I was excited to learn yesterday that Piwik Pro has a free tier now. I used Piwik a long time ago when I migrated Lumen Database from Google Analytics. At the time it was called Matamo and I actually liked it better than Google Analytics.

Why It Matters

As folks continue to be concerned about the monopoly that Google has, making sure we try and use alternatives keeps them on their toes. From a personal standpoint the user interface of Google Analytics is not great, and I am excited to see what Piwik Pro does.

Some Nice Features

• Compliance with GDPR and other privacy regulations. This was the main reason we switched at Lumen.
• 500,000 actions per month is perfect for small sites like mine.
• It looks like they already have more spam filtering than Google’s solution.

The Downside

14 month data retention on the free plan means no more comparing my traffic to previous years.