Web analytics and visitor tracking platforms for measuring traffic, user behaviour, and website performance metrics. All available with one-click installation on 365i web hosting.
Self-hosted web analytics puts the tracking script, the database and the reports on hosting you control, which is precisely why UK and EU organisations keep choosing it over Google Analytics. Matomo is the serious option, at version 5.13.0 in August 2026, and it brings the plugin ecosystem, the documentation and the import tools with it. Open Web Analytics is the quieter alternative, still shipping (1.12.0 in August 2026) and now asking for PHP 8.2 or newer, but with a much thinner ecosystem behind it.
The comparison set is Google Analytics 4, which costs nothing and sends your visitor data to Google; Plausible, from US$9 a month for 10,000 monthly pageviews; and Fathom, at US$45 a month for 500,000. Matomo will happily sell you a hosted version too, from around 29 euros a month with the data held in Frankfurt. Self-hosting the community edition swaps all of that for hosting plus your own maintenance, with no traffic ceiling written into a plan.
The regulatory history is the part people get wrong in both directions. Between January and June 2022 the Austrian, French and Italian data protection authorities each found that sending visitor data to Google in the United States broke the GDPR transfer rules after the Schrems II judgment. The EU-US Data Privacy Framework adequacy decision of July 2023 changed that transfer position, and Google is certified under it, so Google Analytics is not simply outlawed. What never changed is the separate question of cookie consent, and that is where self-hosting still earns its keep.
Situations we see often. If one of these sounds like you, this category is worth a look.
A council service or an NHS-adjacent charity has to be able to state exactly where visitor data sits and who else can read it, usually in writing, usually to somebody who will check. A Matomo install on a UK package with the raw logs in its own MySQL answers that in one sentence, which a third-party tracker cannot.
From 5 February 2026 the amended PECR rules exempt first-party analytics cookies used only by the site operator for statistical purposes, as long as people are told and can opt out free of charge. Self-hosted Matomo configured without the marketing extras is the shape that fits; a tracker that also feeds a vendor is not.
One Matomo install tracks many sites, so the marginal cost of the twenty-first client is a database and a login rather than another subscription line. The trade is that archiving twenty sites is a real scheduled job, and that job, not the tracking, is what you size the plan on.
Joining web behaviour to CRM records or order data means working at visit level, not through a reporting API with rate limits and sampling. Self-hosting gives you direct SQL access to the log tables, which is the difference between having a dashboard and having a data source.
Great news for our Matomo users in France, the Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés (CNIL), has confirmed that Matomo can now be used to collect data without tracking consent.
Read the conditions rather than the headline. The exemption is French and it is conditional: IP anonymisation, no User ID, no ecommerce tracking, no heatmaps or session recording, a working opt-out and capped retention. It is a real regulator endorsing the self-hosted model, but a default installation does not qualify on its own.
cookies used solely for statistical or analytics purposes, where the data is used only by the website operator
That final clause is the entire argument for self-hosting analytics in the UK. A tool running on your own server and reporting only to you meets "used only by the website operator" in a way a third-party tracker feeding a vendor product does not. It still does not remove the duty to tell people and offer a free opt-out.
Self-hosted analytics applications have an unusual workload: very high write throughput from page-view ingestion, occasional heavy aggregation queries during reporting. We tune MySQL for sustained writes, recommend a separate database for analytics data so it does not compete with the main application, and set sensible retention policies because raw event data accumulates fast. For sites doing a few million page views a month, a managed cloud server with NVMe storage handles the workload without breaking sweat.
Analytics is the one thing here that is a database workload, not a web one. Every pageview writes rows into the visit and action log tables, and the pre-processed report tables grow alongside them, faster again for every segment and custom report you define. A modest brochure site sits on shared hosting for years. A busy site tracked at full detail outgrows a shared database allowance long before it troubles PHP.
Two settings decide whether it behaves. Turn browser-triggered archiving off once you are past a few hundred visits a day and run Matomo's core:archive console command from cron instead, hourly being the usual advice, or whoever opens the reports pays for it with a very slow page. Then set the purge for old raw logs and reports under Administration and Privacy, the only control that meaningfully shrinks the database. Matomo warns that logs deleted before their reports are processed are gone for good, so get archiving working first.
Self-hosting is not compliance. It removes an international transfer and a third-party recipient, two of the harder problems. It does not write your privacy notice, enforce a retention period, or stop the tool collecting things you have no basis to collect.
A managed cloud server is the answer once archiving becomes a long job, or one install serves many sites.
Common questions we hear from people running website analytics applications on 365i hosting.
No, and anybody telling you otherwise is selling something. Self-hosting removes two of the harder problems: there is no international transfer to defend, and no third party receiving visitor data for its own purposes. The rest is still yours. You need a lawful basis, a privacy notice describing what you actually collect, a retention period you enforce, and the tool configured so it stops gathering things you cannot justify. Self-hosting makes compliance achievable rather than automatic.
Possibly not in the UK, if it is configured carefully. From 5 February 2026 the amended PECR rules exempt certain low-risk cookies from consent, including first-party analytics used solely for statistical purposes where the data is used only by the site operator, provided you tell people clearly and offer a free opt-out. Self-hosted Matomo fits that shape; a third-party tracker that also feeds the vendor does not. France goes further with a specific CNIL exemption, but only when Matomo is configured to the CNIL conditions. Take advice before removing a banner.
Not any more, and it pays to be accurate about why. In 2022 the Austrian, French and Italian regulators each found that transferring visitor data to Google in the United States broke the GDPR after Schrems II. The EU-US Data Privacy Framework adequacy decision in July 2023 restored a legal route for those transfers, and Google is certified under it. The framework is still being challenged in the courts, and the separate consent question never went away. The transfer argument for self-hosting is weaker than it was in 2022. The control argument is not.
The tracked site barely notices, but a Matomo install can slow itself down badly. The tracking request is small and asynchronous. The weight is in what happens afterwards, as pageviews write rows into the visit and action log tables and the pre-processed report tables grow beside them. Leave browser-triggered archiving switched on and whoever opens the reports pays for that processing with a painfully slow page. Disable it and run the core:archive console command from cron instead.
Matomo, for almost everybody. It has the documentation, the plugin ecosystem, the Google Analytics import tooling and the regulatory paperwork a compliance officer will actually read. Open Web Analytics is still shipping, reached 1.12.0 in August 2026 and now wants PHP 8.2 or newer, and it is a fair lightweight choice for a modest site or a developer who prefers a smaller codebase. If you are picking one to build a long-term reporting habit on, pick the one with the larger community behind it.
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All 2 website analytics applications available with one-click installation on our fast UK web hosting.
