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 Group Counsel
Rolls one system out to 25 subsidiaries in a dozen countries. Optimizes for per-entity channels with real access separation, per-country legal rule sets, external ombudsman roles and group reporting that respects entity boundaries. Rejects one-channel products multiplied by twenty-five contracts.
EQS Integrity Line
This judge's pick
NAVEX One EthicsPoint
Criterion by criterion
Reporting channels & reporter experience
EQS Integrity Line
Anonymous two-way dialog that can even include external experts, 80+ languages with integrated machine translation and browser auto-detect, mobile-optimized, WCAG bronze, and an explicit no-tracking statement make the anonymous dialog first-class. But the 'multichannel' quote is about the caseworker manually creating a case from a letter, email or phone call — no anonymous voice or hotline intake by the product itself is evidenced, which a dozen-country rollout would need.
NAVEX One EthicsPoint
Web, mobile and 24/7 phone intake, anonymous by default across channels, 60+ languages with machine translation for reports and follow-ups, and two-way dialogue — that is the intake footprint my subsidiaries' workforces need. It stops short of the top anchor because nothing addresses accessibility, QR or low-friction entry, and no documentation explains how the reporter's identity is kept out of the channel itself.
Case management & deadline discipline
EQS Integrity Line
Integrated case management with a per-activity revision log, granular need-to-know roles, configurable dual control, partial case anonymisation and dashboards is real. But the evidence is dead silent on statutory deadline tracking, conflict-of-interest exclusion and per-case retention/deletion — the anchor-5 requirement — and I do not buy deadline discipline on faith for 25 entities.
NAVEX One EthicsPoint
Implicated-party screening that blocks access, complete auditable case history with per-user view/edit logging, and audit- and board-ready reporting (Power BI) are all evidenced. But the statutory machinery is absent: no 7-day acknowledgment or 3-month feedback clock anywhere in the evidence, and retention is whatever the business customer directs rather than legally aware automation — so it sits below the anchor it almost reaches.
Legal compliance alignment
EQS Integrity Line
The directive appears once, as a marketing claim that the hotline 'fully complies' with it; no national transposition, no per-country rule set, no named counsel, no acknowledgment or feedback clocks as product features. Deadlines, documentation and retention are evidently the customer's problem — that is the anchor-3 definition verbatim.
NAVEX One EthicsPoint
The directive exists here only as marketing vocabulary — 'Confidently meet whistleblowing requirements like the EU Whistleblowing Directive and SOX' — with no national transposition named (HinSchG et al. nowhere), no deadline features, no legal templates and no counsel review. WhistleB's 'alignment with the EU Whistleblowing Directive and national legislation' is the same vagueness in regional packaging, and retention duties are explicitly the customer's problem.
Security & anonymity assurance
EQS Integrity Line
ISO 27001 covering EQS Group and its data centres, a PwC ISAE 3000 Type I+II audit, STAR Registry, 2FA as standard, OWASP threat analysis and a stated absence of tracking mechanisms, plus the vendor's claim it can at no time access report data. What keeps it off the 8 anchor: no named penetration-test attestations, no security contact or disclosure policy, and 'latest encryption algorithms and SSL certificates' is adjective-grade, not a documented architecture.
NAVEX One EthicsPoint
Encryption, MFA and role-based permissions are asserted, but nothing is audited — no ISO 27001, no pentest, no statement on IP logging. Worse than silence: the privacy statement admits cookies, beacons, tags and scripts collect personal information inside the Application, with targeted-advertising cookies governed by a preference tool — a whistleblowing channel that tracks sessions in its own app is an anonymity problem, not just a gap.
Group & multi-entity capability
EQS Integrity Line
Granular need-to-know authorization, per-user rights and an anonymous dialog that includes external experts are hints of what I need, but nothing evidences per-entity channels, delegated administration, group reporting that respects entity boundaries, or ombudsman roles. The evidence shows me one channel with custom branding — and I reject one-channel products multiplied by twenty-five contracts.
NAVEX One EthicsPoint
This is the make-or-break for a 25-subsidiary rollout, and the evidence is silent on per-entity channels, delegated administration, external ombudsman roles and group reporting that respects entity boundaries — nothing beyond 'enterprise organizations meeting multinational regulatory requirements'. 'Up to two custom workflows' for teams, departments or regions plus 'global collaboration' and a central dashboard is single-tenant phrasing, not a multi-tenant group structure.
European sovereignty
EQS Integrity Line
A German GmbH with exclusive German hosting and a named Munich East data centre is a genuine sovereignty signal. But the chain is undocumented: no DPA, no subprocessor list, backups only 'geographically distributed', and the machine-translation service that touches case content has no jurisdiction stated — all under US PE ownership per the evidence's own provenance note.
NAVEX One EthicsPoint
The vendor is a US entity (NAVEX Global, Inc., Lake Oswego, Oregon, BC Partners-backed), and the only EU-hosting claim — 'Data is stored in the EU', GDPR-first architecture — attaches to the acquired WhistleB sibling, not to the flagship. No public DPA or subprocessor list is in evidence, and the application runs targeted-advertising cookies; for the most sensitive data a group holds, that is anchor-zero territory with one sibling-product credit.
Pricing transparency
EQS Integrity Line
Across five captured pages the only pricing fact is a 'Start free trial' button; no tier, employee band, entity rule or setup fee appears anywhere. An obligated company — much less a 25-entity group — cannot compute any invoice from public pages, which is the anchor-0 definition.
NAVEX One EthicsPoint
There is not a single number in the evidence: three named solutions with 'fast, affordable' positioning and sales-led Professional Services, and every tier routed to a conversation. Neither a 60-employee subsidiary nor my 25-entity group could compute one line of the invoice from public pages.
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.