Sources Overview

What is a source?

In Segment, you create a source (or more than one!) for each website or app you want to track. While it’s not required that you have a single Source for each server, site or app, we highly recommend creating a Source for each unique source of data.

You can create new sources using the button in the workspace view. Each source you create has a write key, which is used to send data to that source. For example, to load analytics.js, the Segment JavaScript library on your page, the snippet on the Quickstart Guide includes:

analytics.identify('user_123', {
  email: 'jane.kim@example.com',
  name: 'Jane Kim'
  });

Website libraries

Analytics.js, our Javascript library, is the most powerful way to track customer data from your website. If you’re just starting out, we recommend it over server-side libraries as the simplest installation for any website.

Mobile

Our Mobile SDKs are the best way to simplify your iOS, Android, and Xamarin app tracking. We recommend them over server-side sources as the default installation for any mobile app.

• iOS SDK
• Android SDK
• Android Wear SDK
• Xamarin SDK
• AMP
• React Native

Server

Our server-side sources let you send analytics data directly from your servers. We only recommend tracking from your servers when device-mode tracking (tracking on the client) won’t work. Check out our guide on server-side tracking if you’re not sure whether it makes sense for your use case.

• Clojure
• Go
• Java
• Node.js
• PHP
• Python
• Ruby
• .NET

Cloud Apps

Cloud app sources empower you to pull together data from all of your different third-party tools into a Segment warehouse or to your other enabled integrated tools. There are two types of Cloud Apps: Object and Event sources.

Object Cloud Sources

These Cloud App Sources can export data from its third party tool and import it directly into your Segment warehouse. Make sure you have a Segment warehouse enabled before you enable any of the following sources:

• Salesforce
• Stripe
• Zendesk
• Facebook Ads
• Google Ads
• SendGrid
• Mailchimp
• Mandrill
• Marketo
• Twilio
• HubSpot
• Intercom
• Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Event Cloud Sources

These Cloud App Sources can not only export data into your Segment warehouse, but they can also federate the exported data into your other enabled Segment integrations:

• Facebook Lead Ads
• Activecampaign
• Customer.io
• Drip
• Iterable
• Klaviyo
• Mailjet
• Nudgespot
• Vero
• Blueshift
• Delighted
• Braze
• Looker
• Radar
• Autopilot
• Friendbuy
• Amplitude Cohorts
• Klenty
• ProveSource
• Moesif API Analytics

To dig into some examples of how to pull this data together, check out our sample queries in the Segment Community.

HTTP

If we don’t have a library for your environment yet, you can always send your data directly to our HTTP Tracking API. All of Segment’s other sources and platforms use the HTTP API to work their magic behind the scenes.

Pixel

Our Pixel Tracking API lets you track events from environments where you can’t execute code, like tracking email opens.

Source request

We’d love to know what other sources of data you’d like to analyze. Contact the Support Team to log a request.

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