# Build brief — a focused alternative to Matomo Cloud

> **Verdict:** Partly, if you narrow it · **Buildability:** 58/100 · **Category:** Analytics
> **Source:** https://www.canitbevibecoded.com/matomo-cloud
> Independent editorial assessment from Can It Be Vibe Coded? Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or derived from Matomo Cloud. Verify current pricing and capabilities before acting.

## Context

**Matomo Cloud** — Run first-party web analytics with goals, campaigns, and user-owned data. It currently costs $26/mo.

The core loop is buildable, but a dependable replacement becomes a substantially larger project. For Matomo Cloud, run first-party web analytics with goals, campaigns, and user-owned data. The hard boundary is mature analytics depth, privacy controls, hosted operations, and premium plugins, plus data pipeline reliability and analytical depth.

This brief describes a focused, single-operator replacement for the part of Matomo Cloud that is genuinely reproducible. It is deliberately narrower than the product it replaces, and it says so in writing. Build the useful core; do not pretend to have rebuilt the rest.

## What you are building

Collect privacy-conscious first-party web analytics events with goals and campaigns, answer a small set of product questions, and retain raw data under the owner's control.

- Ingest a known data source, calculate a focused metric set, and render a useful dashboard.
- A responsive interface with real empty, loading, success, and error states.

## Requirements

### Functional

- Docker.
- ClickHouse.
- PostgreSQL.
- Public HTTPS collector endpoint.
- Site script access.

### Non-functional

- Accessibility: semantic markup, labelled controls, visible focus, and reduced-motion support.
- Security: server-side secrets, validated input, and no credentials in the client bundle.
- Reliability: retries with backoff on external calls, and a clear failure state when a provider is down.
- Portability: the operator can export their data and leave without losing it.

## Implementation brief

Build a personal replacement for Matomo Cloud in an empty repository.
Use Next.js 15, TypeScript, ClickHouse, PostgreSQL, and Docker Compose; do not offer alternative stacks.
The core loop is: collect privacy-conscious first-party web analytics events with goals and campaigns, answer a small set of product questions, and retain raw data under the owner's control.
Make the first run work locally with one documented command.
Store all user data locally by default and make export straightforward.
Put secrets in .env, ship .env.example, and never commit credentials.
Ship a lightweight browser SDK for page views and explicit custom events.
Create projects, API keys, environments, event names, and a documented event schema.
Ingest idempotently, filter obvious bots, truncate IP data, and avoid fingerprinting.
Build dashboards for visitors, sessions, funnels, retention, sources, pages, and events.
Expose filters by date, environment, device, country, referrer, and selected properties.
Add retention controls, raw-event export, deletion, health checks, and backup instructions.
Include clear empty, loading, success, and recoverable error states.
Add input validation, safe filenames, and graceful handling of unavailable APIs.
Write focused tests for the core transformation and one end-to-end happy path.
Create a README with setup, architecture, permissions, data location, and backup steps.
Do not add accounts, billing, telemetry, analytics, or a hosted control plane.
Deliberately leave out cross-site identity graphs.
Deliberately leave out session replay and automatic DOM capture.
Deliberately leave out warehouse-scale reverse ETL and enterprise governance.
Finish by running the tests and listing the exact commands used.

## Delivery standard

- Inspect the repository first, then write a short implementation plan before writing code.
- Deliver the smallest complete end-to-end workflow first; every primary control must work against persisted data.
- Use real validation and storage; never substitute fake dashboards, decorative controls, hard-coded success states, or mock integrations.
- Include responsive layouts plus genuine empty, loading, success, validation, and failure states.
- Keep secrets server-side in environment variables, provide .env.example, and never commit credentials or user data.
- Add structured logs around every external call and return actionable errors without leaking sensitive details.
- Write unit tests for the core logic and one automated test of the main user journey.
- Finish with a README covering setup, architecture, data location, backups, tests, deployment, and known limitations.

## Acceptance criteria

- [ ] A clean install starts the app using only the README and .env.example.
- [ ] The primary journey works from first visit through saved result, reload, edit, export, and deletion where applicable.
- [ ] Invalid input, missing configuration, provider failure, and an empty database each have a usable state.
- [ ] The interface works at 390px and 1440px, is keyboard navigable, and shows visible focus on every control.
- [ ] Tests, type checking, linting, and a production build all pass with no ignored failures.
- [ ] No part of the interface implies a live integration, security guarantee, or scale capability that was not actually built and verified.

## Non-goals

Do not build these, and do not claim to have replaced them:

- Mature analytics depth, privacy controls, hosted operations, and premium plugins.
- Identity stitching.
- Session replay.
- Warehouse connectors.
- Reliability at the vendor's scale is an operations problem, not a prompt.
- The last 20 percent is sync, migration fidelity, speed, and edge cases.

## What you still own after launch

- Run migrations, backups, restores, and dependency updates.
- Test the critical journey after every model, API, or hosting change.
- Monitor failures and fix the edge cases a first prompt will miss.

## Risk

**Operational risk.** The code is achievable; dependable data, integrations, and ongoing operations are the real cost.

Editorial confidence in this assessment: medium. No independent one-shot implementation is linked yet.

## Prior art

Working open-source software you can read, fork, or borrow from before starting:

- [Umami](https://github.com/umami-software/umami) — Popular open-source privacy-focused web analytics platform

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Generated by [Can It Be Vibe Coded?](https://www.canitbevibecoded.com) · Full report: https://www.canitbevibecoded.com/matomo-cloud