Federated Computer Docs

Marketing and analytics

Matomo

Full-featured website analytics that keeps visitor data on your own server.

Use instead of
Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, Hotjar (with plugins)
Typical address
matomo.example.com
Project website
matomo.org
Official docs
matomo.org/guide

Overview

Matomo is a web analytics platform comparable to Google Analytics, but the data is stored on your server and never shared with an advertising company. It can be configured to run without cookies, which in many jurisdictions removes the need for a consent banner.

Main capabilities:

  • Visitors: real-time visitors, locations, devices, and visit logs.
  • Behaviour: pages, entry and exit pages, site search, downloads, outlinks, and events.
  • Acquisition: referrers, search engines, social networks, and campaign tracking (UTM parameters).
  • Goals and ecommerce tracking, with conversion and revenue reports.
  • Custom dashboards, segments, scheduled email reports, and annotations.
  • Tag Manager for adding tracking and third-party scripts without editing your site.
  • Privacy controls: IP anonymization, cookieless tracking, Do Not Track, data retention, and GDPR tools.
  • Optional premium plugins for heatmaps, session recordings, funnels, and more.

What it replaces

Matomo replaces Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics, and with premium plugins, Hotjar-style heatmaps and session recordings.

Signing in

Open your Matomo address and sign in with the account created for you. Users can have view, write, or admin access to each website separately.

Add a website

Administrators:

  1. Open Administration (the gear), Websites, Manage, and select Add a new website.
  2. Enter the name, URLs (including variants like www.), time zone, and currency.
  3. Save, then open Tracking code to get the snippet.

Install the tracking code

  • Any website: paste the JavaScript snippet before the closing </head> tag on every page.
  • WordPress: install the Connect Matomo plugin in WordPress and enter your Matomo address and an auth token.
  • Tag Manager: create a container, add a Matomo Analytics tag, publish, and install the container snippet instead.

Visit your site, then check Visitors, Real-time to confirm visits are recorded.

Read your reports

  • Dashboard: widgets you can add, remove, and rearrange.
  • Visitors, Behaviour, Acquisition: the main report areas. Change the date range at the top, and compare periods.
  • Segments: filter any report, for example “visits from newsletter” or “mobile visitors”.
  • Goals: under Goals, Manage goals, define conversions such as visiting a thank-you page or clicking a sign-up button.

Schedule regular email reports from Administration, Personal, Email reports.

Privacy settings

Under Administration, Privacy:

  • Anonymize data: mask part of the IP address and stop tracking user IDs.
  • Users opt-out: embed an opt-out form on your privacy policy page.
  • GDPR tools: find, export, or delete a visitor’s data on request.
  • Delete old raw data to limit how long logs are kept.

For cookieless tracking, disable cookies in the tracking code (_paq.push(['disableCookies']);) and check whether consent is still required in your jurisdiction.

Superpanel settings

  • Access: choose which groups can sign in to Matomo.
  • Super user: Federated Computer sets up the first super user account; contact support to change it.

Matomo processes reports in the background on a schedule that Federated Computer manages. New data usually appears within an hour.

Further reading