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-- 4 min read

How to migrate from Matomo to Web-Tracking.eu

Matomo is the Swiss Army knife of analytics, but it brings cookies, server maintenance, and a steep learning curve. A practical migration guide for teams who want simpler.

Why people leave Matomo

Matomo is the most feature-rich tool on this list. Heatmaps, session recordings, A/B testing, form analytics, e-commerce reports, custom dimensions, segments — it has more dials than most teams ever turn. It is open source, it can be self-hosted, and the on-premise version is free.

Why migrate, then?

  • Default Matomo uses cookies. The standard installation sets first-party cookies for visitor identification. There is a "cookieless" mode, but it relies on a configuration cocktail (heuristics + IP hashing + visit window) that some EU DPAs accept and others squint at. Either way, the default install is not cookieless, and many self-hosted Matomo deployments are still running it.
  • Self-hosting is real work. A self-hosted Matomo means a MySQL database, PHP, regular updates, log rotation, archiving cron jobs, and a server to run all of it on. For a small business this is a part-time admin role nobody wanted.
  • The cloud version is not cheap. Matomo Cloud starts at 19 EUR per month and scales up quickly with traffic.
  • The dashboard is dense. Matomo's strength — featuring everything — becomes a weakness when you just want to know "how many visitors did I have yesterday and where did they come from."
  • Onboarding new team members. If only one person in the company knows where to click in Matomo, that's a bus factor.

Honest counterpoint: Matomo is the only tool here that does heatmaps and session recordings natively. If you need those, Matomo is a legitimate choice and Web-Tracking.eu is not a replacement for that part.

What is different about Web-Tracking.eu

Web-Tracking.eu is hosted, not self-hosted. There is no database to manage, no PHP to update, no cron to debug. The script writes nothing to the user's device, no matter the configuration — there is no "cookieless mode" because there is no cookie mode. Hosting is in Germany only, on Hetzner. The dashboard is deliberately narrower than Matomo's: page views, referrers, devices, countries, UTM, conversions, engagement score, Search Console. That's it.

Step-by-step migration

  1. Audit what you actually use in Matomo. Open your Matomo and look at which reports you've opened in the last 90 days. For most teams, the answer is page views, top pages, referrers, countries, and one or two custom events. The rest is unused.
  2. Decide what you'll need. If heatmaps, session recordings, or A/B testing are on that 90-day list, Web-Tracking.eu is not a one-for-one replacement. You may need a separate tool (Hotjar, Microsoft Clarity) alongside it.
  3. Sign up on the free tier at web-tracking.eu. 10,000 events per month, one site.
  4. Install the script. Drop it in your <head>. If you're on WordPress, the official plugin handles it. If you're using Matomo Tag Manager, you can install via that, but a direct script tag is cleaner.
  5. Run both in parallel for four weeks. This is the part where Matomo users find the biggest number gap, because Matomo's default cookies inflate uniqueness counts somewhat compared to a server-side hash. Web-Tracking.eu numbers are usually 10 to 25 percent lower on uniques and roughly comparable on page views.
  6. Migrate goals and events. Matomo's _paq.push(['trackEvent', ...]) becomes a similar one-line call. Conversions configured as Matomo Goals become Web-Tracking.eu conversions.
  7. Export historical data. Matomo lets you export per-report CSVs. Save them. Web-Tracking.eu does not import Matomo data automatically.
  8. Decommission Matomo. If you were self-hosting, this is the satisfying part: you get to delete a server. Tar up the data first, in case you need to look at something later. Cancel Matomo Cloud at the end of the billing period.
  9. Update your privacy policy. Remove the Matomo paragraph and any "we use first-party cookies for analytics" wording. If the cookie banner was there only for Matomo, you can usually remove it.

What you'll lose

  • Heatmaps and session recordings. Web-Tracking.eu doesn't have these. Pair with Microsoft Clarity (free, hosted in the US — be aware) or another tool if you need them.
  • A/B testing. Matomo's built-in A/B testing module isn't replaced. Use a dedicated tool.
  • Self-hosting. If sovereignty over the actual server matters to you, Matomo on-prem is irreplaceable.
  • Form analytics, media analytics, and e-commerce reports at the level of detail Matomo offers.
  • Custom segments and dimensions at Matomo's depth.

What you'll gain

  • No server to maintain.
  • No cookies, no banner question for the analytics layer.
  • A dashboard that loads in two seconds instead of fifteen.
  • An engagement score per visit (bounce / skim / engaged / gold) that Matomo doesn't compute.
  • Built-in Google Search Console integration.
  • One-click GA4 historical import.
  • Pricing that starts at 0 EUR (free tier), then 5 / 15 / 39 EUR per month.

Try the free tier

If you've been running Matomo for years and the maintenance burden has crept up, sign up at web-tracking.eu and try the free tier in parallel. If you discover you really do use heatmaps every week, Matomo is still there. If you discover that 90 percent of your Matomo time was looking at "top pages," the migration is going to feel like a relief.