Google Tag Manager vs. Piwik PRO

I use Google Tag Manager (GTM) daily and create tags/triggers for all of our client's websites. It is easy to set up but for some of my tasks, the process does get repetitive so it'd be nice to have a default setting I can use when I have to create accounts, and then tweak/add things to them as needed. It is a great way to collect data and have code on the site without having to log into the site builder all the time. It makes it convenient to make edits or add code after our client's sites go live with us.

Incentivized

Piwik Pro Core is especially perfect for smaller businesses that want to have an alternative to Google's ecosystem. You can do a lot of the great stuff you can do with GA UA and GA4. But it still needs some tweaking. Especially for some bigger companies who have a lot of events, it would be great to have some smaller payment steps, as of right now it can be quite steep for some companies to pay the bill if you go above 500.000 events per month. Nevertheless, I believe this is one of the better options available when data ownership and privacy come to mind.

• Selecting elements on a site [object, class, cookie, etc] (to later fire an event, send some data, etc) is very easy with triggers. Want to add an event when someone clicks on a button? Super easy. It was many many DOM selectors and you can even add custom functions if you need to do something more specific
• In general, firing events in different circumstances is very easy mixing triggers and tags. You can track almost any element of the DOM and do whatever you want with it.
• Testing is a great functionality. Only you can see what's on the site and you can debug it easily by seeing which events or tags were triggered and all the DOM elements involved (and why they matched the trigger).
• Working in environments (staging, production) and versioning is easy to do, deploying changes in 2 clicks.

Incentivized

• Manage all campaigns and increase large volumes of data.
• It has an excellent activity panel through which you can have complete visibility of each activity you carry out.
• It's great to track all interactions between users and track all conversions.

Incentivized

• There are several good integrations, but there can always be more. Native tracking for call tracking solutions, analytics providers, non-Google advertisers would be top of my list.
• Documentation is just dreadful. Luckily there are some awesome folks out there doing crowdsourced tutorials (shout out to Simo Ahava) but by and large the Google Tag Manager instructions are worth what you pay for them.

Incentivized

• Filtering: ip ranges, hostnames, regex. These are a few things that aren't possible like we are used to.
• Tag Manager: not all tags/triggers are possible yet to what we are used to.
• Are more progressive payment model: more little steps to buy a plan.
• Custom dimensions: they weren't available but are now. But they aren't that user friendly yet as I'm used to.

Google Tag Manager makes tracking traffic to our websites effortless, which enables our developers to focus on other tasks. Setting up a new instance takes only minutes and additional scripts can be added/modified without touching the source code of a site in production. This enables our marketing directors to coordinate tests and experiments with minimal effort.

Incentivized

No difficult obstacle to overcome but Google Tag Manager can still be difficult for many users to deploy. Sure the basic HTML script can be deployed quite easily, but when you start to require triggers, variables, etc, it can be a little daunting.

Incentivized

GTM does not provide support. This is one of GTM's biggest issues but it's due to the level of customization for each website. If your team thinks they would heavily rely on the need for a support staff it is probably better to invest in a paid service with a team that can support your needs.

Incentivized

We had to contact the support several times in the beginning and they really took their time to explain the different functions in detail. So in terms of support I can definitely recommend Piwik PRO.

Incentivized

I thought there was a little bit too much emphasis on AdWords stuff, not enough on the generic application of GTM.

Planning and communication will help greatly with an in-house implementation. If there are large teams, try to limit the number of people involved to 1-2 developers (back-end dev may be necessary depending on your platform), one analytics marketer and one project manager.

Incentivized

We moved to GTM from a standard Google Analytics implementation. GTM is much more flexible and easier to make changes, especially as the changes relate to multiple sites and environments. While there is a learning curve when figuring out how to use GTM, I believe the change has been worth it because it helps us understand at a more fundamental level how our tracking works and gives us a lot more control over what we track and how.

Incentivized

Piwik Pro's support for multiple sites saved me a lot of time. To view reports from numerous client sites, I'll have to access a single dashboard. Its digest reports save time and are simple enough for non-technical executives to understand. It gives us access to information about individual users that Google doesn't allow us to see as a whole. It will allow users to express their desires more clearly. As a result, this one is significantly more useful compared to other tools.

Incentivized

• GTM is very useful to determine if a particular element on the site is useful (i.e. is it being watched, is it being clicked, does it help customers navigate through more pages). As an SEO person, I can use this information to decide what to optimize for but also to track progress and see improvements in engagement.
• With the use of Google Tag Manager, I was able to easily inject an A/B testing tool which lead to several improvements in lead generation.

Incentivized

• We have obtained a good impact both economically and in data integration.
• It has allowed us to collect and analyze all the data of our clients, and to create groups that allow us to divide potential clients and make personalized messages.
• We use the Enterprise plan because it provides us with the necessary tools and unlimited features.

Incentivized