CookieYes Cookie Consent Solution – Review

There is a fine line between collecting data for providing customized services and encroaching on privacy. People are becoming increasingly aware of privacy and the need to protect it and laws have been passed to address this concern. So if you are looking for a solution to make your website compliant with these laws, we have an answer for you – CookieYes Cookie Consent Solution.  Read on to find out more.  

Cookies – the double-edged sword

Cookies are small text files that a website stores on a browser when the user visits the website. Websites use them for multiple purposes like storing login statuses, remembering the cart items in an e-commerce store, identifying whether a user is a new visitor or returning user, or analyzing the user behaviour on the website. 

Cookies can help web developers give you more personal, convenient website visits by letting websites remember you, your website logins, shopping carts and more. But they can also be a treasure trove of private info for criminals to spy on. While most cookies are perfectly safe, some can be used to track you without your consent. 

Privacy Laws and Cookies

Many data privacy laws have issued guidelines for safe practices for handling people’s data. One such legislation is the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The US counterpart of the EU GDPR, the California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA) is also gaining traction since it also affects all businesses that collect the personal information of California residents. You will see many businesses striving to get compliant because the consequence of non-compliance is expensive. 

As per the definition of personal data or personal information, cookie identifiers are part of it as well because some cookies (most often third-party cookies) collect the device or login information of the visitors and monitor their online activity to provide additional services on a website. Therefore, under the GDPR and CCPA, a website needs to inform its visitors about these cookies and their purposes and then ask their consent to store the cookies on the visitor’s device. 

And as is the norm with WordPress, there are many cookie consent management solutions for websites. Today we are sharing our experience with one of them – CookieYes.

CookieYes Cookie Consent Solution

CookieYes is a SaaS application that provides GDPR and CCPA cookie consent solutions for websites. Using CookieYes, you can add a cookie consent notice or banner to your website and manage it as per the law requirements. 

Unique Features

The following features have really impressed us. 

1. Intuitive and user-friendly UI/UX

Its UI/UX will barely leave you confused or asking for more. It is clean, intuitive and user-friendly. Every detail is easy to understand and straightforward. A first-time user can quickly figure out how to work around the application. 

For example, the dashboard design is quite impressive and all the important details are available in one place. There is an option for live chat. So, if you are confused or run into any issue, there is help nearby. 

2. Automatic cookie scanning

Once you verify your email address and install the banner, CookieYes will start scanning your website for cookies. The result will be available on the dashboard or the scanner section. The scanning identifies the cookies used by your website and categorizes them according to their purposes. 

3. Automatic third-party cookie blocking

CookieYes automatically blocks cookie scripts from third parties used by your websites, such as Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel and YouTube, before the visitor registers their consent via the cookie banner. You can manually add cookie details and the script URL of third parties to block cookies set by them.

4. Full customization of consent banner

With CookieYes, it is possible to make the cookie consent banner match your website’s colour scheme. You can select the colour of the background, border, text of content, buttons and links or change the language of the banner. It also auto-recommends banner style depending on your website’s design. 

One interesting feature here is enabling reloading of a website after the user enables or disables cookies to show that the website is actually taking the consent status and aligning its services accordingly. 

5. Granular opt-in/opt-out for cookies

There is an option to enable or disable the preloading of cookie categories before receiving cookie consent. This is an important setting as laws like GDPR stresses consent being ‘specific.’ That is, the visitors must have a specific, separate option for consent for different categories. The cookie preferences settings in CookieYes allows users to let the visitors have selective or granular opt-in or opt-out choice for cookies based on their category. 

6. Geo-targeted display of the banner.

CookieYes offers a targeted display of the consent banner depending on the visitor’s location. So, if you enable this option, the website will show the GDPR banner only to visitors from the EU or UK or the CCPA banner to Californian/US visitors. 

7. Revisiting consent any time

As per the GDPR, withdrawing consent must be as easy as it was to give it. Using CookieYes, you can let your website visitors change their consent settings at any time by adding a button on the web page. Clicking the button will open the banner again and the visitors can change their settings. This is only available for GDPR compliance.

8. Visitor cookie consent logging

Yet another vital feature, something that GDPR also requires websites to follow. Getting consent is not enough. There are times when you may need to prove it as well. To be prepared for such situations, you must keep a record of the consent obtained so that you can demonstrate it. 

CookieYes maintains a log of the cookie consent you receive from the visitors. It records the visitor’s IP address (don’t worry, it will be anonymized), consent status, country, and time and date. 

9. Privacy and cookie policy generator

CookieYes solution also offers its users a free privacy and cookie policy generator. It can easily and quickly generate pages. There are a few series of questions related to how you handle data on your website. All you have to do is just answer and submit them. Your privacy policy and cookie policy will be ready in a few seconds. You can either copy the text or HTML and paste it on your website privacy policy page.

Pricing

They have a basic free plan and 3 paid plans – Basic ($100/year/domain), Pro ($200/year/domain) and Ultimate ($400/year/domain). With paid plans, you get advanced featured like a Geo-targeting cookie banner, auto-translation of the banner, and scan more pages for cookies. CookieYes now offers a free trial for 14 days, where most of the features discussed here are available. 

Final thoughts

The importance of your website adhering to GDPR or CCPA for cookies can never be overemphasized. We feel that CookieYes will be a reliable partner for your website. They have good ratings and is used by over a Million sites. 

So do give it a try and let us know about your experience in the comments section below.