decision.