Piwik is essentially an open source replacement for Google Analytics, with the added bonus that all data that is collected belongs to you, and not Google. The trade off is that you must have access to a MySQL database in order to record the stats.

I haven’t really played with with Google Analytics much before, because I’m not that fond if them collecting data on my behalf to use for their own means, so I can’t really compare the two. Don’t get me wrong, I think Google probably provide a very good service if you don’t have the means to collect your own data, but seeing as I do, Piwik is a much better choice for me.

I am still deciding if it will fit in with what is needed for the websites at work, but in the mean time I thought I would give it a go on a few of my personal websites. So far it seems rather nifty, and produces some nice looking charts and stats.

While it looks like a promising project, it is a little lacking in a few areas, like user and site management. It also relies heavily on Flash to display a lot of the charts. Seeing as the charts are not overly complex, it might be nice to see if they could be replaced by javascript equivalents (and make a Linux user like me a bit happy).

I’ll definately keep an eye on its progress, and might even get around to having a look through to code, to see if I can help to improve things.