Some of my events happen server-side and not client-side. What do I do?

This is a bit complicated as there are benefits and drawbacks to tracking on either one. Here are the pros/cons of both:

Client-side

Pros

• Let's you easily record their UTM and referrer (where they came from)
• Works with ad channels
• Less coding work.

Cons

• Adblockers will block them so you'll miss a percentage of your audience. That percentage will vary depending on your audience.

Server-side

Pros

• Guaranteed to fire. Adblockers have no affect on them.
• If you track based on user ID instead of email address, it's easier/faster to access that from your database.

Cons

• Don't work with ad channels.
• Have to pass information like UTM's and referrer to the server to record it.
• More coding work.

Together

So we actually record events on both client-side and server-side. If they're events that we want 100% accuracy, we do it server-side. If it's one we're okay with it being off by some amount, or if we want our ad channels to get the data, we'll do it client-side.

For events we want 100% accuracy and have ad channels see them (like Purchases), we'll create two versions. Purchase and Purchase – FE (front-end, aka client-side). That way we can get both.

Hint: Segment makes tracking a ton of events for a variety of different tools on both client-side and server-side (and with multiple domains/sites) a lot easier and cleaner. We've struck up a deal with them to get startups in our community $50k in credits. To learn more, check out demandcurve.com/segment.