Matomo

Matomo is the kitchen-sink Google Analytics replacement you self-host. Session recordings, heatmaps, funnels, A/B testing — it does everything GA4 does, except your data stays on your servers. For teams with GDPR headaches or users who refuse to hand their analytics to Google, Matomo is the obvious answer.

Plausible and Umami are the lightweight alternatives — both ship ~1KB scripts versus Matomo's 23KB, and they're dramatically easier to set up. But they're dashboards, not analytics suites. If you need heatmaps, user flows, or e-commerce tracking, Plausible can't help you. PostHog is the commercial alternative that combines analytics with feature flags.

The catch: Matomo is GPL-3.0, written in PHP, and requires MySQL — the setup feels like 2015 WordPress hosting. It's heavy to self-host, the UI is dated, and premium features (heatmaps, session recordings) require paid plugins even on self-hosted. For most indie projects, Plausible or Umami gives you 90% of what you need with 10% of the hassle.