Qualio is a popular QMS software, and many consulting customers ask us if we know of any Qualio alternatives. The problem with Qualio often is that it's prohibitively expensive, especially for growing companies. The short answer is that there are quite a few alternatives, and feature-wise, many of them are just as good or even better! So, umm, technically, there's no real reason to actually choose Qualio nowadays, but.. I guess some people still choose to, just like some people in Germany prefer to buy bottled water even though they could drink tap water.

Anyway! We're trying to create more transparency in the QMS software market - and the first step to achieve that is to gather data on all the software options out there. So if you haven't yet, check out our QMS Software Overview!

Roughly speaking, there are two types of QMS software alternatives: Free or almost-free software, and paid software. Let's look at the paid alternatives first.

One of the main differentiators between Qualio and other QMS software solutions is simply its price. Qualio is quite expensive, and even though no official information is available, I've heard that its price scales up with your company's size rather dramatically.

So choosing the right QMS software is important, because, in many cases, they lock you in with your data.. for life.

Ah yes, time for a disclosure! Formwork is our product (nervous chuckle). We developed it because I personally got annoyed with the shady QMS software market - all vendors typically lock you in with multi-year contracts and don't allow you to export your data in a structured way. Formwork is meant to be different: No commitment (monthly cancellation, online!), export your data any time, unlimited users account for the same price, etc. You should check it out!

So that's the main difference you're looking at regarding Qualio alternatives - price, free trials and exportability. In any case, regardless of which decision you make, you should "try before you buy".

In addition, you also have some free or nearly-free Qualio alternatives. Note that none of them are specialized QMS software, so you'll have to spend quite some time to "make them compliant" with plugins etc., and even then you run the risk that an auditor might have a different opinion on what "compliant" means for them. The exception to this is Formwork with its free tier - to my knowledge the only QMS software on the market with a free option.

In my personal experience, the biggest reason for companies searching for Qualio alternatives is the pricing - while there's no official information available, I've heard that it's rather expensive. Most importantly, its price goes up significantly once your company grows and requires more seats.

This is true for Qualio, too. So if you're price-conscious, choose Formwork or one of the "free" tools :)