Should I self-host Amplitude?
For product analytics at Amplitude's $49+/mo entry point, Matomo (or Countly) covers events, funnels and retention for a VPS share. You lose the fancy cohort AI; you keep the raw events forever without a sampling asterisk.
Amplitude's behavioral cohorts and predictive features
SOC2 paperwork someone else signed
product event analytics · funnels & retention · user cohorts · dashboards
* Percent of the subscription price. Your time is priced at the slider's rate — $0/h ("my homelab time is free and I love it") is a legitimate position. Every number is derived from the record, never hand-written. Price source, checked 2026-08-07.
Runs comfortably on a real VPS (2 GB+).
# Matomo — the analytics standard; apache image + mariadb
services:
matomo:
image: matomo:apache
container_name: matomo
restart: unless-stopped
depends_on:
matomo-db:
condition: service_healthy
environment:
MATOMO_DATABASE_HOST: matomo-db
MATOMO_DATABASE_DBNAME: matomo
MATOMO_DATABASE_USERNAME: matomo
MATOMO_DATABASE_PASSWORD: matomo
ports:
- "8100:80"
volumes:
- matomo-data:/var/www/html
healthcheck:
test: ["CMD-SHELL", "php -r 'exit(@file_get_contents(\"http://localhost:80/\")!==false?0:1);'"]
interval: 10s
timeout: 10s
retries: 30
start_period: 30s
matomo-db:
image: mariadb:11
restart: unless-stopped
environment:
MARIADB_DATABASE: matomo
MARIADB_USER: matomo
MARIADB_PASSWORD: matomo
MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD: matomo-root
volumes:
- matomo-db:/var/lib/mysql
healthcheck:
test: ["CMD", "healthcheck.sh", "--connect", "--innodb_initialized"]
interval: 5s
timeout: 5s
retries: 12
volumes:
matomo-data:
matomo-db:
Want a guided install instead? caniselfhostit.com/amplitude has AI-agent prompts that assume a bare machine — that's their half of the stool, and it's good.
FULL TIMED LOG
# Amplitude — verdict log - **Date:** 2026-08-10 - **Verdict:** YES — worth it - **Protocol:** v1 (2GB reference env, Docker preinstalled, AI assistant: claude-code) ## Setup evidence (shared) - This verdict rides on the same replacement verified for `matomo-cloud-matomo` — see `compose/matomo-cloud-matomo.yml` and its log. ## The call For product analytics at Amplitude's $49+/mo entry point, Matomo (or Countly) covers events, funnels and retention for a VPS share. You lose the fancy cohort AI; you keep the raw events forever without a sampling asterisk.