Data privacy compliance can be overwhelming. It’s a complex matter for growing businesses, who need to know exactly which laws they need to comply with and what they require. And that’s all before working out how to manage these obligations.
A consent management platform (CMP) can help make compliance simple. These solutions help you ask for, collect, operationalize, and record consent for data processing in compliance with the dozens of data privacy laws across the globe.
What does this mean for you? No more uphill scrambling to manually stay on top of ever-growing regulatory demands. With the right CMP, you can make compliance feasible and protect customer trust, all while reserving more time for high-impact activities.
However, it’s important you choose the right platform for your organization. To help you find the best fit, we’ll walk through six of the best consent management platforms and their pros and cons. First, though, we’ll cover the basics of CMPs and what key features to look for when evaluating solutions. If you just want to see our comparison of CMPs, scroll down to the bottom of this article.
For most, a consent management platform is a means of managing the cookie consent aspect of privacy compliance, simplifying how this is handled. Cookie consent is the biggest use case for CMPs, but they can also help you manage consent for non-cookie-based data collection. Essentially, it’s software that helps websites collect and manage the user consent required to process consumers’ personal data, making this easier and more transparent.
Note that data privacy laws regulate the collection of personal data–not the use of cookies per se. In most cases, you’ll need to secure consent for any data collection and processing you engage in. Commonly, data collection and processing includes:
CMPs are essential to ensuring compliance with privacy regulations like the GDPR or CCPA/CPRA, which often state that users must be able to make informed choices about their data collection. They allow you to track individuals’ preferences and keep records of their decisions around consent, so you can adjust your activities around these choices, honor consumers’ requests, and remain accountable to regulators. If you don’t have a record of consumer consents, regulators will treat it as though you never collected consent in the first place!
The main features of a CMP are:
A consent management platform helps you stay compliant as it’s often mandated that businesses get consent before collecting and using personal data. Here’s how some of the world’s most prominent data privacy regulations treat consent management:
What happens if you fail to comply with these laws? Non-compliance can have serious consequences, such as substantial fines and legal action, depending on the severity of the violation. The GDPR, for example, issues fees of up to 4% of annual global revenue or 20 million euros, whichever is greater.
But beyond the financial damage, non-compliance can have devastating effects on your company’s reputation, eroding the trust of your clients and even driving potential new customers away.
Furthermore, cyberinsurers, M&A partners, and other partners are making privacy compliance part of their due diligence process. If you want to engage with other organizations in a significant way, achieving compliance is a necessary step to prove you’re worth their time.
An effective enterprise consent management platform helps to avoid these risks, and is therefore a necessity for businesses. It ensures the process of collecting and managing user permissions is fully transparent so consumers can have full confidence that their data is being respected. At the same time, it provides accountability with clear audit trails and records–a practice that is not only good governance, but also meets requirements under data privacy law.
Ultimately, by implementing a CMP, businesses not only make it far easier to stay compliant (thereby protecting themselves from penalties) but also build stronger relationships with their audience through trust and loyalty.
All consent management solutions are different, so it’s important to carefully consider which option best complements your business. Having said that, there are some features that should be non-negotiable when selecting the right tool, no matter how you work.
CMPs are designed to help you maintain compliance, so it’s non-negotiable that they do this comprehensively. Does the platform support all privacy laws that your business is subject to? It should adhere to certain standards, including the requirements set out by the GDPR, CCPA/CPRA, and any other international or regional regulations that apply or may someday apply to your organization.
You don’t want to have to spend hours taking up developer time to tweak code and make your CMP fit your existing systems. Even if a solution can integrate with every niche system under the sun, if it’s a complicated slog to implement, you won’t be able to enjoy the benefits of those integrations. A big part of evaluating the ease of solution’s implementation is evaluating the vendor’s onboarding team and process. See if you can get a sense of what the process will look like, how much assistance you’ll have, and what other customers’ experiences have been.
Can you adapt your cookie banner to fit your brand style? You should be able to customize the look and feel of the pop-up to reflect your company’s design. And, it should have responsive design that enables it to work perfectly on any device. However, total customizability isn’t necessarily a good thing in this case–some privacy laws have very specific requirements about banner design, down to the colors you can apply to the buttons. You’ll want to ensure your solution lets you present an on-brand banner without making it easy to customize your way into non-compliance.
To ask for consent in line with privacy laws, consumers must be made aware of any cookies and other scripts being used to track data on your site so they can make a fully informed decision. But do you know all the cookies and scripts you’re currently deploying?
A good CMP will be able to detect tracking technologies used on your site. It should then categorize them based on their purpose (e.g., marketing, analytics, personalization, essential) so you can give a detailed description to users when asking for their consent. Many privacy laws, like the GDPR, require you to give users the option of consenting or not consenting to specific categories of data trackers.
It’s not enough to simply ask for consent, you must also be able to prove this to demonstrate compliance. To support this, a CMP should thoroughly document every permission given and store consent records to create a trail for regulators to follow during an audit. This should include a timestamp of when consent was given, what the status was (whether they accepted or not), and which cookie categories they agreed to.
Whether you’re an SMB or a large enterprise, your CMP must be able to handle the volume of data and consent requests that your business receives. Not only this, but as your business grows you’re likely to have increasing levels of traffic, possibly across different digital properties, and your CMP must be able to accommodate this. Is it scalable enough to fulfil your needs far into the future?
Privacy laws are ever-changing, and it can be hard to keep up with current requirements. Manually checking laws and updating policies is highly ineffective. Your cookie consent management platform should make it easy to remain up to date by automatically aligning with the latest regulations and best practices. You’ll want to ensure privacy and legal professionals on your vendor’s team are evaluating developments in the privacy world and working with the vendor’s developers to translate these developments into the CMP’s design.
With so many consent management platforms available, how can you choose the best option for you? While they may appear similar at first glance, each has different features, strengths, and weaknesses that should be taken into account when assessing the right fit.
We’ve evaluated six of the most prominent options to help you select your ideal platform.
Best for: A wide range of businesses interested in managing consent with a simple implementation, baked-in compliance guidance, and excellent support.
Osano offers a fully comprehensive, compliance-first CMP that ticks all the boxes and more. Together, its Cookie Consent and Unified Consent & Preference Hub give privacy professionals and other consent owners a one-stop global privacy platform for total visibility and control across their business.
Compliance is baked into the platform, and advanced AI enforces this with highly accurate cookie identification and classification, which a recent G2 reviewer higlighted, "I love new AI feature that provides recommendation for the cookie/script classification."
And, as a Google CMP partner, Osano integrates seamlessly with Google Consent Mode. It also accepts universal opt-out signals like the GPC.
Lastly, Osano is the only CMP to provide a compliance guarantee. If you use the platform according to best practices and still get fined, Osano will pay up to $500,000 off your penalty.
Key capabilities:
Best for: Midsize businesses prioritizing automation in consent management
CookieBot is best known for its automated cookie scanning and CMP partner certification from Google. It also provides consent banners in a wide range of languages, making it a strong option for businesses with international audiences, and is specialized for WordPress users.
This solution is suited particularly well to websites that need quick, simple cookie consent compliance. However, its more basic setup makes it less compatible for growing organizations that therefore need scalable, comprehensive compliance support. In addition, CookieBot has been found to have an outsized impact on site speed due to its use of an externally hosted script.
Key capabilities:
Best for: Large organizations that need tools extending beyond consent and privacy management
OneTrust is one of the first CMPs to have emerged on the market and is a key player in this area. Its platform offers a full suite of tools not only in consent management but also vendor risk, data governance, security, and compliance automation.
As a result, it’s a valuable solution for companies in heavily regulated industries. It’s also aimed mainly towards large enterprises, so may exceed the needs and budgets of smaller teams. Its scope and flexibility also make it very complex to implement and use, and users often report a lack of support. As a result, an ecosystem of OneTrust consultants exists that can help OneTrust users configure the platform.
Key capabilities:
Best for: Enterprise-level businesses needing a highly customizable CMP solution
Designed for scale, Usercentrics is a gold-tier certified CMP in Google’s partner program with customers in over 180 countries. It’s a very customizable CMP platform that helps large organizations manage fine-tuned consent preferences across multiple channels. It also integrates well with complex internal systems, making it a good choice for growing and large companies.
In 2021, Usercentrics acquired Cookiebot. Its automation was therefore enhanced, but its primary focus remains on consent management.
Key capabilities:
Best for: Global businesses requiring a multi-regulation CMP across multiple devices
Specializing in multi-regulatory consent management, Didomi addresses all laws, including GDPR, CCPA/CPRA, LGPD, PDPD, and PIPA. Every consent banner is automatically geotargeted. They also have a large focus on usability, highlighting their intuitive UI-based tools that can be easily adopted by “anyone with basic internet skills.”
Didomi is also Google-certified and is adaptable to businesses of all sizes. It is a slightly more premium solution, however, so may be unsuitable for organizations who only need a simple consent banner. It also has been found to impact site speeds and doesn’t allow for scanning more than 25 domains, which can be a dealbreaker for agencies or other organizations that manage multiple domains.
Key capabilities:
Best for: Smaller businesses who need a simple, budget-friendly CMP that’s easy to implement.
CookieYes combines a simple-to-use platform with essential tools and attractive pricing, making it an ideal option for small businesses wanting a fast setup. It supports GDPR, CCPA, and UK GDPR requirements while offering one-click deployment and multilingual support, but lacks more advanced capabilities like deep automation and adaptability. As a result, it may not be the best option if you anticipate growth or have changing legal needs.
One of CookieYes’s most attractive features is its free plan, though the capabilities in this option are understandably limited, with features like language and multi-domain support only being available in paid tiers.
Key capabilities:
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