Using Matomo for website analytics instead of Google Analytics
Summary
Currently, we have no Website Analytics Tools installed on our website. However, we want to install one and we are thinking about using Matomo instead of Google Analytics. We are not sure about that, though. For us, with respect to user data, it seems better to use an Open Source tool that would run on our own server in Germany. Of course, we want to configure Matomo so that our website is compliant with GDPR and we won't share collected data with others. Could you provide us information about what we need to do and what to have in mind regarding Eclipse policies, when configuring our server and the Matomo instance. For instance, you wrote that when creating a GA property webmaster@eclipse has to receive a permanent account. I guess, that applies to a Matomo instance, as well, right?
Priority
- Urgent
- High
- Medium
- Low
Severity
- Blocker
- Major
- Normal
- Low
Activity
We use GA in part because it's connected to our cookie consent banner, and I'm not certain how much work it would be to add other tracker options to that workflow.
You are correct that webmaster would need access and any service like this would need to be accessible by any committer on the project.
/cc @cguindon /cc @pwhited3w
I made a similar proposal last year in our internal bug-tracking system: https://gitlab.eclipse.org/eclipsefdn/infrazilla/-/issues/447#note_359938
I would like to propose that we consider switching to an on-premise solution that can be used without needing consent (unlike with Google, which will always need user consent).
For example, Matomo On-Premise https://matomo.org/matomo-on-premise/
Matomo ensures the privacy of your users and analytics data https://matomo.org/privacy/
Definitely a +1 from me since it aligns with what I think we should do. However, we do need to consider the cost of hosting and maintaining this service as I think the real benefits of using Matomo is with the on-prem solution. The cloud solution would cost around 1k-5k per month.
https://matomo.org/pricing/?menu
-1 for a project to use the cloud offering. This start at 30$ a month for 50k hits (monthly traffic). I don't think that can scale and it would be a maintenance burden for us to manage the invoice for all projects who wish to switch to Matomo cloud instead of GA.
Edited by Christopher GuindonThank you very much for answering, @mward and @cguindon.
@mward Matomo tracks without using Cookies (see https://matomo.org/cookie-consent-banners/) and is compliant with GDPR, so a cookie banner is not needed.
As I understood, it is already accepted to use another web analytics tool than GA. So what is in my interest is: what do we need to consider, if we would install Matomo on our own server to be compliant with Eclipse requirements?
It sounds like there may be a misunderstanding here.
As @cguindon pointed there has been some internal discussions about setting up something like Matomo, and we do have some ideas regarding the requirements for using an external services, but those 2 things don't actually mean any given external service(regardless of how it is hosted/licensed) is actually 'approved' for use on Eclipse.org(or by Eclipse projects).
The best advice on actually getting something like this approved(and the baseline requirements) can be found here: https://www.eclipse.org/org/documents/eclipse-foundation-hosted-services-privacy-and-acceptable-usage-policy.pdf . TL;DR: start by sending an email to privacy at eclipse dot org asking to be able to use this service.
Dear @cguindon,
could you provide us any insights of your current discussion state regarding to host Matomo? We are actually very interested in using Matomo instead of GA due to it is Open Source and natively compliant with GDPR. Do you have a time plan to finalize this discussion? Regardless your current state, we will probably start using GA, but with the vision to move to an Eclipse hosted Matomo instance as soon it is available.
Edited by Maximilian Neubauer-
Hi @mneubaueres6,
We plan on investigating Matomo in Q1 2023 but I don't expect us to be able to make a decision about using it before the end of that quarter.
If you would like to start tracking stats, I would recommend you use GA for now and follow this issue to see if are going to support the service!
mentioned in issue #1608 (closed)
-
I did an initial assessment of the effort needed for this project.
Migrating to Matomo would address some current pain points that we have with Google Analytics. It has the potential for us to better control and manage who has access to the stats. However, it would require some significant resources to roll out:
- Eclipse Infra team is needed to deploy and maintain the infrastructure needed to host the application
- Eclipse Webdev team is needed to support the community and implement custom tools and plugins to manage users and their access based on their relations to various Eclipse projects.
- Eclipse Marketing team would be required to migrate their custom reports from GA to Matomo.
This is more work than I initially expected. The various team involved currently do not have the capability to take on this work.
As much as I would like to migrate away from google analytics, I made the recommendation that we continue to use GA in 2023 and that we re-visit this decision in Q2 of 2024.
Edited by Christopher Guindon Can I suggest we revisit in October rather than March next year. By doing so, we can add this to our annual planning, as I'm fairly certain by next March our planning calendar will be full.
FWIW, I would like to see us make this move in 2024 if at all possible. I do recognize the amount of work it represents, though - so if we decide next fall it's not feasible, then I suspect we simply decide it'll never be worth it.
-
@pwhited3w Considering all our ongoing projects, we need to push this project to 2024.
I am hoping we can start working on this in Q2 2024.
added statein discussion label
added team:webdev label
marked this issue as related to #4406 (moved)
-
We are doing some investigation work this quarter in the hope of deciding on what we will do next regarding website analytics stats for projects: #4406 (comment 2342126)
I am looking for feedback/comments from the community on my thoughts so far!
-
Quick status update: We're actively working on this update to our policy but need more time to finalize it before we publish it.
We are definitely aiming to get this update done by the end of the year. At the same time, we're focusing on making the policy clearer and easier to understand so we are definitely making lots of changes here.
