Updated in 09/2025 with new QMS software providers; also updated prices in 06/2025 as many providers of QMS software for medical devices have raised their prices. Full update history at the end of this article.
Software for setting up and maintaining a Quality Management System is something which comes up with any new company I work with. The discussion goes along the lines of:
“So the ISO 13485 has all these requirements regarding documents. Surely, there must be some great software out there which helps us be 13485-compliant?”
Yeah, right. When I got into regulatory work, I also started out being very naive. Here’s the reality: There isn’t. I like to summarize it like this: There’s some software out there, some of it is very expensive, and all of it is crappy.
Hold on: This has actually changed since we've released our own QMS software (chuckle). But, historically speaking, I wrote this overview in the stone age while our our company, OpenRegulatory, was still "only" a consultancy. So I'll try to keep things unbiased (which is hard, given the sheer crappiness of software out there).
Regardless, I’m certainly very opinionated on this topic and I expect other people, especially seasoned regulatory affairs professionals, to have differing opinions. That’s okay. I presume our opinions will differ because we have different expectations.
Here are the expectations which a QMS software technically needs to fulfill:
Software for setting up and maintaining a Quality Management System is something which comes up with any new company I work with. The discussion goes along the lines of:
“So the ISO 13485 has all these requirements regarding documents. Surely, there must be some great software out there which helps us be 13485-compliant?”
Yeah, right. When I got into regulatory work, I also started out being very naive. Here’s the reality: There isn’t. I like to summarize it like this: There’s some software out there, some of it is very expensive, and all of it is crappy.
Hold on: This has actually changed since we've released our own QMS software (chuckle). But, historically speaking, I wrote this overview in the stone age while our our company, OpenRegulatory, was still "only" a consultancy. So I'll try to keep things unbiased (which is hard, given the sheer crappiness of software out there).
Regardless, I’m certainly very opinionated on this topic and I expect other people, especially seasoned regulatory affairs professionals, to have differing opinions. That’s okay. I presume our opinions will differ because we have different expectations.
Here are the expectations which a QMS software technically needs to fulfill:
Requirements For Medical Device QMS Software
- Creation and formatting of documents: Rich-text formatting, images, tables, attachments.
- Change history of documents: What has been changed when by whom?
- Review process of documents: Send a document out for review. Receive comments, change the document, get it re-reviewed.
- Approval and distribution of documents: Once a document has been approved, inform everyone that it’s in effect now.
- Signing of documents: Tamper-proof signing which is compliant with national requirements, e.g. 21 CFR Part 11.
I’m sure that all of the medical device QMS software packages which I describe below fulfil these requirements. Your regulatory affairs professional will be satisfied and happy. Great!
Great? Not quite. Technically fulfilling all regulatory requirements may be enough to make your regulatory affairs department happy and survive an audit, but it can still make your life miserable. Why? Here are some requirements which I’d additionally have for QMS software:
Great? Not quite. Technically fulfilling all regulatory requirements may be enough to make your regulatory affairs department happy and survive an audit, but it can still make your life miserable. Why? Here are some requirements which I’d additionally have for QMS software:
Real Requirements For Medical Device QMS Software
- The software is usable: It has great usability (doesn’t require hour-long training) and everyone in the company uses it regularly without being forced to.
- The software is accessible: The company has received enough licenses from the vendor so that every employee can access the software any time. (This goes both ways: Some vendors charge outrageous prices for additional user licenses. Some companies are unwilling to pay more money and try to re-use licenses.)
- The software is opinionated: It comes preconfigured with common-sense defaults which are easy to understand and ensure compliance. It doesn’t require days of configuration efforts, or even worse, a contractor who charges high hourly rates for setting it up for you.
See, no tool on this planet will help your company if only one person is using it while every one else hates to touch it or doesn’t even have access. And that’s exactly where I often see a disconnect between people working in regulatory affairs and software developers, which is unfortunate.
Let’s see what a software developer at a major medical software company says about this:
Let’s see what a software developer at a major medical software company says about this:
I basically work in three worlds. The first one is where our code is (like GitHub); it has version control and issues which we engineers use to organize our work. The second world is where project management happens (like Jira); that’s where product managers prioritize on a high level what’s next. And the third world is the regulatory world in which I regularly have to update documentation, like software requirements.
Note that each of these worlds runs in a separate tool. And all three of them are completely disconnected. So, we could continue coding (first world) and nobody would notice if we didn’t update the regulatory documentation (third world).
While the first and seconds worlds make sense, the third world is pure overhead.
Software Developer at a major medical software company
So that’s where we’re at today. Medical device QMS software always is a separate “world” in which developers reluctantly have to enter (if they do it at all) to create some documentation. A perfect tool would combine source code version control, project management and regulatory documentation.
Alas, that tool doesn’t exist. Enough complaining for now! Let’s see what the current tools offer.
Huge disclaimer: These are my highly subjective impressions and they may vary strongly from yours or other regulatory affairs people for the reasons above.
QMS Software Comparison Table
As you’re surely impatient by now, I’ll put the comparison table up top and write about the details further below.
We’ve actually written a few articles on how to build a QMS in some of the systems mentioned below. Check out our articles on setting up a medical device QMS in Google Drive or GitHub / GitLab and especially why GitLab turned out to be not a good idea.
We’ve actually written a few articles on how to build a QMS in some of the systems mentioned below. Check out our articles on setting up a medical device QMS in Google Drive or GitHub / GitLab and especially why GitLab turned out to be not a good idea.
General
Name |
Type |
Interface |
Usability |
Pricing |
Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Formwork |
SaaS |
Great |
Easy |
Transparent |
Low |
codebeamer |
SaaS |
Windows 98 |
So-so |
Opaque |
Very high |
Confluence |
Self-hosted |
So-so |
So-so |
Transparent |
Low |
Dot Compliance |
SaaS |
? |
? |
Opaque |
Very high |
GitLab / GitHub |
Self-hosted / SaaS |
Great |
Great* |
Transparent |
Low |
Google Drive |
SaaS |
Great |
Great |
Transparent |
Low |
Greenlight Guru |
SaaS |
So-so |
? |
Opaque |
Very high |
MasterControl |
? |
Windows 95 |
? |
Opaque |
Very high |
Matrix Requirements |
SaaS |
Windows 95 |
So-so |
Transparent |
High |
Orcanos |
SaaS |
Catastrophic |
Bad |
Transparent |
Very high |
Polarion |
Self-hosted |
Atrocious |
Difficult |
Opaque |
High |
Qualio |
SaaS |
So-so |
So-so |
Opaque |
Very high |
SimplerQMS |
SaaS |
Windows 95 |
Bad |
Opaque |
Very high |
TraceX |
SaaS |
So-So |
So-so |
Transparent |
Low |
* If all team members are capable of dealing with markdown documents.
Features
Update: I've also added software as a medical device (SaMD) compatibility to the table below; the idea of this column is to show whether the medical device QMS software generally supports software medical devices, too.
Name |
Text Editor |
Change History |
Linking of Stuff |
Optimized For SaMD |
Review / Signing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Formwork |
Great |
Good |
Can be done easily |
Yes |
Included (also FDA compliant) |
codebeamer |
? |
So-so |
Can be done |
? |
? |
Confluence |
Painful |
Okay |
Can be done |
Not really |
Third-party plugin needed |
Dot Compliance |
? |
? |
? |
? |
? |
GitLab / GitHub |
Okay for coders (markdown) |
Excellent (git) |
Tricky |
Code it yourself |
Process required (e.g. Pull Request) |
Google Docs / Drive |
Great |
Needs Workarounds |
Tricky |
No |
Third-party plugin required |
Greenlight Guru |
Nonexistent! |
Okay |
Can be done |
No |
Included, but no text editor |
MasterControl |
? |
? |
? |
? |
? |
Matrix Requirements |
Like Windows 95 |
Okay |
Can be done |
Partially |
Included |
Polarion |
Like Windows 95 |
Atrocious |
Can be done |
No |
Included |
Qualio |
Weird |
So-so |
Can be done |
No |
Included |
SimplerQMS |
? |
? |
? |
No |
Included |
TraceX |
Good |
? |
? |
? |
? |
Tools
I classify tools into two categories: 1) Tools that were designed from the ground up as QMS (“classic” QMS software), and 2) Tools that are generally used for other means but can be re-purposed as QMS (“repurposed” QMS Software).
Let’s start with the repurposed ones.
Let’s start with the repurposed ones.
“Repurposed” Medical Device QMS Software
Confluence
When I consult medical device companies, Confluence is the most common "generic" QMS software I encounter. It’s not like people put a lot of thought into it before diving into the Atlassian ecosystem of Confluence + Jira and ending up with a huge, complex, slow-loading mess.
But: It still seems to be a solid medical device QMS option. It’s probably somewhat unique because it allows you to integrate your project management (Jira), source code (Bitbucket) and QMS (Confluence) into one place, more or less.
That is, if you ever figure out how to configure it. Once you’ve achieved that (if at all), you have to convince your team to use it in the right way, and during the audit spend considerable time explaining it to an auditor. I’ve seen auditors who had some prior experience with these tools, so at least it won’t be foreign to them. Then again, I've literally seen auditors who hate Jira, so I guess it's a double-edged sword.
Regardless, it’s a huge pain. For actually using it as a compliance medical device QMS software, you’ll probably need additional plugins for document signing (e.g. Komala) and risk management (e.g. SoftComply) which come with additional cost, complexity and, you guessed it, configuration.
Talking about cost: The pricing of Atlassian tools is publicly available and reasonable, at least for the SaaS version. If you want to self-host, it gets pricey.
If you have prior experience with Atlassian tools, are confident in setting things up and have some basic regulatory knowledge so you know what you actually want to achieve with your setup, then Confluence could be a viable option. Personally, I don’t like it, but that’s also because I’m a developer at heart and most developers have somewhat of an love/hate/abusive relationship with Confluence + Jira.
Pros:
But: It still seems to be a solid medical device QMS option. It’s probably somewhat unique because it allows you to integrate your project management (Jira), source code (Bitbucket) and QMS (Confluence) into one place, more or less.
That is, if you ever figure out how to configure it. Once you’ve achieved that (if at all), you have to convince your team to use it in the right way, and during the audit spend considerable time explaining it to an auditor. I’ve seen auditors who had some prior experience with these tools, so at least it won’t be foreign to them. Then again, I've literally seen auditors who hate Jira, so I guess it's a double-edged sword.
Regardless, it’s a huge pain. For actually using it as a compliance medical device QMS software, you’ll probably need additional plugins for document signing (e.g. Komala) and risk management (e.g. SoftComply) which come with additional cost, complexity and, you guessed it, configuration.
Talking about cost: The pricing of Atlassian tools is publicly available and reasonable, at least for the SaaS version. If you want to self-host, it gets pricey.
If you have prior experience with Atlassian tools, are confident in setting things up and have some basic regulatory knowledge so you know what you actually want to achieve with your setup, then Confluence could be a viable option. Personally, I don’t like it, but that’s also because I’m a developer at heart and most developers have somewhat of an love/hate/abusive relationship with Confluence + Jira.
Pros:
- Integration with source code repository (Bitbucket) and project management (Jira) possible, in theory
- Document editing in Confluence is straightforward
Cons:
- Commonly, additional plugins are needed for signing and risk management
- Jira and Confluence are slow, e.g. when rendering documents
- Configuration can be very difficult. Nobody tells you whether your custom configuration is ISO 13485 - compliant until you’re being audited
More about Jira / Confluence: Overview | Jira QMS Integrations #1 | Jira QMS Integrations #2 | QMS in Confluence | Video: Confluence QMS
GitLab / GitHub
This is typically the proposed setup I encounter at tech-driven, developer-heavy organizations. It makes perfect sense: You need some sort of change history for your documents, so why not write them in markdown and put them in git? A technically perfect solution. The developer’s dream. And I agree.
That is, if you can convince your entire organization to write markdown documents and commit files to git (or open pull requests, or whatever your workflow is). It’s certainly doable, and maybe even preferable over training your developers to use another crappy QMS software.
It does come with some additional challenges:
That is, if you can convince your entire organization to write markdown documents and commit files to git (or open pull requests, or whatever your workflow is). It’s certainly doable, and maybe even preferable over training your developers to use another crappy QMS software.
It does come with some additional challenges:
- “Linking” things like you could in Confluence + Jira can be tricky. If you want to link to an GitHub issue from a markdown document, how do you do it? There’s no autocomplete or linking feature like in Confluence documents.
- You don’t have any “foreign key constraints” on your links. For example, if you write document A, which refers to documents B and C, and later you delete document C, you won’t realize that it’s still being mentioned in document A.
- What do you put as markdown document in git, and what do you put into issues? Some companies (mis-)use issues for all sorts of things: Software requirements, feature requests and even signing (?!). Consider that issues don’t underlie the same solid version control like markdown documents in git do.
- How do you work on documents which are best created as a spreadsheet, like risk management? Similar problem as with Confluence (there, you probably use a plugin). Manually creating tables and calculating data in markdown files is hard. A spreadsheet would be so much easier.
That being said, if you can deal with those drawbacks - and I don’t think any of them is a complete deal-breaker - then GitHub / GitLab is a solid choice. It provides best-in-class version control, has a nice user interface, and pricing is transparent and affordable. I've seen a few companies set up their medical device QMS software in it.
Pros:
Pros:
- Perfect version control of documents in git
- Great user interface
- Transparent and affordable pricing
- Choice between self-hosted or SaaS (GitLab)
Cons:
- Everyone has to learn markdown
- Linking things will be error-prone
- A lot of process decisions need to be made: How do we handle signing? Document review?
- Markdown files aren’t a good fit for spreadsheet-like documents (e.g. risk management)
More about GitHub: GitHub QMS Setup | We No Longer Recommend GitHub
Google Docs / Drive
Most startups already have GSuite for its email and calendar capabilities. It also includes tools for collaborative document and spreadsheet editing (Docs and Sheets) which are.. best-in-class? At least I can’t think of any commonly used alternative. And the real-time editing and commenting features are very solid.
Given that many established medical device manufacturers run their Quality Management Systems in Microsoft Word and Excel, I think that the GSuite tools are certainly a good choice. Documents can’t get lost in the sense of “I misplaced a USB drive”. The change history and collaborative editing are solid (no more “where’s the copy of the file in which you made your changes?”).
Google Sheets allows you to create spreadsheets for calculation-heavy tasks like for your risk assessment (no need for a plugin like for Confluence; less pain than GitHub / GitLab).
That being said, some similar limitations like for the other “repurposed” tools above apply. You need to have an idea of what ISO 13485 compliance includes, because you need to make many “process decisions” on how to set up your folder structure, how to name your documents, etc.
Document signing is tricky and needs a separate plugin to be solid (you could roll your own, but.. it’s tricky). From my experience, all external document signing plugins suck, because they disrupt your workflow and create copies of your documents as PDFs. Now you have two sources of truth (the original GDoc and the new PDF), great.
The GSuite price is per-user and quite reasonable, especially given that most tech companies already are on GSuite and therefore have no additional cost.
Pros:
Given that many established medical device manufacturers run their Quality Management Systems in Microsoft Word and Excel, I think that the GSuite tools are certainly a good choice. Documents can’t get lost in the sense of “I misplaced a USB drive”. The change history and collaborative editing are solid (no more “where’s the copy of the file in which you made your changes?”).
Google Sheets allows you to create spreadsheets for calculation-heavy tasks like for your risk assessment (no need for a plugin like for Confluence; less pain than GitHub / GitLab).
That being said, some similar limitations like for the other “repurposed” tools above apply. You need to have an idea of what ISO 13485 compliance includes, because you need to make many “process decisions” on how to set up your folder structure, how to name your documents, etc.
Document signing is tricky and needs a separate plugin to be solid (you could roll your own, but.. it’s tricky). From my experience, all external document signing plugins suck, because they disrupt your workflow and create copies of your documents as PDFs. Now you have two sources of truth (the original GDoc and the new PDF), great.
The GSuite price is per-user and quite reasonable, especially given that most tech companies already are on GSuite and therefore have no additional cost.
Pros:
- Most tech companies already have it - no additional cost
- Great usability, everyone can use it
- Transparent and affordable pricing
- You can model almost everything in a Google Doc or Sheet
Cons:
- A lot of “process decisions” necessary - the burden of keeping things organized in folders and with clear titles essentially lies on you
- Document review and signing require either a very clear process or a separate plugin, which sucks
- References between documents are possible, but no consistency is ensured
More about GDrive: GDrive QMS Setup
Honorable Mention: Doorstop
I'd like to briefly mention Doorstop which is a tool which wasn't included in the overview table above. I didn't include it because it only provides requirements management features, so it's not really QMS software in the strict sense. It still is cool, however, as it's an open-source project. It does require extensive technical knowledge though.
More about Doorstop: Overview
More about Doorstop: Overview
“Classic” Medical Device QMS Software
That’s it for the “repurposed” QMS software. Let’s look at more specialized (“classic” QMS) software next. They all have in common that they were specifically developed for modeling a QMS.
Formwork
Formwork is our software - we (OpenRegulatory) built this, because we were disappointed by how shady, intransparent and expensive the whole QMS software industry is. Its first release was in 2022, and since then, multiple companies have passed their EU MDR audits with it, and we're now even collaborating with a notified body! To my knowledge, Formwork is the only eQMS software with a notified body collaboration.
Check out the Formwork page for more information and pricing!
That's it for cool software. If you now want to learn more about the boring, intransparent and sometimes shady side of QMS software, check out the others.
As a disclaimer, this information is mostly based on what I've heard from our customers - I asked some of the companies (e.g. Greenlight Guru) to provide us with their pricing information, but I didn't get a response. So as I don’t have first-hand experience with some of them, I'm mostly mentioning them for the sake of completeness, and I'm mainly gathering second-hand information here. That being said, it's probably still better information than what's out there, including on their own websites, haha..
Update (2025): While many other eQMS providers are raising prices, we're reducing them: There's a free tier, an affordable paid tier (99€ / month) and the unlimited tier at 499€ / month. Our mission is to help startups enter the medical device market, and this is just another step in that direction.
More about Formwork: Overview | Pricing | User Manual
Check out the Formwork page for more information and pricing!
That's it for cool software. If you now want to learn more about the boring, intransparent and sometimes shady side of QMS software, check out the others.
As a disclaimer, this information is mostly based on what I've heard from our customers - I asked some of the companies (e.g. Greenlight Guru) to provide us with their pricing information, but I didn't get a response. So as I don’t have first-hand experience with some of them, I'm mostly mentioning them for the sake of completeness, and I'm mainly gathering second-hand information here. That being said, it's probably still better information than what's out there, including on their own websites, haha..
Update (2025): While many other eQMS providers are raising prices, we're reducing them: There's a free tier, an affordable paid tier (99€ / month) and the unlimited tier at 499€ / month. Our mission is to help startups enter the medical device market, and this is just another step in that direction.
More about Formwork: Overview | Pricing | User Manual
Greenlight Guru
Greenlight Guru is always one of the first software mentioned when it comes to QMS software in the US. After posting this article, a friendly person from Greenlight Guru actually reached out to me to ask whether we could schedule a call and clarify some of my questions, with the goal of adding more useful information to this article. Sure!
During our call, the person walked me through something of a Greenlight Guru demo - note that this wasn’t a real trial account, it was more like a clickable prototype. So the Greenlight Guru person really only could click on the links which they wanted to click on, because many of the other links wouldn’t work (yep).
The product itself looked quite nice and polished. I think the general QMS features are covered quite well, stuff like reviewing documents, electronic signing, and even requirements management. What struck me as very weird was that the product doesn’t have its own document editor, so it literally relies on you to have Microsoft Word or something similar installed on your computer, writing your documents locally and then subsequently uploading them to the Greenlight Guru software for archiving and signing. A weird process, given that humanity has invented browser-based text editors in the meantime.
I also asked whether they could provide any more details on their pricing model as that would really be useful for this article and it would help a lot of startups make their decision. Unfortunately, they declined and said they only do “individual prices, tailored to the client yadda yadda enterprise sales yak yak”.
Later on, the friendly person followed up via email if they could help me any further with providing more Greenlight Guru information for this article. I said yes, how about your share some of your pricing details. The person never responded. That was the last of my communication with Greenlight Guru.
So my conclusion still stands: Their software is probably not bad, but their business practice is still inherently shady: Their pricing model is really opaque (“contact sales”), it’s said to be incredibly expensive (at least five figures of USD per year), you don’t get access to all features (“tailored to your company”), they don’t provide you with a free trial (they don’t even provide their own sales people with a free trial), you can’t export your data easily, I mean.. damn. Not sure if this is really enticing for startups, or any rational company at all.
More about Greenlight Guru: Pricing | Alternatives
During our call, the person walked me through something of a Greenlight Guru demo - note that this wasn’t a real trial account, it was more like a clickable prototype. So the Greenlight Guru person really only could click on the links which they wanted to click on, because many of the other links wouldn’t work (yep).
The product itself looked quite nice and polished. I think the general QMS features are covered quite well, stuff like reviewing documents, electronic signing, and even requirements management. What struck me as very weird was that the product doesn’t have its own document editor, so it literally relies on you to have Microsoft Word or something similar installed on your computer, writing your documents locally and then subsequently uploading them to the Greenlight Guru software for archiving and signing. A weird process, given that humanity has invented browser-based text editors in the meantime.
I also asked whether they could provide any more details on their pricing model as that would really be useful for this article and it would help a lot of startups make their decision. Unfortunately, they declined and said they only do “individual prices, tailored to the client yadda yadda enterprise sales yak yak”.
Later on, the friendly person followed up via email if they could help me any further with providing more Greenlight Guru information for this article. I said yes, how about your share some of your pricing details. The person never responded. That was the last of my communication with Greenlight Guru.
So my conclusion still stands: Their software is probably not bad, but their business practice is still inherently shady: Their pricing model is really opaque (“contact sales”), it’s said to be incredibly expensive (at least five figures of USD per year), you don’t get access to all features (“tailored to your company”), they don’t provide you with a free trial (they don’t even provide their own sales people with a free trial), you can’t export your data easily, I mean.. damn. Not sure if this is really enticing for startups, or any rational company at all.
More about Greenlight Guru: Pricing | Alternatives
MasterControl
MasterControl is probably the "dinosaur" when it comes to QMS software choices, just like Windows 95 is the dinosaur operating system for computers. As you're noticing, this does not necessarily imply good things.
While I don't have first-hand experience with MasterControl (luckily?), I've worked with a few customers who used it. It has the benefit of an established company in the market, i.e. it has many customers, and those customers have passed audits. But those are probably all the benefits. All other aspects can likely be put in the "drawback" category, e.g. an old, dated and confusing user interface, clunky sales processes and especially a high price.
Talking of MasterControl pricing, we looked into that a while ago and our conclusion was that the entry-level price is around $25k+ / year, which is 4x higher than what you'd e.g. pay for Formwork. Notably, that only gets you the entry package at MasterControl, so the amount you pay will likely rise sharply once you need more user seats, while the Formwork package would already include unlimited seats (while only costing 25% as much - yup).
So it's fair to say that MasterControl is not a viable rational choice for new companies in the medical device industry right now, but then again, not every company chooses rationally.
While I don't have first-hand experience with MasterControl (luckily?), I've worked with a few customers who used it. It has the benefit of an established company in the market, i.e. it has many customers, and those customers have passed audits. But those are probably all the benefits. All other aspects can likely be put in the "drawback" category, e.g. an old, dated and confusing user interface, clunky sales processes and especially a high price.
Talking of MasterControl pricing, we looked into that a while ago and our conclusion was that the entry-level price is around $25k+ / year, which is 4x higher than what you'd e.g. pay for Formwork. Notably, that only gets you the entry package at MasterControl, so the amount you pay will likely rise sharply once you need more user seats, while the Formwork package would already include unlimited seats (while only costing 25% as much - yup).
So it's fair to say that MasterControl is not a viable rational choice for new companies in the medical device industry right now, but then again, not every company chooses rationally.
Matrix Requirements
I tried out a demo account when I was considering using it. While lots of other QMS software vendors don’t publish their pricing, I’m positively surprised that MatrixQMS is transparent here. The QMS starts at 610€ per month (updated in 2025 - significant price increase) for three users. That’s probably two orders of magnitude more than Confluence / GitHub / GitLab / GSuite, but probably one order of magnitude less than Greenlight Guru and Qualio (yes, it’s crazy out there).
After trying it out for some time, my takeaways were:
After trying it out for some time, my takeaways were:
- It more or less covers what you need in a QMS. If you additionally get the ALM, you can also do requirements and risk management.
- The interface looks like it was created in the nineties.
- Usability is so-so.
Probably a tool which makes many regulatory professionals happy. And one of those tools which makes software developers want to jump out of the window. I decided against it because I just couldn’t bring myself to shove this down the throats of a team of young, bright software developers. Rather have a tool which everyone uses and risk some audit problems, than having a tool which is only maintained by your regulatory people and isolated from the real world.
Update (2025): Matrix Requirements has been acquired by private equity investors (we wrote about this here). Since then, they've raised prices aggressively with their cheapest tier starting at 610€ / month.
Update (2025): Matrix Requirements has been acquired by private equity investors (we wrote about this here). Since then, they've raised prices aggressively with their cheapest tier starting at 610€ / month.
Orcanos
I tried it out as they offer a free demo. The interface and usability was so catastrophic that I gave up shortly later. Pricing is also quite incredible at 990$ per month. Seriously?
Polarion
Polarion was purchased by Siemens some time ago. It’s the only QMS software on this page which doesn’t have a cloud-hosted SaaS offering. You’ll shortly learn why.
First off, the fact that its website is a 4-level-deeply-nested subdomain (polarion.plm.automation.siemens.com) already raises eyebrows. But that’s just the prelude of what’s next to come. The publicly available installation manual comprises 80 pages, of which most of them are actual step-by-step instructions of installing Postgres and OpenSSH on your server.
Yeah, that’s right. In a world of cloud-hosted applications and docker containers, Polarion expects you to manually set up a server from scratch, with stateful, configurable dependencies (Postgres) all over the place. For me, this is already a no-go in the context of a startup. You already need one person doing regulatory work full-time, and now you need another engineer to set up and maintain your Polarion server? Remember, this includes regular backups - if you lose that sort of data, you’re lost.
Want to purchase Polarion? It can’t be purchased directly, not even on the official 4-level subdomain and no, the 80-page manual also doesn’t give you a hint. You have to go through resellers who don’t publish their prices. So you might end up with wildly differing offers. Some resellers also give you some sort of pre-configuration and templates on top. It’s a wild world out there. The one good part is that it’s usually a one-off purchase - you pay money once, you get the software, you have to install it, no updates (who’d want to migrate their own bare-metal Postgres DB anyway?).
If we just assume that you magically come across a running Polarion instance which you don’t have to maintain, you’ll be greeted by software which looks like a very complex version of Jira from the nineties. Configuring it yourself? Borderline impossible. Even using it without any training? Hard to imagine.
From what I’ve seen, I think that Polarion, correctly configured, and used by a team which was very, very well trained on it, can ensure good compliance. But it’s certainly not a very usable tool and I can’t imagine any developer using this tool willingly when being presented with modern alternatives like GitHub / GitLab.
Pausing the ranting for a bit, Polarion could work for you if your regulatory person already has experience with it and you have someone to maintain your local installation. In all other cases, it’ll be a (steep) uphill battle.
First off, the fact that its website is a 4-level-deeply-nested subdomain (polarion.plm.automation.siemens.com) already raises eyebrows. But that’s just the prelude of what’s next to come. The publicly available installation manual comprises 80 pages, of which most of them are actual step-by-step instructions of installing Postgres and OpenSSH on your server.
Yeah, that’s right. In a world of cloud-hosted applications and docker containers, Polarion expects you to manually set up a server from scratch, with stateful, configurable dependencies (Postgres) all over the place. For me, this is already a no-go in the context of a startup. You already need one person doing regulatory work full-time, and now you need another engineer to set up and maintain your Polarion server? Remember, this includes regular backups - if you lose that sort of data, you’re lost.
Want to purchase Polarion? It can’t be purchased directly, not even on the official 4-level subdomain and no, the 80-page manual also doesn’t give you a hint. You have to go through resellers who don’t publish their prices. So you might end up with wildly differing offers. Some resellers also give you some sort of pre-configuration and templates on top. It’s a wild world out there. The one good part is that it’s usually a one-off purchase - you pay money once, you get the software, you have to install it, no updates (who’d want to migrate their own bare-metal Postgres DB anyway?).
If we just assume that you magically come across a running Polarion instance which you don’t have to maintain, you’ll be greeted by software which looks like a very complex version of Jira from the nineties. Configuring it yourself? Borderline impossible. Even using it without any training? Hard to imagine.
From what I’ve seen, I think that Polarion, correctly configured, and used by a team which was very, very well trained on it, can ensure good compliance. But it’s certainly not a very usable tool and I can’t imagine any developer using this tool willingly when being presented with modern alternatives like GitHub / GitLab.
Pausing the ranting for a bit, Polarion could work for you if your regulatory person already has experience with it and you have someone to maintain your local installation. In all other cases, it’ll be a (steep) uphill battle.
Qualio
Qualio is the new kid on the block, fueled by VC money and unicorn growth. Its pricing model is just as opaque as Greenlight Guru and the rumors are prices are in a similar range (minimum 5-figure USD per year).
Its simpler than full-blown tools like Polarion. The usability is still not great, and the text editing experience is quite subpar to tools like Confluence and GSuite. There are some neat features like linking documents a document review processes, but.. it just feels like one of those tools which were written by software engineers (or even business people) with no UI/UX engineers (or even customers) in mind.
Think of it like a crappy version of Confluence with some QMS features included. You gain compliance features like change history, review and signing, but your trade-off is that the actual text editing experience is much worse.
I would not choose it. Instead of getting compliance features out of the box while having crappy usability, I’d prioritize usability of a tool and add the compliance features on top via plugins or processes (GitLab / GitHub / GSuite).
Update (2025): A few customers have been telling us that Qualio has been raising their prices. Supposedly they're also forcing existing customers to accept price increases. I'll update this article once we know more.
More about Qualio: Pricing | Alternatives
Its simpler than full-blown tools like Polarion. The usability is still not great, and the text editing experience is quite subpar to tools like Confluence and GSuite. There are some neat features like linking documents a document review processes, but.. it just feels like one of those tools which were written by software engineers (or even business people) with no UI/UX engineers (or even customers) in mind.
Think of it like a crappy version of Confluence with some QMS features included. You gain compliance features like change history, review and signing, but your trade-off is that the actual text editing experience is much worse.
I would not choose it. Instead of getting compliance features out of the box while having crappy usability, I’d prioritize usability of a tool and add the compliance features on top via plugins or processes (GitLab / GitHub / GSuite).
Update (2025): A few customers have been telling us that Qualio has been raising their prices. Supposedly they're also forcing existing customers to accept price increases. I'll update this article once we know more.
More about Qualio: Pricing | Alternatives
Dot Compliance
Dot Compliance is a new QMS software - the company has just recently gained more visibility (in around 2024). They are heavily funded by venture capital (VC) investors, and their goal is to grow rapidly.
Pretty much all the same arguments as for Greenlight Guru and Qualio apply to Dot Compliance, too - their website is super unhelpful, their pricing model very opaque ("contact sales"), and it's not very clear which features their software has. You can't try before you buy - at the very least, you can't create an account yourself and take a look at the software.
This is very frustrating to see, given that they are one of the newer companies out there and it would have been great to see some real, customer-centric innovation in this space instead of a VC-funded-enterprise-money-grab.
More about Dot Compliance: Overview | Pricing
But that’s just me. The fact that many of these companies exist shows that I’m certainly not representative for all those medical device companies out there. The enterprise software market is certainly a strange place.
Steve Jobs also noticed that:
Pretty much all the same arguments as for Greenlight Guru and Qualio apply to Dot Compliance, too - their website is super unhelpful, their pricing model very opaque ("contact sales"), and it's not very clear which features their software has. You can't try before you buy - at the very least, you can't create an account yourself and take a look at the software.
This is very frustrating to see, given that they are one of the newer companies out there and it would have been great to see some real, customer-centric innovation in this space instead of a VC-funded-enterprise-money-grab.
More about Dot Compliance: Overview | Pricing
But that’s just me. The fact that many of these companies exist shows that I’m certainly not representative for all those medical device companies out there. The enterprise software market is certainly a strange place.
Steve Jobs also noticed that:
What I love about the consumer market, that I always hated about the enterprise market, is that we come up with a product, we try to tell everybody about it, and every person votes for themselves. They go ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ and if enough of them say ‘yes,’ we get to come to work tomorrow. That’s how it works. It’s really simple. With the enterprise market, it’s not so simple. The people that use the products don’t decide for themselves, and the people that make those decisions sometimes are confused.
SimplerQMS
SimplerQMS is another rather new option. This is somewhat ironic, because "new" is not a word with which you could describe their user interface. I had the chance to talk to a regulatory consultant who had been working as a notified body auditor a few years ago, and he was currently consulting a startup which had purchased SimplerQMS after "months of deliberation and negotiation". He described it as "a huge mistake", and compared the interface to Windows 95. That's somewhat funny, because I use that phrase to describe the user interfaces of most QMS software providers out there, chuckle..
Anyway, one interesting aspect is that the SimplerQMS pricing is listed on their website.. a bit, at least. The cheapest package starts at $1,200 / month which is.. crazy? When Windows 95 was released, I remember that the price was a fraction of that. Maybe an unfair comparison though. Chuckle.
Besides that, SimplerQMS offers three licenses: A Single-User License, a Shared License (?) and a Read & Sign License (?). If you're expecting me to understand those terms and explain the difference to you, I have to disappoint you, because I am equally confused.
Anyway, all in all, the SimplerQMS offering is probably mostly comparable to Greenlight Guru and Qualio. A kind-of-ancient-looking-software at a ridiculously high price.
Should you purchase SimplerQMS? If you're acting rationally, don't. It's overpriced and looks like Windows 95. However, many enterprise companies no longer behave rationally and purchase software by sending out lengthy questionnaires to many vendors. If you'd like to follow this irrational process, SimplerQMS might be one (of many) options for you. But don't expect to be happy with your choice. Then again, this applies to almost all enterprise software.
Anyway, one interesting aspect is that the SimplerQMS pricing is listed on their website.. a bit, at least. The cheapest package starts at $1,200 / month which is.. crazy? When Windows 95 was released, I remember that the price was a fraction of that. Maybe an unfair comparison though. Chuckle.
Besides that, SimplerQMS offers three licenses: A Single-User License, a Shared License (?) and a Read & Sign License (?). If you're expecting me to understand those terms and explain the difference to you, I have to disappoint you, because I am equally confused.
Anyway, all in all, the SimplerQMS offering is probably mostly comparable to Greenlight Guru and Qualio. A kind-of-ancient-looking-software at a ridiculously high price.
Should you purchase SimplerQMS? If you're acting rationally, don't. It's overpriced and looks like Windows 95. However, many enterprise companies no longer behave rationally and purchase software by sending out lengthy questionnaires to many vendors. If you'd like to follow this irrational process, SimplerQMS might be one (of many) options for you. But don't expect to be happy with your choice. Then again, this applies to almost all enterprise software.
Lesser-known Providers: TraceX and Formly
For the sake of completeness, there are two more QMS software providers which are rather new in the market: TraceX and Formly. Both are slightly "weird" in their own way, respectively:
TraceX seems to be a spin-off from Huly, a rather unknown project management software. It seems plausible that the Huly people noticed that they weren't making any money as the project management software industry is a rather competitive industry, and they went ahead and created industry-specific "flavors" of their Huly project management software. TraceX is one of those. It's geared towards medical device compliance.
They used to have very competitive pricing (50€ / month or so, as far as I remember), but they've since removed all pricing from their website and replaced them with generic "book a demo" buttons. Sad.
As this is a software which 1) was not originally aimed at medical device compliance and 2) it's governance and financial sustainability are questionable, our assessment would be to "wait and see" whether they establish themselves within the next 2-5 years in the eQMS industry - specifically, observing whether they 1) find customers, 2) offer competitive pricing and 3) pass audits. Until then, we'd recommend to look at other providers.
Formly is an eQMS software startup which, an outside observer may say, may have copied our software. You notice this in the naming (Formly <--> Formwork). They also went ahead and kindly copied parts of our website texts and design (thanks). Interestingly, just like TraceX, they initially started out with transparent, competitive pricing (around 700€ / month per product or so), but they have since also replaced their pricing boxes with "schedule a demo" links. So they're also going for the intransparent B2B pricing model, sadly.
They recently raised €2M in investment. As with all venture capital (VC) investment, this very likely means that the founder's goal is to sell the company eventually. It's also an hint that they may not have been profitable so far (and likely still aren't right now).
So, for Formly, our recommendation is similar: Stay away. It's a risky choice to choose a company which is not profitable and meant to be sold for one of the most important "backbones" of your organization, i.e. your compliance documentation.
TraceX seems to be a spin-off from Huly, a rather unknown project management software. It seems plausible that the Huly people noticed that they weren't making any money as the project management software industry is a rather competitive industry, and they went ahead and created industry-specific "flavors" of their Huly project management software. TraceX is one of those. It's geared towards medical device compliance.
They used to have very competitive pricing (50€ / month or so, as far as I remember), but they've since removed all pricing from their website and replaced them with generic "book a demo" buttons. Sad.
As this is a software which 1) was not originally aimed at medical device compliance and 2) it's governance and financial sustainability are questionable, our assessment would be to "wait and see" whether they establish themselves within the next 2-5 years in the eQMS industry - specifically, observing whether they 1) find customers, 2) offer competitive pricing and 3) pass audits. Until then, we'd recommend to look at other providers.
Formly is an eQMS software startup which, an outside observer may say, may have copied our software. You notice this in the naming (Formly <--> Formwork). They also went ahead and kindly copied parts of our website texts and design (thanks). Interestingly, just like TraceX, they initially started out with transparent, competitive pricing (around 700€ / month per product or so), but they have since also replaced their pricing boxes with "schedule a demo" links. So they're also going for the intransparent B2B pricing model, sadly.
They recently raised €2M in investment. As with all venture capital (VC) investment, this very likely means that the founder's goal is to sell the company eventually. It's also an hint that they may not have been profitable so far (and likely still aren't right now).
So, for Formly, our recommendation is similar: Stay away. It's a risky choice to choose a company which is not profitable and meant to be sold for one of the most important "backbones" of your organization, i.e. your compliance documentation.
Update history
- 03/2026: Added more details on MasterControl pricing.
- 02/2026: Added iPassport.
- 09/2025: Added TraceX and Formly.
- 06/2025: Added SimplerQMS.
- 04/2025: Added TraceX. More data on Greenlight Guru and Qualio pricing. Added aspects about SaMD.
- 01/2025: Added Dot Compliance, and more links about pricing of Greenlight Guru and Qualio. Many QMS software providers have raised their prices.
- 2024: I’ve written another article summarizing the main mistakes our customers made when choosing their eQMS. Definitely take a look!
