Best Usercentrics Alternatives

Usercentrics, based in Munich, Germany is part of a conglomerate that also produces Cookiebot, which is managed from Copenhagen, Denmark. The two services are kept separate both for marketing and administration purposes.

Cookiebot focuses on getting consent for cookies from website visitors. The package's target market is small business websites. Usercentrics aims for larger businesses likely to store data on private individuals. 

Usercentrics operates globally but is most successful in Europe, where it is the third-largest provider of data privacy services behind OneTrust and TrustArc. 

The focus of the Usercentrics data controls is the usage of website visitor data by third parties, such as Google.

Pros and Cons of Usercentrics

Usercentrics is a consent management platform. This is a wider service than a cookie consent management service because it also manages personally identifiable information (PII).  

The Usercentrics system provides compliance for GDPR, LGPD, POPIA, CCPA/CPRA, VCDPA, CPA, CTDPA, and UCPA. However, it does this in a very narrow way. 

The platform can implement all of these standards on a single website. The service also provides legal pages, such as Terms of Service and Security Policies statements. The platform detects the location of a website’s visitor and adapts the banner language and compliance processes accordingly. 

The service also stores user consent records to be applied across domains. 

Usercentrics offers multiple plan levels. Potential buyers have to calculate value for money per edition However, while the lower two plans of the platform have prices, the top edition, called Premium, is priced by negotiation. 

The result of the price and function playoff means that the quality of the Usercentrics service varies. Some users even experience conflicted feelings about the tool. This user expressed enthusiasm for the system while also commenting that it was difficult to use and not worth the money. 

The data subject access request (DSAR) is an important part of a consent management system. It is the process by which the people whose information is held on an IT system can request a copy. This feature is a paid add-on to the Usercentrics plans. Some businesses will also find that they need more comprehensive GRC functions and due to that, Usercentrics might not be the best consent management platform available.

With that being said, here's our list of the best alternatives and competitors of Usercentrics. 

1. Enzuzo (Best All-Round Solution)

Enzuzo is a good alternative to both Usercentrics and its partner system, Cookiebot. This platform has six plans that range from a website cookie consent service all the way up to a full GRC package. There is even a Free package for small-volume websites that just need a cookie banner and standard legal pages.

Pricing

The Free and Starter plants equate to the type of service that you would get from Cookiebot. The Growth edition includes a geo-detection system that is similar to the service offered by Usercentrics. However, even this lowest consent management plan includes a DSAR service as part of the package. The top plan, Enterprise includes GRC functions that aren’t available from Usercentrics.

Here are the prices of Enzuzo’s plans:

• Free – $0 per month
• Starter – $9 per month
• Growth – $29 per month
• Pro – $79 per month
• Agency – $130 per month
• Enterprise – Custom pricing

 Features

The Growth plan includes the cookie management features that are offered by the Starter and Free editions. This scans a website for the presence of cookies and categorizes them, identifying those that are essential for the operations of the site and third-party cookies that the visitor has the right to refuse. 

All of those extra cookies are blocked by default. The package includes a location-aware cookie banner and once the visitor has approved a cookie type, the Enzuzo system lets them through. 

All Enzuzo plans include DSAR management. Higher plans from the Growth edition up provide full DSAR processing automation. DSAR forms are available in 24 languages, so this is a great choice for sites that deal with international sales or services and so need to hold data about people in many different countries.

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All plans compare favourably to the Usercentrics editions. The price difference between the two platforms is particularly notable. The Agency plan costs $130 per month to cover 20 domains; the middle plan of Usercentrics is priced at up to $1,150 per month. Keep in mind that you still have to pay extra for DSAR management with the Usercentrics service. 

The grades of service offered by Enzuzo are important because they make the platform accessible to all budgets. Startups struggling to absorb sudden supply price hikes need to make savings wherever they can. Tight cost control can make the difference between growing or going out of business. So, the affordability of the Enzuzo platform is crucial.

Advanced Features

The comparison between these two systems stops with the Pro plan of Enzuzo. The Agency plan is designed for service providers that manage systems on behalf of multiple clients – Usercentrics doesn’t cater to that market.  

Taking a look at the Enterprise plan of Enzuzo, we encounter services that aren’t available from the Usercentrics platform. These relate to the data management requirements of handling PII. These advanced services enable compliance management, which includes data governance tasks and risk assessments.  

The GRC features of Enzuzo shouldn’t really figure in a comparison of the platform with the Usercentrics platform. However, we will take a quick look at those higher services for anyone who is interested in getting GRC service and realizes that Usercentrics doesn’t offer them. 

Data Mapping

The PII protection services of the Enterprise plan rely on the discovery and classification of sensitive data. This function is included in the plan and it will identify data instances that relate to specific data privacy standards. 

The Enzuzo service can be used for GDPR, CCPA/CPRA, and other PII-related protection standards. It is also able to identify protected health information (PHI) for HIPAA and payment card data for PCI DSS.  

The discovery process logs all identified instances, enabling them to be accessed for DSARs as well as for protection to be extended to them.  

Vendor Risk Assessment

The vendor risk management unit of Enzuzo supplies a questionnaire to send out to suppliers. In most Web businesses, the vendors that need to be assessed are service providers, such as Web hosting platforms rather than the vendors of goods that might be for sale on a site. 

The Enzuzo system scores the responses of suppliers, giving each a score. These are letter grades, such as A for good through to F for unacceptable. 

Data Governance 

The governance feature of the platform implements a Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA). This examines issues such as the location of data and the administrators that access it. The location of data storage and usage is important for GDPR compliance.

Compliance Management

Enzuzo calculates a Compliance Health score that blends the results of system assessment and third-party risk questionnaire responses. The unit then generates logs for data access events and manages compliance auditing and reporting.

Ideal Partner for Agencies and Complex Websites

Enzuzo's solution scales well for agencies managing multiple client domains and large websites with high traffic and subdomains. It offers priority customer support, dedicated client logins, and a whitelabel solution that allows agencies to add privacy services to their operating model.

Agencies that partner with Enzuzo are also offered exclusive sales & marketing collateral to help close more clients and exclusive access to a private Slack community to network with industry peers.

The pricing scales well, too. And Enzuzo's reseller program puts money in your pocket as you recommend the solution to your audience. 

Overall Assessment

Enzuzo offers advanced cookie consent features, a compliance management platform, and a data management system for managed service providers. This is a wide range of editions that competes in a number of different sectors. One of the markets in which Enzuzo operates is compliance management, which is in direct competition with Usercentrics. In this field, Enzuzo offers a more complete package with DSAR management included and at a price that is considerably cheaper than Usercentrics.

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2. Vanta

Vanta is a compliance management platform that is able to implement steps to get an IT system in compliance with specific standards and then monitor activity to keep it in conformance. The functions of Vanta can be tuned to enforce GDPR, HIPAA, and SOC2, among other standards.:

The assessment provides a risk score through a process that includes access auditing, employee activity monitoring, and third-party risk assessments. The system generates a list of steps that need to be taken in order to improve the risk score and meet the requirements of a specified data privacy standard.

Pros

Vanta searches an IT system and creates hardware and software inventories. It implements a vulnerability scan, documenting configuration weaknesses on hardware and assesses software for risk.  

Cons

This is a vulnerability management package as well as a compliance management system. It is available for self-management on the AWS platform at a starting price of $7,500 per year. There is also a SaaS package available. This price indicator shows that the platform is designed for large organizations. The system focuses on application security rather than data protection. 

Users are generally pleased with the competence of the Vanta system and they appreciate the expertise of the company’s support team. However, there can be many issues with the system and the Help Desk management system only provides email for contact, which results in slow interactions to solve problems. 

The system lacks PII discovery and usage logging.

Overall Assessment

Vanta is entirely focused on securing hardware and software and yet it doesn’t provide a patch manager. The platform lays down recommendations to get a system compliant and explains best practices that should be followed. However, it doesn’t implement data protection measures.

3. Ketch

The Ketch consent management platform is similar to the Enzuzo service because it offers plans that range from cookie consent management to compliance management. The company provides a simple Free edition that offers basic legal cookie consent coverage for websites. 

The Ketch Free and Ketch Essentials plans match the services of Cookiebot, so buyers looking for an alternative to Usercentrics need to look at the Ketch Pro edition. The Pro plan exceeds the data privacy management capabilities of Usecentrics by offering data discovery, categorization, and mapping. The service also implements risk assessment through a Privacy Impact Analysis. 

The Ketch Pro plan includes a DSAR management service and compliance management for GDPR (EU), CCPA/CPRA (California), VCDP (Virginia), and LGPD (Brazil).

Pros

The Ketch Pro edition includes website cookie consent management, which forms the sole role of the two lower plans. The Pro plan also includes a package called Ketch for Developers. This is an orchestration system that developers can integrate into their applications to protect data for compliance. 

Cons

Ketch doesn’t enable consent sharing between domains, which is available in both the Usercentrics and Enzuzo services. There is no version that caters to managed service providers and even IT departments that manage multiple sites will need to duplicate effort because they need to maintain separate consent lists and data privacy services for each domain. 

Despite the fact that user reviews give the Ketch system very high scores. A common theme in reviews is that the system is still glitchy and, effectively, is still under development.

Many users explain that they had to ask for specific customizations to be written for them. This level of bespoke tailoring costs a lot of money and may explain why Ketch doesn’t publish its prices. 

Overall assessment

Ketch doesn’t meet Usercentrics head-to-head. Its Free and Essentials editions undershoot Usercentrics, going for the cookie consent market in which Cookiebot competes. The data privacy features of the top Ketch plan are better than those of Usercentrics. However, the Ketch package seems to be still under development and many customers have to request bespoke additions, which are expensive. 

4. OneTrust (Best for Large Budgets)

OneTrust is the largest data privacy provider in the world and it also has the number one slot in cookie consent management in the USA. The platform was created in response to GDPR but it is mainly focused on compliance with US data protection standards. These include CPRA in California and VCPD in Virginia. The platform also offers PII protection in accordance with the regulations in force in Brazil and Canada.

Apart from PII protection, this platform is able to manage compliance with PCI DSS, HIPAA, and SOX. The OneTrust platform is aimed at large corporations and it includes DSAR management, risk assessment (with third-party risk management), data governance, and compliance enforcement. 

OneTrust produces a cheaper set of tools, called OneTrust Pro and this is mimicked in an even cheaper copy, called CookiePro. The services of OneTrust Pro and CookiePro are closer to the services offered by Usercentrics than those of OneTrust. Consent management is available in the Privacy and Data Governance Cloud module of OneTrust. 

Pros

This is a very large platform that is divided up into four sections, each subdivided into modules. The company also provides training packages and legal advice. The OneTrust system also has units to enforce ESG standards. All of these services will appeal to large organizations. OneTrust recommends this platform for businesses with more than 500 employees.

The OneTrust Pro and CookiePro brands reach out to smaller businesses. Each platform offers a core Cookie Consent package and the CookiePro system divides that offer into cut-down plans for smaller businesses. Both of the subsidiary platforms provide add-on modules for DSAR management and a mobile app consent manager. The OneTrust Pro system has many more add-ons, including a data mapping service.

The multiple brands is a clever marketing tool that enables the company to approach several types of markets. This might account for OneTrust’s great success.   

Cons

Focusing on the OneTrust service’s Privacy and Data Governance Cloud,  interested buyers should know that this is a system for large corporations and there is no price. Anyone looking for an alternative to the Usercentrics system should look at the OneTrust Pro and CookiePro brands. 

OneTrust doesn’t publish the price for the Privacy and Data Governance Cloud nor any other service under the OneTrust brand.

Despite the OneTrust system’s high rates of success, existing customers aren’t impressed by the console for the system or the lack of data orchestration with third-party tools.

Companies that hire consultants to set up the OneTrust system seem to experience more success with the platform.

Overall Assessment

OneTrust is a very large system and the company has broken up the full menu of services into four divisions to make them more digestible. Buyers are limited to subscribing to one of these four packages in its entirety. Instead, buyers can choose a module from one Cloud and a module from a different Cloud. 

5. Drata

Drata delivers compliance management from the cloud. Like OneTrust and Enzuzo, this package provides far deeper data management services than those offered by Usercentrics. This platform competes with OneTrust for the title of the most comprehensive data protection platform because it can implement compliance with 18 data management standards.

The standards that this platform can implement include GDPR, CPRA, PCI DSS, HIPAA, Cyber Essentials, and SOC 2. The service can implement multiple standards simultaneously and it is possible to request a customized package to meet your own framework.

Pros

The Drata system is a GRC platform. The core of the package is the implementation of data privacy standards. There are grades of packages mentioned on the Drata platform, which includes a Starter plan. This also implements data privacy standards compliance. 

The screens for the Drata dashboard are well set out and provide action plans as part of its framework. This is a cost saver for small businesses because it provides an integrated course in the responsibilities of compliance management. So, companies following the system won’t need to go to the expense of sending a staff member on a training course or hire a consultant.

Cons

The Drata system relies on a library of scanners that are able to interact with software packages and operating systems. The Drata method knows how to extra data from a list of packages, assessing their configurations. Although this is an efficient operating methodology, it means that the system is unable to assess or manage software packages for which Drata doesn’t have an integration. 

Drata doesn’t publish a price list, which deters small businesses from inquiring. 

The platform focuses on data privacy and doesn’t have any cookie consent management services. 

Overall Assessment

Drata is a compliance framework and it is a great choice for businesses that need to implement and then maintain a data privacy standards compliance service. As such, it competes with OneTrust and Enzuzo rather than the cookie consent management features of Usercentrics.

6. Resolver

Resolver is billed as an “enterprise resilience solution.” This describes its functions as a GRC service with security scanning and incident management modules. This is a logical combination because one of the requirements of data privacy standards is proof that sufficient measures have been taken to protect data.  

The GRC system includes risk assessment functions and a compliance manager. Risk management extends to reputation management with scans of social media for smear campaigns. The compliance manager is focused on conformance with US regulations for financial institutions, such as SOX and SOC 2. The module also includes CCPA/CPRA compliance. A service called IT compliance includes the management of systems in tune with GDPR and GLBA. There is also a package for the pharmaceutical industry. 

Pros

This is a platform of IT protection systems for large businesses. It includes data privacy measures plus reputation and brand management. The framework provides services for investigating employees and their actions plus the vulnerabilities of IT systems. Risk management extends to third-party risk assessments. 

Overall Resolver customers are very satisfied with the service. The company seems to have invested in a competent Customer Support team, which is frequently highly praised. This review is typical of the comments on G2.

Cons

This service is heavily focused on protecting US corporations. However, it isn’t very involved in protecting companies that deal directly with the general public. For example, its services for financial institutions cover SEC reporting but don’t include compliance with PCI DSS for companies that take payments by cards. The pharmaceutical sector specialization doesn’t extend into healthcare businesses – it doesn’t provide compliance with HIPAA.

PII protection is available through GDPR compliance procedures, which extends the appeal of the platform to businesses outside of the USA.

Overall Assessment

The Resolver system has a high appeal in the finance and pharmaceutical sectors and is very focused on serving customers in the USA. Its GDPR system is an interesting feature for US businesses that also operate in Europe. However, probably, Resolver’s happy customers are all in the USA.

7. Collibra

Collibra is a little different from the systems above here on this list because it isn’t a SaaS platform. However, it does run on the cloud – you can get it as a service on the marketplaces of AWS or GCP. Another difference is that it is primarily concerned with collecting large amounts of data for model formation in big data marketing applications, deep learning, and Artificial Intelligence. The data privacy elements of the platform are there to ensure that any PII collected for these information-driven systems can’t be stolen, misused, or sold.

The platform has modules for data governance and privacy. It also has a data mapping module, but that is concerned with mapping data for interpolation rather than for sensitive data protection. 

Pros

Collibra builds data privacy into data mining systems. The problem with most marketing systems is that they can’t operate without examining the activity of individuals; if information on individuals is held at the transaction level with identifiers for that person, the storage becomes liable to the risks of PII privacy protection requirements. Automated PII protection irons out the risks involved in storing data about people even if the business users have no direct interest in reading down to record level. 

Cons

The biggest problem with Collibra is that very few people in the world understand how it works, and the system’s creators have made it difficult to set up or use. 

The presence of glitches, obscure technical terms, and insufficient documentation mean that implementation can be a headache.

Overall Assessment

This system can apply compliance controls for GDPR, HIPAA, SOX, and PCI DSS. That means that it can manage PHI, financial information, and payment transaction data as well as PII. The key advantage of this tool is that it blends privacy controls into data analysis tools. 

8. Databricks

Databricks is a very similar system to Collibra. This service is concerned with protecting data that is held for the purposes of analyzing and searching for the purposes of AI, marketing analysis, or deep learning. 

While data is usually vectorized or aggregated for processing in research scenarios, it is often held right down to the transaction level, which can include PII and other information that could be useful to data thieves. Thus, this platform integrates data protection measures. 

Pros

This platform integrates an access rights manager and usage tracking features. Those activity monitoring services are enabled by AI. However, they need to be customized by setting up your own alert conditions. This system is more about facilitating access to data rather than ensuring data protection.

Cons

The Databricks system doesn’t include any consent management tools and isn’t designed for user interaction, so it has nothing in common with the cookie consent and DSAR management features of Usercentrics. The makers of this system recommend plugging in some other compliance management tool for data security and provides an integration to Collibra for that purpose. 

Interestingly, although data usage controls seem to be lacking in the Databricks package, this reviewer found the access controls too restrictive:

The user community for Databricks is probably only interested in how that can get to data and is not aware of the legal risks that their access can create.

Overall Assessment

The documentation for Databricks mentions that compliance is available for HIPAA, PCI DSS, FedRAMP, GDPR, and CCPA. However, this is explained to be a function of the Delta Lake system, which is an open source data management framework that underpins the Databricks system. The Trust Center of Databricks states that the platform is compliant with the above standards but doesn’t provide any mechanisms to enable users of the platform to enforce compliance on its own users and data usage.

Usercentrics Alternatives: A Buyer’s Guide

You might have become interested in Usercentrics and found that it addresses much of what you are looking for. This indicates the type of services that you need as a core. However, not every company is the same, and so there will be many consent management platforms with extra features that could appeal more to the potential Usercentrics subscriber.

For this buyer’s guide, we are going to focus on those core services of Usercentrics that you would need to find in order to match Usercentrics. 

Features to Look Out For

Here are the key features that you would look for in a rival to Usercentrics:

• Compliance with data privacy standards that relate to personally identifiable information (PII). These include GDPR, POPIA, LGDP, and US standards, such as CCPA/CPRA
• Cookie consent management with tactics that can range from a simple notification banner to option selection that is recorded
• Cookie blocking by default, blocking all third-party cookies by default and then allowing those that the user has permitted
• Cookie banner templates that provide a choice of banner layouts
• Multiple languages for legal texts and cookie banners
• Legal templates that provide pages for Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, Terms of Use, Data Usage Policy, and Cookie Policy
• Awareness of third-party activity through scanning of website code to find APIs and inserts that generate cookies for use by other businesses
• Management of third-party data extraction that identify and document data processing services (DPS) – a practice that necessitates modified legal notices and procedures to seek consent and allow blocking  
• Privacy policy embeddings: These are adaptations to Privacy Policy statements to permit those DPS activities
• IAB TCF 2.2 support that implements a method to transfer user consent to third parties
• Cross-domain consent management can use the IAB TCF mechanism even for multiple sites that are under the same ownership
• Google consent mode, which is a method to modify Google tags and scripts for Google Ads according to the user response to cookie consent banners
• User interaction analytics, which is a mild form of real user monitoring
• Geolocation tracking provides detection of the user’s location to enable the adaptation of texts to local jurisdictions and languages
• A/B testing that allows different cookie banners to be tested for responses 

The Usercentrics system limits its PII management functions to dealing with third-party attempts to gather data and store it. As the Usercentrics service doesn’t scan a client’s endpoints and cloud data stores for PII, it doesn’t deal with data privacy issues and so its users don’t need to manage data subject access requests (DSARs). Therefore, the platform’s DSAR unit is offered as an add-on rather than as part of its plans.  

Benefits

A key point of the Usercentrics system is that it dodges the issues of sensitive data management. This platform is only concerned with gathering consent for cookies and consent for data storage when other companies perform it. 

Although the system is incomplete regarding GDPR, POPIA, LGDP, and CPRA, it caters to a niche. This service would provide legal cover for website owners who need more than a minimum cookie statement. 

Any company that wants to collect and store PII to build a club or an email list will need to look elsewhere. PII protection rulings make managing email lists an expensive process because they require a host of data protection measures that cookies alone do not. 

FAQs

What is user consent management?

Consent management is a corporate obligation in respect to user agreement for company activities regarding data. A company that stores personal data on private individuals must seek consent and maintain legitimacy by allowing data subjects to see and correct errors. A subset of this discipline is cookie consent management, which gains approval for the storage of cookies on a website visitor’s computer.

Who needs a consent management platform?

Consent management is necessary for websites that collect data. This particularly relates to personally identifiable information (PII). Cookie consent is necessary for websites that use tracking, marketing, and statistical analysis cookies. Cookies that are only necessary to enable the site to function consistently need an information banner rather than a form that seeks consent.

What is privacy management vs consent management?

“Privacy management” is another term for “privacy protection.” It describes the duties of a company to protect sensitive data that relates to private individuals. “Consent management” is the process of getting approval from users for actions that the company is not allowed to perform automatically without consent. Examples of such actions are the storage of tracker cookies on a website visitor’s computer and the movement or processing of PII outside of the EU where that data pertains to a citizen of an EU member state.