The top Borealis competitors: evaluating the market
Last updated: August 2026. We review this page quarterly.
Quick answer
The platforms most often shortlisted alongside Borealis for stakeholder engagement are Tractivity, Open Point (formerly Consultation Manager), Jambo and Simply Stakeholders, plus Syrenis SMART, which is now a legacy product still listed on G-Cloud 14. For UK and EU organisations, Tractivity is the closest like-for-like comparison on this page: one subscription covering all core functionality, onboarding included at no extra cost and typically completed in four to six weeks, and client success and technical teams working UK and EU hours.
Borealis is a stakeholder engagement platform built around four modules, stakeholder engagement, issue and complaint management, land access and acquisition, and social investment. It publishes eight industries, including oil and gas, renewables, offshore renewable energy, mining, utilities, transport, government and healthcare. Borealis describes its packages as designed to scale from a small team managing local initiatives through to a global organisation running multi-site operations. Its published strengths are land access, grievance management, social investment and multi-site corporate reporting.
Borealis and Tractivity are both credible options for organisations professionalising stakeholder engagement. The differences that matter most in a UK or EU procurement are commercial and structural: how onboarding is charged, what sits inside the subscription and what is a separately priced add-on, where data is hosted, and which public sector certifications each supplier holds.
What Borealis publishes
Borealis promotes a broad range of functionality, including stakeholder mapping, sentiment analysis, reporting dashboards and structured engagement workflows. These capabilities are typically marketed as being best suited to large, mature organisations with complex governance requirements.
Borealis is sold as three packages, Essential, Professional and Enterprise, with separately priced add-ons. Essential covers core stakeholder management, mapping, AI tools, a native mobile application with offline mode, a Chrome extension, unlimited engagement plans and full analytics. Mass communications and SMS, team data segregation, land management, grievance and donation portals and commitment tracking sit in Professional, and multi-site corporate reporting, permitting and audit support sit in Enterprise. Their G-Cloud 14 pricing document, dated May 2024, prices Smart Communications, SMS messaging, Team Data Segregation, Corporate View, Issue and Complaint Management and Social Investment separately, each with a one-time set-up fee plus a recurring annual fee.
A modular model lets a buyer pay only for what they use. It also means the year one total depends on which modules are switched on, so the useful question to put to any modular supplier is what the full engagement scope costs once every module you need is included.
How does Tractivity compare to Borealis?
Let’s take a closer look at how Borealis’ top competitor Tractivity compares across the key factors that most commonly influence a buying decision.
Onboarding and total cost of ownership
The clearest practical difference between Borealis and Tractivity is the onboarding model.
Borealis's G-Cloud 14 pricing document, dated May 2024, lists a one-time service fee of £14,550 covering data gathering, configuration and user training, alongside subscription pricing of £1,137 to £2,674 per user per year. That fee sits outside the subscription and outside add-on module fees. Borealis states that a typical implementation takes a few weeks for a full enterprise rollout, including data migration and training.
Tractivity implementations typically complete within four to six weeks, covering configuration, data migration and team training. Onboarding, setup and tailored training sit inside the subscription, with no separate implementation charge. Tractivity is also available on G-Cloud.
The question worth asking is therefore not who is quicker, but whether implementation is a line item or part of the price, and what the year one total looks like once it is included. Build both into a three-year total against your own user numbers.
Modules versus complete functionality
Borealis’ modular commercial model also affects day-to-day value. Core subscription pricing does not always include all engagement and communication functionality, meaning organisations may need to license additional modules to manage communications, handle issues and complaints, or segregate data across programmes.
An alternative approach is to retain Borealis for stakeholder analysis while continuing to use separate communication tools available elsewhere in the market. Running engagement records across more than one system means more than one subscription to renew, more than one integration to maintain, and more than one place an information governance officer has to check when answering a subject access request. This is a point about running several systems side by side rather than about any one supplier.
Tractivity includes all core engagement functionality as standard, with all stakeholder interactions captured and managed within a single, central system. Communications, newsletters, consultation surveys, event and workshop management, contact management, stakeholder mapping and reporting and full engagement history are all built directly into the platform, with unlimited use and no add-on fees.
Because these communication and engagement tools are native to Tractivity, most teams do not need to buy separate survey, newsletter or event tools alongside it. Tractivity does integrate with Microsoft Teams, Outlook and Mapolitical, with a Power BI integration due in 2026, so integrations are supported where you want them rather than required to complete the picture. Keeping engagement records in one system also gives DPOs and information governance officers a single place to look.
As core functionality sits in one subscription, the year one total is predictable and the full engagement record stays in one auditable system, rather than teams deciding which parts of engagement they can afford to switch on.
Adoption, usability and internal capacity
Borealis markets its interface as suitable for users who are not tech savvy, and provides training, mobile access and email integrations to support capture.
Tractivity's difference is licensing. There are no feature tiers and no per-seat feature gating: every licensed user works with the full feature set, so what someone can do is not determined by which plan or seat type they are on. Additional user licences are priced separately, and role-based permissions control who sees what. Dynamically generated mailing lists built from live stakeholder data, internal notification alerts and the Outlook integration keep that record current without manual upkeep.
Tractivity is designed for everyday use by non-technical users, without sacrificing capability. Project managers, engagement officers, communications teams and senior stakeholders can all work confidently within the system without specialist training or reliance on administrators.
The platform includes stakeholder mapping and analysis tools, allowing teams to understand influence, interest and relationships, track sentiment over time, and see how engagement activity is landing across different audiences. Engagement plans and structured workflows help teams move from intention to action, ensuring engagement activity is planned, delivered and reviewed consistently across programmes.
The aim is simple: engagement recorded once, visible to everyone who needs it, without a parallel spreadsheet.
Geography, support and responsiveness
Borealis is based in Magog, Quebec, and was acquired by Irth Solutions of Columbus, Ohio, on 16 October 2025. On its G-Cloud listing, it states phone support from 9 to 5 UK time, Monday to Friday, with its help centre and ticketing system available at all times, and it publishes a UK page describing a dedicated support team in your time zone and data hosted in Europe. Support is offered in English, French and Spanish.
Where the two differ is depth of presence rather than published hours. Borealis's own about page lists "Borealis in Europe" as still to come, and records that the company moved to a 100% distributed workforce model in 2021, with published phone lines for Canada, the United States and Oceania. Borealis lists onsite support on G-Cloud as available "at extra cost".
Tractivity's client success and technical support teams sit in the UK and work UK and EU hours, with day-to-day familiarity with the frameworks UK public sector and regulated clients operate under. Every client gets a named UK-based Client Success Manager, and support time is not metered or capped, whether during onboarding, configuration, day-to-day use or longer-term programme delivery.
For a live consultation or a regulatory deadline, the question worth putting to either supplier is not what hours are published, but who specifically picks up, and how much of their time you have actually bought.
Update cadence and product evolution
Borealis states that its platform is updated four times each year, and it published releases in September 2025, January 2026, March 2026 and June 2026.
Tractivity ships smaller improvements and usability enhancements every three to four weeks, with larger strategic releases quarterly, all included in the subscription. Because there are no modules, every new feature reaches every client at the same time rather than depending on what has been licensed. Product workshops and full-day sessions across the UK are open to all clients and feed the roadmap directly.
Tractivity releases smaller improvements, usability enhancements and feature updates every three to four weeks, ensuring that practical changes reach users quickly. More substantial, strategically significant enhancements are delivered on a quarterly basis, allowing the platform to scale and evolve in line with more complex programme needs.
All updates and new functionality are included as part of the core subscription, with no additional charges or module-based restrictions. To ensure development remains genuinely client-led, Tractivity regularly hosts product workshops and full-day sessions across the UK where all clients are invited to attend, meet other organisations using the platform and provide direct input into the development roadmap.
Scale and suitability
Borealis publishes three packages, Essential, Professional and Enterprise, and describes them as designed to scale from a small team managing local initiatives through to a global organisation running multi-site operations.
The package contents, mass communications and SMS, team data segregation, land management, grievance and donation portals and commitment tracking all sit above Essential, and multi-site corporate reporting, permitting and audit support sit in Enterprise. Its G-Cloud pricing document lists Smart Communications, SMS messaging, Team Data Segregation, Corporate View, the Issue and Complaint Management module and the Social Investment module as separately priced, each carrying a one-time set-up fee plus a recurring annual fee. The SMS add-on carries a limit on messages sent or received, with extra bundles available.
Tractivity has one subscription and no feature tiers. Core functionality, the integrations we publish and support are all included, and the licence scales on users rather than on features. The Engage-360 consultation portal is priced separately.
For a public sector or regulated buyer, that means the business case does not have to be reopened every time your engagement practice matures. That predictability is one of the main reasons energy and infrastructure programmes shortlist us, because the cost of engagement does not rise every time the scope of engagement does.
Borealis vs Tractivity: at a glance
Borealis
Tractivity
Choosing the right platform
Both Borealis and Tractivity support stakeholder engagement, but they are built around fundamentally different approaches.
Borealis is organised as a core module with separately priced add-ons across three packages, with published depth in land access, grievance management, social investment and multi-site corporate reporting, reflecting its origins in oil, gas and mining.
Tractivity is sold as a single subscription built around UK and European regulatory practice. All core functionality is switched on from day one, onboarding is included, support is UK-based and uncapped, and the certification set is built for UK public sector procurement: ISO 27001:2022, Cyber Essentials Plus, and an annually audited NHS Data Security and Protection Toolkit submission. Borealis is ISO 27001 certified through Certi-Trust, and its G-Cloud 14 listing also records CSA STAR Level 1 self-assessment and PCI DSS. On the same listing, checked on 3 August 2026, it records Cyber Essentials as no, Cyber Essentials Plus as no, and other security certifications as no, and it makes no NHS DSPT claim. Where a procurement requires Cyber Essentials Plus or an NHS DSPT submission, that is the deciding factor.
Tractivity takes a more pragmatic approach, prioritising usability, consolidation and long-term embedment across the organisation. It is designed to be used every day by delivery teams, communications staff and senior stakeholders alike, ensuring engagement activity is captured consistently and becomes part of normal programme delivery rather than a specialist exercise.
For organisations that want a UK and EU-based platform with published pricing, onboarding inside the subscription and no modules to license separately, Tractivity is the more straightforward buy. On the four public sector certifications most often asked for in UK procurement, ISO 27001, Cyber Essentials Plus, NHS DSPT and a live G-Cloud listing, we publish all four.
Other Borealis alternatives
Depending on your specific use cases, it is worth researching and requesting a demonstration from a few other platforms in this space. These include Open Point, formerly Consultation Manager, Simply Stakeholders and Jambo, plus Syrenis SMART, which Syrenis no longer actively markets but which remains listed on G-Cloud 14, and more generic tools for smaller or simpler engagements.
Syrenis SMART
SMART is a legacy stakeholder engagement platform from Syrenis Ltd, still listed and priced on G-Cloud 14. Syrenis relaunched its brand on 21 April 2026 and now positions entirely around consent and preference management, and SMART does not appear in the company's current product navigation, pricing pages or industry pages. Syrenis describes it as a capability that "forms a small part of the broader Syrenis platform". Its strengths are classification, tagging and governance, with a documented record in UK central government, including Home Office programmes.
On its G-Cloud 14 pricing grid, marked correct as of 1 April 2024, SMART is licensed per user on banded tiers from £4,215 a year for a single user up to £21,069 for 100 users, with email volume and record limits applied at each tier. Surveys, document collaboration, social media management, web content management and the press office are separately chargeable add-ons on the same grid, with the survey module at £8,428 a year and document collaboration at £12,641. Support is bought in pre-paid blocks measured in fifteen minute increments, out of hours cover is charged per day, and training is charged per session.
Tractivity includes surveys, events, document handling, onboarding, training and uncapped support in one subscription from £9,495 a year, with no email or record caps. Additional user licences and the Engage-360 portal are priced separately. As at August 2026, Syrenis publishes no commitment tracking or complaint management for SMART, both of which are standard in Tractivity. Syrenis does hold ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type II, Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus, so security certification is not a point of difference here.
Open Point (formerly Consultation Manager)
Open Point is the current brand for the company formerly known as MySite Design, which renamed itself and its products on 17 March 2026. Consultation Manager became its Stakeholder Relationship Management product, also marketed as Open Point SRM, and Social Pinpoint became Social Point, its community engagement product. It publishes "20+ Years of Experience" and "750+ organisations".
Its published feature set is broad: stakeholder profiles with advanced search and a timeline, automatic logging of emails, calls, meetings and feedback, an Outlook add-in, and email and SMS sending. It also publishes forms with conditional logic, quick polls and Q&A, hosted public engagement hubs with an interactive commenting map, sentiment and issue analysis, a task manager, interactive dashboards and cross-project analysis.
In July 2026, it acquired Converlens and added an Advanced Reporting and Analytics product. Its public engagement hubs are its clearest published strength. It does not publish a mobile app or public API documentation, and names no grievance module. All three are worth confirming directly with them.
Open Point's published client list is concentrated in Australian federal and state government and North American local government, and it names no UK public sector client. Its group companies are registered in Australia, the United States and Canada, and its UK GDPR representative is a third-party service in London.
On support, it publishes 24/7 helpdesk lodgement with servicing during "local Business Hours", which it does not define anywhere, and phone numbers for Australia, New Zealand and North America only, with no UK or European number. On hosting, its security statement says data is stored "within the customer's jurisdiction or the closest acceptable location", while its subprocessor table names Australia, the USA, the EU and Canada. The UK is not named as a hosting region, so a UK buyer should ask them directly which region their data would sit in and get it in the contract.
Overall, Open Point is a strong choice where public consultation and community engagement hubs are the main requirement. For a UK buyer, the questions to put to them are which hosting region UK data sits in, what support hours apply in UK time, and whether there is a UK contracting entity.
On accessibility, they are ahead of most of this market: they publish conformance with WCAG 2.2 Level AA and a VPAT dated March 2026.
Jambo
Jambo is a Canadian stakeholder relationship management platform, part of the employee-owned Silvacom Group and based in Edmonton, Alberta. Its own positioning is "purpose-built software for teams who need to prove they engaged", replacing spreadsheets and generic CRMs. It provides contact records, linked interactions, issues and commitments tracking, permissions for sensitive data, reporting and dashboards, tasks and reminders, tagging, and geospatial data. Communication campaigns are available as an optional module. It publishes an Outlook add-in, a Zapier connection to over 7,000 applications, an ArcGIS Pro add-in as an Esri Gold partner, and a public API on its Enterprise tier and above.
Jambo's published emphasis is on evidencing engagement, with reporting templates for engagement summary, commitment status and issue tracking, and its Insights module adding custom dashboards. It also publishes Jambo Secure AI, with sentiment, summarisation and auto-tagging, all opt-in and processed in the customer's data region.
Jambo's published offices are in Edmonton, Calgary, Thunder Bay, and one described as a "UK and EU office" at an address in Naas, County Kildare, Ireland. No UK address is published. Its client wall names around 62 organisations, of which three are UK or European, University of Cambridge, the Low Carbon Contracts Company and ENGIE, and it states more than 30 government and public sector customers in Canada. It publishes no UK case study.
As at August 2026, Jambo publishes no influence and interest stakeholder mapping module; its mapping is geospatial, through Esri and address geocoding. It publishes no native survey or consultation tool, listing Typeform and SurveyMonkey through Zapier instead, and its in-platform mass mailer is marked coming soon on its pricing page. If surveys and public consultation are central to your programme, ask Jambo what is available in the platform today.
Jambo publishes Jambo Professional at $995 USD per month including five users, with Enterprise and Ultimate quoted on request, plus priced add-on modules and a one-time onboarding fee whose amount is not published. It is not currently listed on G-Cloud, and Jambo's own comparison page states its G-Cloud application is in progress with listing expected by September 2026.
Overall, Jambo is a capable stakeholder relationship management platform with real strengths in geospatial work, commitment tracking and evidencing engagement, and a substantial Canadian government client base. The questions that matter for a UK buyer are its support hours, which its terms of service define as 8:00 to 16:30 Mountain Time, that is 15:00 to 23:30 UK time, and UK procurement certification, since it holds ISO 27001 and ISO 27017 but is not yet listed on G-Cloud and states that its Cyber Essentials Plus application is underway.
Simply Stakeholders
Simply Stakeholders is a stakeholder engagement platform from Darzin Software Pty Ltd, based in Chatswood, New South Wales, and founded in 2004. Its own positioning is "stakeholder intelligence for a complex world". It publishes a stakeholder register, Outlook and Gmail plugins that automatically save emails and meetings, Google Maps integration, sentiment analysis on every interaction, complaints and commitments tracking, custom dashboards and scheduled reports, and mobile apps for iOS and Android. Its Stakeholder AI feature set adds issue detection, organisation enrichment, 3D network maps and AI-generated summaries.
It sells three plans, Core, Plus and Pro, on a per-user model billed annually, but publishes no prices, so total cost of ownership can only be confirmed through its sales process. On its published pricing page, email and SMS outreach, webforms and surveys, geographic mapping, complaints management and commitments tracking start at Plus, and API access, offline mobile access, a named account manager, quarterly reviews and a service SLA are Pro. Core includes in-app and email support but not telephone support. Records, projects and workspaces are unlimited on every plan, and AI sentiment analysis is included in Core. Its pricing FAQ states that one-time setup fees are included in the plan price, and that a service fee applies if you need their help extracting your data at the end of a contract.
It also publishes a London address alongside UK and EU phone numbers, offers UK and EU Azure hosting, and holds ISO 27001 certification and a SOC 2 Type II report. It does not publish support hours or time zones for any region.
Its own published position is that WCAG compliance is in progress, with no version and no conformance level stated, and we found no accessibility statement or VPAT on its site. When we checked on 3 August 2026, we found no G-Cloud listing, no Cyber Essentials Plus certification and no NHS Data Security and Protection Toolkit submission.
Overall, Simply Stakeholders is a mature platform with strong AI and analytics capabilities and an established enterprise customer base. For UK public sector buyers, the key questions are whether support is available in UK working hours, whether it holds the certifications your procurement requires, and which features sit in which plan. Its privacy impact assessment is stated against the Australian Privacy Act 1988, so ask how UK GDPR is addressed contractually and operationally.
Generic tools
Purpose-built stakeholder management software is not always the right starting point. For small-scale engagements that do not require advanced reporting, analysis, stakeholder mapping, collaboration or detailed tracking, it may be possible to manage engagement effectively using more generic tools at lower cost.
Spreadsheets can provide a simple and practical way to maintain a stakeholder register, with note fields used to record interactions and updates. Existing CRMs or project management tools can also be adapted to manage communications, tasks and follow-ups. While these approaches can meet basic needs in the short term, their limitations typically become more apparent as engagement activity grows in scale or complexity, particularly where governance, auditability and multi-team collaboration become important.
Why UK and European teams shortlist us against Borealis
Of the platforms compared on this page, Tractivity is the only one that publishes all of the following: a single annual subscription price covering all core functionality, uncapped support inside the subscription, ISO 27001:2022, Cyber Essentials Plus, and an annually audited NHS Data Security and Protection Toolkit submission. Tractivity is used by 112+ named UK clients across eight sectors.
Frequently asked questions
The platforms most often shortlisted alongside Borealis are Tractivity, Open Point (formerly Consultation Manager), Jambo and Simply Stakeholders, plus Syrenis SMART, a legacy product still listed on G-Cloud 14 as at August 2026. For UK and EU organisations, Tractivity is the closest like-for-like comparison: one subscription covering all core functionality, onboarding included at no extra cost and typically completed in four to six weeks, and client success and technical teams working UK and EU hours.
Borealis states that a typical enterprise implementation takes a few weeks including data migration and training. Tractivity implementations typically take four to six weeks. Both are measured in weeks, so the difference is cost: Borealis charges £14,550 for that work on its G-Cloud 14 listing, while Tractivity includes it in the subscription.
Borealis is listed on G-Cloud 14, states phone support from 9 to 5 UK time and hosts data in Europe, so it belongs on a UK shortlist. It is ISO 27001 certified, and its G-Cloud 14 listing also records CSA STAR Level 1 self-assessment and PCI DSS. The difference is UK-specific public sector certification. On the same listing, checked on 3 August 2026, Borealis records Cyber Essentials as no, Cyber Essentials Plus as no and other security certifications as no, and it makes no NHS DSPT claim. Tractivity holds ISO 27001:2022 and Cyber Essentials Plus, is audited annually against NHS DSPT, and defaults to UK data residency on Microsoft Azure UK South. Where a procurement requires Cyber Essentials Plus or an NHS DSPT submission, that is the deciding factor.
Borealis sells three packages plus separately priced add-ons. Essential covers core stakeholder management, mapping, AI tools, a mobile application and full analytics. Mass communications and SMS, team data segregation, land management, grievance and donation portals and commitment tracking sit in Professional, and multi-site corporate reporting, permitting and audit support in Enterprise. Its G-Cloud pricing document prices several of these separately, each with a one-time set-up fee plus a recurring annual fee. Tractivity includes all core functionality, the integrations we publish and support in one subscription.
SMART is a stakeholder engagement platform from Syrenis Ltd, used for stakeholder classification, tagging and governance, with a track record in UK central government, including Home Office programmes. Syrenis relaunched its brand on 21 April 2026 and now positions entirely around consent and preference management. SMART no longer appears in its product navigation or pricing, and Syrenis describes it as a capability that "forms a small part of the broader Syrenis platform". Treat it as a legacy product and confirm its current status with Syrenis before shortlisting it.
Yes, it can be used from the UK, and Open Point states a global presence including the UK. Its group companies are registered in Australia, the United States and Canada, with no UK legal entity, and its UK GDPR representative is a third-party service in London. Two things to check before shortlisting. First, support: it publishes 24/7 helpdesk lodgement with servicing during "local Business Hours", which it does not define, and phone numbers for Australia, New Zealand and North America only. Second, hosting: its subprocessor table names Australia, the USA, the EU and Canada, and does not name the UK as a hosting region, so ask which region your data would sit in and get the answer in the contract. It names no UK public sector client on its site.
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