GTM Kit – Google Tag Manager & GA4 integration vs SlimStat Analytics

GTM Kit puts the Google Tag Manager container code on your website so that you don’t need to touch any code. It also pushes data from WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) and Contact Form 7 to the data layer for use with for Google Analytics 4, Facebook and other GTM tags. The goal of GTM Kit is to provide a flexible tool for generating the data layer for Google Tag Manager. It is easy to use and doesn’t require any coding, but it allows developers to customize the plugin as needed. The settings are organised around what you are trying to do (Setup, Events & data layer, Commerce, Consent & privacy, and Tools), so related options live together and the setting you need is quick to find. Know when your tracking breaks Tracking fails quietly. A caching plugin strips the container out of the page, a second plugin loads it a second time, a staging copy reports into your live property, and nothing on the settings screen says so. GTM Kit checks one of your own pages once a day, the way a visitor receives it, and tells you when nothing on your site is loading your container, or when your pages load tracking twice. Where it recognises the plugin or tool adding the second copy, it names it. Two checks in WordPress’s own Site Health screen report whether your container is set up and reaching your pages, and whether consent is configured. A GTM Kit section on the Info tab lists your whole configuration on one screen and copies it into a support request with one click. On sites WordPress reports as staging, development or local, GTM Kit leaves the container out, so test traffic never reaches your live analytics. The data layer is still built there, and a setting loads the container anyway when you are measuring a test site on purpose. eCommerce events tracked with Google Analytics 4 The following GA4 events are automatically included in the dataLayer: WooCommerce view_item_list select_item view_item add_to_wishlist [Premium] add_to_cart view_cart remove_from_cart begin_checkout add_shipping_info add_payment_info purchase refund [Premium] order_paid [Premium] order_processing [Premium] order_completed [Premium] order_refunded [Premium] subscription_started [Premium] Unlock all features with GTM Kit Premium. Easy Digital Downloads view_item add_to_cart begin_checkout purchase Flexible container implementation Depending on how you use Google Tag Manager you can delay the loading of the container script until the browser is idle. This may be relevant to you be if are focusing on pagespeed. You may enter a custom domain name if you are using a custom server side GTM (sGTM) container for tracking. It’s also possible to specify a custom loader. GTM Kit has full support for Stape server GTM hosting. You can also exclude specific pages from GTM entirely. Add URL patterns on the Container settings page and GTM Kit holds back the container, the noscript fallback, and its data layer scripts on matching pages. Useful for third-party checkout iframes, partner-hosted subpages, and in-app webview routes that run their own tracking. Glob patterns are supported by default, with optional regex for advanced matching. Moving from another Google Tag Manager plugin GTM Kit imports settings from Google Tag Manager for WordPress, Google Tag Manager for WooCommerce, Metronet Tag Manager and other GTM plugins, at any time, from the Tools page. Your container ID, data layer variables, Consent Mode defaults, excluded user roles and container environment come across in one step. Before anything is written you see exactly which of your settings will be replaced, and only settings the other plugin actually configured are touched. Post data You may specify which post data elements you wish to include in the dataLayer for use in Google Tag Manager. – Post type: include the type of the current post or archive page. – Page type: include a defined page type. I.e. post, page, product, category, cart, checkout etc. – Categories: include the categories of the current post or archive page. – Tags: include the tags of the current post or archive page. – Post title: include the post title of the current post. – Post ID: include the Post ID of the current post. – Post date: include the post date. – Post author name: include the post author name. – Post author ID: include the post author ID.

Most analytics plugins quietly hand your visitors to someone else’s cloud. SlimStat doesn’t. Every pageview, click, and visitor lands in your own WordPress database and stays there: yours to read in real time, yours to purge whenever you want, never shipped off to Google or anyone else. See the whole story the moment it happens: who’s on your site right now, where they are in the world, what they’re reading, and which links they follow on the way out. Set a goal and watch it convert, or chain a few steps into a WooCommerce funnel and see exactly where people slip away. It’s the depth you’d expect from a hosted analytics service, running entirely on your own terms. Best part: privacy isn’t a setting you have to hunt for. Anonymized IPs, Do Not Track, a consent banner, and scheduled data cleanup are GDPR-ready from the first activation. Thousands of WordPress sites already trust SlimStat to keep their analytics honest, fast, and entirely their own. Main Features Real-time access log — Your site’s pulse, live. Watch each visit land the instant it happens: the page, the spot on the map, the search or link that sent them, how quickly your server replied, human or bot. Complete access log — Every visit in one searchable table. Drill into the full history and break it down by date, country, browser, OS, referrer, search term, or content type to answer the questions the summary charts can’t. Goals & funnels — Turn raw traffic into answers. Define a goal to measure a conversion (a WooCommerce sale, a signup, a key pageview) and see uniques, totals, and conversion rate. Or chain steps into a funnel to spot exactly where visitors drop off. One goal is free; up to five goals and full funnels unlock with Pro. Outbound link report — See which external links actually earn clicks. SlimStat records every outbound link your visitors follow, so you know what’s sending traffic off your site and which partnerships pull their weight. Know your visitors — Go past pageviews to the people behind them: returning readers, logged-in users, and a full audience breakdown by country, language, browser, OS, and screen size. (Pro’s User Overview adds per-visitor journeys, time on site, and Gravatars.) Your data, your server — No third-party cloud, no Google looking over your shoulder. Every byte lives in your WordPress database, and one-way IP hashing lets you count unique visitors without ever storing who they are. GDPR, sorted — Anonymize or hash IPs, honor Do Not Track, auto-purge old records on a schedule, and drop in a translatable consent banner that snaps straight into the WP Consent API (WPML and Polylang welcome). Compliance by design, not an afterthought. Admin bar stats — Keep an eye on the numbers without leaving your work. Online visitors, pageviews, and top pages sit one glance away in the WordPress admin bar, on every screen. Make every report yours — Rearrange, add, or hide widgets across Real-Time, Overview, Audience, Site Analysis, and Traffic Sources until each screen shows exactly what you care about. Shortcodes — Drop any report into a widget, post, or page with a single shortcode. Filters — Decide who counts. Skip your own team, known bots, whole IP ranges, admin pages, or entire countries so your stats reflect real visitors, not noise. Geolocation — Put a city and country to every visitor, plus their browser and operating system, powered by MaxMind and Browscap. World map — Watch your audience light up across the globe at a glance, even from your phone (map by JQVMap). Export & email — Download your reports as CSV files, generate user heatmaps, or get the day’s numbers in your inbox each morning (heatmaps and email reports via Pro). Cache-friendly — Plays nicely with W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache, Cloudflare, and most caching plugins. Pro Pack Features Love the free plugin? Pro is for sites that live by their numbers. It adds the heavier tools without changing a thing about how SlimStat respects your data: Email reports — Wake up to the numbers that matter. Schedule the reports you care about and have them land in your inbox as clean HTML tables, with the columns laid out your way. Heatmaps — See exactly where visitors click, and where they don’t, with a heatmap layer painted right over your live pages. User overview — Follow individual registered users: what they viewed, how long they stayed, and how fast your server answered, with Gravatars to put a face to the visit. Extended overview — Add your own columns to the User Overview report and export file, so it tracks exactly what your site cares about. More goals & funnels — Up to five conversion goals and three full funnels, with ready-made templates for WooCommerce checkout, signups, and content engagement. Network analytics — Run reports and settings across an entire multisite network from one place. MaxMind integration — Connect MaxMind’s geolocation API for richer, more precise detail on where your visitors come from. Custom database — Store all your analytics in a separate, external database to keep your main WordPress DB lean. Export to Excel — Download any report as a ready-to-share Excel file. Requirements WordPress 5.6+ PHP 7.4+ MySQL 5.0.3+ At least 5 MB of free web space (240 MB if you plan on using the external libraries for geolocation and browser detection) At least 10 MB of free DB space At least 32 Mb of free PHP memory for the tracker (peak memory usage) Please note If you decide to uninstall Slimstat Analytics, all the stats will be PERMANENTLY deleted from your database. Make sure to setup a database backup (wp_slim_*) to avoid losing your data. Report Bugs Having trouble with a bug? Please create an issue on GitHub. Kindly note that GitHub is exclusively for bug reports; other inquiries will be closed. For security vulnerabilities, please report them through the Patchstack Vulnerability Disclosure Program. The Patchstack team will validate, triage, and handle any security issues.