Server-side
Server-side tracking and server-side GTM for ecommerce
Browsers drop your events. Your server does not. Ad blockers, iOS restrictions and short cookie lifetimes cut what the browser can report. Server-side tracking sends the same events from your infrastructure instead.
Server-side tracking at a glance
- Service
- Events sent from your infrastructure, deduplicated against the browser
- Price
- from $300, quoted before any work starts
- Covers
- Server-side container, purchase and the standard event set, deduplication, verification
- Platforms
- Shopify, WooCommerce, Google Tag Manager, Meta, Google Ads
- You get
- Events reconciled against real orders rather than against another report
- Related
- Meta Conversions API is scoped on its own if that is all you need
What the browser stops reporting
Server-side gets considered after the browser-only setup stops being trustworthy.
What the server-side setup covers
How it runs
What a server-side setup costs
- 01
Access
GTM, GA4, ad accounts, store admin and the hosting you want the container on.
- 02
Audit
We record what your browser setup sends today and where it is losing data.
- 03
Implement
Container, events, deduplication and destinations go in.
- 04
Verify
Checked against real orders over a live window, then handed over.
FAQ
Server-side tracking and server-side GTM questions
What is server-side tracking?
Your server reports the event instead of the visitor’s browser. The browser still sends what it can, and the server sends the same event with an identifier so the platform discards the duplicate. What arrives is no longer at the mercy of the visitor’s browser settings.
What is server-side Google Tag Manager?
A container that runs on a server you control rather than in the page. Events arrive at it once, and it distributes them to the platforms you choose, which is why it tends to replace several in-page tags at once.
Will server-side tracking recover all my lost conversions?
It recovers the ones lost to browser restrictions and blocking. It does not recover conversions that were never tracked correctly in the first place, and we check which of the two you have before quoting.
Do I need my own server?
You need somewhere for the container to run. A cloud instance or a hosted service both work. We pick based on what your store already runs and what you want to maintain afterwards.
Does this replace the pixel and the browser tags?
Not entirely. Platforms expect both sides and use the browser signal for things the server cannot supply. The pair has to be deduplicated, which is the part that most often goes wrong when a store sets this up alone.
Does server-side tracking bypass consent?
No, and any setup that treats it as a way around consent is a problem rather than a solution. Consent signals apply to server-side events the same way, and we wire them that way.
How do you verify it is working?
By reconciling against your back office. Platform debug views tell you an event arrived. Only your order records tell you the right number of events arrived with the right values.
Server-side is one step of the full setup
Once events are reliable, the next question is what to do with them: ad spend joined to revenue in your own BigQuery, a standard dashboard set, and attribution beyond last click. That is the full system.
Describe what you are losing
Send the symptom, the platform and a screenshot if you have one. We come back with what we think is happening, what it would take to fix, and a fixed price, before any work starts.