Machete vs Matomo Analytics – Powerful, Privacy-First Insights for WordPress

Machete is a simple suite of tools that solves common WordPress annoyances using as few resources as possible. Machete doesn’t cover every single use case, but there is a huge amount of sites that would require less plugins if they used Machete. All Machete tools have two things in common: they solve problems faced by many web developers and they do it using as few server resources as possible. So far, Machete includes the following tools: WordPress Optimization WordPress places a lot of code inside the tag just to keep backward compatibility or to enable optional features. You can disable most of it and save some time from each page request while making your installation safer. Cookies & GDPR Warning We know you hate cookie warning bars. Well, this is the least hateable cookie bar you’ll find. It is really light, doesn’t affect your PageSpeed score and plays well with static cache plugins. Analytics and custom code You don’t need a zillion plugins to perform easy tasks like inserting a verification meta tag (Google Search Console, Bing, Pinterest), a json-ld snippet or a custom stylesheet (Google Fonts, Print Styles, accessibility tweaks…). The Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager tracking codes are PageSpeed optimized, GPDR friendly. Maintenance mode The maintenance mode that ships with WordPress is just a basic lock-down that is activated whenever you do a major update. With machete Maintenance Mode you can hide your unfinished page from visitors and search engines, give your clients a secure temporary access and lock your site without affecting your SEO. Post & Page cloner Adds a “duplicate” link to post, page and most post types lists. Also adds “copy to new draft” function to the post editor. Social Sharing Buttons Social sharing done the Machete way. The icons are made as a custom webfont embedded in a minified CSS file that only weighs 5.8KB. The sharing actions use each platform’s native share URL. WooCommerce Utils WooCommerce was designed to work for every possible use case, but that often leads to unexpected behavior. These simple fixes can improve the WooCommerce user experience by making it behave as clients expect.

Version 5.11.1 and above include an important security related fix, it is highly recommended to update to this version. Already a Matomo On-Premise or Matomo Cloud user? You need to use the Connect Matomo plugin instead of this plugin. For all you WordPress website owners wanting an easier way to get customer insights to grow your business, you can now get the solution the professionals use, for free! Matomo Analytics is the #1 used Google Analytics alternative that offers a powerful range of features, security and protects the privacy of your users. This enables you to learn how to improve your website, make the right decisions for your business and stand out in the crowd in a safe and trustworthy way. Matomo’s mission is to give control and data ownership back to the user. By hosting web analytics on your own servers there’s no third-parties taking ownership, no on-selling of data and no-one looking in. This means when you install Matomo in a matter of a few clicks, you’re in full control. It’s also easier for you to get insights from Matomo Analytics with it’s time-saving interface design and out-of-the-box features, which require less manual configuration than Google Analytics. Matomo is free, secure and open – your ethical user insights platform. How Matomo Analytics for WordPress solves problems: 100% data ownership, no one else can see your data All data is stored in your WordPress and not sent to any third party or different country Super easy to install. No coding or technical knowledge needed #nocode Free to use forever Designed to save you time as an out-of-box solution (including many Ecommerce stores) Protects the privacy of your users GDPR Manager No data sampling Opportunities to extend with an ever-growing marketplace Supports over 50 languages Comes equipped with Matomo Tag Manager How Matomo focuses on privacy: Superb user privacy protection Heaps of features to anonymize data and IP addresses WP shortcode to embed an opt-out feature into your website Features to export and delete data for GDPR Ability to configure data retention Ultimately, Matomo lets you: learn who your customers are and their needs; understand what content works and how engaged your audience is; identify which marketing channels give you the highest ROI and invest with confidence in channels that convert for your business; and discover blockages and fix pain points for confused visitors to ensure they become satisfied customers. Features include: Ecommerce features (supports WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads and MemberPress out of the box) Campaign tracking Visitor profiles Tag Manager Dashboards Segmentation Real time reports Transitions JavaScript error tracking Extensive geolocation reports / maps Many different visualisations Row evolution Report comparisons Export features See the most drastic changes within a given time period Supports WP Rest API And hundreds of other features Easily give your colleagues access to your reports if / when needed Easily exclude certain roles, visitors and pages from being tracked Supports WordPress Multisite. (Note: Tag Manager feature does not work in MultiSite.) Import historical data from Google Analytics or WP Statistics Premium paid features: Heatmaps & Session Recordings Form Analytics Media Analytics Funnels SEO features – Keyword rankings Custom reporting Cohorts Users flow Prerequisites and technical requirements: Running Matomo Analytics on your server can use significant resources. Whenever someone visits your WordPress website, your server will need to serve your WordPress pages to the user, as well as tracking the user journey in Matomo, resulting in an additional request for each page view. The minimum PHP memory limit is 128Mb, but we recommend to use a higher limit (memory_limit = 256M). PHP 7.2 at minimum is required. From Matomo 6 onwards, PHP 8.1, MySQL 8.0 or MariaDB 10.6 will be required at minimum. If your server does not meet those requirements, the plugin will not update to Matomo 6 and will tell you what needs upgrading. If you have high traffic website, or manage a lot of websites with WordPress MultiSite, we recommend installing Matomo On-Premise or signup to Matomo Cloud and install the Connect Matomo plugin instead. Needing to know more before you install? Have a read through the most popular FAQs to ensure you’re making the right choice for you. Over 1 million websites in over 190 countries are using Matomo already. Join the revolution too! Install Matomo on your WordPress website completely free and take back full control of your data! Third party resources we use: After activating this plugin, it will download a Geolocation database (DBIP-City.mmdb) from DB IP into your uploads directory. The DB-IP database is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. This database is needed to detect the location of your visitors based on their IP. When you enter a URL in the SEO ranking widget, then a request with the entered URL may be sent to Google, Alexa, Bing, and other SEO providers. Credits The entire Matomo team and everyone who contributed André Bräkling who is the Author of the Connect Matomo plugin