Dot Compliance is another eQMS software on the market.
They offer three different products: QMS Xpress, Compliance Xpand and Enterprise Xact. If you’re reading those names and thinking that a weird business dude probably scribbled them on a piece of paper while coming off cocaine, well.. I wouldn’t entirely disagree with you. I have no clue what those names should stand for except that they really like to include an “X” in their product names. And that’s weird, because their company name is “Dot Compliance”. Shouldn’t they include a dot in their product names then? Anyway, enough rambling.
Let’s see what sort of QMS software they’re offering and how it relates to medical devices.
Dot Compliance QMS Software: QMS Xpress?
Of all the offerings, it seems that “QMS Xpress” is their QMS software. Looking through the screenshots on their QMS Xpress page, it looks like it offers the following features:
- Documents and records
- CAPAs
- Trainings
- Some sort of supplier management
And that’s pretty much all the information their website provides. Let’s just say it’s not super helpful (except that they say they have “Real People. Real Results”, hm).
Besides that, there’s a “Get a demo” button to schedule a demo. Dude.. I just want to try the actual software and see the pricing, but.. nope.
Dot Compliance Pricing
Like many shady enterprise B2B vendors, Dot Compliance doesn’t publish their pricing, specially not for their QMS software.
So we can only guess based on prices we’ve seen from similar vendors. Qualio pricing and Greenlight Guru pricing is around $24k – $60k per year for startups, which is already a rather crazy price (per year! for startups!). So my best guess would be that the Dot Compliance price is somewhere around that area.
I also think it’s very likely that they only offer long-term contracts with significant lock-in: Qualio and Greenlight Guru only offer 1-3 year contracts (which is crazy!), and you usually don’t get any sort of trial access to try the software before you buy.
So.. you have to make this very significant purchasing decision based on only a sales demo given to you by a salesperson. That’s crazy! If you’re looking for a better alternative, skip to the end of this post.
Company Ownership & Profitability
Dot Compliance most recently raised $23 million in additional investor money in April 2024. This was a so-called “Series B” which means they’ve already raised investor money in the past. The total amount they’ve received from investors is said to be $33 million.
Based on these numbers, it sounds likely that the company is not profitable – it’s attempting to grow very rapidly by raising a lot of capital from investors while not necessarily optimizing for profitability day-to-day.
As a customer, this comes with additional risks: If they remain unprofitable and fail to raise further investment in the future, you might be screwed because now your eQMS provider is going bankrupt and you have to export your data and look for a new provider. And that’s the best case! In the worst case, they’ll go away while keeping your data locked in you don’t manage to transition to another provider.
Generally speaking, we advise our consulting clients to choose software providers which have a track record of profitability and a good (some might say boring) long-term outlook (like, um, us – we’ve been profitable from day one and haven’t taken on any investor money).
Conclusion: Unhelpful Website, Intransparent Pricing, Likely Expensive and Likely Lock-In
So, is the Dot Compliance QMS software a good choice? I guess it depends on your company. It’s hard to make an informed decision here as you’ll unlikely get any sort of trial access to try things out for yourself first. Instead, you’ll have to schedule a sales demo to get any sort of impression of what the software does.
Additionally, it’s likely you’ll get locked in with a multi-year contract and that your data won’t be exportable. One significant risk is that the company might fail in the future as it’s currently likely not profitable and driven by investor money.
Looking for a better alternative? Check out our eQMS software Formwork. We’re a small, profitable company and are still 100% founder-owned (hey, that’s me!). You can cancel every month and can export your data any time. Oh, and it’s much cheaper, too, and you get unlimited users. We got into this industry because it’s shady as hell and we want to make things better. Give Formwork a try!
