Piwik PRO vs.
Google Analytics 360

Google Analytics 360 is a more sophisticated paid version of Google Analytics, the leader in tracking website visitors. With advanced analysis, data-driven attribution, integrations, personalization, testing and optimization tools, the product has earned its strong position. However, there are reasons you might be searching for an alternative.  

• Privacy compliance. If our organization manages personal data and personally identifiable information PII on a daily basis, you should be certain that you are operating in accordance with legal regulations. You might have to keep the data in your country because of data residency and sovereignty laws, plus the privacy and security requirements of GDPR, HIPAA or the European Banking Authority guidelines. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
  
  The solution would be to have the data stored on-premises or in a private cloud to ensure appropriate security and regulatory compliance.

• Sharing your data is not an option. You don’t want to reveal or share information about your visitors with Google. You realize that they would use that data for advertising, to enhance ad targeting and personalization, even the ads of your competitors. So you need complete ownership to have full control over it. 
• Financial aspects. Maybe the free version of GA doesn’t meet your expectations. For instance, if you miss valuable functionalities or reach 10M hit limits, and the hefty price tag of GA360 is a hurdle. You might think about another solution that gives you a full stack of useful features without overspending your budget. 
• Support and professional expertise. Whether you face technical problems, need assistance with product implementation, onboarding, or consult analytics issues. You want to make the best use of the software so expect some extra service. 

With all this in view, in the following chapters you find an extensive comparison between Google Analytics 360 and Piwik PRO. We’ve prepared it taking into consideration criteria, such as:

• Hosting options
• Data processing and connectivity
• Analytics – data collection flexibility
• Reporting features and integrations
• Data ownership, privacy and anonymization
• Tag manager
• Customer care & SLA
• Data security

Below you’ll find a table that covers only the most crucial aspects you should take into account  from the business angle. For full coverage, we recommend reading the whole page.

*Basic support, advanced reporting available from Piwik PRO Analytics Suite 13.0

Piwik PRO lets you choose a flexible hosting plan. You can deploy it on your own infrastructure, as well as in AWS and Microsoft Azure private clouds or a public cloud with secure servers located in Germany, the Netherlands or the US, but you decide in which data center your information will reside.

Ensuring the right data storage setup is critical if your organization handles personal data, especially sensitive data. This applies to organizations in the healthcare, government, banking and telecoms sectors in particular. In these areas the security demands are extremely stringent as the risk is immense. Such industries are highly regulated and any privacy violation could lead to critical consequences damaging to your business.

Unfortunately, in Google Analytics 360 you can only choose a cloud deployment. It means your data will be transferred across Google’s data centres in North & South America, Europe and Asia. From a privacy perspective this can raise certain legal issues, but we’ll talk about that more in chapter 6. 

With Google Analytics 360, you have to overcome some hurdles. First, you wait up to 4 hours for your reports. Second, you can expect sampling when you reach more than 100M sessions in a month, and that can hurt your reports. Third, you need BigQuery to have access to raw data, and the oldest records you get will be from up to 13 months. 

In Piwik PRO you can count on data freshness every 30 minutes. Regarding sampling, we do it only at your request. In other words, even if your website records hundreds of millions actions per month you still have smooth access to complete analytics data sets. 

Raw data is where Piwik PRO shines. It’s available directly, without any additional software or plugins. You also access valuable historical information from 25 months or more in the past, depending on your configuration or contract. 

It’s worth mentioning that both vendors offer a reporting API to extract aggregated report data or apply it to enrich your analyses. You can take advantage of the integration with popular BI and data visualization software such as Tableau or Power BI to enhance and speed up your analytics processes.

* GA360 – Data from up to 13 months
**Piwik PRO – Data from 25 months or more, depending on your configuration or contract

With Piwik PRO and GA360, you can obtain any data through custom dimensions. In addition to that, you receive standard JavaScript tags and support for mobile SDK to gather information from different apps.

In addition, in Piwik PRO you’ll be able to track an unlimited number of websites. In GA360 you have only 50 properties by default, but you can upgrade it to a higher number on request. 

Features

Both products are up for the task when you:

• need standard web and app reporting 
• want to monitor metasites, detailed session log 
• perform content grouping 
• apply advanced filters and segments

Both vendors let you keep tabs on reports so that whenever a metric value rises, drops, or reaches a certain level you’ll receive an email alert.

However, if you’re looking for a product that allows you to process personal data and PII or track secure member areas in accordance with privacy regulations, then the answer is Piwik PRO. Analyze users’ journeys after they have logged into their account on your website with the top safety methods and legal compliance in place. 

But that’s not all. Through a dedicated analytics solution for SharePoint, you can track your intranet spaces down to in-page actions. Then evaluate the popularity of pages and specific content such as newsfeed interactions or searched keywords. 

Finally, you’re able to use network domain and service provider dimensions to filter out your internal traffic and focus on external visitors. 

None of that is possible with Google Analytics 360. If you’re employing PII, you must encrypt it at the right level with a minimum hashing requirement of SHA256. As we’ve already explained, Google doesn’t allow you to use personally identifiable information, and even if you hash it, the process might be reversible. It’s not secure enough for compliance with, for example, the GDPR. 

As to omitting your internal traffic, in February 2020, Google announced that it ended data collection for Network Domain and Service Provider dimensions. Simply put, it will be harder for you, among other things, to uncover bot and spam traffic in your reports.  

To sum things up:

Report types

Piwik PRO and Google Analytics 360 bring a broad array of reports and related functionalities. User flow lets you build advanced funnels out of any type of page view and custom event and broaden your understanding of paths people take. 

With the custom report at the top, you can choose further from other types of reports:

• Technology 
• Site performance
• Goal conversion
• Content tracking
• Site search

And that’s just the start. Both pieces of software enable you to dig deeper, for instance, analyze in detail user acquisition across multiple channels, be it a website, campaigns, direct, search engines or social networks. You can also examine the types of devices, operating systems and browsers people use. Then make the most out of your reports by customizing your dashboards and picking suitable widgets.

Although GA 360 doesn’t have the download or outlink reports you find in Piwik PRO, it delivers you granular real-time data. It shows you what’s going on in your website as it happens, since the report is continuously updated.  

*Without PII

Integrations 

Optimizing your on-site SEO calls for granular behavioral data and information from Google Search Console. Both Piwik PRO and Google Analytics 360 assist you with this task. You advance your reports using details such as:

• Impressions – for keywords searched on Google
• Clicks – for keywords
• CTR – ratio between impression and click for keywords
• Average position of the keyword in Google search results for a given period

Additionally, you can connect those details with your analytics data to enhance your reports. 

Moving forward, GA360 makes it possible for you to plug in to Salesforce Marketing Cloud, but it will cost you extra. Piwik PRO has a built-in customer data platform so you don’t have to worry about any additional contracts with third parties. Additionally, you can enrich your user profiles with data from different forms, all done in a safe manner. 

Google Analytics 360 offers you connections with its own products. First, with Google Ads, so you can easily check how your ads and website perform. Second, with Optimize, which is an A/B, multivariate and redirect testing tool. 

In the case of Piwik PRO, Google Ads integration is coming with the release of Piwik PRO Analytics Suite 13.0 in early July 2020. As to web variant testing, you can employ tag templates from Optimizely, AB Tasty and VWO.   

An overview of this section:

Data ownership and sharing

Both Google Analytics 360 and Piwik PRO grant you full ownership of the user details you gather. It means you’re accountable for them, but also have access and control over the data. Moreover, you know the location of the recorded information and can decide what appropriate safeguards should apply. 

Piwik PRO takes it a step further. It doesn’t share any of your data with third parties.
In the case of GA360 things aren’t so rosy, since it’s shared with DoubleClick, Google Ads clients and other Google products.

Data residency

Various countries across the globe, such as Australia, Canada, China, Germany, India, Russia, and Switzerland, have enacted laws that order companies to store their residents’ personal data within the country’s physical borders. 

Given that, using Google Analytics 360 to gather and process such information you’ll have trouble fulfilling this obligation. The tech giant holds data in clouds across its data centres somewhere in North & South America, Europe, and Asia – but you don’t know where exactly.

Privacy laws & consent management

The GDPR created a framework that new laws, be it CCPA, LGPD, Chile Privacy Bill Initiative, New Zealand Privacy Bill, have implemented as well. The key principle they share is to gain a user’s consent to accumulate and process their data. However, the GDPR, LGPD, and CCPA oblige you to do business only with compliant partners. If not, you put yourself at risk of heavy fines. 

The bad news is that Google Analytics 360 might not be a suitable choice. Consider GDPR, the privacy gold standard. It obligates you to acquire users’ consent and doesn’t allow you to process personal data without it. 

We’ve already discussed Google’s approach to collecting, sharing and storing personal data. It won’t let you achieve regulatory compliance. Check the next section for more details. 

Consequently, you still have to ask users for permission to process their data. What’s more, the vendor doesn’t give you any mechanisms to acquire and manage consents. The only solution is to connect some third party tool for that purpose.

In Piwik PRO, respect for privacy is ingrained in the company’s strategy. Our product has been audited by a top-tier global consulting company that regards our platform as compliant and adequate to help organizations operate in line with legal regulations.

Piwik PRO equips you with a dedicated software, Consent Manager, to meet your legal responsibilities. It enables you to obtain, manage and store records of consent decisions and data subject requests. 

In addition, you can track all changes to visitors’ decisions and then process data in alignment with your users’ choices. 

Here’s the recap of the rest of the section:

Data anonymization

Google Analytics 360’s approach to anonymization is to avoid collecting any information that can be regarded as personal data or PII, apart from: 

Online identifiers, including cookie identifiers, internet protocol addresses and device identifiers; client identifiers [source]. 

The tech giant advises you to anonymize this kind of data if you want to use it. But Alphabet gives you only an anonymization method for IP addresses. So it’s your job to encrypt other identifiers with the minimum hashing requirement of SHA256. 

Keep in mind that hashing is not a sufficient anonymization and under the GDPR this type of information is considered personal data. That’s why hashed data requires consent for gathering and processing it. Even if you follow Google’s best practices to avoid sending PII and anonymize IP addresses, GA still gathers personal data as it saves unique identifiers in a cookie. 

In Piwik PRO, when you want to gather only anonymized data or someone declines your consent request, you can set a “user is anonymous” parameter. Consequently:

• Geolocation is fully or partially disabled. Depending on the instance settings, Piwik PRO will record just the country information or nothing at all. An associated web server will see the same masked IP address.
• No “fingerprinting” data is used to recognize returning visitors. Attributes of the user’s device or browser, operating system, browser name & version, language settings, etc., are not compared in order to identify users.
• One session cookie identifier, “visitor ID,” is stored in the person’s browser. This cookie’s duration is set to 30 minutes, then the browser automatically deletes it. Therefore this identifier describes a visit and not a visitor.

This anonymization method lets you collect some information about user behavior (e.g. page views, conversions, time spent on the site) without asking for consent. And if a user submits you that permission later in the session, you’ll be able to merge their anonymous and personal data into a single record.

Additionally, you can enable zero-identity tracking, a method that combines several privacy settings in Piwik PRO to let you obtain as much data as possible without personal data. You gather event statistics without using any visitor or session identifiers, only anonymous data. All in all, in this process consent isn’t necessary. 

Tag deployment & management

GA360 and Piwik PRO provide a tag manager full of useful features. They range from:

• Asynchronous tag support
• Rich library of triggers
• Condition and tag templates
• Custom tags
• Variables
• Analytics tag templates

You can benefit from tag and debug mode as well as from export and import of tag configuration. 

All of that improves your quality assurance and reliable tag management. 

In GA360 you have workspaces for concurrent tagging projects. This allows your team members to independently work on tag configurations, revert changes and prevent publishing of unfinished modifications. Therefore, you have more control and keep your tags up to the right standard.

On another note, Piwik PRO Tag Manager supports synchronous tags to eliminate a possible flash of original content (FOOC) when you run A/B tests. Plus, you have at your fingertips content personalization and custom pop-ups to enhance your marketing campaigns by applying tailored banners, ads & HTML elements.

Here’s the recap of this section:

Privacy features

Thanks to Piwik PRO’s integrated Consent Manager you can define which tags require prior consent and adjust your tracking according to user privacy preferences. Also, it guarantees zero cookie load preventing your tags from firing and tracking a visitor before you obtain legal permission. By granting users an opt-out option, you also comply with CCPA and other privacy laws. 

Google’s Tag Manager 360 won’t equip you with any of that. In terms of privacy, you need to figure out on your own how to make it certain. As you don’t have an out-of-the-box solution, you have to implement some additional code and configure tags accordingly.

Whether you’re familiar with the technology or just starting your analytics journey, our dedicated support and customer success specialists will guide you through the ins and outs of our platform. 

Piwik PRO offers to all clients:

Dedicated customer success manager – works with you to understand your expectations, then defines your goals, creates an implementation plan, and assists you in learning.

Dedicated service delivery manager – your first point of contact in case of emergency incidents or web analytics performance issues, to ensure that they are always resolved quickly. 

Guides & documentation – extensive technical documentation and product guides to understand our platform.

Personalized support and onboarding – our team lends you a hand while setting up and configuring your web analytics instance. Our SLA ensures all your needs are addressed while you use the product. We can provide those services on-site in cooperation with your internal team.

Custom integration and development (extra service) – we integrate Piwik PRO Analytics Suite with any product in your data ecosystem (e.g. CRMs or BI tools), and through custom development we adjust the platform to your needs.

Analytics consulting (extra service) – after auditing your current setup, we recommend how to adjust your tracking and reporting to achieve your business goals. 

On-demand custom training and workshops (extra service) – we teach you the skills essential to employ analytics data in your daily work. We tailor each training to the use cases of particular teams and stakeholders.

24/7 monitoring and incident handling – we monitor the system, receive notification of all issues and solve them on the spot, ensuring your platform runs smoothly.

In Google Analytics 360 you can contact a dedicated support specialist, use live-chat support to resolve your questions regarding products, services and employing data. You have vast online documentation and a community forum at your disposal. Google team ensures SLA of 99% uptime.  

For everything else, you have to rely on your own skills. Whether it’s product implementation, learning its features, or creating a tracking plan, you do it yourself. 

Briefly put:

ISO 27001 certification

At Piwik PRO we take pride in the fact that our product has been audited and found compliant by a top global consulting firm. We make data protection and safety our highest priority.

Our ISO 27001 certificate reflects that approach. It proves that our company manages information security in alignment with the most stringent standards in that field. The range of safeguards includes all information processed in Piwik PRO, in every form and place of our operations. 

Safe infrastructure 

Piwik PRO and Google Analytics 360 offer clients data centers that are ISO 27001 and SOC 2 certified, with fully redundant servers. 
 
However, Piwik PRO lets you choose storage infrastructure: on premises, in a private cloud, at a third-party data center. Whatever the option, our deployment is GDPR- and HIPAA-compliant so your information will be safe and sound. 

Security review

Data security is an ongoing process. It’s crucial to keep tabs on all measures you have in place and review them on a regular basis. That’s why both Piwik PRO and Google Analytics 360 undertake external audits. 

Furthermore, at Piwik PRO independent security researchers perform regular penetration tests and security reviews of our platform. As we understand the importance of transparency in that field, we can provide our clients on request with all the results and evaluations along with security policies, certifications, and implemented safety measures.  

All these initiatives and certifications prove that we’re a security-conscious provider. Because of this, our customers, even those who manage sensitive information in the healthcare or banking sectors, don’t need to carry out additional compliance reviews.

HIPAA compliance

Organizations that manage protected health information (PHI) of US citizens must ensure the right protective measures are in place to guard it. As we’ve already stated, Piwik PRO fulfills HIPAA obligations while ensuring top-level data security. That applies particularly to storing PHI within US borders, encrypting it in all circumstances. 

One of the ways to shield your data is by restricting access to it. Piwik PRO and GA360 enable that by implementing your preferred SSO authentication including
SAML integration. However, in Google it’s available only via G Suite Enterprise, a Premium office suite with extra safety and customization features. 

Google Analytics 360 won’t support you achieving HIPAA conformity. First, because “you may not send Google Analytics encrypted Protected Health Information (as defined under HIPAA), even if it is hashed or salted.”[source] Meaning, you can’t use it in Google at all. 

Second, the only possible data storage is in the cloud. But without the exact location of servers, the vendor can’t meet the key regulatory obligation of keeping citizens’ records within US territory. 

Here’s this chapter in a nutshell:

We believe that putting those two products side-by-side makes it easier to find the right one for your organization. Both have a wide range of reporting features and functionalities as well as ways of integrating other software or visualizing data. 

Despite that, there are some prominent differences, namely:

• Conformity with privacy and security legislation, including GDPR, HIPAA and CCPA
• Professional support and customer care that involves onboarding, implementation and consulting
• Flexibility of collecting, crunching and storing data, also the speed of generating reports
• Availability of custom integrations and variety of use cases supported by each vendor 

In our view, Google Analytics 360 can be a good choice for many large businesses – price plays the big role here. It best fits companies handling data that doesn’t require extra precautions and employing staff with an advanced analytics background. 

In turn, Piwik PRO, with its complex functionalities, legal compliance, level of customer service, and custom implementations is tailored for organizations working within high privacy and security standards. Ones that expect more guidance or businesses that keep tabs on changing trends and demand frequent readjustments. 

We hope that all of the aspects we’ve analyzed in detail here will bring you closer to a final decision.