Piwik PRO Core vs. Google Analytics

Piwik PRO Core vs. Google Analytics

Reasons to Consider an Alternative to Google Analytics

W3Tech found that 56.8% of all websites use Google Analytics. It’s free, full of features and well known but there are a variety of reasons to consider an alternative:

• Google uses the data for their purposes and it is possible some customers may not like their data being used by them. Perhaps your business reputation has been impacted.
• Privacy compliance is important and you need a way to handle consent and data requests.
• You need secure options for storing data.
• You want to use Personal Identifiable Information (PII) to create customer views.
• You don’t want data sampling (Lunowicka, 2021).
• Ability to track properties with unique security concerns is necessary.

Piwik PRO Core Plan Features, Pricing  and Overview

Piwik PRO has a Core plan that is described as free forever and an Enterprise plan that requires a quote to determine price. While Piwik PRO is generally marketed as an alternative to Google Analytics, it is possible to install it alongside Google Analytics. In the free plan a number of features are available including the following:

• analytics, tag manager and consent manager
• fast reports and dashboards
• safe cloud hosting
• 500,000 actions per month 
• raw data through API or Tableau Connector
• data storage for 14 months
• integration with Google Ads and Search Console
• adherence to GDPR, LGPD and CCPA regulations
• data control
• integration with Tableau, Power BI, Google Data Studio, and others

The following video gives a good look at the basic reports and layouts you will see when using Piwik PRO. It covers basic report categories, filters, custom variables, tag manager, campaigns, keywords, out-links, help center, conversions and more: 

Piwik PRO earns money by selling Enterprise plans so if these features aren’t adequate upgrading to pay for the Enterprise customized plan is the only option. The Enterprise plan is described by Douglas as “more feature rich than Google Analytics at a fraction of the price of Adobe Analytics” which is another competitor. For a more comprehensive list of features and a comparison of the Core and Enterprise plans look here. 

The most unique feature with Piwik PRO is its handling of privacy. According to a Gartner study, by 2023, 65% of the world population’s personal data will be covered by privacy regulations.  The study continues with insights from Nader Henein, Gartner research vice president, stating that GDPR regulations will be the global standard and businesses who comply will benefit from greater consumer trust. Piwik PRO allows you to collect PII, and thanks to the robust, customizable consent management system, it is collected without violating any privacy regulations and without being shared with third parties.

One limitation of the free Piwik PRO Core plan is that the Customer Data Platform (CDP) is not included which means that while PII is collected some of the features that can provide single costumer views aren’t available. CDP is a feature of the Enterprise plan and can help business leaders in decision making.

Who Uses Piwik PRO?

It will come as no surprise that Piwik Pro is used in government, finance, education and healthcare industries because of the wealth and sensitivity of PII they store. In order to best comply with all privacy regulations such as HIPAA, the Enterprise plan will be needed but the Core plan still provides a high level of compliance. It is also no surprise that businesses from the EU who must be GDPR compliant also choose Piwik PRO.

Clients such as HP and the European Commission trust Piwik PRO. Piwik PRO also has a blog with a number of success stories from clients. One is the Anne Frank House. In the case study, The Anne Frank House used Piwik PRO to meet their goal of selling tickets and engaging visitors in learning about Anne Frank. They redesigned their website and wished to measure if the redesign was indeed meeting those goals. They were able to track session duration and page views to learn about their customers. Ticket buyers stayed on the site for a short time usually on mobiles and visitors on desktops who wanted to learn more about Anne Frank had longer sessions because they interacted with the content. The Anne Frank House was able to make the ticket options clearer as visitors thought only one package was available. Ticket sales increased in each category. They also gained insights about how to best optimize content for devices in the future.

How does Piwik PRO Core Compare to Google Analytics?

Piwik PRO Core is a good option if data ownership and compliance to HIPAA (enterprise plan only), GDPR or CCPA regulations are important; however, Google Analytics is audited regularly and to remain compliant blocks PII data. The main difference is how PII is handled whether through consent management to obtain PII or through not using PII. 

The Core plan will give you similar report categories to Google Analytics including Audience, Acquisition, Behavior, Conversion and also Website Performance and you can see page views, unique visitors, popular pages, session duration, location, device, browser and more. Both platforms also allow for custom dimension, filtering of data, conversions, tagging, etc. The consent report is unique to Piwik PRO, though, and tracks those who have accepted the consent form compared to those who are undecided. In addition, both Google Analytics and Piwik PRO Core offer a knowledge base and community forums for support so help is available with either choice. Dedicated support staff is available for the Piwik PRO Enterprise plan.

In Google Analytics each account can have up to 100 properties but in Piwik PRO Core it is limited to 10 which is something to consider if you have a lot of properties to connect. This is unlimited in the Enterprise plan though. 

Google Analytics	Piwik PRO Core
free	free
24-48 hour lag, but there is a Realtime option	30 minute refresh
Google chooses where data is stored	Secure cloud (Self-hosting available with Enterprise)
Anonymous data	Anonymous data and PII with consent
No raw data	Raw data with API or Tableau Connector
Sampled data	No data sampling (but if the 500,000 action threshold is exceeded you have to unplug domains, track less or upgrade to Enterprise)
Knowledge base for support	Knowledge base for support
Privacy compliance without PII	Privacy compliance and PII collected
Google uses data for their purposes	Data is owned
100 properties per account	10 properties

Since both Piwik Pro and Google Analytics have free versions, it’s worth it to test out both to see which will best meet the needs of your business or perhaps even use both. Whether you wish to use one or both, many features are similar. The biggest differences are Piwik PRO’s commitment to privacy compliance, data ownership and no data sampling. Both also offer a paid plan.  This is worth considering if upgrading from a free version is something that might be necessary in the future as your business grows and needs change.