Avoid Server-Side Tagging on AWS for GA4 and Google Ads

💀 ☠ Don't use AWS (Amazon Web Services) for setting up server-side tagging for GA4, Google Ads or any good product. 👇

1) Using GCP (Google Cloud Platform) to host the server-side GTM container is generally cheaper (both in the short term and the long run) than using AWS.

For a production setup with 3 servers, GCP costs around $120/month vs ~$300/month on AWS.

2) As a Google product, GCP provides tighter/native integration with other Google products, such as GA4 and Google Ads.

Google provides built-in client and tag templates for its products on the GCP server-side GTM container.

If your team is already familiar with the Google Cloud Platform, using GCP for server-side tagging requires less of a learning curve.

You make your server-side tagging setup and management unnecessarily hard when you use a non-Google product like AWS with Google products like GA4 and Google Ads.

3) If you primarily use Google products like GA4, Google Ads and BigQuery, it makes economical sense to stay within the Google ecosystem by using GCP.

Key advantages include seamless integration with other Google products, consolidated billing and support, potential cost savings and centralized data management.

4) AWS has a wider range of services and a more complex configuration, which means a steeper learning curve.

GCP has a simpler interface and less complexity.

Unless you are already heavily involved in AWS, GCP is overall a better option for server side tagging setup.

5) There is little support/information/documentation available for AWS server-side tagging, particularly for setups involving Google products.

So, you are pretty much on your own if something goes wrong with the tagging setup. This is not the case with GCP.

Long story short, GCP is overall a better choice for server-side tagging with GA4 and Google Ads.