Stape turns 5: from a borrowed office to 200,000 clients

Five years ago, Ira and I took our first company photo in a borrowed office because our own wasn't presentable enough. Back then, our most valuable asset was the idea: server-side tracking was powerful, but it was far too difficult for most businesses to actually use.

Stape didn't start in a boardroom. We started as part of the community – freelancers and marketers trying to make sense of messy data. Before 2021, I was managing tracking for clients and realized there were no simple tools or clear guides for people who just wanted better data without turning every setup into a technical project. So we built the tool we wished already existed. 

We are a business, but we don't believe in charging an "entry fee" for better data. This is why we invest so much in free tools, open-source templates, and documentation.

Infrastructure is useless without clarity. Providing the "how-to" for free isn't a marketing strategy; it’s a necessity for the industry to move forward. Being part of MeasureCamps, Analytics Pioneers, CRAP Talks, WIDA – Nordics, MeasureSummit, and many more communities keeps us grounded. These spaces provide the feedback and inspiration that drive our development.

Stape now supports over 200,000 customers and processes 5 billion daily requests. These numbers just signal that the industry is finally taking data quality seriously.

In the beginning, we just wanted to help an individual freelancer get a setup running. Now, the challenge is helping teams understand that if you don't own your data stream, you don't own your business outcomes. Many companies still buy tools they don't know how to use or invest in tracking without clear goals in place.

The real shift isn't about chasing AI hype. It’s about recognizing that tools like AI are only as good as the data you feed them. Moving tracking to the server creates a central hub where you can refine, enrich, and control your data before it goes anywhere else.

Tracking for the sake of tracking is a meaningless exercise. If your data isn't aligned with a business objective, it provides no value. Good tracking should help you make informed decisions that impact net profit – not just look good on a dashboard.

As we look toward the next five years, we want to stay leaders in education and keep making complex things easier to handle. We are grateful to the Stape team and the community of experts who’ve helped us raise the standards of this industry.

Thanks for being with us since the days of the borrowed office.

— Ira & Denis