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 SME Operator
Runs a 60-employee company that the law obligated, not convinced. Optimizes for compliance set up in an afternoon at a price the year-end review will not question, with the legal duties handled by the product. Rejects per-report fees, setup charges and anything that needs a compliance department to operate.
EQS Integrity Line
NAVEX One EthicsPoint
This judge calls it a tie.
Criterion by criterion
Reporting channels & reporter experience
EQS Integrity Line
Anonymous two-way dialog is first-class with no tracking mechanisms, 80+ languages with integrated machine translation, mobile-optimized and WCAG bronze — that earns most of the 8 anchor. But there is no reporter-facing voice, hotline or QR channel evidenced: the multichannel fact is my caseworker creating a case from a letter or phone call, not a frightened employee calling in.
NAVEX One EthicsPoint
Web, phone and mobile intake 24/7 in 60+ languages, anonymous or named, with two-way dialog and machine translations of follow-ups — the complete channel set an obligated company needs. It stops short of the top anchor: no accessibility statement, no QR entry, and nothing documenting 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 rights with dual control, partial case anonymisation and dashboards are solid bones. But the evidence is silent on the two things I'm legally on the hook for — automated 7-day/3-month deadline clocks and per-case retention/deletion — and on excluding implicated handlers, so the statutory discipline is my problem, not the product's.
NAVEX One EthicsPoint
Complete auditable case history, per-user view/edit visibility, role-based permissions with implicated-party exclusion, automated escalations and board-ready reporting are genuinely there. But the statutory 7-day/3-month clocks are never named as automated features, and retention is 'retained as directed by our business customer' — the deadline and deletion duties stay on my desk, not the product's.
Legal compliance alignment
EQS Integrity Line
One marketing sentence claims full EU Whistleblowing Directive compliance with no mapping to actual duties: no national transposition (HinSchG et al.) named, no acknowledgment/feedback clock features, no documentation or retention rules in the product, no counsel review. That's the 3 anchor verbatim — the directive is invoked, the obligations stay mine.
NAVEX One EthicsPoint
The EU Whistleblowing Directive appears as a marketing bullet and WhistleB claims alignment with 'national legislation', but no transposition is named, no acknowledgment/feedback clocks are evidenced, and retention is customer-directed. The mapping is exactly what rubric level 3 describes — invoked, vague, and my problem.
Security & anonymity assurance
EQS Integrity Line
ISO 27001 covering both EQS Group and the data centres, a PwC ISAE 3000 Type I and II audit, CSA STAR registration and OWASP-based threat analysis, plus 2FA as standard and a vendor-cannot-access encryption claim — that is audited assurance, not adjectives. It stops short of 8 because there are no public pentest summaries, no explicit IP-logging statement (only a generic no-tracking claim) and no published security contact or disclosure policy.
NAVEX One EthicsPoint
'Secure data hosting and encryption' plus MFA is assertion, not assurance: no ISO 27001, no pentest, no word on IP or metadata logging. The privacy statement admits cookies, beacons, tags and scripts 'within the Application' and targeted-advertising cookies in the preferences tool — the opposite of metadata minimization next to an anonymous hotline.
Group & multi-entity capability
EQS Integrity Line
The evidence is entirely silent on multi-entity structure — no per-entity channels, no entity-separated case access, no group overview. What exists are building blocks: custom branding, granular user rights and external experts in the anonymous dialog, which is not the same as per-subsidiary separation or ombudsman roles.
NAVEX One EthicsPoint
Enterprise positioning with region-specific workflows, role permissions and giant scale claims (88M employees, 75% of Fortune 500), but the evidence never documents per-entity channels, separated case access per legal entity, or a group-level view. Scale claims are not multi-tenant architecture, and nothing on delegated administration or ombudsman access.
European sovereignty
EQS Integrity Line
Hosting is exclusively in Germany with a named data centre (Munich East) under a Munich-based GmbH — the core of the 8 anchor's facts. But nothing here shows a published DPA or subprocessor list, backups go to 'geographically distributed' centres of unstated location, and the vendor sits under US PE ownership (Thoma Bravo) — the chain is undocumented, which caps it at 5.
NAVEX One EthicsPoint
NAVEX Global, Inc. is an Oregon company, and 'Data is stored in the EU' on the WhistleB page is the only sovereignty fact offered — no published DPA, no subprocessor list, no named data centers, and the evidence's own attributes are all unknown. For the most sensitive data a company holds, undocumented beats only total silence.
Pricing transparency
EQS Integrity Line
The only pricing-related fact in the entire sheet is 'Start free trial' — no tiers, no numbers, no employee bands, no VAT treatment, no setup-fee disclosure. I cannot compute my invoice from these pages, and everything above entry implies a sales conversation, which is precisely what my year-end review will question.
NAVEX One EthicsPoint
'Fast, affordable' is the entirety of the pricing language; not one number, band boundary or setup fee appears anywhere in the evidence. Every tier is a sales conversation plus a Professional Services team to buy — I cannot compute the invoice for a 60-employee company, and my year-end review needs an invoice, not a negotiation.
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.