Connect Matomo – cloud or self-hosted, via auth token

Requirements

Matomo does not use OAuth — you connect it per client with an auth token. You need three things: the host URL of your Matomo instance, the auth token, and the numeric site ID (idSite). Matomo has no fixed cloud host — Matomo Cloud runs on a per-account subdomain (e.g. youraccount.matomo.cloud), and self-hosted Matomo sits on your own server — so the host URL is always required.

Create the auth token and connect

1. 1In Matomo, create a token with read access to the website under Settings → Personal → Security → Auth tokens.
2. 2Note the numeric site ID (idSite) under Settings → Websites → Manage.
3. 3In MetricDash, enter the host URL, the auth token, and the site ID for the matching client.
4. 4Assign the connection to the client account.

Data ownership over cookieless

Matomo is the largest open-source analytics tool and, for many clients, the established, GDPR-compliant alternative to Google Analytics. The argument is data ownership: the visitor data sits on your own server or in the EU-hosted Matomo Cloud, not with Google.

Unlike pure cookieless tools such as Plausible, Matomo sets first-party cookies by default — but it can be run GDPR-compliant and, if you want, entirely without cookies. MetricDash only ever gets read access to the stats and changes nothing about your Matomo configuration.

What lands in the website tab

Sessions, unique visitors, page views, the traffic channels with the dominant source highlighted, and the top pages appear automatically in the website tab of the client view, plus the device split by desktop, mobile and tablet. It is the same provider-agnostic website tab that Google Analytics, Plausible and Umami also feed — switch provider later and your view stays identical.

Your clients see the same numbers live through their own read-only portal login, without you having to give them access to the Matomo instance.

Common pitfalls