Full Answer

The Events API is TikTok's server-to-server channel. Instead of relying on the TikTok pixel firing in the visitor's browser, your server posts events to TikTok's endpoint with the customer and order details attached. That matters because browser-based TikTok tracking is heavily degraded by ad blockers, and by Safari and Brave privacy defences, so pixel-only setups lose a large share of conversions.

On WooCommerce the practical mapping is to fire the key commerce events from server-side hooks: AddToCart, InitiateCheckout, and especially CompletePayment or PlaceAnOrder once the order is confirmed. Each event carries hashed identifiers such as email and phone, plus contextual fields like value and currency. The detail that trips people up is deduplication: if you also run the pixel, both channels must send the same event_id so TikTok counts one conversion, not two.

The reason server capture is more reliable than the pixel isn't ideology, it's timing and access. At the WooCommerce order hook the purchase has genuinely happened and your server already holds verified customer data, so the event is both accurate and complete. The official TikTok plugin leans on client-side firing and tends to miss conversions the server would have caught. Pixel for coverage, Events API for truth, shared event_ids to keep them honest.