Commanders Act TagCommander vs. Matomo Analytics

If you need a single place where you can handle all the third party pixels, this is a well-suited platform. As well as if you want to keep the deployment independent from all other (and more complex) deployments driven by IT. If you need a pixel to be fired not just when the page loads, but based on user actions, you should use the events and that's pretty complex to handle.

Incentivized

Matomo is a full-fledged website tracking and analytics tool. It offers everything and then a bit more that GA has to offer. I cannot conceive of any situation where this programme would be "less appropriate". You can use it for each and every website and do well with it. The data it provides includes everything you could wish for (country, IP, new user or not, actions taken, goals achieved etc.)

• Creating new pixels is very easy, as well as organizing all of them, handling prioritization between different partners' pixels.
• Defining the perimeters and constraints where the pixels need to be fired is a breeze.
• Deploying the container and keeping track of all the modification is very well done.
• The configuration of the deduplication rule is pretty flexible.

Incentivized

• One of Piwik's strengths is the provision of customizable widgets for different bits of analytics data. The ability to add and remove them, change dates and more makes this a flexible way to visualize data.
• The visitor log section is also rich, providing date, keywords, actions and more in a single table, which makes it easy to identify your most effective content.
• And the visitor actions table includes both bounce rate and time on site, so you can quickly tell which pages have the most engagement.
• Data display is a strength for Piwik, as you have access to overview charts while simultaneously being able to drill deeper.

• Reports. Tag Commander lacks in term of reports of what's happening. There is an additional module called Attribution Management System that gives you a lot of insights, but more basic reports to understand what has been fired will be useful.
• Support. Tag Commander support is very low responsive. It took several days to have the first feedback and generally, it takes a lot of emails to get what you need.
• Deduplication engine flexibility. The engine is there and it works pretty well, until you have a slightly different need. In that case you need to implement something custom in terms of implementation, reports, etc. A more flexible approach would be useful.

Incentivized

• From a user security standpoint it would be useful to provide users the ability to have two-factor authentication. While stats data is not necessarily sensitive in aggregate, some users may feel that certain portions need to be more secure.
• It would be nice if there was a tighter integration with the Google search/referrer API so that "keyword not defined" would be replaced more often with the actual keyword that is being used to send a visitor to a site.
• An easier branding method, maybe in the form of an API function set, that pulled branding URLs from a set of database fields would be great as well.

At this point, there is not a single conceivable reason as to why we would not renew and continue to use Piwik Analytics. Especially since it is a free program and open source. The product will only get better over time as more people look into it and donate to cause so that development can continue.

Piwik succeeds in presenting me (and my associates and my clients...) large amounts of data in a user friendly way. The interface and functionality can easily be customized. While some enhancements do need technical background (API calls by programming language from the webserver or javascript), others are easy to use (goal / event tracking)

The best thing about the Matomo support is that they have a forum which basically you can find the answer to almost all of your questions and most of the time you don't need to contact them regarding your questions and problems but if you need help they will answer in a reasonable time slots.

Incentivized

Only one hiccup when we were using a beta installation. Other than that, smooth sailing.

We have used Google Analytics before for one of our online tools and we switched to Matomo for the other web applications we have. We did that because Matomo is free but mostly since we wanted us to own the data on these sensitive apps and not share it with third parties. Since we have the data locally, we can now apply machine learning techniques to improve the systems even more.

Incentivized

• It let us deploy new pixels/fixes to pixels independently from the IT deployment process.
• It let us easily turn on/off and sort the pixel execution based on partners' priority, assuring better data tracking for more important partners.
• It provides out of the box pixel implementation for tons of partners, but really often we need to rewrite the pixel from scratch as they're not up to date.

Incentivized

• By using Piwik, we can better identify keywords used to search for the website and by targeting those keywords on search engine advertising (Google, Bing, Yahoo), it helps with conversion and also saves us money by cutting down guess work.
• By using Piwik graphs, it helps to save our employees time in creating pie charts and bar charts to present to upper management.
• Since Piwik is free to use, there is no reason not to implement it. Most likely, with your website, you will already have access to SQL and hosting package. There is minimal cost to implementing Piwik.