Crescentek

Analytics Platform Setup

GA4, Matomo, Plausible — privacy or depth?

Analytics platform advice for Irish businesses — GA4 for free depth, Matomo for GDPR-clean self-hosting, Plausible for simple privacy-first, Mixpanel for product analytics. No single tool does everything; picking the right ones matters.

Based in Ireland
GDPR compliant
Reply within 1 working day
analytics-picker.crescentek.ie · Privacy vs depth
Compare on two axes
Privacy-first vs feature depth
Low privacy
High privacy
Simple
Feature depth
GA4
Free, ubiquitous, complex
G
M
P
M
G
GA4
Marketing-heavy sites with consent flows
Pricing
Free (360 for enterprise)
Where analytics spend goes wrong

Four patterns that quietly break tracking.

Every analytics audit we run finds at least two of these. None are the platform's fault — all are choices made without understanding the trade-offs.

GA4 + bad consent = broken tracking

You launch GA4, buyers hit 'reject all', GA sees 30% of traffic. Every 'optimisation' you make is based on a biased sample. Most SMBs don't realise this is happening.

Overkill platforms for simple needs

A blog owner bought Mixpanel Enterprise because a rep sold it. €10k/yr for data they'd get free from GA4 + Plausible. Matching tool to actual use matters more than buying 'the best'.

GDPR compliance as an afterthought

US-hosted analytics (GA4, Mixpanel) without proper consent management is a GDPR risk. Schrems II ruling means EU data regulators don't accept hand-wavy 'Google says it's fine' responses anymore.

'Free' with data-use trade-off

GA4 is free because Google uses aggregated data. Plausible costs money because you're paying for the data not being mined. Neither is wrong — just know what you're trading.

Three categories, three jobs

No one platform does all three well.

Marketing analytics, product analytics, privacy-first analytics — different jobs with different winners. Running more than one is common and correct.

Marketing analytics

Traffic, attribution, conversions

Which channels drive traffic
Which pages convert (or don't)
Campaign performance tracking
Funnel analysis
Ad platform integrations
Product analytics

What users do in your app

Feature adoption tracking
User journey mapping
Retention cohorts
Event-based analysis
Experimentation / A-B testing
Privacy-first analytics

Data without creepiness

No cookies / no consent banners
EU-hosted data
No personal data collection
Lower setup / maintenance
Compliance-safe by default
The platforms at a glance

Four analytics platforms, four different trade-offs.

Free vs paid, deep vs simple, US-hosted vs EU-hosted — all legitimate choices. The right pick depends on what you're measuring and who's asking.

G

GA4

Free, ubiquitous, complex
Pricing
Free (360 for enterprise)
Ideal for
Marketing-heavy sites with consent flows
M

Matomo

Self-hosted, GA-like
Pricing
Self-host free · cloud €29+
Ideal for
GDPR-strict orgs needing GA depth
P

Plausible

Simple, cookieless
Pricing
€9–€79/mo
Ideal for
Content sites, privacy-first brands
M

Mixpanel

Product analytics depth
Pricing
Free–€833+/mo
Ideal for
SaaS products tracking user behaviour
Is it a fit?

The right analytics tool is the one you'll actually look at.

A powerful dashboard nobody opens is worse than a simple one used weekly. We'll match the tool to your actual workflow — and keep it GDPR-safe.

Right fit
We should talk if…
You're choosing an analytics platform for a new project
Your current setup is broken (GA4 misconfigured, consent issues)
You want GDPR-compliant analytics advice
You're paying for analytics that exceeds your needs
You need to combine multiple tools sensibly
Not a fit
We'll point you elsewhere if…
You just want someone to install GA4 — use our Analytics service
You're already committed and want execution help only
You expect one platform to do everything perfectly
You want to skip GDPR compliance — we won't help with that
When we help most

Common analytics platform scenarios.

Where outside analytics platform advice saves Irish businesses from costly mistakes.

Picking an analytics platform for a new site
GDPR-compliant analytics audits
Replacing GA Universal (still lingering)
Multi-tool setup (GA4 + Plausible + Mixpanel)
SaaS product analytics decisions
Privacy-first migration projects
Reducing analytics tool spend
Consent flow audits with analytics
Common questions

Analytics platform questions, honestly answered.

The questions Irish SMBs ask us most often.

GA4 is free, powerful, and Google's default — which makes it the path of least resistance. But it's complex, requires proper consent management, and sends data to US servers. The trade: free, deep, wide ecosystem — at cost of GDPR complexity and learning curve. For most marketing-heavy sites, GA4 is still the right pick despite the friction.
Not inherently wrong — but it needs proper setup: Consent Mode v2, cookie banner that respects user choice, IP anonymisation, data retention limits, and a DPA with Google. Done properly it's compliant. Done wrong (or skipped) it's a regulatory risk. We set it up properly, which is why Irish regulators don't knock on client doors.
For most content sites, yes. It covers pageviews, referrers, top pages, devices, countries — the 80% of analytics questions most site owners ever ask. Missing: cross-device user tracking, proper funnel analysis, deep attribution. If you don't need those, Plausible is faster, simpler, and legally cleaner than GA4.
Cloud Matomo (€29+/mo) is easier to set up and maintain. Self-hosted Matomo is free as software but you pay for hosting (~€20+/mo for a decent server), maintenance, and updates. For most mid-sized businesses, cloud Matomo is cheaper in total once dev time is priced in. Self-host only if you have technical capacity.
Only if you're building a SaaS product where user-behaviour analysis drives feature decisions. GA4 covers marketing analytics; Mixpanel/Amplitude cover product analytics. These are different jobs. Running both is common for SaaS companies — separate tools for separate questions. For non-product websites, product analytics is overkill.
Yes. Common setup we deploy: GA4 for marketing acquisition, Plausible for simple privacy-first reporting (often on a company blog or content site), Mixpanel for product event tracking. Each covers its own job without overlap. We configure consent mode across all of them so GDPR stays clean.
Works well with

Services that pair with this one.

Picking an analytics platform?

Free 30-minute platform call. Tell us your site and your questions — we'll tell you honestly which platform (or combination) fits, with GDPR properly handled.

Reply within 1 working day GDPR compliant Based in Ireland