If you have a WordPress website you’re probably looking for the best cookie consent plugins for WordPress.
Cookies are small text files that websites store on your computer when you visit them. They’re used for lots of different reasons, including keeping track of your shopping cart while you browse, remembering your preferences, and tracking how often you visit a website.
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
What are cookies?
A cookie is a small text file stored in your browser (e.g. Internet Explorer, Safari, Chrome etc.) to help remember things like your preferences, shopping basket data and more. The data that they store is anonymous, but they are used to create a better user experience for visitors to websites.
To comply with GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) your website should make it clear to visitors from the EU that your site uses cookies (if it does), how they’re used and how to disable cookies if they decide that they don’t want cookies stored in their browsers.
Why do we need cookies?
Cookies are used to store small amounts of data on your computer while you’re browsing the internet. They’re also used to personalize your online experience. For example, when you visit a website, the site will use cookies to recognize you as a returning visitor. If you’ve visited the site before, the site will display personalized content based on your previous visits.
Why do you need a cookie consent plugin?
EU data laws dictate that website users must give confirmed consent before cookies are added to their browser.
So you need to tell your visitors that your site uses cookies, explain what cookies are and what they are used for, and then get consent before they are used on the visitor’s site.
A WordPress cookie policy plugin will help you do this.
What to look for in a WordPress cookie policy plugin?
When I’m looking for any new plugin I look at 3 sets of criteria, which are how many current active installs there are, how recently the plugin has been updated and it’s star rating.
A high number of active installations means that a lot of people have it installed and are using it (otherwise they’d deactivate and uninstall it).
How recently a plugin has been updated is very important. If it’s being regularly updated it means that if any security problems come to light they’ll be fixed pretty soon.
In my experience, people tend to leave reviews of stuff they loved or hated. I’ve never left a review for something I thought was just ok. Unless a plugin has a 4+ star rating I’m generally not interested.
Now we’ve chatted about how to choose plugins in general lets get to the good stuff.
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The 3 Best Cookie Consent Plugins for WordPress
Cookie Yes | GDPR Cookie Consent & Compliance Notice
So this WordPress cookie policy plugin is the new kid on the block which has replaced another entry on the original list and I must say, I’m impressed.
The cookie banner settings are managed via a separate website, not through your WordPress dashboard.
On this site there is a dashboard giving you information like if anyone has not given consent to cookies when they visited your site, how many cookies it thinks your site uses and more.
If you have multiple websites, like me, you can manage them all from this single account. So if you wanted to make a change to settings of your cookie banner across all your sites – you can do it all from one place.
Cookie Notice
This is the cookie consent plugin that I used to use. It’s really easy to set up. You can write your own message and I was able to set up a button to take users to my own cookie policy. You can also add a button to let site visitors refuse to accept cookies.
There are a few design options too, like where you want the banner to display (top or bottom of the screen), the background colour and text colour of the bar, as well as the button design.
For me it’s a pretty good plugin, it does the job it needs to and lets you customise it enough so it fits in with your site.
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GDPR Cookie Consent Banner
If you’re looking for a super-customisable plugin, this is the one for you. You can choose how your users close the popup, either on click, on scroll or timed. My personal preference is for on click so that you know your visitor has actively chosen to close and therefore accept. This isn’t gospel, just what I prefer.
If you want to install another plugin you can choose to display the cookie notice to certain parts of the world only.
You then have the message and button settings are pretty similar to Cookie Notice, so there’s nothing to choose between them in that department.
It’s the style settings that really set Cookie Consent apart from Cookie Notice. You can choose whether or not you want it to display as a banner across the screen, or whether you prefer a square box to appear in any corner of the screen instead. There are also a load of button customisation options from text colour to drop shadow.
Another feature of this plugin is that you can change the settings in the WordPress general customiser, so you can preview your style changes as you make them.
Personally, I think this plugin is a bit overkill. Yes having more control on how it looks and where the notice is displayed on screen is nice, but do you really need it? I can’t say I’ve ever come away from a site either loving or hating it because of the cookie notice.
The 3 Best Cookie Consent Plugins for WordPress: Verdict
For me, Cookie Yes is the standout winner. I’ve not yet switched to using it on this site, but I used it on all my website templates when I was setting them up. And I’ll be using it on client websites moving forward.
It’s easy to use and I like being able to manage it away from the WordPress dashboard.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the WordPress dashboard but I’ve found the Cookie Yes dashboard much easier to use.
I get so many more styling options and it provides me with a lot of information that I think would be tricky via the WordPress dashboard.
Do you use any of these WordPress cookie policy plugins? Are there any others that you think should get a mention when it comes to the best cookie consent plugins for WordPress? Leave me a comment and tell me what you think.
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Good post. Thanks for the info. #bloggerclubuk
I’m glad you found it useful. Thanks for reading 🙂
Great tips! I’ve just downloaded mine!
I’m glad you found it useful. Thanks for reading ?
Did you have to customize or add any php to make it work. I installed the plugin that you did and it worked for a few days, but now it isn’t. When I’ve checked the plugin’s support, there’s something about adding some php re: Google Analytics. (wayyy beyond me). Was just wondering if you initially encountered any problems. I see yours does work.
I’m sorry no I didn’t have any problems with it. Is it just for you or have your readers having problems too? It might be worth clearing your browser cache/cookies to see if that’s the problem. If you’re not sure how to do this, let me know which browser (Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari, Firefox) and I’ll talk you through it.
What a super helpful & informative post. Thank you. #TheListLinky
I’m glad you found it useful
I use your preferred cookie plugin too for all my sites.
Now that the Cookie Notice plugin has died (removed from WordPress repository) what do you suggest using now?
Going through 20 sites to change it is not a job I’m looking forward to!
Many thanks
Andy
It looks like Cookie Notice has been updated, so you should only have to update those 20 sites rather than replace it
For what it’s worth, Cookie Notice is nice but on WP Engine hosting the block from firing feature doesn’t work because of their caching.
Ugh, that’s annoying, thanks for the heads up Chris