CookieRay – Cookie Banner for Cookie Consent (GDPR/CCPA Compliant) vs Pressidium Cookie Consent

CookieRay is a cookie consent and privacy tooling plugin for WordPress. It stores data on your hosting account and runs in your environment. There is no external SaaS dashboard for site operation. CookieRay helps website owners manage cookie consent settings for GDPR, CCPA, ePrivacy, and other privacy-related requirements. Legal compliance depends on your website setup, third-party tools, region, and how the plugin is configured. CookieRay provides a visitor-facing consent experience, configurable script blocking, cookie discovery from your site, detailed consent records, and a setup dashboard to help you manage cookie consent records and support privacy-related workflows. Cookie consent banner A customizable consent surface with card and bar layouts, live preview in the admin, and nine placement positions. Visitors can Accept All, Decline All, or open a Preferences modal to choose which categories to allow (Necessary, Analytical, Functional, and Marketing). Banner text, colors, buttons, and fonts are editable without writing code. Script blocking Choose Log Only recording or Strict blocking in Settings. In Strict mode, CookieRay delays known tracking scripts until the visitor agrees to categories that match those trackers. Common patterns for services such as Google Analytics, Meta Pixel, Hotjar, HubSpot, TikTok Pixel, and many others are included out of the box. Google Consent Mode v2 When enabled, CookieRay outputs consent state in the visitor’s browser for Google tags (such as GA4, Google Ads, or Google Tag Manager) that you have already placed on your site. Google Consent Mode v2 lets Google tags adjust their behavior based on visitor consent choices while supporting privacy-conscious measurement modes when consent is withheld. CookieRay itself does not open separate server-side uploads of visitor payloads to Google; instead it surfaces JavaScript so tags you load can read consent signaling. Behavior of those downstream tags depends on how you configured Google products. Further reading: Google’s Consent Mode documentation (linked under External Services). Cookie scanner Run a cookie scan from the WordPress admin to detect cookies surfaced on responses from your own site. When an administrator starts a scan, CookieRay queues work on your server and uses the WordPress HTTP API to request public URLs belonging to your site domain (for example the homepage, published content URLs, WooCommerce storefront pages where applicable, and related routes depending on plugins). Cookie names surfaced in responses can be merged with your inventory for categorization alongside the plugin’s bundled tracking-cookie reference data. CookieRay also runs deeper script-discovery passes that analyze HTML fetched from a bounded set of URLs (the embeddable deep scan inspects up to 50 URLs on the same domain, chosen from the XML sitemap when available or from the home page plus recent posts and pages). Scan coverage still depends on plugins, caches, authenticated-only flows, and what responses your site serves to CookieRay’s unauthenticated crawler. There is no recurring unattended scan timetable built into CookieRay. You start scans from CookieRay screens (background processing completes those runs without another manual click). Cookie inventory View, edit, and categorize cookies discovered on your site. Assign cookies to Necessary, Analytical, Functional, or Marketing categories. Bulk-categorize or delete entries. Custom cookies can be added manually, with regex pattern support where appropriate. Consent logs Consent events can be logged with identifiers, statuses, granted categories, page URL, banner version, and timestamp fields available for review. Entries are searchable and filterable in the admin. You can export records as CSV, and export individual receipts as PDF for your record-keeping process. Dashboard See a summarized score guided by configurable checks (blocking mode, categorized cookies, policy link usage, consent expiry and scan recency reminders, whether Google Consent Mode output is enabled, and related items). Use it as onboarding guidance alongside your legal or compliance review. Scan history Review past scans: timing, URLs covered, counts, and summaries of results to track changes over time. Settings Configure consent behavior (Log Only vs Strict blocking), consent expiry, consent log retention, Google Consent Mode v2 toggle, optional data portability export flows, and related options. Banner and behavior settings are stored through WordPress options alongside plugin metadata. Privacy and data handling CookieRay does not send usage data, telemetry, or visitor payloads to CookieRay-operated servers. Consent logs and inventories stay in your site’s database unless you export them elsewhere. Third-party trackers you integrate yourself (such as Google Analytics, Google Ads, Google Tag Manager, Meta Pixel, marketing pixels, embedded chat widgets, and similar vendors) may still collect information according to their own tags, configurations, vendor accounts, regions, and published policies, even when CookieRay delays or respects categories for scripts it recognizes. A WordPress Cron task deletes consent records older than the retention period configured in Settings, whenever WordPress Cron runs normally on your host. Pro Features Scheduled automatic cookie scans Geo targeting – show or hide the banner by country Integration with Google Tag Manager, Meta Pixel, Adobe Experience Platform Trust Badge – “Privacy Protected” badge displayed in the site footer Premium support and priority updates Upgrade to CookieRay Pro Support For questions, bug reports, or help with configuration, visit the CookieRay support page. External Services CookieRay does not send analytics, telemetry, or visitor data to CookieRay-operated servers. 1. Same-site cookie scanner When an administrator runs a cookie scan, CookieRay uses the WordPress HTTP API (wp_remote_get) to fetch public URLs belonging to the same WordPress site — for example the homepage, published post URLs, WooCommerce storefront pages, and sitemap entries. What is sent: Standard HTTP GET requests to your own site’s public URLs. When: Only when an administrator triggers a scan from CookieRay admin screens. Who receives the requests: Your own web server. No data is sent to CookieRay or any third party. Source file: includes/class-scanner.php 2. Google Consent Mode v2 (optional, admin-enabled) When enabled in Settings, CookieRay outputs JavaScript on visitor pages that signals consent state to Google tags you have independently installed (e.g. GA4, Google Ads, Google Tag Manager). CookieRay does not make server-side HTTP calls to Google. What is sent: Browser-side consent signals read by locally loaded Google tags you control. When: When Consent Mode is enabled in CookieRay Settings and visitors load pages that include your Google tags. Who receives downstream data: Google, per your Google account and tag configuration. Google Privacy Policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy Google Terms of Service: https://policies.google.com/terms Google Consent Mode documentation: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9976101

Pressidium Cookie Consent makes it easy to add a stylish, customizable cookie consent banner to your website and conditionally load third-party scripts (analytics, performance, targeting, etc.) based on the user-selected preferences to help you comply with EU GDPR cookie law, CCPA, and similar regulations. ⚙️ Fully customizable Easily modify the cookie consent banner and settings modal text. Pick one of the built-in color presets to match your website’s aesthetic, or adjust the color of individual components via our convenient color picker. Choose from a variety of layouts, positions, and transitions directly from the WordPress dashboard. 🪶 Lightweight The plugin is built on top of the Cookie Consent JS library by Orest Bida, a standalone vanilla JavaScript library with no third-party dependencies, that loads blazingly fast and won’t slow down your website. ♿ Accessible An a11y friendly plugin — fully accessible and WAI-ARIA compliant. 🌐 Translatable Modify any text in the cookie consent banner and settings modal, and provide translations. Choose the language auto-detection strategy you prefer — either read the user’s browser language or read the markup of the current page to identify its primary language. 📱 Responsive Fully responsive and mobile-friendly cookie consent banner and settings modal. 🙅 Block scripts Control which scripts are loaded based on the user’s preferences. List the URLs of the scripts you’d like to block (both exact matches and regular expressions are supported) and prevent them from running until the user has given consent. 🧹 Auto-clear cookies Automatically delete cookies when a user opts-out of a specific category inside cookie settings. ✋ Force consent Block the user from interacting with the page until they consent to your cookie policy. 🔁 Re-consent Ask users to consent again when you update your cookie policy. 📝 Consent records Record user consents to be able to provide proof of consent for auditing purposes. 🎛️ Floating settings button Add a floating settings button to your website that allows users to change their cookie preferences at any time. 🤖 Hide from bots Automatically parse the user agent to detect bots, crawlers, and webdrivers. If one is detected, you have the option to hide the cookie consent banner from them. 🧩 Google Consent Mode (GCM) integration Integrate with Google Consent Mode (GCM) to adjust how Google tags behave based on the user’s consent preferences. Supports both Google tag (gtag.js) and Google Tag Manager (GTM) implementations. 🚪 Google tag gateway integration One-click PHP proxy to quickly route traffic to Google tag gateway for advertisers. ✨ AI integration Integrate with AI to generate translations and cookie descriptions. Supports both GPT and Gemini. 🧱 Block for the WordPress Block Editor Add the Pressidium Cookies Table block for the Block Editor to display a dynamic table listing all cookies under the selected category, making it easy for users to understand what cookies are being used on the site. ⌨️ Control it programmatically Programmatically control the plugin. Conditionally show/hide the cookie consent banner and/or the settings modal, accept one (or more) cookie categories, erase cookies, load previously blocked scripts, etc. About Pressidium This is a free and open source WordPress plugin developed by Pressidium®. Pressidium offers Managed WordPress hosting for web professionals designed to optimize the performance, security, and scalability of WordPress websites. With a strong emphasis on reliability, Pressidium utilizes high-available architecture to ensure your website’s uptime.