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Policy management software: policy compliance software and policy management tools that map to SOC 2, ISO 27001 and HIPAA
Most policy tools are document control with a review workflow bolted on. They store the PDF, chase the signature, and stop there. Complies runs the same lifecycle and then does the part that matters at audit time: it ties every approved policy to the controls it satisfies across five frameworks.
From $79/mo · Prices published · No sales call · Monthly billing
Audit readiness
0 %
Built for teams of 5 to 200
What policy management software actually does
Policy management software runs the full life of a written policy: drafting, review, approval, publication, employee acknowledgment, and scheduled re-review, with a version history that can prove which wording was in force on any given date. It replaces the shared drive where policies go stale and nobody can say who approved what. The category splits into two kinds of product, and buyers routinely conflate them. The first kind is document control: a repository, an approval workflow, distribution lists, and attestation tracking, sold to large regulated organizations such as hospitals and police departments where the volume of policies is the problem. The second kind is compliance-native policy management, where each policy is linked to the specific controls it satisfies, so an approved access control policy is simultaneously evidence for SOC 2 CC6, ISO 27001 A.5.15, HIPAA 164.308 and PCI DSS Requirement 7. Complies is the second kind, built for companies of 5 to 200 people where policy work belongs to a founder, an engineering lead, or a first security hire. It drafts each policy from the systems you actually connected, so the access control policy references your real identity provider instead of a generic template. A human reviews, edits, and approves, and nothing goes live without a named approver and a date, because that is the first thing an auditor asks. Acknowledgments are tracked per employee per version, which is itself the evidence auditors request. Annual reviews land on the compliance calendar automatically. Prices are published at $79 to $499 a month with monthly billing available, which is unusual in a category where almost every vendor quotes only after a demo.
Complies assists with compliance workflows. It is not legal advice, and it does not certify you or guarantee audit outcomes. Your auditor decides; Complies gets you ready.
Last updated August 2026
The three jobs a policy tool has to do
A lifecycle, not a folder
A policy is not finished when someone writes it. It has to be reviewed by the right people, approved by a named owner on a recorded date, published where staff can find it, acknowledged by the people it binds, and re-reviewed on a schedule before it goes stale. Complies runs each of those as a tracked step with an owner and a due date, so the question "when was this last approved, and by whom" always has an answer.
policy lifecycle managementAttestation that doubles as audit evidence
Auditors do not just want the policy. They want proof that the workforce read it, and proof of which version they read. Acknowledgment is recorded per employee against a specific version, with a timestamp, so when fieldwork asks who accepted the current information security policy you export a list instead of reconstructing one from email. This is the single most requested policy artifact in a SOC 2 or ISO 27001 audit.
evidence collection softwareOne policy, credited in every framework
A dedicated policy suite gives you a beautifully versioned document that your compliance program then has to reference by hand. Complies maps each policy to the controls it supports across SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA and PCI DSS, so one approved document earns credit everywhere it applies and a second framework does not mean a second policy set.
control mapping softwareThree ways teams manage policies, and who each one fits
The real choice is not whether to buy a policy tool. It is whether you need document control at scale, or policies wired into a compliance program. Here is the honest comparison, including where Complies is the wrong answer.
| Dimension | Shared drive and email | Dedicated policy suite | Complies |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | Under 20 people, a handful of policies, no audit yet | Hospitals, agencies and regulated firms with hundreds of policies | Teams of 5 to 200 carrying 1 to 5 security frameworks |
| Drafting | Copy a template and edit it by hand | Templates plus guided authoring and a document editor | AI-drafted from your connected stack, human approved |
| Version history | Filenames such as policy-v3-FINAL-2 | Full version control with point-in-time reporting | Every change recorded with author, date, and prior wording |
| Acknowledgment tracking | A spreadsheet somebody maintains, or nothing | Campaigns, reminders, and per-version attestation reporting | Per employee, per version, timestamped, exportable as evidence |
| Control mapping | None; you reference policies manually in the audit | Standards mapping available, often as a paid add-on | Every policy mapped across five frameworks from Growth |
| Audit evidence | Assembled by hand the week fieldwork starts | Strong for policy artifacts, separate from technical evidence | Policy and technical evidence sit against the same controls |
| How you buy | Free, until an auditor asks who approved what | Demo, scoping call, quote, annual contract | Published price, sign up, start the same day |
| Pricing | Free plus your own time | Almost always quote-only (see the audit below) | Published: $79, $199, $499 per month |
Read that honestly. If you run 400 clinical policies across a hospital system with accreditation requirements, a dedicated policy suite such as PowerDMS or NAVEX PolicyTech is the better tool and we will say so plainly. If you have twelve policies and no audit on the horizon, a shared drive is genuinely fine for now. The gap Complies fills is the company in between: enough policies that the spreadsheet is failing, an audit in the next year, and no appetite for a procurement cycle. If you are weighing the broader compliance platforms that bundle policy management, compare them in detail on Vanta alternatives, Drata alternatives and Sprinto alternatives.
Which policy management vendors publish a price
Policy management is one of the least price-transparent software categories in the market. We checked every vendor below directly on 5 August 2026 and recorded exactly what each one publishes, with no estimates filled in where a number was missing.
| Vendor | Publishes a price? | What is actually published | How to read it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Complies | Yes | $79, $199 and $499 per month at the yearly-billed rate, monthly available | Policy management inside a cross-mapped compliance platform |
| VComply | Partly | Pro GRC Suite states "Modules start at $1,000/mo"; Starter and Enterprise are quote-only | The closest thing to a public list price among the dedicated GRC and policy tools |
| PowerDMS (NEOGOV) | No | Quote only. Documented as a base cost plus per-user, per-year licensing | Deep accreditation and public safety features, priced after a scoping call |
| NAVEX PolicyTech | No | Quote only, sold as part of the NAVEX One platform | Enterprise-scaled. Expect a full procurement cycle |
| ConvergePoint | No | Quote only. No figures published | SharePoint-native, so it fits Microsoft 365 shops |
| Vanta, Drata, Secureframe, Sprinto | No | Quote only, and policy management is bundled rather than sold on its own | You cannot price the policy module separately from the platform |
One number circulates widely and deserves a caution. PowerDMS, itself a vendor in this category, publishes a buyer guide putting policy management software at roughly $4,000 to more than $100,000 a year. It discloses no methodology or sample, so treat it as a vendor estimate rather than data. We have not reproduced it as a fact anywhere else on this site, and we do not repeat the per-seat and discount figures that circulate on competitor blogs without a disclosed source.
What changes when policies stop living in a drive
Drafts that describe your actual company
The AI writes each policy from the systems you connected, so the access control policy names the identity provider you really use and the change management policy reflects how your team actually ships. Generic template packs are the reason auditors find policies that describe a company nobody works at.
A named approver on every document
Nothing becomes an active policy without a human approving it on a recorded date. That single field answers the question that opens most policy conversations in fieldwork, and it is the reason AI drafting here stops short of auto-publishing.
Acknowledgments you can export, not reconstruct
Every employee acknowledgment is stored against a specific version with a timestamp. When an auditor samples five people and asks which version they accepted, that is a report rather than an afternoon in your email archive.
One policy set for five frameworks
Policies map to controls across SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA and PCI DSS. Adding a second framework mostly re-labels documents you already approved rather than starting a second policy project.
Reviews that regenerate themselves
Annual review dates go onto the compliance calendar with an owner attached, so a policy that expires in March surfaces in February instead of during the audit. Stale policies are a finding, and they are entirely avoidable.
A price you can read before a call
Starter is $79 a month, Growth $199, Scale $499 at the yearly rate, with monthly billing available. In a category where nearly every vendor quotes only after a demo, being able to budget from a web page is the practical difference.
From no policies to an approved, acknowledged set
Pick the frameworks in scope
Choose SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS, or several. Complies generates the policy set those frameworks actually require, already cross-mapped, so you are not guessing which documents you owe.
Connect your stack and generate drafts
Point Complies at AWS, GitHub, Google Workspace and Okta. It reads configuration, never customer data, and drafts each policy against what it finds, so the first version is specific rather than generic.
Review, edit, and approve with a real owner
A human reads every draft, changes what is wrong, and approves it. The approver and date are recorded, and the previous wording stays in the version history for point-in-time questions.
Publish, collect acknowledgments, and schedule the re-review
Staff acknowledge the current version, the record is stored as evidence against the mapped controls, and the next review date lands on the calendar with an owner. The program keeps running without anyone re-typing it.
Who this is for, and who it is not
A GOOD FIT WHEN
- You are 5 to 200 people and policy work is somebody's second job, not a department.
- Your policies live in Google Drive or Notion and nobody can say who approved the current version.
- You have a SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA or PCI DSS audit in the next year and need policies that map to controls.
- You want acknowledgment tracking that exports as audit evidence rather than a spreadsheet you maintain.
- You would rather read a published price than sit through a demo to find out what it costs.
LOOK ELSEWHERE WHEN
- You manage hundreds of clinical or public safety policies with accreditation workflows. PowerDMS and NAVEX PolicyTech are built for exactly that and are better at it.
- You need policy management with no compliance framework attached, purely as document control. A dedicated document management system will be cheaper and simpler.
- You need consent management, cookie banners, DSAR automation, or data mapping. Complies does not do any of those.
- You want the software to be accountable for what your policies say. It drafts and tracks; your company still owns the content, and none of this is legal advice.
Common questions about policy management software
Policy management software manages the full life of a written policy: drafting, review, approval, publication, employee acknowledgment, scheduled re-review, and retirement, with a version history that proves which wording was in force on a given date. It replaces the shared drive where policies go stale and no one can say who approved what. The better tools also link each policy to the compliance controls it satisfies, so an approved document counts as audit evidence rather than sitting in a separate system.
Complies publishes its prices: Starter $79 a month, Growth $199 and Scale $499 at the yearly-billed rate, with monthly billing at $95, $239 and $599. Almost every other vendor in this category is quote-only. The exception we found is VComply, whose Pro GRC Suite page states that modules start at $1,000 a month. PowerDMS, NAVEX PolicyTech and ConvergePoint publish no figures at all and price after a scoping call, typically per user per year.
It depends on which problem you have, and the honest answer splits three ways. For hundreds of clinical or public safety policies with accreditation requirements, PowerDMS and NAVEX PolicyTech are the strongest tools. For a Microsoft 365 shop that wants policies inside SharePoint, ConvergePoint fits naturally. For a company of 5 to 200 people that needs policies tied to SOC 2 or ISO 27001 controls without a procurement cycle, Complies is built for that specific case, and publishes its price so you can check.
At minimum: a central repository, real version control, an approval workflow with a named approver and date, controlled distribution, acknowledgment tracking per employee per version, scheduled reviews, and search. If you are buying it for compliance rather than document control, add two more: mapping from each policy to the specific controls it satisfies, and an export that hands your auditor the policy plus its acknowledgment record together.
Below roughly 20 people with a dozen policies and no audit ahead, a shared drive plus a calendar reminder is genuinely enough, and we would rather say that than sell you something. It stops being enough at the point where an auditor, a customer security review, or an insurer asks who approved a policy and which version staff accepted. If you cannot answer that in a few minutes today, the spreadsheet has already failed.
Document management software stores and versions any file. Policy management software adds the governance layer specific to policies: an approval chain with an accountable owner, controlled publication to the people a policy binds, acknowledgment tracking, and a review cycle that fires before the document goes stale. A document management system can hold your policies; it cannot tell you that 12 of 40 employees never accepted the current version.
Policy attestation is the recorded confirmation that a named employee read and accepted a specific version of a policy on a specific date. Auditors ask for it because a policy nobody has read does not control anything, so acknowledgment is the evidence that the control actually operates. In a SOC 2 or ISO 27001 audit, expect the auditor to sample employees and ask for their attestation records, which is why per-version tracking matters more than a single signature on hire.
Yes, and it is usually the fastest part of either project to finish. Both frameworks require documented policies plus evidence they are communicated and reviewed: SOC 2 through the common criteria, ISO 27001 through Clause 5.2 and Annex A.5.1. Software helps by generating the required set, recording approvals, tracking acknowledgments, and mapping each document to the controls it supports, so one approved policy earns credit in both frameworks instead of being written twice.
AI can write a credible first draft, and that removes most of the blank-page problem, but it cannot be accountable for the result. Complies drafts each policy from your connected systems so the content reflects your real setup, then requires a human to review, edit and approve before it goes live. Nothing is auto-published and none of it is legal advice. A policy your company has not actually read and agreed to is a liability, not an asset.
Frameworks and guides
SOC 2 compliance software
ISO 27001ISO 27001 compliance software
POLICYAI Policy Management Software: What It Does and Does Not Do
CROSS-FRAMEWORKAudit Evidence Examples: What Auditors Actually Ask For
SOC 2SOC 2 Controls List: AICPA CC1 to CC9 Common Criteria
Draft the policies, prove they were read
Prices published, $79 to $499 a month. Monthly billing. Start today, no sales call.