Events, attribution & webhooks

A subscription sold in a Web Flow is a Purchasely subscription like any other: it goes through the same lifecycle, emits the same server events and reaches the same webhook and integrations as your App Store and Play Store subscriptions. What Web2App adds is where the purchase came from: the channel, the provider and the campaign. This page lists what changes, and where to read it.

Web purchases in your webhooks

Every subscription event of a web subscription, from the first purchase to renewals, cancellations and refunds, carries the usual attributes plus three that describe the origin of the purchase.

{
  "event_name": "ACTIVATE",
  "store": "STRIPE",
  "provider": "purchasely",
  "channel": "web2app",
  "attribution": {
    "utm_source": "meta",
    "utm_medium": "cpc",
    "utm_campaign": "summer_promo"
  },
  "plan": "premium_yearly",
  "user_id": "user_42",
  "anonymous_user_id": "…"
}

Use channel to split your revenue between the web and the stores, and attribution to compute the return of each campaign down to the subscription's lifetime, since the same values are repeated on every event of the subscription. The full list of attributes is on Server events attributes. Only the UTM parameters are forwarded; click identifiers such as gclid or fbclid are used for the ad platform integrations but not sent in webhooks.

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Webhook v3 only

provider and attribution are available in webhook payloads version 3. Native store events expose channel only.

The activation, seen from your backend

When the subscriber opens the redemption link, the subscription moves from the anonymous web visitor to the app user. Your webhook receives the corresponding entitlement and lifecycle events for the app user: an ACTIVATE with the user's identifiers, then the transfer events if the subscription later moves to a signed-in account. This is the same sequence as an in-app subscription restored or transferred between users: see Entitlement events.

If your backend grants access from webhooks, grant it on ACTIVATE for the user_id or anonymous_user_id of the payload, as you already do. Nothing web-specific is required.

Web purchases in Stripe

Purchasely tags the Stripe objects it creates so you can recognize them in your Stripe dashboard, exports and Sigma queries. The Checkout Session and the Subscription carry the following metadata:

Stripe subscriptions created on your own website by your backend do not carry these keys.

Events collected on the web

The funnel itself emits SDK events, the same family as your in-app Screens, tagged with the web as source. They feed your Purchasely dashboards and the Web2App funnel view.

See UI & SDK events for the shared attributes.

Events emitted in the app

On the app side, the activation emits one event to your SDK event listener and to your integrations:

From SDK 6.2, REDEMPTION_CONSUMED can trigger a Campaign. Details and payloads are on the SDK integration page.

Where each signal goes

Troubleshooting