I was using Google Analytics for quite some time but was never really satisfied with the service. I’ve been stuck countless times in the menus and options and never found an easy way to get out. But, it’s not that bad after all. GA is a comprehensive service that offers everything you can think of in terms of tracking your website users behaviour, but sometimes you just want to get simple insights that are cleanly laid out and easy to understand.

The search for a better analytics platform impressed me with the available options, but none was good or free like Google Analytics. I’ve tried every service out there, but one service kept popping up as highly recommended in every online review and that was Piwik. I have decided to try it out.

Piwik is open source and regulary updated. With over 2.000.000 users world-wide and clients like T-Mobile, Wikimedia and Forbes, I could say that this is a well tested and reliable platform. The best thing about Piwik is that you can download the software for free and host it on your own server so you can have 100% data ownership of the data that is collected. For some users, installing the service on a dedicated server can be a more challenging task, since you first have to configure the server itself, but if you are using a hosting service with cPanel and Softaculous, then you can install Piwik with one click.

The interface would look pretty refreshing for someone who’ve been using GA for a long time. It’s clean, very well laid out, it has a fully customizable dashboard and all the unnecessary stuff has been removed. The best thing about Piwik and being open source is that developers can fully customize it to suit their needs, there’s plenty of available addons, and great plugins for the most used CMS like WordPress, Joomla and others.