[ad_1] In July, Termly announced its acquisition of the GDPR/CCPA Cookie Consent Banner plugin. The new direction was an overhaul of the WordPress extension, turning what was once a free offering into, essentially, a commercial SaaS product. Users could run the service for up to 100 visitors. After that, the cheapest tier would cost $180 per year. Despite multiple notices that changes were coming and making sure auto-updates were disable so that users would find no surprises, the move has not sat well with many people. Since the plugin update, users have taken to the WordPress.org review system. Across the board, they have left nothing but one-star ratings in the past month and a half. The free tier limit of 100 monthly visitors did not feel free at all to many. By the middle of August, the Termly team had responded after listening to this feedback and making some changes. The company bumped the limit to 10,000 unique visitors, making it a free solution for far more users. Termly is also dedicating more team members to responding to questions on the WordPress forums. “Termly has offered a consent management solution for years, and our pricing structure has been this way for 1,000s of existing customers,” said Raffaele Riconosciuto, Director of Marketing at Termly, when asked whether the 100-visitor limit came up in discussions before launch. “In all honesty, we simply did not consider it since our new customers view our pricing structure favorably. In hindsight, the structure is less favorable for people who are currently getting something for free, and thus why we made the changes as quickly as we could.” A 10,000 visitor limit on the free tier is likely to be a much more reasonable limit for the average website. Beyond that, site owners will need to account for a monthly or yearly fee. Some users may still have issues with the plugin being rolled into a SaaS offering, needing to sign up for a third-party service. However, Riconosciuto said Termly needed to go in this direction. “The SaaS structure we’ve adopted is ubiquitous for most consent management platforms (CMPs) today,” he said. “Given that data privacy laws are constantly evolving, as are mechanisms for tracking users on the web, CMPs require a high degree of maintenance and upkeep just to keep their users meeting base legal requirements. We are also continuing to develop new functionality to make the process more painless and robust. Hence why we charge a recurring subscription cost to our more advanced users, who subsidize the always-free tier.” Termly already had a robust platform in place that serves customers inside and outside of the WordPress ecosystem. It did not make sense to rebuild the entire platform within the plugin and maintain them separately. It would have created duplicate development work without a need to do so. Users can still install the cookie consent banner without leaving the WordPress admin panel, but further customizations happen via the Termly dashboard. Riconosciuto said the team may extend the UI integration between the plugin and service in the future if that is where user feedback leads them, pulling more functionality into WordPress. The other side of this is that previous plugin versions were not compliant with several data privacy laws, including the GDPR and ePrivacy Directive. “The GDPR and ePrivacy Directive are the main EU legislation governing the use of cookies and similar tracking technologies,” said Riconosciuto. “In the context of cookie consent management and cookie banners, the most important takeaway is that a business must obtain consent from an end-user before they serve them non-essential cookies. Consent must be free, specific, informed, and unambiguous. The old banner does not block cookies or contain the information required to ensure when an individual interacts with the banner, they have provided consent to the satisfaction of these legal requirements.” Of the legal mazes businesses must navigate, Riconosciuto said that each EU member state had “transposed the ePrivacy Directive into local cookie laws.” Termly looks at the guidance issued from each of these member state regulators when determining how to implement the cookie banner. “Why does following the law and related guidance matter?” asked Riconosciuto. “Recently, we have seen regulators in these regions taking enforcement action against entities that fail to comply with the guidance they have provided for how to comply with the cookie laws. Unlike the GDPR, ePrivacy directive, and France’s cookie law, guidance, and recommendations from an EU regulator is considered ‘soft law’ and not binding. However, the guidance typically explains how a regulator will determine if a business is violating a local cookie law (i.e., how they will enforce the cookie law). That means if your business’s cookie practices fail to satisfy the requirements laid out in regulator guidance, you are likely violating cookie law and may be subject to enforcement action. Even more, organizations in the EU like NYOB are relying on these laws and soft guidance to determine whether they will file draft complaints with regulators against businesses in violation of these laws.” Riconosciuto mentioned several areas where the older versions of the plugin did not comply with the laws. However, the updated plugin and service take care of these issues. The following is a non-exhaustive list: The solution must actually block cookies and tracking. Cookie consent banners must honor user choices. The language must adequately notify users of what they are agreeing to before consenting. Consent banners must allow the granular selection of cookies by category (e.g., performance and functionality, advertising, analytics, social networking, etc.). Provide clean and easily accessible information and options for accepting or rejecting at the first level without being deceptive (e.g., all buttons should be the same size and format). The banner must generate and save an audit log of consent interactions. These may need to be presented to regulators. While users may continue using an older version of the plugin, Termly does not recommend it because it is non-compliant. The company has no plans to restore any parts
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Termly Acquires GDPR/CCPA Cookie Consent Banner, Turns Free Plugin Into a Commercial SaaS Product – WP Tavern
[ad_1] Company A sells its plugin. Company B picks it up and moves forward with an overhauled version that looks and feels much different than the original. Users are outraged by the changes. It seems to be a repeating theme in 2021, almost as a rule rather than an exception. Last month, Termly announced its acquisition of the GDPR/CCPA Cookie Consent Banner plugin. The plugin was a simple tool for adding and styling a consent banner for the front end. It is now a SaaS (Software as a Service) product that requires a Termly account to operate. According to the team’s blog post, such changes were necessary. “Termly’s products, including the cookie consent management platform, are designed to cover the EU GDPR, the ePrivacy Directive, UK GDPR, and the CCPA. These laws require more than just a cookie consent banner to be compliant. Termly can help you build a privacy policy, create a Data Subject Access Request form, and comply with other privacy law requirements.” In the past couple of weeks, users have taken to the WordPress.org review system, handing out 21 of the plugin’s 29 total one-star ratings. The project has over 200,000 users, so more should be expected if the general consensus is that this was a poor move by the company. One of the complaints from users is the commercialization of the plugin. In the past, it was completely free to use. While there is still a free tier, users are limited to a mere 100 monthly unique visitors on a single domain. After hitting that limit, the banner will stop collecting consent records. The next level up costs $15 per month if paid annually. New pricing options for the Termly service. As Pattaya Web Services pointed out via Twitter, “GDPR/CCPA Cookie Consent Banner for #Wordpress has been purchased by #Termly and will now cost most website owners $180 per year.” Termly must get a return on its investment. The company has developers to pay, and they have families to feed. But, I suspect the average user will not warm up to the so-limiting-that-it-is-free-in-name-only introduction level. Having to pay for features that have been free for years will not sit well with many. Of course, there is always the option of using the old version, but Termly has no plans of maintaining it or ensuring that it meets compliance. The only alternative for small site owners who cannot afford to pay is to opt for another solution. “I guess GDPR Cookie Consent banner, now operated by @Termly_io didn’t learn anything from [the] fiasco with WP User Avatar plugin reported by @wptavern earlier this year,” wrote user Gennady Kurushin on Twitter. I believe they did. There are differences, and Termly’s handling of this showed a willingness to be transparent. And, I cannot stress this enough: the new plugin is not an entirely different one unrelated to its core purpose. It was overhauled and turned into a SaaS product. At the end of the day, it is still a cookie consent management plugin — just different and costs a lot more for most users. Unlike Dark Mode and ProfilePress, Termly did not make the changes in the dead of night. At least the company was upfront about everything. The team included an announcement in a point release two weeks before sending out the overhauled version. It disabled automatic updates so that users would not accidentally upgrade without being aware of what was coming. It even published a public blog post detailing what was happening. Prior notice of upcoming changes in 3.0 and disabled auto-updates. If anything, Termly took just about all the necessary steps it could have taken to prepare its user base. If a “right” way existed for a complete and utter makeover of a plugin, the company did as much. That level of honesty is a bit more than we have seen in the past. The changes may still leave a bitter taste in the mouths of many users, but Termly should at least get a few points for making them in the light of day. The result may be the same: fundamental changes in how the plugin operates, but users had a chance to ditch it or continue using the old version before anything went into effect. For some users, it may not be much, but that’s worth something. I won’t be breaking out my pitchfork today, but I do not use the plugin. As more and more users upgrade to 3.0+ and realize they are essentially on the line for $180 per year, the reviews could get ugly. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link
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