Best GDPR Software Shortlist
Here’s a brief list of the tools I evaluated throughout this article to help you find the best choice for your business.
- TrustArc - Best for advanced consent management
- Ethyca - Best for automation
- WireWheel - Best for privacy operations management
- LogicGate - Best for mapping risk management workflows
- AvePoint Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) - Best for privacy assessment
- DPOrganizer - Best for identifying high-risk activities
- BigID - Best for data security
- Spirion - Best for sensitive data management
- Collibra - Best for ensuring GDPR compliance
- Termly - Best for small business GDPR compliance
- Clym - Best all-in-one solution
- SECURITI.ai - Best AI-driven GDPR software
Many organizations use GDPR software to manage customer data, consent forms, and various data security issues. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) tools are typically used to efficiently and securely handle customer-related data. If your business operates in the European Union, using GDPR Compliance Software to store the personal information of European citizens is essential. To help, I created a list of options I researched and added a summary of what makes them unique, their key features, screenshots, and pricing and trial information.
What Is GDPR Software?
GDPR software refers to specialized technology solutions designed to assist organizations in adhering to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a comprehensive data privacy regulation in the European Union (EU). This software encompasses a range of tools and features that help businesses manage and maintain compliance with GDPR requirements, such as data protection, consent management, data subject rights management, data mapping, risk assessment, breach reporting, and privacy impact assessments. GDPR software aims to streamline the processes involved in handling personal data, ensuring that organizations handle data responsibly and in accordance with the regulation's principles.
Overviews Of the 12 Best GDPR Software
Below, you’ll find my comparisons of the top GDPR software you can implement in your business.
1. TrustArc - Best for advanced consent management
TrustArc offers advanced consent management tools to ensure marketing teams comply with diverse GDPR privacy laws.
Why I picked TrustArc: The platform consists of multiple modules and features that handle every aspect of GDPR compliance. This includes TrustArc’s advanced consent management that will help your team increase consumer trust and avoid compliance issues. The advanced consent manager tool is an adaptable solution that allows you to achieve website cookie compliance requirements from the GDPR while delivering a consistent consent experience.
TrustArc Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include a data inventory hub that helps your business create data flow maps and in-depth compliance reports to help manage risks. TrustArc also offers an assessment manager that enables you and your teams to conduct and oversee privacy assessments.
Integrations include a small number of connections with third-party applications, such as Dataguise, edX, Radar Privacy, and Sizmek Ad Suite.
Pricing: Pricing upon request.
Free Trial: Free demo available.
Pros
- Comprehensive reporting and data analysis
- Helps users gain valuable knowledge
- Data flow manager maps data movement
Cons
- Implementing the platform has a learning curve
- Customer support needs work
2. Ethyca - Best for automation
Ethyca provides a high degree of process automation to help marketing teams comply with GDPR regulations and focus on more significant privacy tasks.
Why I picked Ethyca: The platform will help your business handle GDPR tasks by automating almost all complex data privacy requirements. With Ethyca, you can automate consent enforcement tasks, such as cookie scanning, third-party consent, and data sales consent; privacy requests via a built-in requests manager and preference center; data mapping sensitive information; and more. Through all of Ethyca’s capabilities, you can increase brand trust, automate privacy requests, and ensure proper consumer consent.
Ethyca Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include future control capabilities that future-proof policy enforcement during any GDPR changes. Ethyca also offers privacy intelligence tools with an enormous open-source privacy engineering platform with over 200,000 hours of privacy engineering knowledge.
Integrations include connections with top business systems to help you implement privacy throughout your marketing team. These integrations include tools such as Adobe Sign, Airtable, Basecamp, FreshBooks, Google Analytics, HubSpot, Intercom, Klaviyo, Mailchimp, QuickBooks, and other software options.
Pricing: From $75/month.
Free Trial: Free demo available.
Pros
- Helpful customer support
- Easy to use
- Automates complicated processes
Cons
- Lengthy setup is required
- Some documentation is incomplete
3. WireWheel - Best for privacy operations management
WireWheel offers deep privacy expertise to help organizations quickly launch and expand programs through its privacy operations management capabilities.
Why I picked WireWheel: With WireWheel, your marketing team can enhance privacy operations through the platform’s privacy operations management features. Through these operations, you can deploy and manage privacy assessments to gather the proper information from people and systems to ensure complete privacy management and GDPR compliance. WireWheel’s privacy operations management also provides a central repository that holds your assessments and other vital reports you can view, download, or share.
WireWheel Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include branded data subject request intake forms to help you collect processing requests for access, correction, deletion, portability, and restriction. WireWheel also offers assessment management and automation to help you perform privacy impact assessments for high-risk processing.
Integrations include straightforward connections with tools and applications to ensure complete compliance across your organization, such as Airtable, HubSpot, Mailchimp, Marketo, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Slack, Smartsheet, Zendesk, Zoho CRM, and other software options. You can also use WireWheel’s API to create custom integrations with your current tech stack.
Pricing: Pricing upon request.
Free Trial: Free demo available.
Pros
- Excellent out-of-the-box capabilities
- Helpful customer support
- Flexible compliance templates
Cons
- Sometimes slow to adapt to GDPR changes
- Some features can be buggy
4. LogicGate - Best for mapping risk management workflows
LogicGate helps businesses outline how they process personal data by helping them map risk management workflows.
Why I picked LogicGate: The platform offers GDPR compliance management tools, such as risk management data mapping, to enable tour businesses to meet GDPR requirements. By using LogicGate, you can ensure continued compliance by mapping, tracking, and monitoring data activities according to GDPR requirements. LogicGate offers customizable pre-built data mapping workflows to meet your unique requirements.
LogicGate Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include forms you can create to automate, collect, and store details and responses. LogicGate also offers email notifications that send alerts so you can promptly complete compliance tasks.
Integrations include connections with popular third-party applications to help you gain improved visibility into your business’s risks, such as CrowdStrike, DocuSign, Google Drive, Microsoft Teams, Okta, OpenAI, Power BI, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Slack, and other software options. You can also use a paid Zapier account or the platform’s API to create custom integrations.
Pricing: Pricing upon request.
Free Trial: Free demo available.
Pros
- Completely customizable
- Excellent support team
- Easy to implement
Cons
- No area to test changes
- The user interface needs improvement
5. AvePoint Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) - Best for privacy assessment
AvePoint Privacy Impact Assessment can help businesses get an overview of privacy compliance and satisfy GDPR requirements and standards.
Why I picked AvePoint Privacy Impact Assessment: The platform can help you understand where your business is when preparing for GDPR readiness. AvePoint Privacy Assessment enables you to implement privacy assessments by providing a centralized system with editable questionnaires that are pre-populated with relevant GDPR questions. The system then automates information collection, including following up with the parties responsible for each question, allowing you to assess risks and get recommendations for closing gaps.
AvePoint Privacy Impact Assessment Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include end-user reporting on website traffic, search usage, documentation, and active user access. AvePoint Privacy Impact Assessment also offers virtual machine backups to help you improve the protection of virtual elements.
Integrations include connections with third-party platforms such as Alvaria Engagement Analytics, DocAve, Meeting360, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Project360, Salesforce, ServiceNow, TeamBeats, and VisitStream.
Pricing: Pricing upon request.
Free Trial: 30-day free trial + free demo available.
Pros
- Simple deployment
- Easily sets up business rules
- Intuitive system
Cons
- Not many integrations are available
- Customer support needs work
6. DPOrganizer - Best for identifying high-risk activities
DPOrganizer centralizes and simplifies data mapping to help businesses quickly identify and manage high-risk activities.
Why I picked DPOrganizer: I added DPorganizer to this article because of its data mapping tools that provide a foundation for privacy management. With this platform, you will get an overview of your company’s data and how it’s used to help you identify high-risk processing activities, such as lack of defined purposes or legal basis. DPOrganizer’s data mapping capabilities will interconnect all data, allowing you to make changes and ensure everything’s appropriately mirrored in your system.
DPOrganizer Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include tools to help you document and organize requests, simplifying case prioritization processes and allowing you to find the right data. DPOrganizer can also help you build, send, and analyze data assessments to track privacy risks, identify challenges, and choose your next steps.
Integrations include connections with thousands of the most popular third-party applications through a paid Zapier account, such as ActiveCampaign, Airtable, Asana, Google Calendar, Hubspot, Mailchimp, Microsoft Teams, Salesforce, Slack, Zendesk, and other software options. You can also use DPOrganizer’s open API to create custom integrations with your current systems.
Pricing: $408/month, billed annually.
Free Trial: Free demo available.
Pros
- Many out-of-the-box features
- Ideal for beginners
- Easy to use
Cons
- Needs to be more intuitive
- Lacks input field explanations and hints
7. BigID - Best for data security
BigID uses advanced machine learning and data intelligence to help businesses manage and secure sensitive data.
Why I picked BigID: The privacy regulations within the GDPR require your business to identify data related to individuals and be responsible for protecting that data. So, I added BigID to this list because it can help your company succeed in data protection and remediation, including protection monitoring and reporting who the information belongs to, where it’s from, and where it’s going. The platform also uses machine learning-based data discovery to classify all data and perform data risk scoring to measure risks based on different parameters such as data type, location, and residency.
BigID Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include privacy automation capabilities that help you handle end-to-end data fulfillment and reporting, allowing you to quickly locate all information on individuals across all data sources and identify personal and sensitive information. The platform also offers a governance suite that helps you perform reliable, professional, and scalable data governance to mitigate risk and give you a competitive advantage by building customer and stakeholder trust.
Integrations include connections with various software or solutions that enhance your GDPR tasks, such as Collibra, Confluent, Immuta, Salesforce, SAP, ServiceNow, Snowflake, Splunk, Tableau, Wiz, and other software options. You can also use the platform’s API to create custom integrations.
Pricing: Pricing upon request.
Free Trial: Free demo available.
Pros
- Enables high-level data protection
- Easy to use
- Clear user interface
Cons
- Hard to get issues fixed quickly
- Customer support is difficult to reach
8. Spirion - Best for sensitive data management
Spirion helps businesses manage and protect sensitive personal customer data to reduce risk exposure and gain visibility into their data activities.
Why I picked Spirion: The platform’s sensitive data manager offers capabilities that will help you monitor access to sensitive information and control its movement. Spirion can help you discover your sensitive data wherever it lives by scanning a number of locations to see if any information exists behind your firewalls. Spirion also offers tools that enable you to comply with personal data requests under the GDPR regulation and eliminate human error while minimizing risks.
Spirion Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include highly accurate data tracking that goes beyond pattern matching and returns results with less than 2% of false positives and false negatives. Spirion also provides automated workflow capabilities that remove all guesswork from data management, including complex data discovery, classification, and remediation processes.
Integrations include connections with a small number of tools and systems, such as Alien Vault, Atakama, Palo Alto Networks, Seclore, ServiceNow, Skyhigh Security, Splunk, Symantec, Thales, Tonic, and other software solutions. You can also use Spirion’s API to create custom integrations.
Pricing: Pricing upon request.
Free Trial: Free demo available.
Pros
- Robust sensitive data protection solution
- Well-designed user interface
- Built-in data discovery wizard
Cons
- Intensive data scanning can cause performance issues
- Range of features can make it complex
9. Collibra - Best for ensuring GDPR compliance
Collibra helps marketing teams simplify data governance, assessment, and auditing to ensure they’re compliant with GDPR data protection policies.
Why I picked Collibra: I decided to add Collibra to this article because it provides multiple tools to ensure your business remains compliant with the GDPR. The platform can apply machine learning algorithms to help you discover and classify data that needs governance under the GDPR. Under the GDPR, your business is required to understand what personal data you possess, and Collibra can help you achieve this through its metadata graph feature that maps relationships among data categories, subject categories, and usage.
Collibra Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include data flow automation that generates a visual data flow map from the controller to the processor to enable privacy teams to support record processing requirements. Collibra can also help you conduct privacy assessments with customizable templates to address Article 35 requirements.
Integrations include native connections with an array of tools to build your data ecosystem, such as Google Looker, Informatica PowerCenter, Marketo, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Power BI, Salesforce, SAP ERP, ServiceNow, Tableau, Workday, and other software options. Collibra also provides an API that enables businesses to connect the platform to their tech stacks.
Pricing: Pricing upon request.
Free Trial: Free trial available.
Pros
- Comprehensive feature set
- Customizable workflows
- User-friendly interface
Cons
- Steep learning curve
- Some deployment challenges
10. Termly - Best for small business GDPR compliance
Termly is an all-in-one GDPR software that helps small businesses stay up-to-date and compliant with ever-changing GDPR privacy laws.
Why I picked Termly: The platform is an all-in-one GDPR compliance solution for small businesses that need a tool to handle complex privacy laws. Termly provides various methods to help your small business fulfill legislative requirements from the GDPR. This software can ultimately help ease the burden of remaining compliant and provide you with peace of mind.
Termly Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include policy generators to help you create various types of policies, such as a privacy policy, terms and conditions, cookie policy, and more, to ensure customers understand how you’re using their data. Termly also offers a consent management platform that empowers you and your team to manage cookie consent and data collection.
Integrations include the ability to connect Termly to your business software and systems and build the platform’s compliance features into your tools through Termly’s API.
Pricing: From $10/website/month.
Free Trial: Free plan available.
Pros
- Excellent for small businesses
- Quick to implement
- Good customer support
Cons
- Free plan is limited
- Limited customizability
11. Clym - Best all-in-one solution
Clym is an all-in-one compliance solution that helps marketing teams remain compliant with all global data privacy regulations and make websites more accessible.
Why I picked Clym: This tool is an all-in-one platform that helps your business remain compliant with GDPR data privacy regulations as well as other global laws. Clym is a flexible, scalable software that can manage your business’s cookie consent, data subject requests, and policy updates. It’s also customizable, allowing you to achieve GDPR compliance without significantly impacting your customers’ experiences while enabling you to prove compliance if approached by any regulatory authority.
Clym Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include accessibility capabilities that allow your customers to choose from multiple profiles that help make your website more accessible to them. Clym also offers a geo-location tool that provides compliant experiences that are unique to the regulations governing your customers’ location while also providing the opportunity to give a multi-lingual privacy experience.
Integrations include connections with standard business tools such as Google Analytics, Hotjar, HubSpot CRM, Intercom, Jira, Shopify, Smartlook, Vimeo, WordPress, Zendesk, and other software options.
Pricing: From $49/month.
Free Trial: Free demo available.
Pros
- Good package of features
- Manages compliance worldwide
- Cost-effective
Cons
- Steep learning curve
- No data mapping capabilities
12. SECURITI.ai - Best AI-driven GDPR software
Securiti.ai is an AI-driven solution that enables businesses to find sensitive information across multiple environments and sources.
Why I picked Securiti.ai: I added Securiti.ai to this article because it’s an AI-driven solution that helps your business meet GDPR compliance. Through the platform’s AI, you can meet compliance requirements through its data discovery, data subject request automation, documented accountability, and enhanced visibility. Afterward, your business can turn this information into efficient data processing activities and AI-driven process automation.
Securiti.ai Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include a customizable data subject rights request portal that you can use to create branded web forms to accept verified data and automate fulfillment initiation workflows after verified requests are received. The platform also helps you continuously monitor and track data against non-compliance to subject rights, security controls, or data residency to identify data flow risks.
Integrations include pre-built connectors that help your business automate GDPR compliance, such as Amplitude, Asana, Capsule CRM, Google Analytics, Mailchimp, SAP HANA, Smartsheet, SurveyMonkey, Zendesk, Zoho Docs, and other software options.
Pricing: Pricing upon request.
Free Trial: Free demo available.
Pros
- Comprehensive solution for complex data issues
- User-friendly UI
- Prompt customer support
Cons
- Scanning unstructured data sources needs improvement
- Steep learning curve
Other GDPR Compliance Software Options
There’s an enormous number of GDPR compliance tool options that are worth significant consideration. To help make this article more beneficial to you, I added the following relevant choices you can implement in your business.
- Drata - Best for collecting evidence of security controls.
- Osano - Best for scaling privacy programs.
- OneTrust - Best for controlling responsible data usage.
- Skyflow - Best for verifying every data access request.
- Safetica - Bet for security audits.
- Strike Graph - Best for achieving security certifications.
- ManageEngine - Best for building robust data workflows.
- Privacypage - Best for creating branded privacy pages.
- Crownpeak Digital Experience Platform - Best for enterprise consent management.
- Decube - Best for simplifying data governance.
- Nightfall DLP - Best for data loss prevention.
- Accountable - Best for establishing a compliance culture.
- StandardFusion - Best for vendor and third-party assessment.
- AuditBoard - Best for compliance issues and reports management.
- Exterro GDPR Compliance - Best for identifying and mapping personal data sources.
- ComplianceBoard
- DataGrail - Best for interactive GDPR compliance displays.
- Pridatect - Best for creating tasks to mitigate risk.
- 1touch.io - Best for continuous traffic analysis.
- Privitar - Best for addressing privacy strategy gaps.
Selection Criteria For GDPR Software
So, what should you look out for when choosing GDPR compliance software? Here’s a short summary of the main selection and evaluation criteria I used to develop my list of the best GDPR software for this article:
Core Functionality
All GDPR compliance platforms will offer the same foundational capabilities that make it a GDPR software. When deciding the best options for this article, I looked for software with the following base functionality.
- Data management and mapping; this includes identifying and documenting what types of personal data are collected, processed, stored, and shared within the organization.
- Consent and rights management; helps organizations obtain and track user consent for data processing activities, ensuring that consent is freely given, specific, informed, and revocable.
Key Features
Here’s a list of the standard features you can find in GDPR software. This list will help you narrow down your search for the right platform.
- Data Management: Your organization can use this feature to securely collect and store data, track usage across departments, and quickly remove unwanted information; this offers comprehensive capabilities for managing consent details, authentication protocols, user rights management, and data removal options.
- Compliance Audits: Even if you’re confident your organization isn’t breaking any privacy laws, this can change in the future without anyone realizing it; GDPR software with compliance audit capabilities automatically runs checks through a built-in GDPR compliance checklist at regular intervals to ensure the company’s policies and practices are in line with the EU’s regulations and alert your legal team when it identifies problems.
- Data Protection: GDPR compliance software can protect sensitive data by providing encryption capabilities and other security methods, such as password protection and role-based access; it can ensure your organization abides by GDPR requirements for monitoring activities related to personal information.
- Security Reporting: Your team should always be aware of any data breaches that occur, and any GDPR solution with this feature will automatically send alerts if it discovers anything sinister happening with your system’s security protocols; this gives your team time to stop potential breaches before they happen.
- Data Anonymization: Web browser cookies track visitors the moment they access your website, and many organizations use the information collected from trackers for analysis - but the EU’s privacy regulation requires companies to clean this data as much as possible; GDPR applications with anonymization capabilities remove everything that links a specific user with data that describes them, leaving marketers free to examine usage statistics without sacrificing privacy.
- Pseudonymization: GDPR regulations provide alternatives to complete data anonymization if you have no choice but to hold some identifiable information; your business still needs consent to store this information, but you won’t be required to clean it if you're utilizing a GDPR tool that offers pseudonymization to protect visitor privacy by scrambling their data to make it useless if it falls into the wrong hands.
Usability
No matter how intuitive the GDPR software might be to use, there will be an early learning curve to overcome. You and your team will need to become accustomed to the platform and its capabilities, which can cost work hours. That’s why it’s smart to consider any training and onboarding a vendor offers with its software, helping everyone learn to navigate and efficiently use the tool to its fullest. However, any training or onboarding should be brief and allow everyone to get back to what they do best. Any way to make the tool more usable will save several days or weeks of low productivity.
Software Integrations
GDPR software can integrate with various types of business software, such as customer relationship management, enterprise resource planning, content management systems, ecommerce solutions, web applications, marketing automation platforms, and human resources systems. Integrating GDPR compliance tools enables you to ensure your data is correctly managed according to the EU’s GDPR. Also, because some of these tools hold customer information and other sensitive details that require management in accordance with GDPR guidelines, integrating with GDPR software ensures your data is always secure and compliant.
People Also Ask
When considering implementing GDPR software in your business, you may have some questions that will help you understand whether you need these platforms or not. The following are some answers to frequently asked questions about GDPR software and helpful answers to benefit you.
How does GDPR impact email campaigns?
Does GDPR apply to software?
What countries require GDPR compliance?
What are the benefits of GDPR software?
Other Risk Compliance Solution Reviews
Risk compliance means more than just managing GDPR consent. You may also find yourself needing tools to monitor brand mention, intervene in negative customer reviews, and ensure asset consistency with detailed proofing, approval, and dissemination tools. Here are additional resources you may find useful:
- Social Listening Tools
- Brand Management Software
- Marketing Asset Management Software
- Click Fraud
- Brand Protection Software
The Takeaway
The GDPR has changed the way organizations collect data and implemented penalties for non-compliance. Helpful GDPR tools can significantly benefit your business as you employ new marketing strategies that need to comply with this regulation. To enhance your business’s GDPR compliance when operating in the EU, there are specific steps to follow and checkboxes to tick. However, there are ways to simplify this process, and using GDPR software is the easiest method that can reduce the headaches and make it simpler to meet the most crucial requirements, helping you focus on other business goals sooner.
If you need help with other critical and beneficial software to enhance your marketing processes, sign up for The CMO newsletter to get the latest tool reviews for every aspect of your marketing department.