Between PHP updates, database optimization, security patches, and the occasional report processing freeze, I'm spending 1-2 hours a month just keeping it running. And that's for a handful of small sites that get maybe 50K pageviews combined.

The thing that surprised me most: out of the box, Matomo uses first-party cookies with a 13-month lifetime and processes IP addresses. You have to explicitly configure cookieless tracking. So the "more private because self-hosted" argument doesn't hold unless you actually change the dfaults.

For anyone else who's been through this: did you stick with self-hosted or switch to a cloud tool? I've been looking at Plausible (which also has a self-hosted community edition), Umami, and some of the lighter SaaS options like Fathom and Fairlytics.

Curious what the trade-off looks like for others. The appeal of self-hosting is real, but so is the time cost.

Tips for r/selfhosted: This sub values honest discussion, not promotion. The post frames it as a genuine question. Don't link to fairlytics.dev in the post, only mention it if someone asks directly in the comments.