Cookie notices: 5 common CMPs in comparison

All of you are familiar with the obligatory cookie notice when you visit a website for the first time. This text banner is used to obtain consent to the collection and processing of the respective user's data. Quite annoying, but mandatory! To support companies with data collection, processing and management, there are Consent Management Providers (CMP) that provide cookie notices. We have compared 5 common providers to help you choose the right CMP.

What are CMPs?

Due to the new GDPR data protection directive in 2018, companies have had to deal with the topic of data protection much more than before. Now there is also the ePrivacy Regulation, which aims to better protect personal data in e-communication and standardize it across Europe.

Quick action is required here, as the handling of personal data on the Internet is a very sensitive issue. If handled incorrectly, it can result in severe penalties.

Consent management providers, or CMPs for short, help with the provision of GDPR-compliant cookie notices. Loosely translated, you could also call them consent management providers. CMPs ask for the user's consent to the use of personal data immediately upon entering a website by means of a cookie notice. This data is then stored and can be used for advertising purposes or similar.

Borlabs Cookie

Borlabs Cookie offers four different CMP packages:

• "Personal" is the cheapest option for 39 euros per year and offers the CMP for just one website.

• "Business Medium" - five websites can be equipped with the content management provider for 99 euros.

• "Agency Small" costs 199 euros per year and allows you to manage 25 websites with the content management provider.

• "Agency" makes it possible to use the CMP for as many as 99 websites for 299 euros.

All these packages are available in German, English, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch and Polish. In addition, Borlabs Cookie automatically provides an overview of the cookies used in the privacy policy. This enables the website visitor to recognize the cookies more precisely and to decide which ones to allow and which not.

One disadvantage of Borlabs Cookie is that it is only available for WordPress.

Consent Manager

Depending on the package, the Consent Manager distinguishes between the number of websites and monthly page views:

• With the free "Basic" variant, you can manage a website with a maximum of 5,000 page views per month with the CMP.

• "Beginner" costs you 19 euros per month and offers the CMP for one website. The page impressions per month are limited to 100,000, but can be increased for 0.10 euros per 1,000 impressions. The contract is renewed monthly.

• "Standard" costs 59 euros per month and offers the CMP for three websites. The number of page views per month is limited to 1,000,000, but can be increased. The price per 1,000 additional page views is 0.05 euros.

• With "Agency", 20 websites and 10,000,000 page impressions per month cost 195 euros. Here, too, there is a surcharge of 0.02 euros per 1,000 additional hits. The contract term is 12 months.

• The price for the "Enterprise" package is available on request. You have as many websites as you want and you can also determine the number of page views individually. Every additional 1,000 page views also cost 0.02 euros in this variant and the contract runs for 12 months.

Consent Manager offers ready-made texts in 26 different languages. From the "Standard" package upwards, these can be customized and provided with your own designs.

Consent Manager also includes the function of a cookie crawler, which goes through the website 1, 10, 100 or 300 times depending on the package and simulates a real user on the page. In this way, the website owner is notified of user behavior and other active cookies on the site.

Cookiebot

Like the two previous tools, Cookiebot also offers four different models for its users:

• The "Free" offer includes a website with less than 50 subpages.
• With "Premium Small", the customer pays 12 euros per month for each domain with less than 500 subpages.
• "Premium Medium" costs 28 euros per domain. This can contain up to 5,00 subpages.
• For 49 euros per month you get the "Premium Large" package. With "Premium Large", more than 5,000 subpages are possible per domain.

Cookiebot offers 46 different languages, email reports on site performance and user behavior, geographical user data and many other useful functions for all paid models.

GDPR cookie compliance

As with the previous three programs, there are also four different offers for GDPR:

• The "Free" option is also free of charge here and offers you the CMP for one website.
• For 49 pounds you get the "Single License" for just one website, but you get a lot more tools.
• The "Developer License" costs 99 pounds and, in addition to the tools, offers up to five websites that can be managed.
• The most expensive offer is the "Agency License" for 199 pounds, which allows you to manage 25 websites.

GDPR Cookie Compliance offers all four models in 11 languages, with texts that can be customized from the "Single License" upwards. The same applies to the design. In addition, the paid versions include a useful cookie analysis tool to track user behavior on the site. They give you the option of allowing or disallowing various cookies, save the data of all users on the website and offer many other functions.

User Centrics

User Centrics is similar to the Consent Manager in the way it handles payment methods. Here too, billing is based on the number of sessions per month:

• The "Standard Package" costs 50 euros per month and offers you a capacity of 50,000 sessions per month.
• The "Advanced Package" costs between 150 and 999 euros per month for more than 50,000 sessions and can be customized.
• The largest package, the "Enterprise Package", offers the CMP for an unlimited number of websites, but the price is not fixed. You will need to contact User Centrics personally as it is customized.

The "Standard Package" has some useful functions such as consent management and an up-to-date privacy policy for 8 euros per month, but is limited in comparison with the other packages.

From the "Business Package" onwards, the user automatically receives a cookie report, with which he can track and analyze the user behavior of website visitors. The "Enterprise package" also includes the option of cross-domain consent sharing, i.e. the transfer of consent between different end devices, and many other functions.

The 5 CMPs at a glance

That was quite a lot of input, wasn't it? To help you compare the five companies, we have put together another table with the most important information:

As you can see, there is a suitable CMP for every requirement. You can choose between different levels of functionality and even different subscription models.

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