Self-hosting the Pendo Agent

Overview

The Pendo agent is the Javascript that runs in your web application, collects raw event data, and displays Guides. A standard Pendo installation loads pendo.js securely and asynchronously from a CDN. We highly recommend loading the Pendo agent from our CDN to ensure that you're using the most current version. However, you can self-host the Pendo Agent if security restrictions require you to do so.

More Information on Installation

Planning your Pendo Installation

Developer's Guide To Installing Pendo

Disadvantages of Self-hosting

Pendo continuously releases updates to the Pendo Agent, typically weekly. Many of these updates include feature enhancements that will require the updated Pendo Agent to be present in your application for the feature enhancement to work properly. Self-hosting the Pendo Agent stops you from receiving the current version of the Agent when the app loads which may block access to those updates. More importantly, self-hosting the Pendo Agent prevents you from automatically receiving critical security updates. Self-hosting also requires additional developer time to install and manage the Agent.

The Agent reflects the current Subscription Settings. If any changes are made, you must update the Agent for those changes to take effect. For example, changing the "Show Guides to Anonymous Visitors" setting would start showing Guides in real time if Pendo hosts the Agent. This change will not occur until the updated Agent is downloaded and hosted with a locally hosted Agent.

Adding or removing staging environments in Pendo requires an updated version of the Agent to recognize those changes. Staging environments are used to deploy and test Guides outside of your production environment. The staging version of the Pendo Agent always comes from the Pendo CDN and any modification of the install script to change this is not supported.

Download the Pendo agent

Download the Pendo agent from Agent Settings, which is an app-level setting.

1. Navigate to Settings > Subscription Settings.

2. Open the Applications tab.

3. Find and open the relevant app from your Applications list.

4. Open the Agent Settings tab.
5. Select Manage Production Settings.
6. Select the Download link to downloadpendo.js.

Host the Pendo agent

After downloading pendo.js, host the file somewhere your application can access. For example, you could host the agent at https://myapp.com/assets/pendo.js.

Update your install script

After you have uploaded pendo.js to your directory, update the install script to load pendo.js from your location. You need to update src='https://cdn.pendo.io/agent/static/'+apiKey+'/pendo.js' in the install script with the location of your locally hosted Agent. This change must be made everywhere Pendo is installed in your application. This could be on a single page or on multiple pages of your application depending on the details of your specific installation.

If you need to update the agent, you only need to replace pendo.js in your directory unless you also change the location or filename.