Why we ditched Google Analytics 4 for Piwik Pro (and skipped Matomo)

Original: From Google Analytics to Piwik Pro? A Real Client Case, Part 1

Lukas Oldenburg

June 2, 2025

7 min read

Case Study

Intermediate

Technology Foundations

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From Google Analytics to Piwik Pro? A Real Client Case, Part 1

Summary

Techniques and best practices for implementing client-side data tracking on web and mobile applications, including SDKs, virtual URLs, element selectors, event throttling, and handling browser quirks like ad-blockers and ITP/ETP.

Who This Is For

Marketing Analysts

Consultants

Marketing Managers

Key Takeaways

GA4's 100-character limit on custom dimensions can break content tag tracking for media-rich sites
The 500 daily values cardinality limit makes GA4 unusable for content platforms with thousands of articles
Small tech teams without SQL/GCP expertise may find GA4's BigQuery dependency too resource-intensive
API rate limits can break existing Looker Studio dashboards, forcing expensive workarounds
Sometimes switching analytics platforms is more cost-effective than hiring specialists for GA4 complexity

Tools & Technologies

Google Analytics 4 Google Analytics Universal Analytics Piwik Pro Matomo BigQuery Google Cloud Platform Looker Studio Google Ads

Topics Covered

data-collection web-analytics mobile-analytics event-tracking

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Topics

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