This is the story of how we came about our Cookie Policy and why we chose the provider we chose. It is a long story that I condensed for you so you don’t have to go through this painful trial and error to find what works for you!

Cookie notices on WordPress websites need to:

  1. scan our sites for cookies,
  2. categorize them,
  3. offer consent options via a popup,
  4. block any non-essential cookies until consent is received
  5. keep proof of consent

If you’re looking for the low down on cookies, if we need them, and how to classify them – see this post.

First I googled alternatives to illow and only received a list of other blog articles of people talking (too much). After that, I found these top contenders that charge based on traffic.

  • Enzuzo- $80/mo for 30,000 visitors
  • Ketch – $130/mo for 30,000 visitors
  • Osano – $199/mo for 30,000 visitors

That is clearly too expensive and unnecessary for blogs.

These prices are per pageview – that is clearly too expensive. And unnecessary for blog pages that contain almost the same thing (as far as the cookies are concerned) and most of WPB friends and clients do not need complete consent management platforms and tracking. We only need a notice that lets our visitors know about cookies, and provides the legally required options for them to control their own data.

That brings us to the legally required elements of a cookie notice.

Legal Requirements for a Cookie Notice

The rules change depending on where your readers are coming from and which country you are in. So I’ve summarized the following rules to encapsulate both the intent of the law and the execution. These rules are changing FAST. So a year is about all I can hope for. But I’ll review the policies on my site quarterly.

See the sources section below for where I got these summaries. In using these rules, I hope to cover all the laws coming into effect in the USA & California (CCPA), EU (GDPR), Canada (PIPEDA), Brazil (LGPD). By sticking to the intention of the law, we’ll cover our butts when all sorts of different wording comes into force.

This is not legal advice. This is a story to tell you what I’m doing for my site and why. You use this story as advice at your own peril.

All plugins provide options for you to do it the wrong way. I was surprised too!

You do need to know these elements of a cookie policy because all plugins seem to provide options for you to do it the wrong way. What’s the point in annoying our users with banners if you don’t even do it properly? So when perusing the options in a plugin or service – I made sure it can do the following:

Transparency

  • easy to read language
  • a link to the full cookie policy page

consent

  • we must STOP any non-essential cookies until we have consent
  • we must have explicit consent, that means:
    • the ‘accept all’ cookies may NOT be checked by default
    • not using “if you use this site, you are consenting”
    • not setting the “X” or “Close” or scroll to imply consent
  • we must allow for a way for users to withdraw consent (you’ll notice a new annoying icon that is always on display on our site so that you can withdraw consent at any time)
  • we must let users choose which category of cookies they approve of and which they can decline

timing

  • the consent banner must appear immediately
  • non-essential cookies must be blocked from the moment a user lands on the page until they consent

appearance

  • the banner must have options to customize, decline all, consent to all
  • it must make it easy and obvious to consent and to withdraw consent
  • not necessary yet: translation support, and accessibility support

record keeping

  • unfortunately you must have a record of a person’s consent
  • you must allow users to withdraw their consent

Cookie Notices Plugins for WordPress

So then I went to my friend, ChatGPT, who gave me some other options to look into and these options have different pricing models as noted.

Beware – WordPress creates pages out of your blog posts- every category, tag, author archive, and date based archive counts as a new page. See your Search Console sitemap to view the real number of pages on your site.

  • Usercentrics Cookiebot $60/mo for 3,500 pages scanned
  • CookieHub for WordPress $27/mo for 100k pageviews
  • CookieYes $0/mo for 15,000 pageviews $55/mo unlimited pageviews
  • Cookie Compliance (Hu-manity) $15/mo unlimited pageviews
  • Civic Cookie Control – FAR too complicated to set up
  • CookiePro – ran out of time
  • Cookie First – 9 EUR / mo, unlimited pages, 19 EUR/mo if you are in UK.
  • WP Cookie Consent Manager (legalpages) plugin $6/mo for unlimited visitors and includes 500 pages scanned

Given those options, WP Cookie Consent seemed the most promising.

WP Cookie Consent Manager

Given the research I’ve done over the last couple of weeks, I’m increasingly impressed with WP Cookie Consent Manager. The free plan that they offer is likely good enough for most of you. And it does include a complete compliance maintenance dashboard – which does all the legal things we need it to (see above).

So I installed it and gave it a whirl – the options and ability to set up the banner is great. The ease of scanning for cookies is in theory, really simple – just click the button.

WP Cookie Consent: I wasn’t able to complete a scan of any pages.

Problems: I wasn’t able to complete a scan of any pages. It said the scan was aborted and insisted on an upgrade but then on the dashboard, the status of my cookie scan was Complete – and Successful. (twice)

And if I didn’t know any better I would think the whole set up is working.

WP Cookie Consent dashboard screenshot

However, I am sad to say that it found zero of my cookies on the site. (I have around 20)

WP Cookie Consent scan History >> Dashboard

So if you have WP Cookie Consent plugin installed – please check the “Discovered Cookies” tab to be sure that your cookies are actually being displayed in the banner. Need to know what cookies you have?

You can try Cookie Yes if you want a neat tidy report of the cookies used, and the categories they belong to.

Installation instructions for CookieYes are here.

Cookie Compliance by Hu-manity

For $15/mo for unlimited pageviews I thought this would be a keeper. After a few hours of testing – it turns out the compliance is another level. Which is good for those who are super serious about being compliant and have customers from any country. Cookie Compliance will make sure you are compliant in whatever region you decide.

Did you know you need to have a “Do not sell my information” link to be compliant in California? Me neither.

Cookie Compliance Banner Screenshot
Cookie Compliance Banner

Problem: this does not add cookies to your banner or site. It does not scan and find the cookies. But it will block them, IF you add each cookie properly and keep it updated. This is too technical for most site owners. And there are easier plugins.

This is too technical for most site owners.

So that rules out Cookie Compliance. Sadly.

How to Get a List of Your Cookies

Aren’t you proud of me that I haven’t made one pun about a list of peanut butter, macadamia white chocolate and gingerbread? Me too.

To get the cookies for your website, you can use a free scanner like Cookie Yes. Without logging in – you can enter the link of your site and it will email you a login with the results of your scan. After you login to their site, you will see something like this:

Cookie Yes dashboard screenshot

Under the Cookie Manager tab, you will see a list of cookies AND the category that they are in. Most bloggers will have more cookies than these as all advertisers set a lot of cookies on your site.

CookieYes | CookieFirst

If you have under 15,000 hits per month, we recommend CookieYes as it has all the features and is free until you get to 15,000 pageviews/month. The banner is customizable, even in the free option, and there are 5 scans per month I believe.

Installation instructions for CookieYes are here.

The cookies are scanned, categorized and added to your site, you can add the table to your cookie policy too. The only thing it doesn’t have by default is the “Do not sell my information” link, which you can easily add to the intro wording if you like. Link that to a form that will allow a person to submit that request.

CookieYes banner Screenshot
CookieYes banner Screenshot

If you have over 15,000 pageviews a month, my recommendation is CookieFirst. It is 9EUR / mo for the regular compliance and options which is good for most US based content creators. If you wish to get the advanced plan – it is 19 EUR/mo and recommended if you are in the UK. And they do not charge based on pageviews. Yay!

We offer an Installation Service or an Installation & Management Service for cookie consent.

Bonus: I like the banner interface – it is simpler and cleaner than the others. The “My Data” is the tab where a user can erase their own data.

CookieFirst banner screenshot.
CookieFirst Banner Screenshot

We have partnered with CookieFirst for bloggers! You can purchase an installation & management service here, and we will manage the cookies on your site for the same price mentioned on their site. (9EUR or $13/mo)

Maintenance of Policy

You’ll need to revisit your cookie policy and your privacy policy at the same time. We recommend December or January – and have included it in our annual maintenance checklist which you can download for free.

And you’ll need to rescan your site for cookies and update the banner, every time you add or change service providers, especially these types of services:

  • email marketing services
  • smtp services
  • crm/erp platform
  • analytics/ trackers
  • ads
  • social media pixels/tags

Conclusion

In conclusion, we recommend CookieYes, CookieFirst or if you can get it to work, WP Cookie Consent by Legal Pages.

Sources

Beginner Checklist

If you’re starting out, you’ll love our comprehensive 52 point checklist for your website! Read through once, and then work on items one at a time as it comes up!

52 Edits Checklist – beginners categories

Cathy Mitchell

Single Mom, Lifelong Learner, Jesus Follower, Founder and CEO at WPBarista.