Benefits of Stape hosting for server Google Tag Manager

Setting up server-side tagging might seem tricky at first, but with the right tools, it becomes much easier. You’ll need time and resources to set up a cloud server and learn the basics of server-side tracking. To make things simpler, we created Stape hosting for Google Tag Manager. With Stape, anyone can quickly and easily set up server-side tagging confidently, no matter their technical skill level.

With Stape, you can set up tagging server URL in 1 click - it's super simple. Plus, it's a wise financial choice. Stape’s hosting is around five times cheaper than GCP, saving you significant costs without compromising quality. 

Stape's sGTM hosting concerns more than just its price point and simplicity. It's about the multitude of benefits of server-side tagging it offers, which ensures that anyone, regardless of their technical knowledge, can confidently set up cloud hosting for the Google Tag Manager server-side. 

But besides its cost and simplicity, Stape has multiple other advantages. In this post, we will cover all the benefits Stape hosting for sGTM offers.

Regarding server-side Google Tag Manager hosting, businesses often compare Google Cloud Platform with Stape, a popular alternative that offers simplicity and cost savings.

Want to learn why Stape is the better choice over GCP for server-side tagging? Check out our blog post for a detailed comparison and see the advantages Stape offers!

We’re proud of our ever-growing gallery of Stape power-ups that make server-side tracking easier and more fun.

There is a detailed guide on understanding Stape power-ups, their key features, and how to use them. 

Let us give you a quick overview of Stape power-ups and the goals you can reach with them.

Custom GTM and GA4 Loader from Stape changes the loading paths of GTM and GA4 scripts to bypass ad blockers and ITPs, ensuring reliable tracking. It is available for all plans.

• User ID. It assigns a unique user ID to track actions across devices and sessions for more accurate data.
• GEO Headers. It adds geographical data (country, region, city, etc.) to event data in your server GTM container for better targeting and segmentation.
• User Agent Info. It adds device, OS, and browser details to event data in your server GTM for deeper insights into user behavior.
• Google Service Account. It connects your GTM server container with Google services like BigQuery and Firestore to enrich and store server-side data.
• POAS Data Feed. It lets you send profit data to ad and analytics platforms, so you can switch to profit on ad spend (POAS) reporting and optimize ad campaigns towards higher-margin products.
• Bot Detection. It provides an advanced way of filtering bot traffic by giving every request a score from 0 to 100, so you see how likely it is to be a bot. Traffic between 50 and 75 is marked as suspicious, but we do not block it because not all checked parameters confirm bot behavior. Requests scoring above 75 are blocked (if blocking is enabled), as all parameters point to clear bot activity.
  
• Ad Blocker Info. Detect whether a visitor is using an ad blocker by adding a header to each sGTM request. This helps you measure how many users block ads and analyze campaign visibility more accurately.

• Cookie Keeper. It extends the lifetime of first-party cookies, even in browsers with strict privacy settings, ensuring more reliable tracking.

• Anonymizer. It anonymizes or removes user data in Google Analytics 4 to comply with privacy regulations like HIPAA.

• sGTM Preview Header Config. It enables better visibility in the sGTM debugger for requests sent from outside web GTM, aiding debugging.

• XML to JSON. It converts XML data from webhooks into JSON format, making it compatible with server-side GTM.

• Multi Domains. It maps multiple subdomains to a single server GTM container, simplifying tracking across various websites.
• File Proxy. It routes files through your server GTM container for improved control over file hosting and security.
• Request Delay. It delays server-side data requests by up to 2000 minutes, allowing for better control over data flow and timing.

• Schedule. It sends data requests on a scheduled basis (e.g., daily or hourly), automating data collection from your server GTM container.
• Dedicated IP. It routes all outgoing requests from your Stape container through one fixed IP address, helpful for tracking consistency or whitelisting an IP.
• Block Request by IP. Exclude internal traffic or suspicious sources by blocking requests from listed IP addresses before tags fire in the server GTM. You can add up to 30 IPs.
• Click ID Restorer. Bring back identifiers like GCLID (Google Ads) and MSCLKID (Microsoft Ads) that may be removed from URLs in Safari and Brave Private modes.

• Open Container for Bot Index. It allows bots to access your GTM container, improving SEO by capturing valuable bot interactions.

These power-ups offer greater control, data security, and customization for your server-side tracking setup.

After the container creation, you can easily connect your custom domains via Entri.
This is the simplest way to link your custom domain. Check the full list of supported DNS providers by Entri.

Just log in with your DNS provider credentials and grant Stape one-time permission to connect your custom domain. Once authorized, Stape will handle the rest, ensuring a seamless integration without any manual configuration. This feature saves you time and effort, making the process quick, efficient, and hassle-free.

Stape has two types of accounts:

• Personal
• Agency
• Partner

Using Agency and Partner accounts, you can manage and create containers for clients. Let’s say you want to set up server-side tracking for your client and ask a client to add payment. You can do it using a Stape Agency or Partner account, just create a container and send an invite to a client via email. The client can add their billing while you still can manage and set up their container. Agencies and Partners can also opt to pay for their sub-accounts' subscriptions with Billing.

To get an Agency account, you can convert your Standard account. An Agency account can further be upgraded to a Partner account upon meeting certain criteria. This allows you to join the Stape partner program and show your audience the new way to track users on their site or app. Give them a special link to sign up and earn up to a 40% recurring commission for life.

Single Sign-On lets your team use the same company login for Stape that they already use at work. Instead of creating a new password, users are redirected to an identity provider each time they sign in. To get access to SSO, simply send a request through your account settings on Stape.

Once the setup is complete, Stape switches all accounts with your domain to SSO. Everyone is logged out and will need to sign in again through SSO.

If someone with your domain signs in through SSO but doesn’t yet have a Stape account, one is created automatically in the same region (Global or EU) as the master account. 

You can share access to your stape.io account with other people. Once you've shared access, another person will fully access your account. They will be able to view and edit all containers.

To share access, click Account Settings → Shared Access → Share Access.

A flexible Google Cloud environment will autoscale your sGTM from at least 3 to 6 servers. When Google notices that your server GTM needs more resources, it automatically autoscales. sGTM may require more resources for several reasons: traffic to your website may increase, you've updated the server-side tagging setup and are sending more events, etc. 

Autoscale has both pros and cons. The good thing is that sGTM will receive more space when it needs it and will continue functioning. However, there might be situations when cloud hosting stops working without autoscale, and you need to update it manually. 

The bad thing is that autoscale means a higher price for sGTM hosting. Three Google servers will cost USD 120, while six will cost around USD 240. 

On Stape, we autoscale servers when you need them. If our system notices that your server requires more CPU or memory, we add it. If you’ve subscribed to the Pro plan, you will still pay USD 20, server GTM will get more CPU and memory when needed for 3 days. Our billing is connected to requests only. 

We're always looking for ways to expand our platform, so we've added API access.

Account API Key can be found in the Settings section of your account:

If you are interested in building an integration with Stape and want more information on how it works or what the requirements might be, then just send us an email to support@stape.io

By default, the GCP deployment uses just one server suitable for testing with low traffic. When you're ready to move to production, upgrade to a flexible app engine environment.

After the upgrade, Google will provide at least three servers per container for better reliability.

Here are two critical things to consider when upgrading from a test GCP deployment to a flexible App Engine environment:

• Costs. The minimum production setup on Google hosting will cost USD 120 (three cloud servers, each costing USD 40). Stape’s minimum cost is USD 20; for larger sites, we offer the Business plan that costs USD 100. Our pricing is flexible to fit every need and budget. Interested in why we are cheaper? We have this blog post describing how Stape optimizes the cost of the GTM server.
• Run shell scripts to upgrade to production. When you decide to upgrade to the production environment, adding a credit card to the Google Cloud is not enough, and you need to run shell scripts manually to upgrade to the production. Plus, some other configurations are required to decrease the costs of hosting the server Google Tag Manager. Stape hosting will do the job for you in less than 30 seconds, making the cloud server upgrade streamlined. All you need to do is click one button in the stape.io admin.

The default configuration requires modifying Google Analytics 4 clients to load GA from your server URL. You’ll also need to add a Google Tag Manager Web Container client to load gtm.js from a custom subdomain.

Loading gtag.js and gtm.js from your tagging server URL will give full advantages to server-side tracking and first-party cookies. 

Stape hosting does everything automatically. You must add the transport URL to the GA4 and UA tags inside the web Google Tag Manager container. Setting up additional clients or making other configurations in the server Google Tag Manager container is unnecessary. 

We have several hosting zones and are constantly expanding server locations. You can find detailed information about them on our HelpDesk. If you have users from multiple locations, you can opt for the Global multi-zone server location option. This feature automatically directs incoming requests to the closest available zone determined by the user’s IP address.

The server GTM container is set up using automatic provision, which takes a long time to load. Stape’s hosting solves this problem by using brotli to optimize the loading speed and using Nginx instead of node.js since Nginx is faster in cached file serve. 

The Data Store is Stape’s built-in database that allows you to write, read, and sync data within the Google Tag Manager server hosted on Stape. It is available for Pro plan users and higher. 

The functionality and design of the Data Store are highly similar to Firebase. You can store JSONs of data organized in documents. One MB - the maximum size of one document.

Monitoring power-up lets you set custom alerts to track sGTM and server-side tag performance. Alerts notify you when certain conditions are met.

Typical uses include tracking 4xx/5xx status codes and event count changes on platforms.

Available for Business plans and above. Alert limits per plan:

• Business/Business+: 5 alerts
• Enterprise/Enterprise+: 10 alerts
• Custom: 20 alerts

Logs is an essential feature to use when setting up server-side tagging. It can help you troubleshoot any problems with requests, missing data, or even determine how the vendor processed a request. Examples of using the Logs feature can be the following:

• Website tracking problems detection.
• Meta attribution inaccuracy troubleshooting.
• Troubleshooting of data discrepancies across different platforms.

We offer logs access to users on paid plans. Their retention depends on your plan:

• Pro / Pro+ – keeps the last 3 days of logs.
• Business / Business+  – keeps the last 10 days of logs.
• Enterprise / Enterprise +  – keeps the last 10 days of logs and supports log export.

To get started, log in to your Stape account, open your container, and navigate to the Logs tab:

There are two types of logs:

• Incoming requests - the requests that were received by the server GTM.
• Outgoing requests - the requests that have been sent by the server GTM to Facebook, TikTok, and other platforms.

Incoming requests are available by default. To activate outgoing requests, switch to the tab Outgoing requests and enable the toggle:

You can also enable the ability to Export logs (available for Enterprise plans or higher). This will automatically export your incoming and outgoing (if configured) logs to a cloud storage of your choice (e.g., GCP or BigQuery).

We have a detailed guide on Stape's Logs feature, its functionality, and configuration.

Requests Analytics is a feature of the Stape platform designed to simplify the measurement of server-side tracking performance.

The feature can be found in your container in the section Analytic" next to Power-Ups. Requests Analytics is available for everyone who uses Stape Custom Loader (a free power-up by Stape that makes GTM scripts more resistant to ad blockers).

The Website Tracking Checker by Stape is a free tool built to help you spot what’s wrong with your tracking setup and learn how to fix it. In just two minutes, you’ll get a full breakdown of what’s working, what’s missing, and what you can do to optimize it across both web and server-side tagging.

You don’t need to be technical to use it - simply enter an URL, and we’ll do the rest. The checker scans your site for analytics and advertising scripts, cookie behavior, and SEO-impacting scripts. Based on what it finds, you’ll get a tracking score, categorized feedback, and clear, step-by-step recommendations on how to improve your setup. Whether you're troubleshooting GA4 setups or trying to get better data quality for Meta CAPI - this tool has your back.

What the checker reviews:

• Analytics - checks if platforms like GA4 are implemented using the best practices for the setup.
• Advertising - reviews how server-side tracking can improve quality for better ad attribution and ROAS.
• Cookies - audits cookie lifetimes, consent mode configurations, and technical compliance.
• SEO - detects tracking scripts that slow your site and flags those that can be moved server-side.

After the scan, you’ll receive a clear set of personalized recommendations tailored to your current tracking setup. Each recommendation includes a brief explanation and practical steps to implement.

Once you’ve followed the suggested improvements, rerun the scan and track your progress. It’s that simple. Bonus? Cleaner tracking setups can lead to:

• 40% more conversions tracked
• 35% increase in data accuracy
• 20% faster website speed

Setup Wizard is a free tool developed by Stape, designed to make data tracking setup easier. It scans your tech stack and the platforms you use, then generates ready-to-use Google Tag Manager container templates. Once created, these templates are automatically imported into your web and server GTM containers.

You don’t need to be a technical expert to configure data tracking for your website. With Setup Wizard, the configuration process can take minutes. You can select the tools you use (our solution can create a template for the most popular, such as GA4, Google Ads, Meta, Microsoft, etc.), fill in the necessary fields with data related to your tools, and test the templates in your GTM account.

The Connections tab in Container settings lets you easily manage oAuth tokens for Microsoft Advertising, Google Sheets, Google Ads Offline Conversions, Google Data Manager API, and Meta. Stape simplifies the setup for these platforms with the connections for automatic token refresh. 

The connections are available on Pro plans and higher. Tokens are color-coded: green for valid, red for expired.

Stape has a team of experts in server-side tracking to help you get started. Setting up accurate and reliable monitoring can be challenging, so we’re here to help ensure your clients get the best possible results. Our staff has extensive experience creating and managing server-side tracking containers for various businesses, from small startups to Fortune 500 companies. Our support is also available 24/7. 

Stape offers the most cost-effective and user-friendly hosting for Google Tag Manager. It provides a range of powerful features and server-side tagging solutions to simplify your tagging experience. 

While our server-side GTM hosting is powered by Google Cloud, our automated tools make setup and management a breeze. You can quickly implement server-side tagging for your website without requiring time-consuming manual configurations, allowing you to focus on what matters most.