Usercentrics Review

Usercentrics is a cookie consent management service based in Europe. The system manages consent for cookie usage on websites and mobile apps, and the company plans to introduce a service to manage consent issues on TV apps. In this review, we'll examine the cookie consent and preference management sector and assess Usercentrics' services in the context of its competition. 

What Is Usercentrics?

Usercentrics was set up by Mischa Rürup in 2017. The company merged with Copenhagen-based Cybot in 2021. That company operates Cookiebot, which is a complementary product to Usercentrics. The consolidated company carries the Usercentrics GmbH name and is still based in its original location: Munich, Germany. 

To reconcile the two divisions, the company positions Cookiebot as a service for small businesses that just want the minimum legal cover for cookie consent and Usercentrics is marketed to mid-sized companies looking for a more sophisticated service.   

The company’s market niche is referred to as a “consent management platform,” or CMP. The field is part of the data privacy and compliance management sector.  

Usercentrics Review Methodology

In this review, we will look at how Usercentrics assists its customers. The business offers three plan levels, which it hopes will attract a range of sites. We examine how each type of business is catered to and then look at what other businesses rival the services of Usercentrics. Does the platform offer value for money? Is there a reason that the conglomerate decided not to merge Usercentrics and Cookiebot? Are there better cookie consent services on the market?

Usercentrics Cookie Consent Management

Usercentrics is a cookie consent management system. This is a simpler service than a consent management platform because a full CMP holds details on each customer’s responses to the cookie consent banner. Holding data on private individuals gets really complicated because this is the main focus of all of the data privacy legislation around the world. 

Data that can identify a member of the public is called “personally identifiable information,” or PII. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which came into force in Europe in 2016, placed a responsibility on all companies to properly manage and protect PII. The rules are complicated and failure to comply can be costly, so the entire sector developed a workaround that removes the need to hold any PII. This is how Usercentrics found its market. 

The tool assigns a unique code to each visitor and stores that number in a cookie on the user’s computer. Usercentrics then maintains a database of responses that are indexed by those numbers. When a visitor returns to a site, the Usercentrics function references the database and recovers the user’s cookie preferences.

International Privacy Standards

Many countries and regions now have their own versions of GDPR. Most of the rulings on cookie usage are the same. However, some countries have slight variations—many countries still have no regulations at all. Another complication is that not everyone in the world understands English, so the consent banner needs to be displayed in the local language of the site visitor. 

Cookie management is a headache for websites because those sites can be accessed anywhere in the world. The site would need to write complicated processes to detect a visitor’s location and adapt its cookie consent processes accordingly. The Usercentrics service takes care of that. The subscribing website owner just has to insert a line at the top of a Web page and Usercentrics takes care of all the cookie consent requirements. 

Usercentrics can publish consent banners in 35 languages. Subscribers also get the legal pages needed for websites, such as terms of service and privacy policy pages. 

The regulations that the Usercentrics service complies with are:

• GDPR – EU and the UK 
• LGPD – Brazil 
• POPIA – South Africa
• CCPA/CPRA – California, USA
• VCDPA – Virginia, USA 
• CPA – Colorado, USA
• CTDPA – Connecticut, USA
• UCPA – Utah, USA

These are not all of the data protection regulations in the world, so Usercentrics doesn’t provide total coverage. For example, it doesn’t implement PIPEDA or Quebec Law 25 in Canada.

Usercentrics Cookie Consent Banner Design

The Usercentrics dashboard provides a library of cookie consent banner layouts. It is possible to customize each – in fact, you are expected to want to put your own logo on it. 

Here is an example of a layout that doesn’t provide options to block categories of cookies:

Here is an example of a cookie banner that does provide category selection:

Naturally, the layouts for mobile device forms are a little different: 

Usercentrics Pricing

Usercentrics groups its pricing options into two categories: those catering to websites and those meant for mobile apps.

Usercentrics Website Plans

• Starter for up to 50,000 sessions per month – $60 per month
• Advanced for more than 50,000 sessions per month – $175 to $1,150 per month
• Premium custom plan with pricing by negotiation

Usercentrics Mobile Plans

• Advanced for up to 500,000 daily active users – $60 to $1,186 per month
• Premium custom plan with pricing by negotiation

Those rates are a little imprecise and it isn’t clear why the company can’t offer a starter plan for its mobile app service as it does for websites. 

Usercentrics offers a 30-day free trial of the starter website CMP plan and the advanced mobile app plan. This is notable as most rival services offer a 14-day free trial.

Usercentrics UX & Onboarding

The dashboard for the Usercentrics system is well laid out and easy to follow. You must set up your implementation rules and settle the design of your consent banners by uploading your company logo.  

Once your policies are defined, you need to insert a couple of lines into the header area of your site.  Another option is to use Google Tag Manager. 

The Usercentrics dashboard provides usage statistics. Although consent responses are stored on the Usercentrics server, they are not made available to you. 

Usercentrics Customer Reviews

The G2 review platform has 84 reviews from customers of Usercentrics. Overall, scores for the service are very high with 59 reviewers awarding the service the full five stars. 

The most highly-rated attributes of the Usercentrics service are its ease of use and the quality of its Customer Service team.

This buyer for a mid-sized business commented on ease of use before making any other remarks: 

Despite lauding the usability of Usercentrics, this buyer goes on to complain that his team struggled to get the advanced features set up. The task was made more difficult than it needed to be by the inadequate documentation and setup guides provided by Usercentrics.  

This user found that the platform used technical terms and jargon that made using the system difficult. Working through the available documentation to find what those terms meant took a lot of time. 

Overall, the user reviews for Usercentrics are good. Some small business buyers declared that they felt the price was a little high. This shows that the company’s strategy of maintaining Cookiebot as a separate, cheaper option for smaller businesses is a good idea. 

Alternatives to Usercentrics

Usercentrics platform has a dedicated following, but the company took a risk in maintaining the Cookiebot brand at a lower price. There are less costly rivals that offer more or less the same service. 

Usercentrics doesn’t offer any of the complicated services that PII requires, so many companies that hold data will need to look elsewhere. They will find that there are companies that offer data privacy management as well as cookie consent management for a similar price to the rate levied by Usercentrics. 

Here are some services that we think you should consider as alternatives to Usercentrics.

Enzuzo – This service offers a Free edition with a basic cookie banner and then four paid plans that progressively as on more features right up to the Enterprise edition, which includes a full data privacy management and compliance service. 

👉 Start building a free cookie consent manager

CookieYes – This is a strong rival to Cookiebot and undercuts the prices of that system as well as Usercentrics. The platform is available as a plug-in for WordPesss and it has a Free edition that will give you a cookie banner, scanner, and blocker. The three paid plans go up to a price of $40 per month. You can get a 14-day free trial for any of the paid plans.

Usercentrics Strengths and Weaknesses 

Usercentrics is one of the leading cookie consent management systems. However, it is a little pricey and doesn’t add on any extra features to justify charging more than its direct rivals, which include its own sister platform. 

Here are the main strengths and weaknesses of the Usercentrics platform:

Pros of Usercentrics:

• A generous 30-day free trial
• Compliance with GDPR, LGPD, POPIA, CCPA/CPRA, VCDPA, CPA, CTDPA, and UCPA.
• Banners and policy pages in 35 languages
• Geo-location detection and automatic banner adaptation
• Site cookie scanning

Cons of Usercentrics:

• No data management functions                            
• No WordPress integration
• Uses jargon and doesn’t explain it

If you're on the fence about which data privacy partner to pick, book a complimentary 1-1 strategy call to learn more about how Enzuzo can be of service