Dedicated server-side GTM

A dedicated container is Google's server-side Tag Manager running your GTM server container on a server that serves only you. Everything you built in that container runs as it would on Cloud Run: clients, tags, community templates, transformations and GTM's preview and debug mode. PixelFox builds the server, issues the certificates, watches its health and rebuilds it when you change the configuration.

Dedicated containers are part of the Enterprise plan, up to a fixed number counted across all of your sites. On another plan, or past that number, the create form explains why it refused. Compare with the shared container, which every plan includes and which needs no GTM server container at all.

Set up

1. In Google Tag Manager, open your server container, then Admin → Container Settings, and copy the Container Config string. A web container has no such string; create a server container first if you only have a web one.

2. Dashboard → your site → sGTM hosting. Choose Dedicated, name the container, paste the Container Config and press Create container.

3. Wait for it to come up. The status reads provisioning while the server is built, usually three to five minutes, and the page updates on its own. It turns active once the container answers over HTTPS.

4. Use the hostnames shown on the container card:

   • <id>.sgtm.pixelfox.app is the tagging server. Set it as the server_container_url in gtag or in your GTM web container.
   • <id>-preview.sgtm.pixelfox.app is the preview server GTM's debug mode talks to. Nothing to configure; the tagging server already points at it.

5. To serve it from your own domain, claim the hostname on the card and CNAME it at the container's own hostname, not at connect.pixelfox.app:

   ss.yourstore.com   CNAME   <id>.sgtm.pixelfox.app

   The dashboard shows the exact record. The certificate is issued on the first request after the CNAME resolves.

Seeing the events in PixelFox

A dedicated container sends events wherever its own tags point. To also get them into your PixelFox dashboard, and from there to the destinations you connected, add the PixelFox Forwarder tag to the server container and give it the container's forwarding secret. The steps are on Forward from your own GTM server; they are the same whether the container runs here or on Cloud Run.

Statuses

Things to know

• Changing the Container Config rebuilds the server. Expect a few minutes offline; the hostnames are repointed automatically. Publishing a new version of the same container in GTM needs no rebuild, the server picks it up on its own.
• Pause removes the server, not just the traffic. Resuming takes as long as creating one.
• A dedicated hostname is served only by its own server. If it is CNAMEd at connect.pixelfox.app by mistake, requests are refused rather than quietly handled by the shared endpoint, which would skip every tag in your container.
• A site with dedicated containers cannot be deleted until they are. Delete the containers first.
• A dedicated container does not outlive its plan. When an account has been without an Enterprise plan for a week, its dedicated servers are stopped, not deleted. The containers, hostnames and configuration are kept, and Resume rebuilds them once the plan is active again.