What Is Server-Side GTM?
How server-side tagging works and why it improves data quality.
Standard Google Tag Manager runs entirely in the visitor's browser: every tag fires directly from the page to Google, Meta, TikTok and so on. Server-side GTM (sGTM) adds a server you control between the browser and those vendors.
How it works
- The browser sends one stream of events to your own tagging server URL.
- Your server container receives the events and runs your server-side tags.
- Those tags forward the data to the vendors you choose.
Why teams use it
- First-party context: requests come from your own domain, so cookies set by your server are treated as first-party.
- Resilience to blockers: fewer third-party scripts and requests for browsers and extensions to block.
- Control: you decide what leaves your infrastructure and can trim or change data before it is forwarded.
- Lighter pages: fewer vendor scripts running in the browser.
What FlyNode does
FlyNode runs Google's official sGTM container image for you, on a domain you can point at your own subdomain, with request metering, Event Logs and analytics built in. You do not manage servers, TLS certificates or scaling.
What you still need
A Google Tag Manager account with a server container, and a web container on your site that sends events to it. The next guides walk through both.
Ready? Continue with Get Your GTM Container Config.
Still stuck?
Open a support ticket from your dashboard and include the container name.