It is important to plan ahead before creating a Cloud account to start off on the right foot and get the best out of Matomo. There are a two important decisions to be made to correctly set up a Matomo account:

1) How to choose the right account name
2) How to create a Matomo site

Choosing a name for your Cloud account

The first step is to create a Matomo trial account with the right name, as the name cannot be changed afterwards. It is a straightforward step for companies with a single website (i.e. www.mycompany.com), simply type the site name as shown in the example below:

Above shows the account name will be MYCOMPANY.MATOMO.CLOUD, as it extracts the website name from www.MYCOMPANY.com. For agencies or companies that manage several websites (i.e. www.mycompany1.com, www.mycompany2.com, etc.), choose a meaningful name for the account first. Note it is ok if the account name is NOT a website name, simply type www.MYNAMEHERE.com to create MYNAMEHERE.MATOMO.CLOUD.

If the account name shown needs to be changed, click on the « change » link and it will be possible to edit the account name:

Creating a Matomo site

Matomo automatically creates the site based on the website URL provided (www.mycompany.com as the example above) and the site name will be displayed in the « All Websites dashboard » as shown below:

Usually a Matomo site is created for each website. If you manage several websites, you will need to add those websites. See how to create and manage websites in Matomo.

Important! If you are planning to import data from Google Analytics using our GA import, please note that it creates a new Matomo site when the import is configured. This means the account may have two sites with the same name:

Is it important to plan the migration because it impacts the way historical data can be viewed together with the data tracked in Matomo.

Previous FAQ: How can I change my Matomo Cloud plan?