PowerDMS alternative 2026: Xoralia compared

This article is written for you if you are evaluating alternative policy management solutions to PowerDMS. That applies whether you already use PowerDMS and are questioning if it still meets your needs, or it is on your shortlist as you formally evaluate different options. 

We are Xoralia, and PowerDMS is our competitor. Of course, although we would love you to select Xoralia, we know that to win long-term customers, we must provide a solution that fits your needs. Therefore, we’ve tried to provide an honest and useful comparison between Xoralia and PowerDMS. If PowerDMS is genuinely the better fit for you, the information here will help you reach that conclusion. 

What is PowerDMS? 

PowerDMS is a document and policy management platform with a history rooted in the US public safety sector covering law enforcement, fire services, emergency medical services, and other accreditation-driven organisations. It has expanded into broader public sector, healthcare, and corporate compliance use cases over time. 

PowerDMS is a standalone SaaS platform. It offers policy lifecycle management features, including document creation, review, approval, distribution, and acknowledgement, as well as training, accreditation management, and, in some configurations, scheduling tools. It is primarily a US-market prod

What is Xoralia? 

Xoralia is a policy management platform built natively for Microsoft 365. It manages the full policy lifecycle from creation and review through to approval, distribution, attestation, and audit reporting. It achieves this by running entirely inside your Microsoft SharePoint and Teams environment. Xoralia is a focused, standalone policy management product, not part of a broader suite of compliance tools. 

Xoralia’s customer base spans regulated organisations of 150 to several thousand employees across financial services, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, education, public sector, aviation, and manufacturing - predominantly in the UK, Europe, US, and Australia. 

The fundamental architectural difference between Xoralia and PowerDMS 

This is the most important comparison point. PowerDMS is a standalone SaaS platform, so your policy content is hosted in PowerDMS’s environment rather than your own. Employees access PowerDMS through a separate portal with a separate login. It integrates with some third-party tools, but it does not run within your Microsoft 365 tenant.  

Xoralia runs inside your Microsoft 365 tenant, so your policy documents stay in SharePoint. Employee authentication uses your existing Entra ID SSO with no new login required. Attestations occur in Teams (or in SharePoint, if preferred), while AI features run via Azure OpenAI within your tenant. Critically, at no point does your policy content leave your Microsoft 365 environment. 

For regulated and complex organisations, this architectural difference is important in three ways:

Feature comparison

PowerDMS vs Xoralia: where Xoralia has advantages 

Xoralia has several notable strengths.

Finding an alternative to PowerDMS: when to switch? 

If you are currently using PowerDMS and evaluating whether to switch, the relevant questions are: 

• Do you actively use PowerDMS’s accreditation management features, or primarily its policy and attestation functionality? If the latter, you may be paying for features you do not use. 
• Are your attestation completion rates where they need to be? If employees find the portal inconvenient to use, a platform that surfaces requests in Teams will solve the adoption problem. 
• Does your organisation have data residency requirements that PowerDMS’s external hosting creates friction for? UK and EU organisations subject to GDPR, NHS information governance, or financial services data security frameworks should verify the data residency implications of their current contracts. 
• Is your organisation’s Microsoft 365 investment central to how employees work? If so, policy management that lives within that environment will achieve adoption levels that a separate portal cannot. 

Migration from PowerDMS to Xoralia 

Migrating from PowerDMS to Xoralia is a managed process and is usually straightforward. Policy documents are typically either already in SharePoint or can be migrated there as part of onboarding. 

Review schedules, ownership records, and any assigned audiences for policies that are configured during the implementation process. Any existing attestation history can also be retained. 

Most migrations are completed within the standard onboarding process without requiring significant professional services engagement. The Xoralia team manages the transition to ensure continuity of compliance. Any policy management or employee attestation process already in flight or needing to kick off during the migration period is not disrupted.