Comparison with Other Tools

There is no single “best” analytics tool. Liwan is designed for a small self-hosted setup with no external database. If you need deeper product analytics or marketing-specific workflows, another tool may fit better.

At a Glance

Tool	Self-hosted	Hosted cloud	Self-contained¹	Funnels/Goals	Campaign attribution²	License
Liwan	✅	❌	✅	❌	➖	Apache-2.0
Matomo	✅	✅	❌	✅	✅	GPL-3.0-or-later
Plausible	✅	✅	❌	✅³	➖	AGPL-3.0⁴
Umami	✅	✅	❌	✅	✅	MIT
PostHog	✅	✅	❌	✅	➖	MIT + proprietary EE⁵
Mixpanel	❌	✅	N/A	✅	➖	Proprietary
Google Analytics	❌	✅	N/A	✅	✅	Proprietary

Tool-by-tool Notes

Liwan

Liwan fits teams that want basic self-hosted web analytics with low operational overhead. It works well for blogs, content sites, and smaller products where simple traffic reporting, configurable collection settings, retention, and drop rules are enough.

Matomo

Matomo is a mature platform with a broad feature set and many customization options. Compared to Liwan, it generally includes more built-in reporting depth (for example goals, funnels, ecommerce reporting, and plugins). It is usually a better fit when you need that depth and are comfortable operating a larger stack.

Plausible

Plausible focuses on simple analytics with a clean product workflow. Compared to Liwan, it typically has stronger built-in goal and event reporting. It can be a good fit if you want privacy-focused analytics and do not need a self-contained setup. The self-hosted Community Edition is AGPL-3.0, which can be a downside for teams that require a permissive license policy. Plausible also has a hosted offering, and some advanced features are cloud-only.

Umami

Umami is lightweight, open source, and widely used. Compared to Liwan, it often has more community integrations and a more familiar web-app style dashboard flow. It can be a good fit if you want a self-hosted setup and do not mind running an external database.

PostHog

PostHog is often used for product analytics-heavy setups. Compared to Liwan, it usually covers a wider range of product analytics features (for example funnels, retention analysis, cohorts, feature flags, and session replay), with higher operational complexity.

Mixpanel

Mixpanel is commonly used for product analytics, especially funnels, retention, and behavior analysis. Compared to Liwan, it is more focused on deep product analytics workflows, but it is a hosted proprietary product.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is widely used for ad and marketing integrations and attribution workflows. Compared to Liwan, it generally has deeper campaign attribution and conversion tracking. It is not self-hosted, and data is processed in a third-party cloud. If tighter data control is a requirement, self-hosted options are often preferred.

Typical self-hosted setup does not require a separate external database service. ↩
➖ means partial/basic support compared to tools that focus heavily on that area. ↩
Plausible supports goals in both editions, but some advanced conversion features such as marketing funnels, user journeys, and ecommerce revenue goals are cloud-only. ↩
For Plausible, AGPL-3.0 refers to the self-hosted Community Edition; features and terms can differ in other editions. ↩
PostHog’s main repository is MIT-licensed except for the ee directory, which has separate proprietary terms. ↩