Piwik PRO vs. Universal Analytics vs. Google Analytics 4: The most important differences explained

This blog post was originally published on November 23, 2018.

According to W3Techs.com, Google Analytics is used by 55.6% of all websites. Its popularity comes as no surprise – it’s developed by one of the most recognizable brands in the world, offers a vast variety of features and is free. Google offers two kinds of properties: Universal Analytics and brand new Google Analytics 4 (GA4).

However, there are numerous reasons why you might consider an alternative to the Mountain View giant’s product:

1) Control over data. You don’t want to share data about your website visitors with Google. You’re aware that Google would use this information to improve targeting and personalization of its ads, including the ads of your competitors.

2) Traffic limits. Your traffic exceeds the limits of Google Analytics Universal – 10 million hits per month. You’re looking for a more competitively priced analytics platform than the premium version of Google Analytics – Google Analytics 360.

3) PII usage. You’d like to work with personally identifiable data (PII)  or personal data)and take on all the responsibilities it entails. You’re hunting for a platform that would let you integrate different sources of personal data and create single customer views out of them. GA doesn’t give you this option.

4) Types of tracked properties. You’re seeking features or integrations that Google Analytics doesn’t have. For example, you want a product with a dedicated solution for tracking SharePoint intranet. Or you’d like to collect data from secure member areas of your websites and apps according to your internal security policies.

5) GDPR and HIPAA compliance. You prefer software that would support you in complying with data security and privacy laws. For instance – one with a module for handling consents and data requests under GDPR, or which allows you to fulfill the obligations of HIPAA.

6) Data hosting options. You’re looking for a platform that offers flexible hosting options. Because of data protection regulations, data residency laws or your strict internal policies you’re not allowed to store your data in the public cloud or in random locations.

7) Raw data access. You want to push raw analytics data to e.g. a data warehouse or BI software. Universal Analytics lets you retrieve collected information only in an aggregated form. In GA4 you can access raw data via BigQuery. 

8) Always fresh data with no sampling. You would like to operate on the latest and complete dataset. With Universal Analytics, you have to wait up to 48 hours for your reports and can expect sampling when you reach more than 500K sessions in a month. In the case of GA4 you have to wait up to 8 hours. 

9) Support and professional services. You want to receive premium-level support, implementation and onboarding. You’d like to have someone to advise you on how to set up tracking, create reports, perform custom integrations and to make you comfortable using the platform.

See how Piwik PRO Analytics Suite – both the free Core plan and paid Enterprise plan – fares against Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4.

Table of contents:

• Features and modules
• Hosting options
• Data processing, connectivity and collection flexibility
• Reporting features and integrations
• Tag manager
• Privacy compliance
• Support and customer care
• Data security
• Piwik PRO vs. Google Analytics – which one should you choose

Number of features and modules

The first important thing to consider is the number of modules provided by each product. Google offers an analytics and tag management system. Piwik PRO gives you more with Tag Manager and Consent Manager The additional modules enable you to meet a wider range of data privacy and security regulations. They also help you get more data and do more with it. 

Hosting options

In the case of Universal Analytics and GA4, you get randomly assigned public cloud hosting. As for Piwik PRO Enterprise, you can choose between:

• Cloud data centers in the Netherlands, Germany, the US, Singapore and EU-owned cloud servers in Sweden.
• 60+ Azure and AWS private cloud regions, and an EU-owned private cloud in Sweden.
• On-premises hosting options in the location of your choice.

With Piwik PRO Core, you get secure cloud hosting in Germany.

Data processing, connectivity & collection flexibility

More data collection flexibility  means greater freedom in using your analytics platform.

Data freshness

The freshness of your data describes the time it takes to collect, process and deliver data to your reports. In the case of Universal Analytics:

Processing latency is 24-48 hours. Standard accounts that send more than 200,000 sessions per day to Analytics will result in the reports being refreshed only once a day. This can delay updates to reports and metrics for up to two days. To restore intra-day processing, reduce the number of sessions your account sends to < 200,000 per day. 
[…]
When intra-day data is available, it may not contain every event because some hits may be delayed due to implementation or network constraints. [source]

In Piwik PRO reports based on the same (or much bigger) data sample would be generated in 30 minutes or less.

Data sampling

In products such as Universal Analytics, your data is aggregated and delivered to you as a random data set. This means you can’t be sure if your reports are displaying overall traffic and meaningful trends, or are off the mark.

With Universal Analytics, data sampling occurs automatically when you reach the monthly limit of 500,000 sessions. In GA4, sampling takes place only in advanced reporting when the data exceeds 10 million in counts.

In Piwik PRO, on the other hand, sampling is optional. You can turn it on, for instance, if your website experiences over a billion actions per month, to enhance the speed at which you access your analytics data. 

As for traffic limits, the number of hits the platform lets you  track on a monthly basis, for Google Analytics it’s 10 million hits. In Google Analytics 4 there are no hit limits. At the same time, Piwik PRO Core allows you to track up to 500,000 hits, whereas the Enterprise plan’s limit is one billion hits or more, depending on your configuration. With Piwik PRO, you’ll work on 100% of your data.

Access to raw data, reporting API & integrations with BI tools

When it comes to data connectivity, there are some differences between Piwik PRO and Universal Analytics. The biggest is the ability to access raw data through API, BigQuery, CSV export and Tableau connector. Here Piwik PRO has the upper hand.

With Google Analytics 4 you may access raw data via BigQuery. 

All compared products have API-related features. You can take advantage of a reporting API to extract data from your reports. Also, all vendors allow you to integrate your analytics with popular BI and data visualization software. However, in the case of Universal Analytics, this capability is limited to aggregated data.

Limit of properties

Finally, Piwik PRO Enterprise allows you to employ an unlimited number of properties and views, while Piwik PRO Core’s limit is 10. Meanwhile, Universal Analytics offers 50 properties per account and Google Analytics 4 – 100 properties.

Piwik PRO vs. Google Analytics – reporting features and integrations

At first glance, the platforms seem similar, as they allow you to:

• Track web and mobile apps by means of JavaScript and SDKs.
• Get insight into user actions and characteristics with audience, acquisition and behavior reporting.
• Take advantage of easy-to-use custom reports.

That said, there are some crucial differences in how the platforms collect and present data. Let’s have a look at what you can expect from the vendors.

Processing personal data

If you’d like to collect and process personal data, Google platforms won’t be the right partner for the job. At Google’s help center you can read that:

To protect user privacy, Google policies mandate that no data be passed to Google that Google could use or recognize as personally identifiable information (PII). PII includes, but is not limited to, information such as email addresses, personal mobile numbers, and social security numbers. [source]

This means that even your user-level reports in GA should be stripped of PII. Otherwise, you are violating the platform’s terms of service. This can result in Google suspending your GA account.

As for Piwik PRO, both plans let you gather personal data, including sensitive information, and safeguard its privacy and security with Consent Manager and additional data protection measures.

Secure member areas analytics

Now, let’s move on to analyzing data in secure member areas of your websites and apps.

If you decide to analyze and use the information from those places,  make sure you are doing it with software that provides the highest level of security.

Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4 won’t give you control over where your data is stored. Also, they use your data to improve their services and share it with numerous products, including Google Ads. For these reasons, they may not be the right products to analyze data from sensitive areas of your website or app.

Piwik PRO gives you full data control. On top of that, the Enterprise plan allows you to decide where you store the collected information – in a public cloud, private cloud or on your own premises. 

With Piwik PRO Core you get secure cloud hosting in Germany. You can also apply consent management to further protect the privacy of your visitors and fulfill regulatory requirements.

Multi-channel attribution

The customer journey rarely finishes in a single browsing session, which makes it difficult to analyze which channel or touchpoint should get the credit for conversion. Both Piwik PRO and Universal Analytics offer you multi-channel attribution tools to help you with this task. 

Besides predefined attribution models, you get custom ones to fit your business needs. You’re able to analyze:

• Conversion paths – traffic channels (channel, medium, source/medium, source) visitors use before they convert
• Time to conversion – how many days visitors take to convert
• Path length – the touchpoints visitors use before they convert
• Compare attribution models such as last-click, position-based, first-click, last-non-direct-click, time-decay, linear and custom to make a more complex and detailed evaluation of channels and touchpoints.  

What’s more, Universal Analytics allows you to segment your attribution reports. It provides you with data-driven attribution reports that work based on algorithms and let you assess converting and non-converting paths.

Funnel analytics

In Piwik PRO, you can build funnels out of any type of page view and custom event. In addition, funnels are:

• Retroactive – present historical data tracked before the funnel was defined
• Available immediately after creation
• Flexible – don’t require a goal as a last step
• Filtrable – allow you to define each step in the funnel at a highly granular level

No matter when you decide to configure your funnel, you’ll always have access to the full dataset of both historical and recent user actions. 

In turn, funnel visualization in Universal Analytics:

• Requires assigning a goal.
• Can’t be viewed using a specific segment of sessions.
• Doesn’t include historical data. [source]

The Universal Analytics goal funnels appear in the funnel visualization and goal flow report.

Google Analytics 4 users have access to the funnel exploration features. 
In GA4, the funnel exploration utilizes data that’s already been collected. In Universal Analytics, using funnels requires defining a goal. The report will only show data collected going forward from that point. Whereas in Universal Analytics step customization is based on Page dimension, in GA4 it is based broadly on events, with filtering by other dimensions.

The GA4 funnel report looks like the one below:

User flow reporting

Piwik PRO’s user flow reports provide you with the following options:

• To set up a user flow report for interactions such as a page view, download, search, custom event, and more.
• To see a breakdown of dimensions related to sessions. For example, you can view channels, referrers or campaigns.
• To add up to ten interactions.

The user flow in Piwik PRO has three settings that help you analyze visitor paths:

• Standard: shows you the next interactions after the key interaction.
• Transition: illustrates the interactions before and after the key interaction.
• Reverse: shows you the interactions preceding the key interaction.

As for Universal Analytics, it offers many types of flow reporting. The list includes:

• Behavior flow
• Goal flow
• Users flow
• Events flow
• Funnel visualization
• Google Play referral flow

However, when using them you’ll stumble across the following limitations, which Piwik PRO doesn’t have:

• Flow reports support only session-based segments. User-based segments are disabled for flow reports. You can apply only a single segment to a flow report.
• Flow reports cannot display data for more than 100,000 sessions. If you have more than 100,000 sessions in the data set, the sampled data appears in the flow reports. Adjust the date range to reduce the number of sessions in the report. [source]

GA4 doesn’t have a behavior flow report. Instead, you can use your exploration templates to follow your user’s journey. Use your funnel exploration report to track a predetermined path or your path exploration for free-form tracking.

The first option is a funnel exploration report – you may view it in the previous section. It lets you pre-select the path you want to investigate. 

The second option is a path exploration report. It allows you to look at your user’s journey, but it is free-flowing.

Network domain and service provider dimensions

Omitting the traffic that comes from your employees allows you to focus on data related to external visitors – your present and future customers.

In Piwik PRO, your reports can ignore internal traffic for each website or app, or for the whole account. In Google Analytics 4 and Universal Analytics the lack of support for network domain and service provider dimensions means you may have issues with excluding those sources from your reports.

Custom channel grouping

Piwik PRO and Universal Analytics offer a handy feature called custom channel grouping that provides flexibility in organizing your incoming traffic. You can connect all traffic sources to your website in one channel grouping that you define.  

For example, connect similar referrer URLs into one group. Take Facebook traffic and the different subdomains it uses. Instead of having multiple rows in your source/medium report (each one for Facebook traffic), you can get just one – Facebook organic.

Piwik PRO lets you create 10 groups in one custom grouping, but this limit can be increased. Universal Analytics, in contrast, lets you create 50 groups. 

Custom channel grouping is not available in Google Analytics 4. You can report the performance of a marketing channel using the exploration report. GA4 is not consolidating the data concerning a given channel. You need to identify all the traffic sources (referrers) belonging to a given channel and manually consolidate the data using the exploration report. You cannot edit the default channel group definitions. It means you have to follow a disciplined approach while using the UTM parameters.

Metasites

Metasites let you combine data from two or more websites to analyze them as a whole. They save you the time you’d have to spend on copying and calculating data for separate websites. Instead, you see all the relevant data in a single view:

You’ll be able to use this feature in Piwik PRO and Google Analytics 4 but Universal Analytics doesn’t provide you with this functionality.

Real-time analytics

In Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4, real-time reports allow you to monitor activity on your website as it happens. For example, you can see how many people are on your site, which pages or events they’re interacting with and what goals they complete.

You won’t have this option with Piwik PRO. Currently, the data has a 30-minute delay to allow for sessions to complete before displaying them in the session log. We plan on adding full real-time reporting in the future.

Integrations

In Piwik PRO you’ll find:

• Full integration with Search Console allowing you to combine GSC and analytics data. 
• Google Ads integration – to let you keep track of your marketing budget and stay up to date with campaign results.
• Google Data Studio integration – to connect analytics data with data from different sources and use it in one dashboard in Google Data Studio
• Google Sheets integration – to allow you to work with your analytics data in Google Sheets and easily manipulate, filter, and visualize it as you want it.
• Additional synchronous tag templates allowing you to use A/B testing tools such as Optimizely, VWO, AB Tasty.

To the surprise of no one, Google platforms provide you with native integrations with Google Ads, Google Search Console and A/B testing tools. But there are also some differences, For example, there is no Google Sheets integration with Google Analytics 4.

SharePoint analytics

If your organization uses SharePoint, you may want to seek an analytics platform that, in addition to tracking your business websites and apps, would also analyze user behavior in your digital workspace. 

You’ll get this option as part of the Piwik PRO Enterprise plan. Among other things, it lets you:

• Find out how users engage with your publications and news web elements – what they like, save for later, follow and comment on.
• Enrich analytics data with User Profile Attributes retrieved from SharePoint Active Directory such as user login, user display name, office location, department and job title.
• Track your internal email campaigns.
• Organize your reports by team and office location.

Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4 don’t provide a dedicated integration with SharePoint. You can try to connect your intranet website with the platforms manually, but this solution has some serious drawbacks. Among other things, you won’t be able to track SharePoint-specific user characteristics or collect and upload personal data, e.g. from your Active Directory.

Tag manager

Universal Analytics, GA4 and Piwik PRO provide you with a tag manager with a vast array of features. The list includes asynchronous tag support, extensive library of triggers, conditions and tag templates, as well as custom tags, variables and analytics tag templates. You can also employ tag and debug mode and freely export and import configurations between your websites. 

Piwik PRO Tag Manager supports synchronous tags that can be used to eliminate a possible 
flash of original content when you run A/B tests. Plus, you have content personalization and custom pop-ups at your disposal to improve your marketing campaigns with tailored banners, ads and HTML elements.

Thanks to Piwik PRO’s integration with Consent Manager, you can adjust your tracking according to user privacy preferences and prevent tags from loading before you obtain legal visitor consent. 

You won’t find these functionalities in Google Tag Manager.

Privacy compliance

With an increasing number of regulations, companies must pay more attention to how they collect and process user data. From this section, you’ll learn which product will support you better with this task.

Control over data

If your analytics vendor gives you full control over collected data, you can be sure that you’re the only party having access to the information about your clients and have full control over how this data is used. 

That wouldn’t be the case with Google. As we’ve said before, its product uses your analytics data to improve their services, and the information you collect in your tool is then shared with clients of other Google products, including:

• Google Ads
• YouTube
• and other Google products

You can read in Google’s Privacy & Terms that:

Many websites and apps use Google services to improve their content and keep it free. When they integrate our services, these sites and apps share information with Google.

For example, when you visit a website that uses advertising services like AdSense, including analytics tools like Google Analytics, or embeds video content from YouTube, your web browser automatically sends certain information to Google. This includes the URL of the page you’re visiting and your IP address. We may also set cookies on your browser or read cookies that are already there. Apps that use Google advertising services also share information with Google, such as the name of the app and a unique identifier for advertising.

Piwik PRO gives you full control over the data you collect. That, combined with flexible data hosting, allows you to employ analytics in more contexts. Even if you’re handling sensitive data or operate in an industry that requires stringent privacy measures – be it healthcare, finance or the public sector – you can still tap into opportunities that come with collecting first-party data about your visitors. 

GDPR and LGPD

New data privacy laws, including Europe’s GDPR and Brazil’s LGPD, obligate you to use software that supports your compliance efforts.

Unfortunately, Google products don’t necessarily fit the bill. To address the requirements of these privacy laws, Google mandates you  to dump all information classified as personal data, except for:
Online identifiers, including cookie identifiers, internet protocol addresses and device identifiers; client identifiers [source]

As for this type of personal data, it advises you to anonymize IP addresses and encrypt other identifiers with the minimum hashing requirement of SHA256. Here you can find Google’s guides on how to avoid collecting PII and anonymize IP addresses.

However, hashing is not a sufficient anonymization method. Under GDPR, hashed data is still considered personal data and you need a valid visitor consent to collect and process it. Google doesn’t provide a tool that would help you with the task.

Piwik PRO, on the other hand, allows you to tackle compliance in two ways:

• By turning on Piwik PRO Consent Manager. It’s a piece of software dedicated to collecting, managing and storing both records of consent decisions and data subject requests. You configure it using a visual interface.
• By anonymizing your data using one of three available methods. You can read more about them here: 6 ways analytics software collects data online.

Anonymization mode can be also used in combination with Consent Manager, when a visitor declines or disregards your consent request. Then, if a user grants you consents later in the session, you’ll be able to merge their anonymous and personal data into a single record.

CCPA

Another important new law to abide by is CCPA. Under the Californian legislation, consumers have the right to obtain a record of the personal information companies have on them and can request to have their data deleted or to stop the sale of their information. 

In Google platforms, you’ll have to configure the mechanism for processing and honoring visitor requests manually. 

Piwik PRO, however, gives you a handy user request management system that comes with Piwik PRO Consent Manager.

Data residency laws

Numerous countries, such as Germany, Australia, Canada, India, Switzerland, Russia and China, have introduced laws that order companies to keep their residents’ personal data within a country’s physical borders.

Meeting all those requirements is particularly difficult if you use Google platforms, as it doesn’t provide flexibility in terms of server locations – your data will be stored across different Google Data Centers. Here you can find their whole list.

With Piwik PRO Enterprise you can choose between multiple private cloud regions of Microsoft Azure,AWS and Elastx, or keep the data on your own servers. This in turn allows you to comply with the requirements of data residency laws.

Piwik PRO Core provides you with secure cloud data storage in Germany.

Support and customer care

In the case of Universal Analytics, Google Analytics 4 and Piwik PRO Core, you will be able to take advantage of vast online documentation and help from the community.

As a Piwik PRO Enterprise client you can take advantage of the following services:

Dedicated account manager – assists you in defining your business needs and translating them into actionable advice for using the platform, provides product training and is your first point of contact in case of any platform-related questions.

Detailed documentation – infrastructure guidelines for optimal product performance in the case of an on-premises installation.

Personalized onboarding and support – to help you set up and configure your web analytics instance. An SLA ensures that all your needs are met as you use the product. These services can be provided remotely or on-site, in cooperation with your internal team.

Dedicated service delivery manager –  is your first point of contact in case of emergencies or web analytics performance issues.

Custom integration and development (extra service) – to integrate PPAS with your data ecosystem (e.g. CRMs or BI tools) and to adapt the platform to your requirements through custom development.

Analytics consulting (extra service) – to advise you on what to change in your tracking and reporting to bring you closer to your business objectives.

On-demand custom training and workshops (extra service) – to teach you how to use analytics insights in your day-to-day work. Every training is unique as we tailor them to the use cases of particular teams and stakeholders.

24/7 monitoring and incident handling – to make sure your platform is up and running and performing well.

Data security

Piwik PRO, Google Analytics 4 and Universal Analytics undertake external security audits and provide their clients with data hosting on redundant, ISO 27001 and SOC 2 certified infrastructure. They also let you manage access to your analytics instance by creating user groups and assigning them with different permission levels. 

Finally, Piwik PRO and Google alike are ISO 27001 certified as companies.

HIPAA compliance

If you’re operating in healthcare, you surely know that handling data in line with HIPAA – The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 – introduces some serious data protection demands. They can’t be met with many popular web analytics products, including Google Analytics.

In its guide on “Best practices to avoid sending Personally Identifiable Information (PII)” Google explicitly states that:

Unless otherwise specified in writing by Google, Google does not intend uses of Google Analytics to create obligations under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, as amended, (“HIPAA”), and makes no representations that Google Analytics satisfies HIPAA requirements. If you are (or become) a Covered Entity or Business Associate under HIPAA, you may not use Google Analytics for any purpose or in any manner involving Protected Health Information unless you have received prior written consent to such use from Google.

Piwik PRO Enterprise, in turn, allows for collecting and storing PHI (protected health information) in line with the law in both on-premises and cloud hosting options.

Piwik PRO Core is as secure and privacy-friendly as the paid plan for the platform. However, since it uses servers located in the EU, it doesn’t satisfy the demands of HIPAA.

SAML integration 

In the case of Piwik PRO, SAML integration comes with the Enterprise plan, but is unavailable for the Core users. With Google Analytics 4 and Universal Analytics you’ll have to be a GSuite Enterprise user to access this feature.

Piwik PRO vs. Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4

We hope that with this extensive comparison we’ve managed to answer some of your questions about similarities and differences between Piwik PRO, Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4.

But if you’d like to tap into an even deeper comparison of the platforms, you’ll find it in our ebook:
Piwik PRO vs. Universal Analytics & Google Analytics 360 & Google Analytics 4 & Google Analytics 360 4.

Here we list over 100 product features, including data visualization methods, types of reports and more. Be sure to check it out:

Comparison

Comparison

Piwik PRO vs. Universal Analytics & Google Analytics 360 & Google Analytics 4 & Google Analytics 4 360: The most comprehensive comparison

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Want to learn more about what Piwik PRO Analytics Suite has to offer? Create your free PRO Core account or get a demo of your perfect Piwik PRO setup. 

This comparison is based on the publicly available information gathered in June 2022.