For many years now, I’ve been using Matomo Analytics which is an open-sourced self-hosted version of Google Analytics, and integrating that with all my client’s websites. While it collects a lot of useful details, it also causes a lot of headaches. I’ve been testing a new software tool called Umami for the past couple of months, and directly comparing it with Matomo. While there’s still some quirks to Umami, it’s overall a much better piece of software for the needs of my clients and myself and I have recently opted to utilize Umami instead of Matomo going forward.
Some problems and downsides of using Matomo (the previously used software):
- Required reports to be generated by email on a routine basis, leaving ~30 days in between data sets without a status (i.e. has there been an increase in traffic the past 10 days? My clients can’t quickly tell this from Matomo as they didn’t have access to it which required me to manually send reports during those times when requested).
- The interface is very outdated in today’s design language and has inefficient code which adds a lot of “bloat”, causing Matomo to run very slowly and require a lot of resources to run at scale.
- The Matomo tracking script is over 30 kilobytes in size which is inserted in every client website to use the Matomo capabilities.
- Matomo required the script to be named only one name which made it very easy for ad-blockers to block it, leading to a higher likelihood that visitors were not all being counted.
- Matomo is very well-known software which amounted to lots of “referrer spam” attacks which dirtied the data a bit.
In comparison, Umami:
- Allows me to generate a unique URL for each client that they can use to check on their website analytics at any time they feel like without delay.
- A modern interface which loads incredibly quickly and uses less resources on my server. It’s more efficient.
- The Umami tracking script is only just over 2 kilobyte in size (effectively 15 times smaller than Matomo’s script), which means all client websites now load even quicker with more efficient tracking scripts.
- Umami allows for custom tracking script names and API calls which allows bypassing most (if not all) ad-blockers which in-turn allows for more accurate data. In testing Umami alongside Matomo for the past two months, Umami always recorded more visitors than Matomo did which is good news. Of course no analytics software is perfect so there will always be some missed visitor counts, however Umami performed better in my tests.
- Umami isn’t as well-known (yet) as Matomo which keeps its attack vector smaller. Spam is everywhere no matter what, but I counted less spammy-looking requests recorded in Umami when comparing with Matomo.
This will be a process and won’t be immediate in terms of removing the older Matomo code from all my client’s websites, and I will need to send out unique URLs to each client over the next few days too. The month-end report for February 2023 will be the last sent by Matomo software to my clients, and going forward after March 1st will be a unique URL to Umami that can be accessed at any time so you don’t need to wait for 30 days for the next report to generate (for example).
You can expect an email from me before March 5, 2023 with your unique URLs which will allow you to view your website analytics data at any moment in time. If you do not have your unique URL by March 5th, please contact me right away.
It’s easy software to use however if you have any questions with the data displayed or how to get a certain type of data you may be looking for, I’m here to help.