Mixpanel, Amplitude and Google Analytics rent the event. Matomo is GPL-3.0. Umami is MIT. Plausible is AGPL-3.0. PostHog documents a self-hosted Docker Compose deployment under MIT, and its main repository has an enterprise directory that is not part of the foss tree. We deploy the tree whose licence matches what the client was promised.
What is the honest difference?
Umami and Plausible answer how many people came and from where. Matomo goes further into on-site behaviour. Mixpanel and Amplitude sell funnels and cohorts as the product. If the funnel is the reason for the subscription, say so, and do not migrate the client onto a page-counter.
What does self-hosting analytics still require?
A collector that survives a traffic spike, and a decision about what you are allowed to store. Owning the event does not repeal a privacy law. It does put the event on a disk you can delete.
When should analytics stay rented?
When the only need is a marketing number and Google Analytics is already in the tag. Own it when the event stream is product data, or when a third-party script on the marketing site is a contradiction the company can no longer explain.
What do we hand over?
We select the system, deploy it on infrastructure you control, connect it to the tools you keep, and write the runbook so your own team can operate it. Support after handover is optional. The rest of the map is in software you can stop renting; the engagement behind it is open-source business systems.
Name one process that still needs a person. We will tell you what a one-time build takes.
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