| Functionality | 3 <p>Simple Analytics is a very lightweight web analytics product. As such it lacks many complex features you might want such as heatmaps or session replay. However, it does the basics well - page views, live visitor counts, referral source tracking etc.</p> | 7 <p>For a web analytics tool, we were pleasantly surprised by the depth of functionality that Matomo offers. Features such as heatmaps, session replays and scroll depth tracking are all unique when looking at Matomo's competitors. We also appreciate that the tool is open source and can be self-hosted should you wish.</p> |
| Ease of Use | 7 <p>Thanks to its relatively limited feature set - nearly all of Simple Analytics' features are accessible on one main dashboard. As such it would take an average SMB employee less than 20 mins to master its use.</p> | 3 <p>Given the sheer breadth of functionality and dated design, we found Matomo frustrating and confusing to use. Most of its interfaces are non-standard when compared with modern web analytics products and its more powerful features take a lot of effort to fully configure. It would take an average SMB employee several hours to master the platforms use.</p> |
| Look and feel | 5 <p>Simple Analytics' design aesthetic is dark and fairly developer oriented. That being said, its core dashboard will feel very familiar and its data visualizations and graphs are easy to read. Our main complaint is that we faced delays on page load of up to 4 seconds in some instances.</p> | 2 <p>Matomo's design is very dated. Most interfaces are extremely overwhelming, confusing or clunky. Given the sheer breadth of functionality on offer this isn't exactly surprising. Additionally, we found many pages to be sluggish to load (taking >3 seconds).</p> |
| Customisability | 4 <p>Beyond custom events, Simple Analytics offers limited scope for customization. We would like to have seen more options to tweak the dashboard itself and change how data is visualized.</p> | 7 <p>Matomo offers a lot of scope for customization. From custom reports to A/B tests there are a number of fine tweaks, visualization changes or experiment details which can be fine tuned to get the most out of your analytics experience. Additionally the product is open-source meaning you can self-host it if you wish to.</p> |
| Ease of Setup | 7 <p>Simple Analytics stays true to its name as it offers a very intuitive setup process - only requiring a simple script. We appreciated the offer of a self-serve free trial as well as a live demo to get a feel for the tool before installation.</p> | 5 <p>Matomo offers a self-serve free trial like most of the tools in this sector. In terms of setup, most websites will only need to install a simple code snippet to access full functionality. That being said, if you want to take advantage of the more powerful features such as heatmaps, there is a fair amount of additional customization and setup required in the dashboard itself which can take several days.</p> |
| Customer Support | 3 <p>Simple Analytics' developer documentation is not well presented. We specifically missed the presence of any kind of search bar at all meaning you'll need to trudge through dozens of pages if you're looking for something specific.</p> | 3 <p>Like with most analytics tools, developer documentation and knowledge bases are the primary avenue for support. Unfortunately we found Matomos to be poorly laid out and hard to navigate. Beyond that, they offer a ticket system for help queries which take a few days to get responses from.</p> |
| Integratability | 3 <p>Simple Analytics offers a fairly robust API through which you can interact with data as well as make platform changes. However, it offers little to no integrations beyond this.</p> | 7 <p>Matomo offers an extensive API that goes beyond just gathering stats - it also allows you to access live data and make changes to goal/website configuration. Additionally, we were pleased to see easy set up with Google tag manager and BigQuery.</p> |
| Ease of Migration | 7 <p>Simple Analytics offers self-serve export functionality for key datapoints via its web app. Additionally, its API is robust and allows business to access datapoints programatically.</p> | 8 <p>Matomo offers self-serve export of key data directly from its web app. Additionally, it also offers a strong API through which you can pull data programatically.</p> |
