How session tracking works

A session is the window of time between a player joining your server and leaving it. Session data is the foundation of the analytics that matter most: how long players stay, when they leave, and whether they come back.

What a session is

clan.me defines a session as a continuous period of activity, with a start time and an end time. Session length is the difference between them. A player who joins, plays for 45 minutes, disconnects, and returns two hours later has two sessions, not one.

Multiple sessions per player per day are normal. The session data in your dashboard shows total sessions, average session length, and the distribution of lengths across your player base.

Plugin mode: accurate sessions

With the plugin installed, sessions are recorded from actual join and quit events. When a player connects, the plugin immediately records a session start. When they disconnect, the session closes with an exact end timestamp. This is always accurate, even for very short sessions under a minute, and even during the gaps between heartbeats.

Poller mode: inferred sessions

Without the plugin, clan.me infers sessions from polling data. A player spotted on two consecutive polls is assumed to have been online continuously between them. A player who appears on one poll and is absent on the next is treated as having ended their session at some point in that interval.

This means poller-mode session boundaries are accurate only to the polling interval, typically 3 minutes. A player who plays for 10 minutes between two polls may be recorded as a session of 3 to 9 minutes depending on timing. For accurate session analytics, the plugin is required.