This presentation explores why higher education institutions should consider self-hosted analytics solutions, particularly Matomo, as an alternative (or augmentation) to third-party analytics tools like Google Analytics. In today's digital landscape, universities face unique challenges with analytics. The transition from Universal Analytics to GA4 likely prompted many institutions to reevaulate their analytics strategy. Meanwhile, concerns about student data privacy, regulatory compliance, and true data ownership continue to grow. Self-hosted analytics offers compelling advantages for higher education.Matomo stands out as a robust self-hosted (open-source) analytics solution with features that match (or exceed) Google Analytics. It offers capabilities for tracking application form completion rates, measuring engagement with such things as virtual campus tours, or monitoring traffic across departmental subsites. The Randolph-Macon College case study demonstrates a successful implementation journey, and illustrates Matomo's benefits in practice. Our implementation uses inexpensive PHP micro-hosting costing the institution just $2-3/month while handling 300,000-500,000 monthly visits–demonstrating that self-hosted analytics can be both affordable and scalable. RMC also leverages Matomo's comprehensive conversion tracking and funnel insights comparable to GA4 capabilities. During this presentation, RMC will present its own implementation and deployment of Matomo, and discuss the pro's and con's to such an undertaking.
