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12. Understanding Events in FirstHive

Firsthive is an intelligent Customer Data Platform that builds unique customer identities by ingesting data from all sources of customer interaction and transactions—such as ERP, CRM, websites, social media, PoS, mobile apps, and customer care platforms (see Data Ingestion and Source Configuration for the full list of supported sources and integration methods).

As the world’s first CDP to apply machine learning for building unified customer identities, FirstHive also layers actionable campaign targeting recommendations to drive a disproportionate increase in marketing ROI.

Since the platform primarily handles data ingestion, unification, and activation, every piece of data flowing in or out impacts system resources—including storage, processing, computation, high availability, and execution channels.

This page provides a comprehensive reference for events and entities in FirstHive — what constitutes an event, how the Events and Entities data model works, and how all events, both inbound and outbound, are counted toward your events quota.

For a shorter, conceptual introduction, see Understanding Events in FirstHive. For the literal field-level schema of events and the entities derived from them, see Events and Entity Schemas.

FirstHive at a Glance

FirstHive is an Intelligent Customer Data Platform (CDP) that builds unique customer identities by ingesting data from all sources of customer interactions and transactions — including ERP, CRM, website, social, point-of-sale, mobile app, customer care, and more. FirstHive is the world’s first CDP to use Machine Learning for building unified customer identities, and layers those identities with actionable campaign targeting recommendations to deliver a disproportionate improvement in marketing ROI. FirstHive is a privacy-by-design, GDPR-compliant product that also delivers cross-channel campaign orchestration capabilities on the unified customer data set.

FirstHive operates across four components:

  • Data Integration — ingesting data from all connected sources
  • Unification — resolving and merging data into unified customer identities
  • Intelligence — driving intelligence on the collated data plane
  • Activation & Orchestration — enabling segmentation, personalisation, and campaign orchestration

Because the platform ingests, unifies, and activates data at scale, every event — whether flowing into or out of the platform — has a direct impact on storage, processing, computation, high availability, and execution. FirstHive’s pricing model is therefore based on total event volume, directly proportional to every data movement in and out of your FirstHive account.

The Events and Entities Model

FirstHive’s data model is built on two foundational concepts: Entities and Events. Understanding the distinction between them is essential to correctly interpreting how your ingestion quota is calculated.

What is an Entity?

An Entity is the unified, persistent record of a unique customer — or other object, such as a transaction or account — within FirstHive. As data is ingested from multiple sources, FirstHive’s ML-powered identity resolution engine creates and continuously enriches Entities by resolving identifiers — email addresses, phone numbers, device IDs, loyalty IDs, and more — across all data touchpoints.

Key characteristics of an Entity:

  • Represents the who in your customer data — a single, deduplicated customer profile
  • Persists over time and is enriched as new events are ingested and unified
  • Is identified by one or more resolved identifiers (email, phone, customer ID, cookie, device ID, etc.)
  • Is not individually counted toward the ingestion quota — entity creation and enrichment is a natural by-product of event ingestion and unification

What is an Event?

An Event is a discrete, timestamped data point that captures an action, behaviour, interaction, or transaction associated with an Entity. Events represent the what happened — and cover both data flowing into FirstHive and data flowing out of FirstHive.

Key characteristics of an Event:

  • Immutable — once recorded, an event is a permanent record of something that occurred at a point in time
  • Linked to one or more Entities via resolved identifiers
  • Carries context: channel, source or destination, content, attributes, and metadata about the interaction
  • Every event — whether inbound (data in) or outbound (data out) — is counted toward the ingestion quota

Entity vs. Event: Comparison

DimensionEntityEvent(s)
DefinitionA unified record representing a unique customer (or object) in FirstHiveA discrete data point capturing an action, behaviour, or interaction — either flowing into or out of FirstHive
PersistenceEnriched and updated over time as more events are ingestedImmutable — each event is a timestamped record of something that occurred
CardinalityOne Entity per unique customer, resolved across all data sourcesMany Events per Entity (typically thousands over a customer lifecycle)
ExampleCustomer ID 10023: John Doe, email john@example.com, loyalty tier GoldPurchase of ₹4,500 on 12-Mar-2026; Email Sent on 10-Mar-2026; API response to CRM on 8-Mar-2026
Quota impactNot individually counted toward the events quotaEvery event — both inbound and outbound — counts toward the events quota

Core Principle: All events being sent to FirstHive or sent from FirstHive count as part of the events quota. This includes every inbound event record from any connected data source AND every outbound event — campaign sends, audience pushes, API responses, data exports, and any other data out. Entities created or enriched as a result of these events are not separately counted.

Events Quota

The events quota represents the total volume of events processed by FirstHive — both received from connected data sources (data in) and sent to connected destinations (data out) — within a billing period. This is the primary metric on which FirstHive’s usage-based pricing is calculated.

As a sizing reference, FirstHive assumes an average event size of roughly 0.25KB. For data uploads, this extends to an assumption of up to 35 attributes as a single event.

What Counts Toward the Ingestion Quota?

All events flowing through FirstHive — in either direction — count toward the licensed events quota:

  • Data In (Ingestion): Every event record received by FirstHive from any connected source, regardless of source type, integration method, or whether the event creates a new Entity or enriches an existing one.
  • Data Out (Activation): Every event record sent from FirstHive to any connected destination — including campaign sends, audience pushes, API responses, webhook callbacks, SFTP/data lake exports, and any other outbound data movement.

The quota is measured at the point of each event transaction — one event equals one unit of quota consumed, irrespective of direction.

API Responses

Any API response sent from FirstHive is counted toward the ingestion quota. This covers real-time personalisation or decisioning API responses, audience or profile data served via FirstHive’s request API, webhook callbacks triggered by FirstHive to external systems, and event stream outputs from FirstHive to downstream consumers.

Every API response counts as two events — one for the inbound request and one for the outbound response — regardless of the size, complexity, API type, or integration pattern. This applies to all outbound API calls. It’s a common source of quota-sizing surprises for API-heavy integrations (e.g. a personalisation API called at high volume), so it’s worth building into any capacity estimate up front.

How Events Are Counted

The number of events generated depends on the source channel, destination type, and the granularity of data being tracked or sent. Each user interaction or data record constitutes at least one event; for some sources and destinations, a single interaction generates multiple events.

Basic event construct:

Data Source → [FirstHive Ingestion Pipeline] → Entity → Events → E1 (e.g. Page View) → E2 (e.g. Product Click) → E3 (e.g. Add to Cart) → En (e.g. Purchase)

Entity → [FirstHive Activation / API] → Destination → Events → E1 (e.g. Email Sent) → E2 (e.g. Audience record pushed to Facebook) → E3 (e.g. API response to CRM) → En (e.g. Record pushed to SFTP)

Each event E1 through En is counted individually toward the licensed quota — for both data in and data out flows. The Entity is created or updated as a result of ingested events but is not separately counted.

Events on Data In: Counting by Source Type

Source TypeExamplesWhat Counts as an Event
Record-based SystemsCRM, Data Warehouse, ERP, CSV/XLS uploads, JDBC, SFTPEvery new record inserted or update to an existing record sent to FirstHive, regardless of connection method
First-Party InterfacesWebsite, mobile app, microsite, PWAEvery tracked user action or behaviour (page view, login, click, form submit, conversion step, etc.) sent via the FirstHive SDK or analytics integration
Third-Party PlatformsSocial media (including social listening tools), chatbots, review platforms, ad networks, ORM platformsEvery user interaction record ingested from the third-party source (e.g. a Facebook Like or Comment)
Campaign / Execution ChannelsEmail, SMS, Voice, Web Push, WhatsApp, RCSEvery campaign metric ingested back into FirstHive from the execution node (Sent, Open, Click, Unsubscribe, Delivery, Bounce, etc.)
API-connected SourcesWebhooks, custom APIs, real-time event streamsEvery event record received by FirstHive via an inbound API call or webhook payload

Events on Data Out: Counting by Destination Type

Destination TypeExamplesWhat Counts as an Event
Communication ChannelsEmail gateway, SMS gateway, Voice, Web Push, WhatsAppEvery communication record sent from FirstHive to the execution channel counts as one event (one event per message sent)
Audience Push to 3rd-Party PlatformsFacebook Custom Audiences, Google Ads, DV360, call centre triggersEvery record or trigger sent outbound to a 3rd-party platform via Push API counts as one event
3rd-Party Platform via FH Request APICRM enrichment API, personalisation engine, real-time decisioningEvery data record or payload sent by FirstHive as a response to an inbound data request counts as one event
Data Push to Remote LocationsSFTP, data lake, data warehouse, BI toolEvery record pushed outbound to a remote location (SFTP, S3, BigQuery, Snowflake, etc.) counts as one event
API Responses (any outbound API call)REST API responses, webhook callbacks, event stream outputsCounts as two events — one for the inbound request and one for the outbound response

Worked Examples

Data In

Record-based systems. A CRM batch of 50,000 customer records uploaded via SFTP generates 50,000 ingestion events. A subsequent update file with 5,000 changed records generates a further 5,000 events.

First-party interfaces. A user session — lands on homepage → logs in → views a product → adds to cart → completes checkout — generates 5 events.

Third-party platforms. 10,000 Facebook Likes ingested from a brand page post generate 10,000 events.

Campaign and execution channels. An email campaign sent to 100,000 recipients with a 25% open rate and 5% click rate generates 100,000 (Sent) + 25,000 (Open) + 5,000 (Click) = 130,000 ingestion events. An SMS campaign of 50,000 messages with an 8% click-through rate generates 50,000 (Sent) + 4,000 (Click) = 54,000 events.

API-connected sources. A real-time purchase webhook firing on every e-commerce transaction generates one event per transaction received by FirstHive.

Data Out

Communication channels. A campaign send of 200,000 emails dispatched from FirstHive generates 200,000 outbound events.

Audience push to 3rd-party platforms. An audience segment of 75,000 profiles pushed to Facebook Custom Audiences generates 75,000 outbound events.

API responses. A real-time personalisation API called 500,000 times in a month (e.g. serving product recommendations on a website) generates 1,000,000 events under the two-events-per-response rule.

Data push to remote locations. A nightly export of 1,000,000 unified customer records to a Snowflake data warehouse generates 1,000,000 outbound events.

Summary

Data FlowDirectionCounts Toward Ingestion Quota?
CRM / ERP records ingestedInboundYes — one event per record inserted or updated
Website / app behavioural eventsInboundYes — one event per tracked user action
Third-party platform interactionsInboundYes — one event per interaction record
Campaign response metrics (open, click, etc.)InboundYes — one event per metric per recipient
Inbound API / webhook event recordsInboundYes — one event per record received
Campaign sends (email, SMS, push, etc.)OutboundYes — one event per message sent
Audience pushes to ad platformsOutboundYes — one event per record sent
API responses (any outbound API call)OutboundYes — two events per API response sent
Data exports to SFTP / data lakeOutboundYes — one event per record pushed

Key takeaway: The events quota covers all events flowing through FirstHive — both data in (from any source) and data out (to any destination), including all API responses. Entities are not individually metered; only the events associated with them are counted.