Few issues cause as much anxiety for site owners as cookie consent and privacy compliance. Even for my business site, I had to carry out a lot of research to find the right solution when my knowledge of the topic was minimal. I could have done with this Complianz review a few years ago!
What’s more, international regulations can create a complex patchwork of requirements that vary by location. It feels as though every locale has its own set of privacy directives that all need attention. For you, this can lead to either inadequate compliance or excessive caution that might damage the experience of your site.
For this Complianz review, I’ll examine how it handles the complexities of cookie consent management for WordPress sites and whether it lives up to its initial promise.
What Makes Complianz Stand Out
In comparison to the glorified popup banners or vast enterprise solutions that some WordPress plugins are, Complianz is a sophisticated privacy ecosystem using WordPress as a foundation.
One of the key facets of any privacy plugin is its own data privacy strategy. To this end, Complianz keeps all data on your server, with no third-party cloud solutions or external services. In contrast, other solutions—iubenda is one, but there are many others—store consent records on their servers rather than yours.
Complianz’ self-hosting approach can have a positive impact on your site’s performance. Most importantly, it aligns with the privacy-first philosophy that should underpin any compliance solution.
Complianz also has an in-house legal team that continuously monitors privacy regulations globally. The laws and directives we have to follow evolve on a perpetual basis, which means Complianz’ legal expertise translates into regular updates for both the plugin’s functionality and the legal documents it generates.
Complianz’ Comprehensive Cookie Consent Core Functionality!
The WordPress.org Complianz plugin page gives you an indication as to how popular the tool is: it’s active on over one million sites. It has an impressive rating from users too, and eyeballing it, it’s at least on par with competing plugins such as CookieYes, Cookie Notice and Compliance, and Real Cookie Banner.
I’m going to go under the hood throughout this Complianz review to show you what makes this plugin so popular among users. From my testing, I’ve found its core features solve the problems you’ll face when implementing privacy compliance.
Intelligent Cookie Scanning and Configuration
A cornerstone of effective cookie compliance is knowing exactly what cookies your site uses, and Complianz’ hybrid scanner is central to the process:
- It detects cookies from WordPress’ core, plugins, and third-party services.
- As your site evolves, the plugin will rescan to catch new cookies
- There’s an integration with Cookiedatabase.org for up-to-date cookie information.
- You get templates for hundreds of services and plugins.
I like how the scanner adapts to your specific WordPress implementation. For instance, Complianz detected a change when I installed a new plugin with its own cookies. After the automatic rescan, it suggested appropriate updates to my consent configuration.
Region-Specific Compliance
Privacy regulations will vary by location, and Complianz supports region-specific compliance for a number of high-profile directives across the world:
There is even support for Australia, South Africa, Brazil, and others. For each region, Complianz uses IP-based auto-geolocation, which applies the appropriate consent mechanism, legal documents, and script blocking behavior. This approach means visitors from different locations can receive a tailored experience that complies with local regulations. All this without requiring multiple plugins.
For example, the EU implementation offers granular consent categories (such as functional, preferences, statistics, and marketing) with script blocking. The US version can implement the Do Not Sell My Personal Information option that the CCPA requires.
If you serve a global audience, this functionality alone can justify the investment in Complianz.
Script Management and Integration
Complianz’ script management is one of the standout facets in my opinion as it actively manages which scripts can run based on user consent:
It provides automatic script blocking for common services (such as Google Analytics or Facebook), custom script management for unique implementations, and placeholders for blocked content (such as YouTube videos).
The Script Center uses a dependency manager to ensure those scripts load in the correct order too. This is critical for true GDPR compliance, as the regulation requires that tracking scripts can’t run before the user consents.
Complianz implements script blocking directly at the WordPress level rather than simply hiding elements or relying on external script blocking technology. Ultimately, this gives you proper GDPR compliance at the code level and delivers faster performance.
Customizable Consent Banner
When it comes to your consent banner, you have an extensive set of customization options that balance compliance requirements with brand consistency:
Those options include multiple templates, comprehensive styling options for colors and positioning, animation effects, custom CSS for advanced styling, and useful features such as split testing to optimize consent rates. Also, you can configure consent by category or service and even implement ‘soft cookie walls’ when necessary.
The Privacy Command Center: Features Beyond Basic Consent
As you can tell, Complianz is a complete privacy solution rather than a simple cookie banner plugin. For starters, it generates a complete suite of legally-compliant documents unique to your site’s configuration.
Other competitors will only offer basic privacy policy templates, but here you get plenty of documents that cover cookie policies, privacy statements, data leaks, and much more.
The documents will update based on both your site’s configuration and when regulations change. They adapt to visitor location too, so users in the EU will see a different version than those in California.
When it comes to your obligations to the user’s data rights, there are a number of tools on hand:
- Data request processing forms.
- An automated workflow for handling user requests.
- ‘Right to forget’ implementation.
- Management for data access requests.
These tools streamline what would otherwise be complex manual processes. Speaking of which, demonstrating proof of consent is a legal requirement for many businesses (especially those in the EU). Complianz maintains timestamps of consent, unique anonymous identifiers, statistics dashboards, and more to help you.
Complianz Review: The Installation and Overall Experience
Theory and features don’t matter if the installation process is a nightmare—which isn’t the case with Complianz! This starts from purchasing a plan, as you get the option to install Complianz onto your site from the checkout screen:
I might be out of the loop, but this seems unique among WordPress plugins so I find it thoughtful that the option is available. Regardless, you can also install the Complianz plugin in the typical way too.
Note that you should get an automatic download of the premium version of the plugin, but you can also find this within your Account > Downloads dashboard:
The best place to start for me is the Complianz > Dashboard screen within WordPress:
The Progress card lists out the most crucial steps to get things up and running, so I would look here first. Of course, the wizard is something you’ll work with too:
Once you complete this and choose to display the consent banner, you can customize it using a variety of options:
After this, you can work with the Integrations screen to set up script blocking, service approval, and more:
Between the onboarding, the banner customization, and the integrations, you have the crux of what Complianz is all about. Of course, cost matters too, so it’s the next piece of the puzzle within this Complianz review.
What Complianz Costs (And Whether It’s Worth It)
While the free version of Complianz is solid, a premium subscription nets you much more functionality. The three pricing tiers each provides the full feature set of Complianz, with the difference in the number of licenses you have available:
- Personal: $59 per year for a single site license.
- Professional: $179 per year for five licenses.
- Agency: $399 per year for 25 licenses.
For most WordPress site owners, the Personal plan will be enough, but the higher tiers will be more beneficial (and necessary) if you have multinational compliance requirements.
In comparison to other services, I believe Complianz delivers exceptional value for money. For instance, while iubenda’s pricing starts at around $40 per year, this only provides up to seven third-party services, full iubenda branding on display, and a pageview cap per month. To get the same functionality as the Complianz Professional tier, you’d need to spend around $300 per year.
Complianz’ Support and Documentation
Effective support is essential for any tool, and Complianz is strong here. The documentation is plentiful, and it splits the knowledge base into several categories:
There’s also a blog that gives you a passive way to learn more about privacy, cookies, and everything related.
When it comes to support, you can access the relevant form from the Tools > Support page within WordPress:
It’s simple and effective, with the team replying within 24 hours on a weekday and 48 at the weekend. Given the comprehensive nature of Complianz, I’d prefer to see a more immediate way of getting support. However, this is definitely in line with what the competition provides.
The Verdict: Complianz Without Compromise
Regardless of what your favorite cookie compliance plugin is, Complianz can make you rethink that choice. It builds on top of WordPress to deliver arguably better integration and performance. In contrast to the competition, Complianz gives you greater depth and a more comprehensive way to manage site privacy settings. It’s a winner in my book!
Will Complianz review help you change your choice of cookie consent solution for WordPress? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this in the comments section below!
