Whistleblowing Portals

Hintbox

EU-Made Report an error

Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: 2 of 4 dimensions proven

0–5 in half steps. 5 means the rubric's top anchor is met on the evidence.

An AI-assisted analysis of public evidence — not a hands-on test.

Every score, rationale and verdict on this page is AI-generated. Every claim cites the source it was read from. Nothing here is a human star review — and no score can be bought. How scores are made →

Method and versions

The Compliance Officer v1.0 · The Reporter's Advocate v1.0 · The SME Operator v1.2 · The Group Counsel v1.0 · The Security Auditor v1.0 · The Skeptic v1.2 · rubric v1 · evaluated 15 Sep 2026

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Read this page as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.

The SME Operator

Weighted verdict

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.

Same scores as the panel view — this lens weights them the way this judge cares.

Scored by The SME Operator

Reporting channels & reporter experience

How this is scored

The intake side: how a reporter actually submits — web form, anonymous dialog, phone/voice, languages, accessibility — and whether anonymity survives first contact.

0 — A web form that is an email in disguise: no anonymous route, no way to reach the reporter afterwards.

3 — An anonymous form exists but the dialogue ends there — no secured mailbox for follow-up questions, few languages, desktop-only.

5 — Anonymous two-way dialog via a protected mailbox, a usable set of languages, mobile-friendly; voice or phone intake missing or an add-on.

8 — Multiple channels (web, voice message or hotline, QR entry points), broad language coverage with translation support, accessibility considered, and the anonymous dialog is first-class rather than bolted on.

10 — Intake engineered around the frightened reporter: every channel anonymous-capable, dozens of languages, WCAG-conscious, no app install or account required, and the vendor documents how the reporter's identity is kept out of the channel itself.

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The SME Operator

Anonymous two-way dialog is genuinely first-class: the reporter gets generated login credentials after submitting and can keep messaging, uploading files and even file new reports anonymously, with 24-30 languages and automatic AI translation. But phone intake is a 49€/month add-on and email a 29€/month add-on, and the evidence says nothing about accessibility or app-free mobile design — that lands it between the anchors, dialog strong, channels paywalled. 2 3 5

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Case management & deadline discipline

How this is scored

The case worker's side: triage, statutory deadlines (7-day acknowledgment, 3-month feedback), role separation, audit-proof documentation.

0 — Reports land in an inbox; deadlines, roles and history live in a spreadsheet next door.

3 — A case list with status fields, but deadlines are manual, permissions are all-or-nothing, and the record of who did what is thin.

5 — Deadline tracking with reminders for the statutory clocks, case notes and attachments, basic role separation between case handlers; reporting on the caseload is limited.

8 — Automated statutory clocks, conflict-of-interest handling (excluding implicated case handlers), complete tamper-evident case history, retention and deletion rules applied per case, and management reporting.

10 — A case system an external investigator can rely on: enforced workflows, full audit trail, legally aware retention/deletion automation, evidence handling, and statistics that survive a regulator's questions.

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The SME Operator

Revisionssichere audit trail of every handling step, automatic triage and prioritization, Eingangsbestätigung, active deadline support for the reporter-feedback clock, and access rights steerable per company and case — more than a status list. What I don't see is conflict-of-interest handling (excluding an implicated case handler) or per-case retention automation, which is what separates this from the 8 anchor. 3 4 5

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Legal compliance alignment

How this is scored

How specifically the product implements EU Directive 2019/1937 and national transpositions (HinSchG et al.) — not whether the marketing mentions them.

0 — Generic feedback software wearing a whistleblowing label; no reference to the legal obligations it claims to satisfy.

3 — The directive is invoked in marketing but the mapping is vague; deadline rules, documentation duties and retention periods are the customer's problem.

5 — The statutory duties are implemented as product features — acknowledgment and feedback clocks, documentation, deletion after the retention period — for at least one national law, with guidance for the rest.

8 — Multiple national transpositions supported with their differing details, legal templates and process guidance maintained by named counsel or documented review, and updates when the law moves.

10 — The product is a legal instrument: per-country rule sets kept current, documented legal review, guidance for edge cases (group-wide channels, external ombudsman setups), and the vendor shows its homework in public.

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The SME Operator

The 2019/1937 duties appear as product features, not slogans: receipt confirmation, active support for the feedback deadlines, deletion per the Directive, and even a public-sector compliance statement. But it's one German-sized shoe: no HinSchG named, no national transposition differences, no legal review or counsel documented — for my single-country obligation that's workable, but the evidence can't evidence more. 4 5

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Security & anonymity assurance

How this is scored

Whether the confidentiality promise is engineered and evidenced: encryption, metadata handling, penetration tests, certifications.

0 — Security is a paragraph of adjectives; no certificates, no test reports, no statement on metadata.

3 — TLS and encryption at rest asserted, but nothing audited: no ISO 27001 or equivalent, no published pentest, silence on IP and metadata logging.

5 — A current ISO 27001 (or equivalent) certificate for vendor or hosting, end-to-end encryption of report content claimed with some technical detail, an explicit no-IP-logging statement.

8 — Certified ISMS covering the product, regular third-party penetration tests attested, documented end-to-end encryption architecture, metadata minimization explained, security contact and disclosure policy published.

10 — Assurance a hostile auditor accepts: current certificates with visible scope, recurring pentest summaries public, cryptographic architecture documented, anonymity analysed against the operator itself — the vendor can answer "how would you unmask a reporter?" with "we cannot, and here is why".

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The SME Operator

ISO 27001 certification, regular external penetration testing, and an explicit statement that no IP, MAC or location data is stored, plus metadata stripped before encryption and a real E2E story — data arrives pre-encrypted so 'neither we nor third parties can read it'. What's missing for an 8 is anything an auditor can read: no published pentest summaries, no security contact or disclosure policy in the evidence. 1 2 3 4

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Group & multi-entity capability

How this is scored

Whether one contract can serve a corporate group: separate channels per legal entity, central oversight, ombudsman access, white-labeling.

0 — One company, one channel; a group buys and administers N separate instances.

3 — Multiple channels under one account, but no separation of case access per entity and no consolidated view.

5 — Per-entity channels with separated case handlers and a group-level overview; branding per entity is basic; external counsel access possible.

8 — Real multi-tenant group structure: per-entity channels, languages and branding, delegated administration, external ombudsman roles, group reporting that respects entity boundaries.

10 — Group compliance as architecture: hundreds of entities manageable centrally, per-country legal rule assignment per entity, white-label reporting pages, and access separation strong enough to satisfy each subsidiary's works council.

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The SME Operator

Groups can create per-entity companies, the whistleblower selects the affected entity at submission, and case-handler rights are steerable per company and case; there's also an ombuds solution and a white-label partner offering. But no delegated administration or consolidated group reporting is evidenced, and anything calling itself a group gets pushed into a custom quote — adequate for one company, unproven as group architecture. 3 6 5

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European sovereignty

How this is scored

Where reports about people actually live and under whose law — entity, hosting, subprocessors, DPA. In this category the data is by definition the most sensitive a company holds.

0 — Non-EU entity, non-EU-default hosting, no public DPA or subprocessor list — for whistleblowing data.

3 — A DPA exists and an EU region is available on request or on top tiers; subprocessor exposure to US CLOUD Act reach is broad or undocumented.

5 — EU hosting is the default, DPA and subprocessor list published; the vendor or a critical subprocessor is still within non-European jurisdictional reach.

8 — EU entity, EU hosting with named data centers, published subprocessor list free of content-touching non-EU processors, DPA and TOMs public.

10 — Jurisdictionally clean end to end: European ownership, EU-only hosting and subprocessors for report content and metadata, on-premises or sovereign-cloud options, and the whole chain documented publicly.

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The SME Operator

A German GmbH with a Koblenz register number and German address, hosted by Hetzner in an ISO-certified German datacenter, with an explicit no-hosting, no-transfer-outside-EU statement. The gap is paperwork: no published subprocessor list and no public DPA document — the processor-on-documented-instruction sentence is a claim, not a contract I can inspect, so it stops short of the 8 anchor. 1 4 7

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Pricing transparency

How this is scored

Whether an obligated company can compute the real invoice — per entity, per employee band, per year — from public pages alone.

0 — No public prices at all; every tier is a sales conversation.

3 — An entry price exists, but the tiers most obligated companies need are unpriced, or the maths is obscured by employee bands, per-report fees or mandatory setup charges.

5 — Most tiers carry real numbers with billing period and VAT treatment stated, but at least one commonly needed capability — extra entities, extra languages, phone intake — hides in an unpriced add-on.

8 — Every tier priced publicly with employee-band boundaries, entity rules and setup fees stated; only genuine corporate-group contracts are custom.

10 — Complete price computability: every tier, band, add-on and renewal rule public, so the invoice for a 60-employee company and a 5-entity group is a two-minute exercise.

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The SME Operator

Both tiers carry public net prices with VAT treatment stated (99€ and 149€ monthly), pricing is independent of handler accounts with unlimited users, and every add-on is priced in the open — voice bot 49€/month, email 29€/month, domain mapping 29€/month, onboarding 390€ one-time. For my 60-employee company the invoice is genuinely a two-minute exercise; what keeps it from a 10 is that the premium tier's annual figure and what it actually adds over base are left vague, and the 390€ onboarding smells like a setup charge I'd have to justify even if it's optional. 1 2 5

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European sovereignty — proven facts

2 of 4 dimensions proven

Built only from facts shown on the vendor's own pages. A dimension we could not prove is left open, not scored as zero.

Legal entity	Not determined ⚠ unverified	—	uncited Report an error
Ownership	Not determined	—	uncited Report an error
Data residency	EU only ⚠ unverified	3/3 pts	4 Report an error
Subprocessors	EU only ⚠ unverified	2/2 pts	1 Report an error

Where this could be wrong

Evidence ages. The oldest capture behind this page is from 11 Sep 2026. Vendors change pricing and policies without notice; every fact reflects its source as of the capture date shown in the registry.
Weak sourcing — Data residency. Statement sits on the vendor's security/trust page rather than in a contractual data processing agreement.
Weak sourcing — Subprocessors. Only the hoster is named; no complete subprocessor list is published, and the provider of the AI-based translation feature is not disclosed.
Weak sourcing — Legal entity. Not confirmed on the vendor’s own pages as captured.
AI can misread a source. Extraction and judgement are automated; a citation guarantees traceability, not infallibility. If something here is wrong, say so — no account needed, every report is decided within 5 business days, and accepted corrections are published.

What we left out

A claim that does not survive our checks costs us the claim, not the page. This is what was taken off this one.

9 product facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us
4 legal facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us
3 compliance facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us
3 pricing facts could not be confirmed on the vendor’s page as captured and were left out of this page and of the panel’s material. Know more? Tell us
1 sovereignty dimension could not be confirmed on the vendor’s own pages and is shown as unknown. Know more? Tell us
6 of the readings below were written against an earlier fact sheet — a fact has been corrected, added or pulled since. Until the panel next runs on this product you are reading the older judgement. Know more? Tell us
The panel’s written verdict is withheld: our own re-read found claims in it that the evidence does not carry, and a second synthesis did not fix them. The scores and the material below are unaffected. Know more? Tell us

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Sources (9)

The pages every claim on this page was read from — each one checked, dated, and kept verifiable.

1 Vendor homepage www.hintbox.de Checked 15 Sep 2026 Details →
2 Pricing page www.hintbox.de Checked 15 Sep 2026 Details →
3 Features page www.hintbox.de Checked 15 Sep 2026 Details →
4 Security & privacy page www.hintbox.de Checked 15 Sep 2026 +1 earlier capture: 15 Sep 2026 Details →
5 FAQ www.hintbox.de Checked 15 Sep 2026 +1 earlier capture: 11 Sep 2026 Details →
6 About / vendor entity www.hintbox.de Checked 15 Sep 2026 Details →
7 Imprint www.hintbox.de Checked 15 Sep 2026 Details →
8 Reporting channels & reporter experience — found from sitemap www.hintbox.de Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
9 Reporting channels & reporter experience — found from sitemap www.hintbox.de Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →