Every marketer is on a journey to track and scale their conversions, but along the way, you could be heading into trouble without even realizing it.
You’re scaling campaigns, your ROAS is climbing, and tracking is flawless until a single privacy misstep puts your entire ad account at risk.
Tracking is key for marketers to grow their business. They know it’s important but are not sure how to use it properly. That’s the reason that they rely so heavily on tools like Customer data platforms (CDP) like Elevar. It does the job of tracking, but when it comes to privacy compliance, it leaves a big loophole.
In a world with privacy-conscious users and strict privacy laws like GDPR, HIPAA restrictions, and more on the way, one wrong move can cost your growth.
Let’s break down what Elevar is and how it functions in a privacy-first marketing space. And identify the best alternative with privacy-safe data tracking for better conversions.
Let’s get into it.
What is Elevar?
Elevar is a server-side tracking and data analytics platform designed specifically for Shopify e-commerce brands and DTC (Direct-to-Consumer) merchants. It bridges the gap between your Shopify store and marketing/analytics platforms, ensuring you capture accurate, complete customer data through reliable infrastructure and smart automation.
Features of Elevar:
- Tracks conversions – Sends purchase event data to ad platforms, but does not always guarantee 100% accurate conversion tracking; some purchase events may be missed or delayed
- Server-side tracking – hosting, scaling, and monitoring for you, but requires complex setup and updates for server-side tracking instead of working smoothly on its own.”
- Provides data layer – One-click Shopify integration with Google Tag Manager, but it offers limited flexibility beyond the pre-built Shopify data layer and GTM setup, which may not suit every use case.
- Custom event tracking – Allows capturing actions or UTM-based data, but it can be complex to set up and might miss certain user actions or UTM parameters.
- Integrates with multiple platforms – Like GA4, Meta CAPI, TikTok, and Klaviyo, but its limited integrations may not cover all the marketing or analytics tools you rely on.
- Improves ad performance – Ad performance is boosted by boosting event match quality and ROAS, but these gains can plateau, and it may not deliver significant improvements in every situation.
Downsides of Elevar that every marketer needs to know
1. Higher Setup & Maintenance Effort
- Elevar relies on Google Tag Manager (GTM) server-side setup that often requires technical knowledge. While plug-and-play in Shopify contexts, larger or customized stores can face complex tagging logic, duplicated events, and setup headaches.
- Maintenance tends to be recurring, onboarding may cost around $750, and ongoing tag management can require substantial time or additional support costs.
2. Technical Complexity & Potential Data Gaps
- Being GTM-dependent, Elevar setups can suffer from inconsistencies, missing events, or duplication, especially when publishers aren’t deeply familiar with GTM intricacies.
- Server-side tracking lacks some browser and device-level context (e.g., visibility triggers or full client-side behavior), which is crucial for debugging or fine-grained analytics.
3. Not Universally Supported by All Platforms
- Some ad platforms are still not fully optimized to receive data via server-side APIs alone. They prefer or require client-side events for attribution.
- Elevar’s effectiveness depends on each destination’s API availability, so channels with incomplete server-side support may limit functionality or require fallback logic.
4. Risk of Implementation & Support Failures
- There are user reports of serious issues during setup, including tracking inaccuracies, broken integrations, and performance drops, sometimes leading to significant revenue loss.
- One detailed user story described months of unresolved tracking bugs, disrupted Klaviyo flows, and data gaps before eventually abandoning Elevar.
5. Diminishing Returns for Multi-Million-Dollar Brands
- While Elevar improves tracking for many, at extremely high ad spend (e.g., multiple six to seven digits per month), benefits plateau. Some users report that management complexity outweighs marginal performance gains.
Beyond the technical downsides, Elevar has a major challenge that affects every marketer: privacy and consent.
No matter how precise your tracking is or how effective your ad campaigns are, missing the mark on user consent puts you at risk of bans or restrictions. Let’s explore why privacy and consent are such crucial factors.
Why is Elevar not Privacy-Compliant?
1. No Native Consent Management
Elevar does not include a built-in privacy layer to automatically block or allow event tracking based on user consent. This means compliance with GDPR, CCPA, or HIPAA relies on you integrating and configuring an external Consent Management Platform (CMP) like OneTrust or Cookiebot.
If this integration is missed or misconfigured, you risk sending personal data without proper consent, a direct compliance violation.
2. Tracking Can Fire Before Consent
By default, Elevar’s tracking setup can trigger events as soon as a user lands on your site, even before consent is captured.
Without extra logic in GTM, this could result in data being sent to ad platforms without legal authorization, leaving you exposed to fines or platform policy violations.
3. No Automatic Data Suppression for Declines
Unlike some privacy-first tracking tools, Elevar won’t automatically suppress or anonymize events for users who opt out.
If you forget to set up conditional triggers in GTM, non-consenting users’ data may still be sent server-side.
4. Compliance Responsibility Falls on You
Elevar is a powerful server-side delivery tool, but it shifts all privacy compliance responsibility to your team. That means you must manually ensure that:
- Consent status is passed to Elevar correctly.
- Data is blocked for users who decline.
- Platform APIs only receive compliant events.
- Elevar lacks built-in HIPAA filtering out sensitive data, leading to account bans.
Any slip here could result in non-compliance, and Elevar won’t catch it for you.
Read more: The Fix: Overcoming Health and Wellness Ads
I know what you’re thinking: “Is there an all-in-one platform with tracking along with privacy compliance and consent management built in as a priority, not an afterthought?”
Here you go..!!
CDPs Are History: 1PD OPs is where the Future is
While Elevar puts the burden of privacy on you, 1PD Ops flips the script.
Built from the ground up with a consent-first architecture, CustomerLabs ensures no fluff and zero data leaks. Before diving into the core details, let’s take a quick tour to explore what CustomerLabs 1PD OPs is, its key functions, and how it performs.
What is CustomerLabs 1PD OPs?
CustomerLabs 1PD OPs refers to how CustomerLabs empowers marketers to take full control of their first-party data operations from collection to activation, all within one privacy-first platform.
Unlike traditional CDPs or tracking tools that rely heavily on third-party cookies or fragmented data sources, CustomerLabs is built to harness first-party data securely and efficiently.
This means you collect, unify, and activate data you own directly from your customers and prospects with full compliance with global privacy regulations.
Features of CustomerLabs 1PD OPs:
- Consent-First Data Collection: CustomerLabs ensures every data point is collected only after user consent is verified, so your operations stay compliant by design.
- Unified Data Control: Integrate data across all your digital touchpoints, websites, apps, CRMs, and ad platforms in a single centralized system.
- Privacy-Safe Data Activation: Send clean, consented data server-side to advertising platforms (Meta, Google, TikTok, and more) without risking leaks or policy violations.
- Flexible Event Management: Customize which user behaviors and track events based on business goals and compliance needs.
- Real-Time Data Sync: Automate instant data syncing to optimize ad targeting, personalization, and attribution without delay.
- Advanced Consent Management: Maintain full visibility and control of real-time consent status and user preferences, reducing risk and increasing trust.
- Integrates seamlessly with a wide range of platforms, including GA4, CAPI, Klaviyo, and more, giving you full flexibility
Also read on: How to improve attribution with 1p domain tracking in Meta and google ads
Why 1PD OPs – Privacy-First platform
In a privacy-first world where third-party cookies are fading away, owning and operating your first-party data is the future of marketing. CustomerLabs 1PD OPs gives you the tools to do this efficiently, driving smarter growth while protecting your customers’ privacy.
- Consent before anything else: No events are fired until a user gives valid, trackable consent.
- Server-side enforcement: Consent status is carried through to your ad platforms behind the scenes, not just on the browser.
- Full compliance by design: Whether it’s GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA, or future regulations, CustomerLabs is already prepared.
- End-to-end protection: It doesn’t just show a cookie banner; it blocks all tracking until the user opts in.
- Zero-code setup: Marketers can configure and enforce consent rules without engineering help.
And this isn’t marketing fluff. According to the CustomerLabs Consent Infrastructure Overview, the platform automatically blocks every tag and event by default until consent is granted.
That means you’re protected out of the box, not by chance. You’re not hoping your GTM setup did its job; you know your users’ choices are respected. So even if you’re not technical, it’s easy to see the difference.
Just compare CustomerLabs to Elevar in a head-to-head privacy check, and the contrast is obvious.
Also read on: What is Zero-party Data and Why it is important for Marketers
Elevar vs. CustomerLabs: Who Respects Consent?
Let’s break down the key differences:
| Features | Elevar | CustomerLabs |
| Built-in consent layer | Elevar does not | CustomerLabs has it |
| Native consent-aware event tracking | No | Only CustomerLabs supports this out of the box |
| Auto-blocking until consent | With Elevar, you have to set this up yourself | CustomerLabs blocks all events until consent is given |
| GDPR/CCPA/HIPAA readiness | Elevar leaves it up to you | CustomerLabs is designed for compliance |
| Server-side consent enforcement | Elevar doesn’t handle this natively | CustomerLabs passes consent state server-side |
| No-code setup | Elevar requires manual technical configuration | CustomerLabs is built for marketers |
The takeaway is clear: With Elevar, you’re building your privacy enforcement system. But with CustomerLabs, it’s already built for you.
Now you see why Elevar needs a true alternative, one that can be your ultimate lifesaver for privacy compliance. Let’s conclude.
Conclusion
In a privacy-first world, CustomerLabs isn’t just an alternative to Elevar; it’s the only responsible choice.
Think of it like this: Elevar gives you the container, but no lid. CustomerLabs gives you both a sealed system where data doesn’t “spill” because consent is enforced from the start. With CustomerLabs, you’re not patching on privacy as an afterthought. You’re choosing a platform built for it. That means better marketing performance and real peace of mind regarding compliance.
