GDPR Compliance but not a 5 star solution/service!

Where to start, overall it does what it says on the tin, but BEWARE!

The WordPress Plugin is outsourced, in other words its developed by a third-party, so its behaviour and what it does on your WP instance and in your Database you get “no support” on!

I made the mistake in starting with the easy/least time consuming option and installing the plugin! All great until I wanted to remove the plugin due to causing various errors in my instance once I decided to remove Jetpack from my instance. Several dependencies created at DB level meant the Cookiebot plugin was no longer happy. No big deal, remove overhead and keep things simple, or so I thought. I uninstalled the plugin and added the manual script tags as required for a manual implementation. Unfortunately, despite several weeks/months of back and forth with distant support staff who barely had control of the English language, telling me that the Consent banner on my website did not show because I’m outside the EU (I tested with VPN inside the EU, with no success thanks), I had to concede defeat and re-install the Plugin to get the consent banner to display on my website. Funnily enough as soon as that was installed, I started seeing the banner even though “I’m outside the EU” without having to revert to using VPN to test.

In summary, I will be moving to another service because I feel that the support is average at best, especially given the ￡8GBP/per month cost, in addition they have no ownership of their own plugin which has clearly had an impact on my instance (beyond the Jetpack issue) thus not even allowing the manual script implementation to function as described despite following the installation instructions to the letter and disabling AND uninstalling their plugin! My guess is something at Database level is stopping the consent banner to function in my instance, but you are on your own with that type of issue, so either pay a developer to clean up DB tables and remnants or spend days trying to figure stuff out for yourself, time value wise is better spent elsewhere in my case, so when I eventually get back on this subject I will look for an alternative solution, I have already found one at less than half the price that looks like a close match in terms of what it delivers.

Regrettable but fact. Most will pay the premium of this solution on the premise of an easy life, but this has proven to be anything but!

My advice, do not use the plugin method to implement, use the manual method.

Best.