Cookie consent software ensures that websites can comply with relevant privacy regulations such as the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and the ePrivacy Directive (ePD). These solutions enable website administrators to create, customize, implement, and manage cookie consent notices, as well as manage and store user preferences for opting in or out of cookies. This type of platform improves and eases the management and control process for user data and preferences.
As privacy regulations and internet usage continue to evolve, it’s crucial that every website effectively manages and communicates how they collect, use, and store user data. One of the essential aspects of ensuring online data privacy is obtaining user consent to use cookies. Cookie consent software allows users to make informed decisions regarding what information is being collected, and if they are happy with this.
A reliable and efficient cookie consent software is one that allows customizable pop-up designs, ensuring that customers can clearly see what information is being collected. It should also offer a user-friendly design and provide automatic compliance with the latest regulations.
To help you select the best cookie consent software for your website, this guide will provide a list of the top solutions, reviewing each by their features, compliance measures, customization options, ease of implementation, and user feedback. The article will end with some key questions and features to look for when selecting a Cookie Consent solution.
Ketch is a data permissioning platform that delivers data mapping, risk assessment, and DSR automation capabilities, as well as cookie consent management. With Ketch, you can collect and manage user data and preferences securely, and implement and evidence consent-based policies. In addition to ensuring that customer consent choices are properly recorded, Ketch helps enhance user experience by streamlining the visitor journey, and supports a range of privacy requirements including GDPR, CCPA, and LGPD, with the option to customize policies to suit specific needs.
Ketch provides you with customizable templates that can be edited and tailored to your needs without the need to code. You can change all aspects of a consent banner, ensuring the colours, text, blocks, position, and layouts all match with your brand image to enhance user experience. This builder also allows you to preview how the banner will be displayed in different languages, jurisdictions, and on different devices.
Importantly, Ketch aligns user preferences with website tags, ensuring that your site acts in accordance with these stated preferences. The platform integrates with third-party providers to ensure that they completely understand users’ consent preferences, meaning that users have a consistent experience across devices and platforms. Overall, Ketch’s cookie consent solution is straightforward to set up and delivers a streamlined experience for both end-users and web management teams.
Cookie Information is a privacy protection solution that helps organizations manage their users’ data, improve trust in their brand, and comply with global privacy laws such as GDPR and CCPA. The solution offers a proven cookie banner called Website Consent for businesses to provide transparency and control to website visitors over data collection.
The Website Consent banner identifies collected data and ensures an up-to-date cookie policy. User consent information is securely stored within EU servers, preparing organizations for potential audits. Cookie Information’s cookie-consent banner is customizable and offers multiple built-in templates, allowing businesses to maintain brand consistency and deliver a seamless user experience.
Integration with Google Consent Mode offers valuable marketing data, while respecting users’ privacy choices. The solution is compatible with various CMS and hosting providers, such as WordPress, SiteCore, One.com, and Wix. It includes easy-to-follow guides for working with tag managers like Google Tag Manager and Piwik Tag Manager, as well as supporting 42 languages to accommodate diverse markets.
CookieYes is a comprehensive platform designed to facilitate all aspects of cookie compliance with ease. It is designed to be compliant with a range of laws including GDPR (EU and UK), CCPA/CPRA (California), and VCDPA (Virginia), amongst others.
The platform offers a fully customizable cookie banner that can be tailored with custom layouts, designs, languages, and branding to match each individual business. The banner is compatible with any CMS or HTML site, making it easy to incorporate and deploy. The platform delivers granular cookie control, enabling automatic third-party cookie blocking and setting cookies based on user preferences. It also provides an overview of consent opt-ins.
CookieYes features advanced website scanning to generate detailed cookie audit reports. It can automatically detect and categorize cookies, schedule monthly scans, and scan behind logins for hidden cookies. Foolproof consent management is also available. This allows for user targeting, consent log recording, integration with Google Consent Mode, and the implementation of a cookie widget for consent withdrawal. In addition to these essential features, the platform offers free policy generators that include pre-built policy templates and generate customized policies in minutes, making the process seamless and user-friendly.
DataGuard offers a comprehensive cookie management solution that is designed to help businesses capture compliant cookie consent across multiple languages and various devices. The platform ensures GDPR, CCPA, and LGPD compliance with a fully customizable cookie banner or page. DataGuard’s cookie management solution is suitable for businesses operating in multiple markets as it supports over 40 languages and provides a variety of options to fit various branding requirements.
In addition to compliance, DataGuard simplifies the process of meeting legal requirements by providing a database of more than 2,600 data processing services to embed into your privacy policy. The platform ensures that any changes made in the cookie manager are dynamically updated, ensuring privacy policies remain up-to-date. It also offers analytics and reporting capabilities to help businesses optimize the performance of their cookie consents and make more informed decisions.
By connecting customers’ cookies with their preferences, DataGuard empowers businesses to give their customers complete control over their data. This, in turn, enhances customer trust. The platform’s real-time data connectivity provides businesses with valuable insights into overall acceptance rates and their customers’ preferences, leading to improved customer experiences.
Didomi is a comprehensive cookie consent solution that allows you to manage cookies effectively and with granular control. It is designed to help businesses collect user consent and preferences across all domains and devices. With a focus on global compliance, the platform ensures adherence to worldwide privacy laws, even in complex technical environments.
Didomi’s cookie consent solution offers advanced design and customization options, enabling businesses to ensure the platform is branded and customized. By using a clear and engaging cookie banner, businesses can enhance user experience and improve consent rates. The platform is designed for both technical and non-technical teams, offering an easy-to-use editor, API access, and mass updates module. Didomi’s support staff are on hand (and can be contacted through multiple channels) to assist with any questions.
Additionally, Didomi’s advanced analytics and reporting function provides detailed insights into cookie consent performance and metrics. This allows businesses to optimize their strategies and ensure ongoing compliance. The cross-device feature ensures users can share their cookie consent across various platforms, such as mobile, web, app, connected TV, and IoT. This streamlines user actions, thereby improving usability. The platform also allows businesses to retrieve proof of consent when needed and seamlessly synchronize user choices collected through the solution with their existing data and marketing tools.
OneTrust is a widely trusted software used by more than 750,000 websites to simplify compliance and consent management for personal data protection. This software allows companies to detect all cookies, tags, trackers, pixels, and beacons across their websites. It also provides easily customizable consent banners for meeting regional and brand requirements. OneTrust also offers pre-built marketing technology (MarTech) integrations for smooth deployment across domains.
OneTrust’s key features include auditing your website to identify and maintain an inventory of all first- and third-party cookies and tracking technologies. It automatically categorizes cookies and trackers using a database of over 45 million pre-categorized cookies, for grouping them by purpose. Companies can easily configure the consent experience with professionally designed templates and custom branding. This offers a seamless user experience with support for over 250 languages and geolocation rules.
The platform enables auto-blocking of trackers, until explicit consent is gained. This is achieved using no-code cookie blocking, tag manager integrations, and script re-writing. You can schedule regular scans to automate scanning and maintain records. The software demonstrates compliance through a detailed user consent transaction database. Additionally, Cookie Consent allows for A/B testing to optimize consent banners (and maximize opt-ins), while also extending its consent options to mobile app consent and OTT and CTV consent.
Osano Cookie Consent is a leading consent management platform (CMP) designed for reliability, flexibility, scalability, and ease of use. It provides a robust foundation for compliance, regardless of a customer’s location, taking relevant laws into account. The platform is easy to implement and is supported by Osano’s global team of privacy experts.
Osano ensures compliance by displaying banners in accordance with local regulations and in the user’s preferred language. The consent records are stored in a quantum ledger database for easy auditing and demonstration of compliance. The platform is compatible with various website platforms and supports both iOS and Android, making it a versatile solution for any organization.
As a scalable solution, Osano Cookie Consent grows as your organization does, providing multiple methods for managing consent across domains and jurisdictions. The platform supports unlimited domains, while maintaining site performance. With compliant banner templates for data privacy regulations in over 50 countries, Osano minimizes manual effort and reduces the risk of non-compliance.
Osano’s easy installation and customization allows businesses to maintain brand consistency, while complying with consent laws. The platform is designed to facilitate clear, compliant consent, while minimizing the impact on marketing effectiveness. With seamless integration into marketing tech stacks, Osano ensures compatibility and improves user trust and growth.
Securiti helps businesses to collect cookie consent and automate blocking in compliance with global privacy regulations. By periodically scanning websites, the software detects and classifies cookies into their respective categories. It also facilitates the configuration and deployment of custom banners to collect user consent, providing transparent information that can improve opt-in rates. Additionally, the solution automatically blocks non-essential and opt-out cookies to honor user consent.
This flexible preference management center allows companies to create and configure cookie banners and preference managers, ensuring that they align with their branding. Organizations have control over content, styling, and placement. A real-time reporting dashboard provides consent visualization at both the visitor and organizational level, making it easy to monitor consent activity.
The solution supports compliance with various privacy regulations, such as GDPR, CCPA, LGPD, ePrivacy Directive, and IAB TCF v2.0. Intelligent detection tailors the website experience for visitors, ensuring global compliance requirements are met. The proprietary cookie intelligence database automatically categorizes scan results and provides information on the purpose of each tracker, streamlining the process of setting up a cookie consent banner.
Transcend is a full-stack consent management solution that caters to both client-side and backend user consent, offering fully customizable consent experiences for different regions, devices, and domains. Transcend provides comprehensive coverage from client-side UI to backend opt-outs, honoring Global Privacy Control (GPC) signals and Limited Data Use (LDU) restrictions, making it suitable for various domains, apps, and regions.
As businesses grow and expand into new markets, Transcend ensures seamless and scalable consent management, making it easy to customize frontend UI and add regional consent experiences without any hassles. This helps to reduce the resource strain associated with global operations and prevents bottlenecks from slowing business growth.
The platform also offers visibility and reporting features. This allows organizations to confidently manage their global digital footprint. Transcend provides a full dashboard with insights into user preferences, opt-out compliance, trends, and other essential metrics for effective privacy compliance and risk management. Users can access data visualizations, audit logs, and records of consent to make informed decisions.
Transcend is an all-inclusive solution for honoring and enforcing user data preferences, providing a customizable and scalable consent management system that can easily adapt to the requirements of growing businesses.
TrustArc’s Cookie Consent Manager is a well-established cookie consent tool that is used by businesses of all sizes to maintain consistent compliance with global regulations. TrustArc’s software enables organizations to manage consent records across multiple domains, ensuring that their digital platforms remain compliant, thereby minimizing the potential for costly violations.
The Cookie Consent Manager offers easy integration with your tag management system, supporting various consent use cases and up to 45 different languages. Through its automatic tracker identification and categorization capabilities, TrustArc streamlines the process of ensuring GDPR, CCPA, and PIPL compliance. The software also provides comprehensive reporting features, giving real-time visibility into consent metrics in addition to other insights.
TrustArc’s Cookie Consent Manager includes a Technical Account Manager who will offer ongoing support in troubleshooting issues, customizing designs, and ensuring that your cookie consent program remains compliant across jurisdictions. TrustArc aims to elevate user trust in your business, while simplifying the cookie compliance management process.
Cookie Consent software allows business to gain consent and preferences from users. In practice, cookie consent software powers the popups or pages that appear when you access a website, requiring users to submit their preferences.
It is important that organizations gain consent from users, otherwise they may be breaching laws and user trust. Europe’s GDPR regulation requires that non-essential cookies must only be activated once a user has given explicit consent.
Cookie consent solutions are designed to balance the need to be clear and concise, explaining the purpose and nature of each cookie, without frustrating or negatively impacting a user’s experience. They will be designed to maximise cookie consent, whilst allowing users to decline if they wish.
This type of solution will feed information back to an organization regarding which cookies are accepted, and the rates that they are rejected. This can result in altering the wording or way that cookie permission is sought.
A cookie is a small packet of data that helps to identify your device. Within this, cookies have many specific functions and uses. They are designed to optimize and improve the browsing experience.
For example, browser cookies can be used to manage browser sessions. They can store individual login credentials, as well as specific preferences and interests. On a clothes website, for instance, they may store your sizing or style interest, ensuring that you have a tailored browsing experience. They are also used to ensure that you only see targeted adverts, based on your search history. Customized advertising is, probably, the most well-known use of cookies.
Cookie Consent solutions give admins granular control over the customization and deployment of their cookie consent requests. This allows them to add specific brand images and text, ensuring that a consent request form fits with marketing and branding criteria.
Consent requests are built from a templates that adheres to common regulations and laws, such as GDPR, CCPA, LGPD, ePrivacy Directive, and IAB TCF v2.0. By selecting one of these presets, admins can ensure that their consent form adheres to all legal requirements. This means that organization’s do not have to spend additional time cross checking their content and policies with legal obligations and requirements.
A form can then be deployed to a site, allowing users to select the option that is most appropriate for them. Statistics and rates can be recorded and sent back to admin teams. From here, they can assess acceptance rates and decide if there is a better way of seeking consent. Some platforms offer A/B testing to identify the most effective methods within their sector.
When selecting a cookie consent solution, there are several factors and features that are worth keeping in mind.
There is an, almost, limitless number of compliance frameworks depending on your location, sector, and size. For some organizations, there may be different frameworks governing different aspects of your organization or process.
Alex is an experienced journalist and content editor. He researches, writes, factchecks and edits articles relating to B2B cyber security and technology solutions, working alongside software experts. Alex was awarded a First Class MA (Hons) in English and Scottish Literature by the University of Edinburgh.
Laura Iannini is an Information Security Engineer. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Cybersecurity from the University of West Florida. Laura has experience with a variety of cybersecurity platforms and leads technical reviews of leading solutions. She conducts thorough product tests to ensure that Expert Insights’ reviews are definitive and insightful.