Elevar Conversion Tracking

Why Did Elevar Cost Us Millions?

One year ago, we decided to improve our conversion tracking on Facebook and Google Ads, so we switched to Elevar. To ensure everything would work flawlessly from the start, we even paid a few hundred dollars extra for their expert installation.

To our surprise, once the work was handed over, there was a 35% inaccuracy in tracking—even worse than before Elevar. Despite repeated assurances from Elevar that everything was fine, the issue persisted. Their approach to addressing the problem was superficial at best, and time kept slipping away. The result? Several months of essentially non-functional tracking, during which we spent a fortune on campaign costs while losing even more revenue due to the missing 35% of data and conversions. Running campaigns effectively with such inaccurate data was impossible.

When the situation became unbearable, we decided to leave Elevar and requested a refund for the installation and subscription fees. Instead of issuing a refund, they suddenly assigned someone more experienced to fix the tracking. It finally started working properly, but the financial losses caused by their negligence were irreparable. As compensation, they offered us a lifetime 50% discount on the subscription.

For a while, the tracking worked. Then we encountered a new issue—this time with tracking in Klaviyo. Shopify launched a server-side integration with Klaviyo, but Elevar failed to notify customers that this major change would affect them. A single email alert could have prevented the losses. As a result, our Klaviyo tracking stopped working, bringing all our flows to a halt. Once again, Elevar's response was evasive—they wouldn’t admit whether Shopify’s server-side integration conflicted with their own tracking. After weeks of back-and-forth communication, it was confirmed that it did. Their proposed solution? Duplicating our flows: one set running on Shopify’s tracking and the other on Elevar’s. This approach was labor-intensive and utterly pointless. More money wasted.

Adding insult to injury, during this ordeal, their support casually mentioned that we were on an outdated plan that wasn’t advantageous anymore. Following their advice, we switched to a new plan. Something felt off, so I reviewed their original pricing. It turned out the new plan wasn’t more advantageous at all—it was worse. When confronted, their support responded with the same arrogant attitude we had come to expect. So much for their apology with the 50% discount—it didn’t last long. This isn’t just about money; it’s about principles.

Now, five days before our biggest sales event—Black Week—we’re facing another disaster. For two months, Google had blocked all our custom retargeting audiences. After extensive investigation, we discovered that Elevar was at fault again. They had failed to meet Google Consent V2 requirements. For years, we had been using the Pandectes app for Google Consent without issues. However, Elevar implemented a half-baked consent solution without notifying us, negatively affecting the functionality of the Pandectes app. The result? We lost months of retargeting data and spent endless hours communicating with Google support to determine why our audiences were completely blocked.

By the way, these audiences won’t reactivate—we are starting completely from scratch. And imagine the impact of losing a 540-day audience window, especially before Black Week! A single email alert from Elevar could have prevented these losses. We’re talking about millions here.

So now, with just five days until Black Week, we have no retargeting audiences collected. Elevar’s response? Arrogant as ever. They’re demanding another $1,000 for an “expert installation” to fix the issue—despite knowing the extent of the damage they’ve caused. They’re fully aware we plan to leave them right after Black Week, but we don’t have time to implement a new tracking system before such a critical event.

In nearly two years of working with Elevar, the financial losses we’ve incurred are staggering. Even if they offered us a free subscription for a thousand years, it wouldn’t begin to cover the damage.

As the saying goes, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Hopefully, someone can learn from our mistakes and avoid the unnecessary stress and financial loss we’ve endured with Elevar.

To be fair, I am not a developer, nor an engineer. The reviews of the app are good, and the need for good tracking is real.

So far I am only trying to perform the set-up of the app, and it is complex and time-consuming. I fear that the probability of breaking the current tracking is higher (e.g. it is recommended to remove current tracking code to avoid double tracking), than implementing the app adequately without the need to pay the 1000$ implementation fee.
The app provides tutorial videos, which help but are not sufficient.