A practitioner’s reference to every capability Stape layers on top of GTM Server.
Why Power-Ups Exist
Vanilla sGTM is a powerful routing layer. Requests come in from the browser, get processed by client templates, fire tags, and data goes out to your endpoints. That’s the baseline.
But vanilla sGTM has limits. It doesn’t remember users across sessions. It can’t enrich anonymous events with stored profile data. It has no built-in mechanism to bypass ad blockers at the DNS level. It doesn’t alert you when event volume drops off a cliff.
Stape’s Power-Ups are the answer to those limits. They’re optional modules that plug into your container and extend what sGTM can do — without requiring you to build custom infrastructure or write server-side code from scratch.
Here’s a full reference of each one and when it earns its place in a setup.
1. Enricher
The Enricher stores user data from incoming events and appends it to future events from the same user — including events from other devices or sessions.
What it solves
Most events above the purchase level arrive at your sGTM container without identifying information. The user is anonymous. Meta and Google receive weak signals, match quality suffers, and your attribution degrades on everything outside the checkout funnel.
When to use it
Any setup running Meta CAPI or Google Ads Enhanced Conversions where the client has meaningful ToFu traffic. Which is virtually every e-commerce or lead gen setup.
| Covered in detail in Blog 3 of this series. |
2. Custom Loader (Proxy)
The Custom Loader proxies your GTM web container JavaScript through your first-party domain, so it’s served from data.yourclient.com instead of www.googletagmanager.com.
What it solves
Ad blockers and browser privacy tools block requests to known tracking domains. When they block GTM’s loader script, your entire web container fails to fire — not just one tag, all of them. The Custom Loader bypasses this by serving the script from a domain the browser trusts.
When to use it
Every sGTM setup. This is table stakes. If you’re not proxying your GTM loader, you’re accepting data loss on 20–40% of users depending on the audience.
3. Consent Mode Integration
Stape’s Consent Mode integration allows your sGTM container to respect and enforce user consent signals from your CMP (Consent Management Platform) at the server level.
What it solves
Browser-side consent signals can be manipulated or missed. Server-side consent enforcement means your container won’t store, enrich, or forward data for users who haven’t opted in — regardless of what happens client-side.
When to use it
Any setup serving users in the EU, UK, or other consent-regulated jurisdictions. Paired with the Enricher, it’s non-negotiable: you cannot store user data without it.
4. Stape Store
The Stape Store is a key-value data store built into your Stape infrastructure. It allows you to persist data across events and sessions — and import external data (like your CRM customer base) into the container’s accessible memory.
What it solves
The Enricher needs somewhere to store and look up user profiles. The Store is that somewhere. But it’s also independently useful: you can store session data, user preferences, experiment assignments, or any state that needs to persist across multiple server-side requests.
When to use it
Required for the Enricher. Independently useful for any setup that needs persistent state at the server level.
| Covered in detail in Blog 5 of this series. |
5. Monitoring and Alerts
Stape’s Monitoring Power-Up tracks event volume, error rates, and container health in real time, with configurable alerts when thresholds are breached.
What it solves
Tracking breaks silently. A tag fires incorrectly, an API key expires, a website deploy breaks the dataLayer push — and nobody knows until a client notices their conversions dropped in the ad platform dashboard three days later.
When to use it
Every production sGTM setup managing real ad spend. Set it up once and let it tell you when something’s wrong before your client does.
| Covered in detail in Blog 8 of this series. |
6. User ID
The User ID Power-Up provides a persistent, device-agnostic identifier for users based on signals available at the server level.
What it solves
Cookie-based user IDs break across devices and browsers. Safari ITP clears first-party cookies after 7 days. Incognito sessions start fresh. The User ID Power-Up creates a more durable identifier that persists through these gaps.
When to use it
Any setup trying to track cross-device journeys accurately, especially for clients with high mobile-to-desktop conversion paths.
| Covered in detail in Blog 7 of this series. |
Prioritizing Power-Ups for a New Setup
If you’re enabling Power-Ups on a new Stape container, here’s the sequence that makes sense:
- Custom Loader — enable immediately. No downside, material data recovery.
- Consent Mode — required for compliance before storing anything.
- Stape Store — required as the backend for the Enricher.
- Enricher — enable after Store and Consent are configured.
- Monitoring — set up before you go live in production.
- User ID — enable when cross-device attribution is a priority for the client.
Each Power-Up is independent, but they’re designed to work together. The combination of Enricher + Store + Consent Mode + Custom Loader is what a fully optimized Stape setup looks like.
Tuhin — Analytics & Server-Side Tracking Specialist • AnalyticsRush.com