The written short answer is being updated after a re-evaluation. The scores below are current.
Read this comparison as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.
The External DPO
Carries thirty client mandates and bills by the hour they save. Optimizes for multi-client capability, reusable templates, a RoPA that drives the rest, and client-ready reports. Rejects single-tenant tools that treat the consultancy as thirty separate customers.
audatis MANAGER
preeco | datenschutz
This judge's pick
Criterion by criterion
Records & DPIA depth
audatis MANAGER
The RoPA is treated as the engine: 65-77-activity industry template packs, save-as-template and group templates, delegation to responsible users, and export as an official authority register; AVV management even auto-generates the Art. 30(2) processor register, and the Group/Whitelabel editions with 2-46 Mandanten are explicitly built for external DPOs. Below 8 because legal bases and TOMs are not evidenced as linked into one data model and DPIA triggers are not derived from the record.
preeco | datenschutz
The record of processing is a genuinely connected model: activities carry their systems, safeguards and data processing agreements as a graphical relationship view, recipients without a contract surface as marked-missing rows, and every approval freezes a PDF revision with checksum. For my practice the mandate story is real — connected documents inherit content across clients, new tenants are created in minutes with per-tenant module configuration, and the Bavarian authority's questionnaire plus status reports and procedure files are generated at the push of a button. The one step short of full marks: I found no public information on a completeness view that drives technical and organizational measure coverage from the record itself.
Data subject rights & incidents
audatis MANAGER
DSR handling for access/erasure/withdrawal with central templates and task workflows exists, and the deletion concept module models Fristen, storage locations and deletion classes — but as documentation, not tracked execution. No breach register, no 72-hour clock and no authority-notification workflow appear anywhere in the evidence; that absence caps the operational half below rubric level 5.
preeco | datenschutz
Requests arrive through embeddable web forms covering every Art. 15–22 type, identity verification and rejection grounds are documented, replies go out from the system via a one-time encrypted link, and the statutory clock is watched automatically with proactive warnings. Breaches get nine ready notification templates including the Art. 33 reports to the supervisory authority and the BSI duties, a clear per-report deadline status and graphical risk mapping, and deletion classes link to processing activities to derive rules with deadlines and responsibilities. What I miss for full marks is evidence of execution: I found no public information on tracking that shows a deletion actually happened.
Privacy regime coverage
audatis MANAGER
DSGVO/BDSG plus Swiss DSG and the church laws EKD/KDG is the right regime set for the DACH-and-church market, and the Infodienst delivering vetted legal updates plus regular updates shows the content is maintained. But no one-record-many-regimes mapping is evidenced, and UK GDPR, ePrivacy and AI Act duties are absent.
preeco | datenschutz
GDPR plus the German specifics my clients actually face — BSIG reporting duties and the Bavarian authority's questionnaire — and the EU AI Act conformity checks run in the same system with risk classification of AI systems, refreshed by roughly monthly updates. That is real one-record-many-regimes work for GDPR plus AI Act. I found no public information on UK GDPR, Swiss nDSG or ePrivacy coverage, so cross-regime mapping beyond that pair is not evidenced.
Audit readiness & evidence
audatis MANAGER
Edit history for Eingabekontrolle, revision-safe online attestations, activity reports auto-generated from DSMS KPIs and the official-register export mean a client audit file assembles without weeks of manual work. Missing for 8: no audit-scoped evidence packs on demand, no explicit auditor access roles, and no demonstrated 'state on date X' reconstruction.
preeco | datenschutz
Every approval produces an immutable revision with SHA-256 integrity checks and colour-coded comparison — a fixed state of the documentation at any point in time — and an automatic activity log records each change with timestamp and user. The audits module spans planning through follow-up with the preeco catalog included and BSI IT-Grundschutz, CISIS12 and VdA ISA as paid add-ons, reports export as PDF, DOCX and XLSX, and specialized data protection officer reports evaluate across tenants. I found no public information on evidence attachments collected per activity, so a full audit file still means assembly work.
Integrations & automation
audatis MANAGER
CSV/Word export is the only evidenced connectivity to the real estate; no API, directory import, SSO/SCIM or native connectors appear anywhere in the evidence, and the whitelabel ticket-system integration is a one-line mention. Delegation and workflow integration are genuine but this is manual entry with reminders, not automation that removes re-typing across mandates.
preeco | datenschutz
The captured pages state plainly that there is currently no public REST API — the application is conceived as a closed system, with customer-specific endpoints developed only for Private Cloud and On-Premises. What does connect: a Model Context Protocol server that lets AI assistants query processing activities and export revisions, an optional DeepL integration, DOCX/XLSX import and export, and SAML2 single sign-on on the premium hosting variants. I found no public information on directory import, ticketing or HR connectors, or webhooks, which for feeding a real client estate is the daily toil I bill against.
European sovereignty
audatis MANAGER
German GmbH in Herford (HRB 13983, German VAT ID) with product hosting stated as 'Rechenzentrum Standort Deutschland / Eigener Server' gives a clean EU core including an on-prem option. But the product's own DPA, TOMs and subprocessor list are unpublished, so exposure cannot be verified from the evidence.
preeco | datenschutz
A German entity in Ulm, hosting exclusively in ISO-27001 datacenters of Hetzner in Nuremberg and Falkenstein, no transfers to third countries, a published data processing agreement with downloadable TOMs and two weeks' written notice on subprocessor changes, and named processors Hetzner in Germany and UpCloud in Finland. Development, operations and support sit in Germany, with an on-premises variant for public sector and enterprise. I found no public information on the ownership structure, which keeps me just short of a fully clean bill.
Pricing transparency
audatis MANAGER
Every price on the evidence — all three editions, per-10-user packs, storage per GB, ISMS add-on, flatrate tiers — is 'Auf Anfrage'; not one number is public. Credit of one point only for the fully visible edition/employee-tier structure and the 30-day trial, which makes the sales conversation short but still leaves the real invoice incomputable.
preeco | datenschutz
I found no price figures at all — the license is said to scale by employees, modules and hosting variant, expressly not by the number of organizations, with no setup fees and no cancellation periods, but the actual invoice remains a sales conversation. For budgeting thirty mandates, knowing the licensing dimensions and that extra organizations cost nothing is genuinely useful; the absence of any published number is what the score reflects.
Sovereignty, side by side
Dimension
audatis MANAGER
preeco | datenschutz
Legal entity
Incorporated in DE
Incorporated in DE
Ownership
Not determined
Not determined
Data residency
Not determined
Not determined
Subprocessors
Not determined
Not determined
Facts, side by side
Only facts both products carry under the same definition — anything else would not be a fair row.