Usercentrics Server-Side Tracking is a fully managed hosting service for Server-side Google Tag Manager (sGTM) and Meta Signals Gateway (MSGW).
Server-side tracking improves marketing performance by running the measurement infrastructure under a first-party context (i.e. the same domain as your websites). Cookies can now be first-party and be set from the server, improving durability, resilience, and security.
Together with Usercentrics CMP, Server-Side Tracking also improves compliance and data governance by making it easy to respect your customers' consent choices and decide exactly what gets shared with marketing platforms.
Our documentation is organized to help you:
Get started quickly with a complete working setup under 15 minutes for:
Learn more about Server-Side Google Tag Manager and Meta Signals Gateway;
Understand and deploy use cases for server-side tracking (like web analytics, conversion tracking, and many more).
Choosing between Server-Side Google Tag Manager and Meta Signals Gateway
Server-Side Google Tag Manager and Meta Signals Gateway (MSGW) are both powerful server-side tracking tools. While they’re similar in some areas, they are also different in how they’re designed, used and the features they provide. We offer much more detailed articles about sGTM and MSGW so you can learn more about them, but this section should cover the main similarities, differences and guide towards picking one.
How they are similar
Server‑side by design: Both run event processing off the browser, improving resilience to browser restrictions and enabling first‑party endpoints.
Data governance: Both let you normalize/enrich payloads and control what leaves your domain.
How they differ
Dimension | SGW | sGTM |
|---|---|---|
Primary goal | Faster, guided pipelines to Meta and a small set of destinations (incl. BigQuery) | Vendor‑agnostic server container for broad tag routing across many platforms |
Client code | Signals Gateway Pixel (separate from Meta Pixel) | Web GTM/data layer/Google Tag |
Destinations | Meta, BigQuery, and custom HTTP | Any tag/template supported in the GTM ecosystem |
Time‑to‑value | Shorter; UI‑driven pipelines and built‑ins | Longer; more flexible but requires configuration per platform |
Ecosystem lock‑in | Optimized for Meta use cases; limited but growing non‑Meta outputs | Broad, platform‑agnostic routing |
When to choose each
Choose SGW if:
Meta performance is the primary objective
You need a quick, low‑code path to the Meta Conversions API
Want built‑in offline conversion uploads and custom audience building
Choose sGTM if:
You need a central, platform‑agnostic router for many destinations (analytics, ad platforms, CDPs)
You want deep control over transformation logic via GTM templates and server clients
Have access to developers / tracking specialists that can support your implementation
Next step: get started with server-side tracking
The next step is to get started with your server-side tool of choice: