1. Home
  2. Tag Management Solutions
  3. Google Tag Manager Reviews
  4. User Review of Google Tag Manager
Google Tag Manager: Simple, Easy to use and Flexible Tag Management System
February 14, 2014

Google Tag Manager: Simple, Easy to use and Flexible Tag Management System

Dan Antonson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction

We decided to utilize Google Tag Manager to assist with the web analytics and tracking pixel management. Being in an agency environment we also use it to manage tags for multiple clients. Google Tag Manager eliminates our web analysts and paid advertising specialists from constantly asking for help from our development team. It also speeds up the time it takes to deploy a tag across a website.
  • Extremely IT-Friendly - user permissions, methods to test tags and versioning.
  • Relatively Intuitive Interface - adding tags or changing rules are straightforward.
  • Easy to Install - Simple to install, one container placed and you're ready to go.
  • Event Listeners - Google Tag Manager now has options for event listeners to "listen" for actions on the page. These listeners can be used to fire tags on a certain click or interaction.
  • Pre-Built Templates - no need to know javascript in most scenarios, pre-programmed templates make adding some tags as easy as filling out a web form.
  • Supports Custom Javascript - Tag not supported? There is a custom HTML / javascript tag that can be used to run and publish tags.
  • Steep Learning Curve - Google Tag Manager introduces new concepts such as Macros and Rules. Some may struggle at first deploying advanced analytics features such as ecommerce tracking.
  • No Tag Folders - there is no easy way to "bucket" similar tags, a site with a lot of tags can become difficult to manage.
  • No error debugging - Google Tag Manager will tell you if the tag fired, but not necessarily if there are errors
  • Efficiency - Google Tag Manager has increased efficiency dramatically. No need for development as much.
  • Cost - Google Tag Manager is free to use, and free is the best price when trying to get buy-in.
  • Flexibility - Traditional tags fire when a page loads (such as a "thank you" page) with Google Tag Manager, you are able to fire tags when a button is clicked (no page load) or when a form is submitted that does not load a new page.
  • BrightTag,Qubit,SuperTag,Tealium
BrightTag, Qubit, SuperTag and Tealium all have great products, without a question, and they're are great for organizations with very specific tagging needs. With that said, Google has a history of building phenomenal products - Google AdWords, Google Analytics, etc. and their systems always work well together. With Google Tag Manager having a strong integration with their existing products and having no cost to start the choice was easy for our organization. Google Tag Manager has our needs covered and with it, we are able to deploy tags across multiple sites with ease. I would recommend it to anyone.
Until a strong case or need arises for enterprise tag management, I cannot see any reason why we would discontinue using Google Tag Manager. Even if we were to switch to a different vendor, we would still likely use Google Tag Manager to manage Google Analytics code and Google AdWords conversion and remarketing pixels.
Google Tag Manager could work for just about any scenario, and it's free. However, for a large organizations with many tagging needs, it may be better to look for a paid solution. Many other tag manager systems have much more functionality and support more tags. It's also important to recognize that for advanced implementations, additional coding (mainly dataLayers) are required - as easy as Google Tag Manager is to install I find for the most value, custom coding is still needed.