Why do I pay for pageviews even when an intercept is off?

Ethnio servers get a hit even if your web or app intercept is off, and those hits add up to a lot of traffic. Every page load sends a request to our JavaScript that says something like, "Hey, should we show this intercept right now?" Then our servers check your intercept status, targeting, and other factors, and send back a response: "No, don't show it."

It can climb toward billions of page views per month, which takes a fair amount of AWS infrastructure to support and, of course, costs money. So voilà, that's how page view tracking works: if your site sends our servers a ton of traffic, you'll have to pay more, even if all your intercepts are turned off.

More detail: Any page where you place Ethnio code tracks the number of views to that page. Every time someone loads that page, it counts as a page view, even if your Ethnio study is turned "OFF."

Note for Enterprise plans - We can roll page views into tiers so you can leave Ethnio code live without having to pay for unused traffic. Our goal is to make it as easy as possible for teams to get in touch with their customers, without having to hassle internal development resources. Contact us to learn more.