Cookie Banners and Analytics

Why Voice sites don't show a cookie consent banner

Note: the admin pages have been redesigned since the screenshots in this documentation, though the functionality is essentialy the same. The documentation will be updated to match.... soon.

Voice does not use any non-essential cookies. The only cookies set are strictly necessary for the site to function - such as session and login cookies. Under UK and EU ePrivacy law, these cookies are exempt from consent requirements, so no cookie banner is needed.

Voice analytics

Voice websites have built-in real-time analytics, which don't use cookies or track user data, therefore they don't require a consent banner.

For more information see the Analytics help page.

Web statistics

Voice sites also have access to full web server stats — page views, visitor counts, bandwidth used and similar — but these are derived from server logs, not cookies. They are probably not as useful as the analytics as, although we try our best to filter it, inevibatly a lot of bot traffic is also included in these web statstics.

If you want to add third party analytics to your site

You can add third party analytics to your Voice site by adding the tracking Javascript code into the theme settings, but your choice of tool affects whether you need to display a cookie consent banner to your visitors.

Cookieless analytics (no banner required)

Some analytics tools work entirely without cookies, tracking visits using server-side methods that don't store anything on the visitor's device. You can use these freely without a consent banner:

Goat Counter - Completely free and GDPR compliant. Voice's built-in analytics are based on Goat Counter, but you can separately add your own tracker if you want to, to get some extra features that the Voice analytics don't enable.
Simple Analytics - EU based. Free tier available.
Umami - US based. Free tier available.
Plausible - EU based. From £9/month.
Fathom - US based with EU data storage. From $15/month.

Analytics that require a cookie banner

Tools such as Google Analytics set persistent tracking cookies on visitors' devices. If you add Google Analytics (or similar) to your site, you are legally required to display a cookie consent banner before setting those cookies. Voice does not currently provide a built-in consent banner, so you would need to arrange this separately.

For most community and voluntary sector sites, a cookieless tool will provide everything you need without the added complexity of a consent banner.