Hub for teams replacing Google Analytics 4 with self-hosted Matomo, Plausible, Umami or PostHog: retention and export limits, the Universal Analytics shutdown, consent rules in the EU, and the migration and cost pages under it.
Google Analytics 4 against self-hosted Matomo On-Premise for marketing and website analytics: raw data ownership versus GA4's retention limits, Matomo's free core and paid premium plugins, consent-exempt configuration in France, server sizing by pageviews, and which teams should stay on GA4 for Google Ads integration.
Google Analytics 4 against self-hosted Plausible Community Edition for teams that want a simple, cookieless traffic dashboard: what Plausible measures and leaves out (funnels and revenue goals are Cloud-only), the twice-yearly CE release cadence, and when GA4's depth is still needed.
Google Analytics 4 against MIT-licensed Umami for lightweight, cookieless site analytics on Node.js and PostgreSQL: setup effort, event tracking, what Umami Cloud adds over self-hosting, and the reporting gaps that keep larger marketing teams on GA4 or push them to Matomo.
Google Analytics 4 against PostHog for product-led companies that want web analytics, product analytics and session replay in one tool: the self-hosted hobby deployment and its roughly 100k events a month ceiling, PostHog Cloud EU as the practical option, and the ee license split.
Moving from GA4 to self-hosted Matomo: installing the tracker or Tag Manager, importing GA history with the free Google Analytics Importer, what the import cannot carry (raw visits, segments, funnels), rebuilding goals and dimensions, and running both tools in parallel before cutover.
Moving from GA4 to self-hosted Plausible Community Edition: configuring the Google integration, importing GA4 history as daily aggregates, recreating goals, what does not carry over (ecommerce revenue, UTM detail, exit pages), and replacing the GA tag with the Plausible script.
What it really costs to leave free GA4 or a paid Analytics 360 contract for self-hosted Matomo or Plausible: servers sized by monthly pageviews, paid Matomo plugins such as heatmaps, consent tooling you may no longer need, implementation and upgrades, and the BigQuery costs GA4 exports already carry.
What can be taken out of GA4 before a switch: the BigQuery daily and streaming exports and their limits, the Data API and its token quotas, why retention settings cap explorations but not standard reports, and why Universal Analytics history can no longer be exported.
For EU organizations weighing GA4 against self-hosted analytics: what the EU-US Data Privacy Framework changed for transfers, why CNIL says large analytics offerings rarely qualify for the consent exemption, how a self-hosted Matomo configured to CNIL's conditions avoids a consent banner for analytics, and what Google's EU data collection does and does not cover.
For product teams moving off GA4 to PostHog: the documented route through the GA4 BigQuery export, mapping GA event names such as page_view to PostHog events, the daily export cap on standard properties, PostHog's self-hosted sizing limits, and replacing the gtag snippet.
Google offers no Business Associate Agreement for Google Analytics and tells HIPAA-regulated customers not to send it PHI. This page covers what that rules out on patient-facing sites and how self-hosted Matomo or PostHog inside your own HIPAA environment changes the picture.
France's CNIL lets some audience measurement run without consent if it meets strict conditions, and says most large offerings do not. This page explains the conditions, how Matomo is configured to meet them, which features break the exemption, and which other EU authorities follow the CNIL approach.
For enterprises paying for Analytics 360 for SLAs, unsampled data, longer retention and a 20-billion-event daily BigQuery export: what self-hosted Matomo or PostHog provide instead, where raw data lives, and the operating work that replaces Google's SLA.
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