The six-judge bench splits along two lines. NAVEX One EthicsPoint leads the casework: case management means 6.8 to EQS Integrity Line's 5.2, with five judges leaning its way and one tie, and it also leads multi-entity scale (3.5 to 3.2; two leans its way, one the other, three ties) and compliance alignment (3.3 to 3.0; two leans, four ties). EQS Integrity Line leads security assurance at 6.7 to 2.7, with six leans and none against, and sovereignty at 4.7 to 2.3, with five leans and one tie. Reporting channels is level at 7.0 versus 7.0 — two leans each way, two ties. Pricing transparency reads 0.7 to 0.0 with four leans, though neither verdict counts pricing. Weighted totals favor EQS Integrity Line on four judges, NAVEX One EthicsPoint on the compliance officer (5.3 to 4.7), with the SME operator level at 5 to 5.
Choose EQS Integrity Line if
You must show your security reviewers named attestations — security assurance runs 6.7 to 2.7 with six judges leaning this way, resting on ISO 27001, a PwC ISAE 3000 Type I and II audit and CSA STAR.
Your data-residency policy requires EU-only storage under a German legal entity — the attributes list data residency as EU-only and jurisdiction as DE.
Your privacy office requires a stated subprocessor position — the attributes list subprocessor exposure as none.
Your group counsel or security auditor signs the purchase — their weighted totals read 4.1 to 3.8 and 5.2 to 3.1.
Reporter protection leads your criteria list — the reporter advocate's weighted total is 5.9 to 4.7.
Choose NAVEX One EthicsPoint if
Your investigators live inside the case tool — case management runs 6.8 to 5.2 with five judges leaning this way, covering auditable case history and implicated-party screening.
Your compliance officer holds the budget — their weighted total reads 5.3 to 4.7.
You run entities across several jurisdictions — multi-entity scale runs 3.5 to 3.2, with two leans this way, one the other way, three ties.
Directive alignment sits early in your rubric — compliance alignment runs 3.3 to 3.0 with two leans and four ties, though both verdicts describe the directive coverage as marketing.
You sit under a US parent that accepts US-default storage — the attributes list jurisdiction as US and data residency as US-default.
Read this comparison as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.
The Compliance Officer
Runs the internal reporting office of a 600-employee company and answers for every missed statutory clock. Optimizes for case discipline: automated acknowledgment and feedback deadlines, role separation, documentation that survives a regulator. Rejects inbox-with-a-form products that make the deadlines her problem.
EQS Integrity Line
NAVEX One EthicsPoint
This judge's pick
Criterion by criterion
Reporting channels & reporter experience
EQS Integrity Line
Anonymous two-way dialog is first-class ("complete anonymity... anonymous dialogue between the whistleblower, case handler and external experts", no tracking mechanisms), with 80+ languages, integrated machine translation, browser auto-detect and mobile optimization — but voice/hotline or QR intake is never evidenced as an engineered anonymous channel; the "telephone call" in the multichannel fact is a handler manually creating a case, not reporter voice intake, and WCAG only at bronze.
NAVEX One EthicsPoint
Web, mobile and phone intake, anonymous or named, 60+ languages with two-way dialogue and machine translation of report details and follow-ups — that satisfies the 8 anchor almost fully. It stops short of 10 because the vendor documents nothing about keeping reporter identity out of the channel itself, and there is no accessibility or QR-entry evidence.
Case management & deadline discipline
EQS Integrity Line
Integrated case management with a per-activity revision log, granular need-to-know permissions, configurable dual control and partial case anonymisation is a real permission model — but the evidence is entirely silent on the statutory clocks: no 7-day acknowledgment automation, no 3-month feedback deadline, no conflict-of-interest exclusion of implicated handlers, no per-case retention or deletion rules. The deadlines would be my problem again, and dashboards don't fix that.
NAVEX One EthicsPoint
Implicated-party screening, complete auditable case history with per-user view/edit visibility, and genuine management reporting are evidenced — that is real discipline, not an inbox. But the statutory clocks surface only as generic 'reminders' with no 7-day/3-month automation named, and retention is 'as directed by our business customer', so per-case deletion rules remain my problem.
Legal compliance alignment
EQS Integrity Line
The EU Whistleblowing Directive appears exactly once, as a marketing assertion that the hotline "ensures that your organisation fully complies" — no national transposition (HinSchG or otherwise), no deadline or documentation duties implemented as features, no retention periods, no named counsel or legal review. The mapping is the customer's problem.
NAVEX One EthicsPoint
'Alignment with the EU Whistleblowing Directive and national legislation' is marketing mapping, not implementation: no national transposition named, no legal templates, no counsel review, and the privacy statement confirms deadline, documentation and retention duties are the customer's to direct. The dedicated EU-focused product line keeps this just above pure label-wearing.
Security & anonymity assurance
EQS Integrity Line
Strong on attestations: ISO 27001 with stated scope ("EQS Group and our data centres"), PwC ISAE 3000 Type I and II, CSA STAR Registry, OWASP threat analysis, 2FA as standard. It falls short of the top anchors because the "EQS Group can at no time access your data" claim is asserted rather than documented — no published pentest summaries, no cryptographic architecture, and "no tracking mechanisms" is the only metadata statement we get.
NAVEX One EthicsPoint
Encryption, MFA and role-based permissions are asserted, but nothing is audited — no ISO 27001, no pentest, no encryption architecture. And it is worse than metadata silence: the privacy statement discloses cookies, beacons, tags and scripts collecting personal information within the Application, which is an anonymity problem for a whistleblowing channel.
Group & multi-entity capability
EQS Integrity Line
Corporate branding and granular per-case access are evidenced, and external experts can join the anonymous dialogue — but there is not a single fact on per-entity channels, separated entity case stores, group-level consolidated oversight, delegated administration, or per-entity legal rules. Whether one contract can serve a corporate group is simply unanswered.
NAVEX One EthicsPoint
Regional custom workflows, role-based permissions and multinational enterprise positioning are evidenced, but the evidence never mentions per-entity channels, delegated administration, or a group overview that respects entity boundaries. The Fortune-500 customer base implies scale; the evidence does not show the multi-tenant mechanics.
European sovereignty
EQS Integrity Line
German legal entity (EQS Group GmbH, Munich) and hosting "exclusively in Germany" with a named Munich East data centre are anchor-grade facts on where reports live — but the registry contains no DPA, no subprocessor list and no TOMs at all, and the vendor has been owned by US PE firm Thoma Bravo since 2024. For the most sensitive data a company holds, the chain past the first data centre is undocumented, so I cannot go higher.
NAVEX One EthicsPoint
'Data is stored in the EU' is stated for the EU product line, but the vendor is a US entity acting as processor for the most sensitive data we hold, and no DPA, subprocessor list or TOMs appear anywhere in the evidence. Subprocessor exposure to non-EU jurisdictional reach is entirely undocumented.
Pricing transparency
EQS Integrity Line
The only pricing fact in the entire registry is a "Start free trial" button — no tier prices, no employee bands, no entity rules, no VAT treatment, no setup fees. I could not begin to compute the invoice for a 600-employee company from these pages.
NAVEX One EthicsPoint
Three solutions, one described as 'fast, affordable', and not a single number anywhere — no tiers, bands, billing periods or setup fees. No obligated company can compute any invoice from these pages; everything is a sales conversation.
Sovereignty, side by side
Dimension
EQS Integrity Line
NAVEX One EthicsPoint
Legal entity
Not determined
Incorporated in US
Ownership
Not determined
Not determined
Data residency
EU only
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.