Optro (formerly AuditBoard) and Diligent One Platform are the two internal audit platforms with the longest institutional memory in this market, and both rewrote their names and their AI stories within a day of each other. Optro is what AuditBoard became on 9 March 2026, at the IIA’s GAM conference, when it also folded its existing AI features into the Optro AI name; Diligent One Platform is what HighBond, Galvanize and ACL became, and on 10 March 2026, at the same conference, it debuted a new AuditAI suite built on top of ACL AI Studio. The rename timing is trivia; the products underneath it are not. Optro carries the larger review base, the deeper SOX heritage and a 10-module suite across the three lines. Diligent One carries the ACL scripting language, the Robots automation layer and a GovCloud environment built for regulated and public-sector auditors. Most buyers who put these two on a shortlist together are choosing between workflow breadth and analytics depth, not between a good product and a bad one.
This comparison sets Optro against Diligent One Platform on ownership and what each name now covers, works through where the two differ by decision factor, lines up a side-by-side scorecard and fit-by-situation table, builds a five-year cost illustration from public figures only, covers migrating between them, and closes with a recommendation by situation. It draws on the site’s Optro review and Diligent One Platform review, and follows the evidence levels and scorecard set out in how we review audit software, part of the independent buyer’s guide to internal audit software. If you are here because a familiar name changed, AuditBoard is now Optro covers what changed for existing AuditBoard customers.
Verdict. Optro is the safer default for a mid-size or large function that also runs SOX and wants one workflow across audit, controls and the second line; Diligent One is the better buy for a function that will actually run analytics, because ACL and Robots do things Optro’s no-code layer does not. Neither is inexpensive, and neither publishes a price for the audit product, so a written quote for your exact modules and user counts decides more than this page can.
Best for. Optro: SOX-heavy public companies, functions of six or more auditors, banks and organizations consolidating audit, risk and compliance on one platform. Diligent One: analytics-heavy functions, banks and public-sector bodies that need FedRAMP Moderate, and teams with an existing ACL script library.
Not for. Optro: analytics-first teams that want scripted, full-population testing as the core of the system. Diligent One: a SOX-centric public company whose ICFR program is the center of gravity, or a first system for one to five auditors that needs a published small-team price.
Evidence. Research-based: vendor documentation and release notes, public procurement records, third-party pricing data, verified user reviews on Gartner Peer Insights and G2, and analyst coverage. We have not used either product hands-on for this comparison.
Price evidence. Optro: Vendr’s buyer data, updated February 2026, puts the median contract at $45,947 a year. Diligent One: no audit-specific public price; Vendr’s Diligent marketplace page shows a platform-wide median of $26,250 a year that is dominated by board-portal deals and is not an audit benchmark.
Last verified. 27 September 2026.
In this guide
- The two products in one table
- Where they are different
- Head to head: the scorecard
- Fit by situation, side by side
- Total cost of ownership over five years
- Migration between them
- Our recommendation
- Questions about Optro and Diligent One
- Sources and verification
- Related guides
The two products in one table
Start with what each name now means, because both changed since 2024. The row below sets Optro and Diligent One side by side on ownership, category, deployment, the modules that matter to an audit function, pricing model, the best public price evidence and independent ratings. Where a figure needs a caveat, the caveat is in the cell.
| Attribute | Optro (formerly AuditBoard) | Diligent One Platform (formerly HighBond) |
|---|---|---|
| Owner | Hg (private equity), since a deal agreed 23 May 2024 | Insight Partners, Clearlake and Blackstone; a sale near $7 billion explored since November 2024, none completed |
| Category | Internal audit platform with a 10-module GRC suite | Internal audit platform with native full-population analytics |
| Founded | 2014, as SOXHUB; Los Angeles area (Cerritos until 2024) | Diligent Corporation founded 1994, New York; the audit and analytics line arrived through the April 2021 Galvanize acquisition |
| Deployment | Cloud SaaS only | Cloud SaaS, including GovCloud; a Windows desktop client for ACL Analytics; an on-premise Robots Agent option |
| Core audit modules | Internal Audit (OpsAudit) and Controls Management (SOX), two of 10 modules | Projects (engagements and workpapers) and Internal Controls Management (SOX), two of six solutions, plus Analytics, AI Studio and Robots |
| Analytics | Optro Analytics, no-code, no scripting layer | ACL Analytics (ACLScript and Python) plus the no-code ACL AI Studio |
| 2026 AI suite | Optro AI (renamed from AuditBoard AI) plus the Accelerate agents | AuditAI, built on ACL AI Studio |
| Pricing model | Per core user and per module; stakeholder users free and unlimited | Platform subscription by user type, plus solutions and toolkits |
| Best price evidence | Vendr median $45,947 a year (Feb 2026); a bid of $164,000 a year for 25 core users (Nov 2023) | No audit-specific public price; Vendr’s platform-wide median of $26,250 a year is board-portal-dominated |
| Ratings (GPI / G2) | 4.5 from 890 / 4.6 from about 1,613 | 4.1 from 148 / 4.3 from 154 |
| Analyst Leader claims | Gartner MQ for GRC Tools, Assurance Leaders (Oct 2025); Forrester Wave: GRC Platforms (Q2 2026) | Forrester Wave: GRC Platforms (Q2 2026) only; not named a Leader in Gartner’s MQ |
Two things fall out of the table immediately. First, Optro is the more expensive product by every public figure available, and the more heavily reviewed one; Diligent One has no audit-specific price at all, only a platform-wide Vendr median collected mostly from board-portal deals that should not be read as an audit benchmark. Second, the two solve different problems by design: Optro is workflow-plus-modules, built outward from SOXHUB’s control testing into nine adjacent categories; Diligent One is workflow-plus-analytics, built around a scripting language that predates the board-portal company that now owns it. The rest of this comparison works through what that difference means stage by stage.
Where they are different
The seven decision factors below are the ones that actually come up in a shortlist conversation: how deep the audit workflow goes, how each handles SOX, how the analytics differ, what each vendor’s new AI suite really does, what verified reviewers say head to head, how the platforms handle integration and security, and what the pricing model hides.
Audit workflow and methodology depth
Both platforms run a full engagement lifecycle from planning to reporting, but they got there from different starting points. Optro’s Internal Audit module, still called OpsAudit in the product, builds from a configurable audit universe and risk assessment into standardized work programs, role-based review and sign-off, and a document-request workflow that gives every auditee a free, unlimited stakeholder license. Diligent One’s Projects app offers two workflow types instead of one: Workplan for small and mid-sized functions running procedure-based audits, and Internal Control for SOX-style testing, with up to 10 custom test ratings per project instead of a plain pass or fail. Diligent’s Assessment Drivers also link a metric in its Results analytics engine directly to a risk score in Projects, so inherent risk can be populated from data rather than typed in by hand; nothing described in Optro’s documentation does the same. The site’s annual internal audit risk assessment playbook and risk and control matrix template describe the method both products are meant to serve.
SOX and controls testing
Optro’s SOX product, Controls Management, is the direct descendant of SOXHUB, the name the company used from 2014 to 2017, and it shows: an out-of-the-box RCM, certification workflows, external auditor access and continuous control testing, plus the Midship-derived Autonomous Testing engine that Optro says can run up to 87 percent of SOX program management, a claim we could not independently verify. Diligent One’s Internal Control workflow runs on a COSO 2013 template with per-asset effectiveness testing and Mission Control for bulk updates, which is real testing capability; what it lacks, by the two reviews’ own scorecards, is program-level SOX: deficiency aggregation, certification cascades and the year-end packet an external auditor wants to read. A SOX-centric public company should treat Optro and Workiva as the two products built around that job, and Diligent One as capable but not purpose-built for it.
Analytics: native scripting versus no-code
This is where the two diverge most. Optro Analytics is a no-code layer bundled into the platform’s shared services, with more than 150 integrations claimed and no scripting language of its own; limited analytics functionality is G2 reviewers’ single most common complaint about Optro, raised in 71 reviews. Diligent One’s answer is ACL Analytics, now at version 19 (released 4 December 2025), a desktop application built on the ACLScript language with an added Python command, more than 100 connectors claimed and a Databricks connector added in the same release; Robots schedules and automates that work in Python or ACLScript, and Results tracks the exceptions it finds. ACL AI Studio then adds a no-code, natural-language layer alongside the scripting one, so a Diligent customer gets both options where an Optro customer gets one. A function that wants reproducible, scripted, full-population testing should treat Diligent One’s analytics as the more capable starting point; the site’s IDEA vs Arbutus vs ACL comparison covers how ACL Analytics stacks up against the dedicated analytics tools it competes with on the desktop.
AI: two different bets at the same conference
Optro and Diligent used the same March 2026 conference to make opposite bets. Optro folded AI first announced as AuditBoard AI in April 2024 into the Optro AI name as part of the 9 March rebrand, then layered the Accelerate agents (October 2025) and the Midship-derived Autonomous Testing (May 2026) onto a product that had already been shipping AI features for two years. Diligent introduced AuditAI as a new umbrella brand on 10 March 2026, built on ACL AI Studio, which itself had only reached general availability on 25 September 2025; most of what AuditAI names is six months old or less. The table lines up the dated features.
| Feature | Vendor | Date | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| AuditBoard AI, renamed Optro AI | Optro | 24 Apr 2024; renamed 9 Mar 2026 | Drafting, recommendations and mapping across modules |
| ACL AI Studio | Diligent One | Announced 15 Jul 2025; general availability 25 Sep 2025 | No-code, natural-language analysis and AI-recommended tests |
| Accelerate: Audit Agent and Document Intelligence | Optro | 22 Oct 2025 | Risk-based sampling, evidence annotation, walkthrough-to-narrative drafting |
| ACL AI Studio agentic mode | Diligent One | 2 Feb 2026 | Agentic task handling inside the analytics layer |
| AuditAI suite | Diligent One | 10 Mar 2026 | Umbrella brand for planning, control and evidence agents; about 70 percent admin-time claim |
| Optro AI rebrand; MCP server | Optro | 9 Mar 2026; MCP server 28 Apr 2026 | Renamed AI suite; lets approved customer LLMs query live Optro data |
| Autonomous Testing (Midship) | Optro | 6 May 2026 | Agents run attribute tests, access reviews and reconciliations from raw evidence |
| ACL AI Studio on the Claude 4.6 model | Diligent One | 17 Sep 2026 | Underlying model update, per Diligent’s release notes |
| Orchestration, risk and internal audit agents | Diligent One | 15 Sep 2026; select solutions from Oct 2026 | Platform-wide task routing and conversational reporting |
Both vendors publish similar governance statements: no training on customer data by default, AI output that is labeled or logged, and, in Diligent’s wording, human approval required for consequential agent actions. Optro’s models are a mix of in-house machine learning and Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI service; Diligent’s run on Amazon Bedrock, and Diligent says ACL AI Studio has used the Claude 4.6 model since 17 September 2026, though its trust page names only Bedrock and does not name a model. Gartner’s Market Guide for Audit Management Software, published 13 April 2026, told buyers to be particularly wary of agent-washing from any vendor; the useful test of either company’s claims is a live run on your own evidence, not the press release, and the site’s evaluating AI in audit software has the protocol.
What users say, head to head
Optro is rated higher everywhere that matters to most buyers, and the gap is not close. Gartner Peer Insights puts it at 4.5 from 890 reviews in the Audit Management Solutions market against Diligent One’s 4.1 from 148; G2 puts it at 4.6 from about 1,613 against 4.3 from 154. G2’s own side-by-side comparison page breaks the gap into categories, and it is not uniform: Optro leads on ease of use, ease of setup and product direction, but Diligent One leads on quality of support.
| G2 category | Diligent One Platform | Optro |
|---|---|---|
| Overall rating | 4.3 (154 reviews) | 4.6 (1,624 reviews) |
| Meets requirements | 8.3 (115) | 8.7 (1,359) |
| Ease of use | 7.9 (118) | 8.8 (1,398) |
| Ease of setup | 7.4 (65) | 8.1 (1,011) |
| Ease of admin | 8.1 (52) | 8.4 (753) |
| Quality of support | 8.9 (106) | 8.6 (1,321) |
| Business partnership | 8.8 (49) | 9.0 (760) |
| Product direction | 8.5 (111) | 9.6 (1,355) |
Read the support line before assuming Optro wins across the board. Diligent One’s 8.9 on quality of support against Optro’s 8.6 is the one category where more reviewers rate the smaller, more analytics-heavy product ahead, and it lines up with a pattern in both platforms’ own review themes: Optro’s Gartner Peer Insights reviewers cite inconsistent implementation-consultant quality, while Diligent’s cite slow ticket resolution and dashboards that are hard to customize. Neither complaint is about reliability or lost data. If your shortlist conversation turns on onboarding experience rather than the finished workflow, ask each vendor’s reference customers about ticket response time specifically; it is the one line where the review sites disagree with the overall verdict.
Integrations, hosting and security
Both platforms clear the standard enterprise security bar and differ mainly on public-sector authorization. Optro holds SOC 1 and SOC 2 Type II reports, ISO 27001, HIPAA, TX-RAMP and HECVAT, and states that its hosting meets FedRAMP Moderate impact requirements; we found no statement of an actual FedRAMP authorization, and the Carahsoft partnership announced 22 September 2026 brings NASPO ValuePoint and OMNIA Partners contract vehicles rather than a federal authorization. Diligent One holds ISO/IEC 27001:2013 certification and annual SOC 2 Type II audits across nine commercial AWS regions, plus a GovCloud environment that Diligent states carries FedRAMP Moderate for all agency configurations and DoD IL5 for federal customers, with some apps, including ACL AI Studio, unsupported there. For a federal buyer, the difference between a requirements statement and an authorization is the whole conversation; the site’s audit software due diligence guide has the questions to ask either vendor directly.
Pricing model and what costs extra
Optro prices per core user and per module, with unlimited free stakeholder licenses for auditees; Diligent One prices a platform subscription by user type, layered with solutions and toolkits that are free, bundled or sold separately depending on which ones you buy. Neither publishes a list price for its audit product. The table below sets out what typically shows up as a separate line on each vendor’s order form, drawn from the pricing pages, help centers and review themes covered in the site’s Optro review and Diligent One Platform review; treat it as an RFP checklist, not a quote.
| Cost driver | Optro | Diligent One Platform |
|---|---|---|
| Implementation | Separate one-time fee; $50,000 in the West Virginia bid; Vendr’s rule of thumb is 10 to 30 percent of the subscription | Onboarding fee of $5,000 to $25,000-plus per Vendr; Diligent’s own consultants deliver solution implementation |
| Additional modules or solutions | Each of the other nine modules is its own line | Each solution beyond Audit Management is priced separately |
| Advanced analytics or AI | Autonomous Testing (Midship) is listed as its own product; whether Accelerate is bundled is unconfirmed | A Professional subscription is required for Workflow robots and AI editing; the Analytics desktop is licensed separately from the platform |
| Additional users | $5,400 per additional core user in the West Virginia bid | Restricted user licenses are named as an added-fee complaint by Gartner Peer Insights reviewers |
| Renewal escalators | 3 to 7 percent a year, per Vendr | 3 to 5 percent a year, per Vendr |
| Data export after termination | Standard-format export (ZIP, PDF, CSV) confirmed in the West Virginia bid | 30 days of access after termination; the system may be destroyed 90 days after that |
Head to head: the scorecard
Both scorecards below use the 12 areas described on the review method page and come from the site’s Optro review and Diligent One review, not from a side-by-side test. Optro scores nine Strong and three Adequate; Diligent One scores seven Strong, four Adequate and one Limited.
| Area | Optro | Diligent One Platform |
|---|---|---|
| Risk assessment and planning | Strong | Strong |
| Engagement workflow | Strong | Strong |
| Workpapers and evidence | Strong | Strong |
| Issues and follow-up | Strong | Strong |
| Reporting | Strong | Adequate (Reports app retires 30 Sep 2026) |
| SOX and controls testing | Strong | Adequate |
| Analytics and automation | Adequate | Strong |
| AI features | Strong | Adequate |
| Quality program support | Adequate | Adequate |
| Auditee experience | Strong | Strong |
| Administration, integrations and security | Strong | Strong |
| Cost and contract | Adequate | Limited |
| Vendor viability | Strong (Hg-owned since 2024; renewal pricing and rebrand confusion are the risks) | Stable owner, open sale question (a sale near $7 billion explored since Nov 2024, none completed) |
Nine Strongs to seven is not a landslide, and the pattern matters more than the count. Optro’s weak spot, analytics, is exactly what Diligent One is built around; Diligent’s weak spots, SOX program depth, reporting polish and published pricing, are exactly what Optro’s SOXHUB heritage was built to solve. A function that will use both halves of either product well should expect to be satisfied with the core workflow either way, and should decide on the edges: analytics depth if you pick Diligent One, SOX program maturity and cost transparency if you pick Optro. The fit-by-situation table below turns the scorecard into a recommendation by team size and sector.
Fit by situation, side by side
The eight situations are the same ones used on every review and comparison in this guide, so the ratings below are the same as in the Optro review and the Diligent One Platform review, set side by side. Optro rates Strong fit in five situations and Workable in three; Diligent One rates Strong fit in six and Workable in two. Read the reasons, not just the labels: a Workable rating in a situation you are actually in is not disqualifying, and a Strong fit in one you are not in tells you nothing.
| Situation | Optro | Diligent One | What tips it |
|---|---|---|---|
| First system for a small team (1 to 5 auditors) | Workable | Workable | Both work; neither publishes a small-team price, and TeamMate’s published two-user quote undercuts either |
| Mid-size function (6 to 25 auditors) | Strong fit | Strong fit | Both vendors’ core market; pick on analytics need and SOX depth, not fit |
| Large or global function (25+ auditors) | Strong fit | Strong fit | Both scale; Diligent’s on-premise Robots Agent suits data that cannot leave the network |
| SOX-heavy public company | Strong fit | Workable | Optro’s SOXHUB heritage covers program-level SOX that Diligent’s Internal Control workflow does not |
| Bank or credit union | Strong fit | Strong fit | Both hold bank references; Diligent’s full-population analytics is the stronger examiner story |
| Public sector, higher education or nonprofit | Workable | Strong fit | Diligent’s GovCloud carries FedRAMP Moderate and DoD IL5; Optro states a requirements match, not an authorization |
| Analytics-heavy team | Workable | Strong fit | ACL Analytics and Robots are the category’s reference implementation; Optro Analytics is no-code only |
| Consolidating GRC across the three lines | Strong fit | Strong fit | Both are built to sell this; pick on which second-line modules you actually need |
Three situations move together (mid-size, large, consolidating GRC) and are not useful tie-breakers by themselves. The other five split cleanly: SOX-heavy and public-sector buyers should weight Optro and Diligent One’s authorization status respectively; an analytics-heavy team has a clear answer in Diligent One; and a first system for a small team is the one situation where both products are merely workable, which is the cue to also read the Optro alternatives page and the audit software for small teams guide before shortlisting either.
Total cost of ownership over five years
Neither vendor publishes an audit-specific price, so any five-year total here is an illustration built from public figures, not a quote, and the two products are not equally documented: Optro has one real procurement record, a bid rather than an award, with a stated five-year total; Diligent One has none. The table shows several ways of reading the same public data, with the assumption stated in each row. Treat every Diligent One figure as a wide-open estimate: Vendr’s Diligent median of $26,250 a year is a platform-wide figure dominated by board-portal deals, and no public record ties a dollar amount to Diligent’s audit product specifically. Get a written quote naming every app, solution and user type before comparing real numbers; the site’s vendor-neutral RFP method has the pricing schedule to send so quotes come back in a comparable shape.
| Basis | Optro, 5-year illustration | Diligent One, 5-year illustration | Assumption and caveat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vendr median, flat, no escalation | $229,735 ($45,947 x 5) | $131,250 ($26,250 x 5) | Simplest floor; assumes today’s median holds for 5 years with no renewal increase |
| Vendr range floor, flat | $106,100 ($21,220 x 5) | $27,750 ($5,550 x 5) | Smallest deals in each dataset; Diligent’s floor is almost certainly a board-portal deal, not an audit one |
| Vendr range ceiling, flat | $556,040 ($111,208 x 5) | $241,315 ($48,263 x 5) | Largest deals in each dataset; the same caveat applies |
| Vendr median with a typical escalator | About $254,000 (5 percent a year, the midpoint of Vendr’s 3 to 7 percent range) | About $142,000 (4 percent a year, the midpoint of Vendr’s 3 to 5 percent range) | Escalators compound annually; both figures still exclude implementation |
| The one public audit-specific record | $990,750 (West Virginia DOT bid, 25 core users, including $50,000 implementation and services, Nov 2023) | No public audit-specific procurement record found | A bid, not an award, and the only figure here not derived from Vendr |
Read this table as a range, not a forecast. The only line insulated from Vendr’s board-portal skew is the West Virginia bid, and it describes one 25-core-user public-sector deal from 2023, not a current list price; Optro’s actual contract for your function could sit anywhere in or outside the Vendr range depending on modules, users and negotiation. Diligent One’s numbers are weaker evidence than Optro’s on every row: there is no equivalent bid, no equivalent published contract, and the Vendr figure it does have was collected mostly from Diligent Boards, Entities and ESG customers, not from audit buyers. That gap is itself useful information: a buyer who needs price certainty before a board approves a budget will get further, faster, with Optro’s public data than with Diligent One’s, whatever the eventual quote turns out to be. The site’s internal audit software pricing guide puts both vendors’ numbers beside every other product in this guide.
Migration between them
There is no direct import tool between Optro and Diligent One in either direction, and nothing in either vendor’s documentation claims one; expect a migration project, not a data transfer. Moving into Diligent One, the Bulk Importer loads projects, frameworks, objectives, risks, controls, issues, actions, requests and time entries from an Excel template at up to 2,000 records a batch, which covers the audit universe, the current-year plan and open issues well, and prior-year narrative workpapers poorly; plan to archive old files read-only rather than migrate them. Moving into Optro, the documentation we read does not describe an equivalent bulk-import tool for historical workpapers from Diligent, TeamMate or Excel; customers bring over the audit universe, the control library, open issues and the current plan and leave the rest in a read-only archive, the same pattern in reverse. What carries over cleanly either way is the control library and RCM structure, because both products model a control the same way underneath different terminology; what does not carry over is any script written in ACLScript, which is Diligent-specific, or any workpaper built on Optro’s Annotate tickmarking, since neither has an equivalent on the other platform. The site’s guide to implementing audit management software covers the first 120 days for either direction, and the demo script has the migration questions to ask a vendor’s sales engineer before you sign.
Our recommendation
Choose Optro if internal audit and SOX sit together in one function, if the second line is buying adjacent modules on the same platform, or if you need the largest available base of verified reviewers to point a skeptical audit committee toward. Choose Diligent One if your function already has, or wants to build, an analytics practice that runs scripted, full-population tests rather than samples, if you are a bank or public-sector body that needs FedRAMP Moderate today rather than a requirements statement, or if the ACL name already means something to your testers. If you are choosing for a small team on a tight budget, treat both as Workable rather than Strong and read the Optro alternatives page and this guide’s best internal audit software roundup before committing to either vendor’s floor price. If you are not sure you are comparing the right category at all, the internal audit software vs compliance automation guide and the GRC suite vs standalone audit management software guide are worth 10 minutes before the next demo call; and whichever way you lean, the site’s buying mistakes guide names two mistakes that recur in exactly this pair: assuming a bigger review base means a better fit, and signing before the AI add-ons are priced.
Questions about Optro and Diligent One
Is Optro the same company as Diligent One?
No, and they have never been the same company. Optro is AuditBoard’s new name, adopted 9 March 2026; AuditBoard has been owned by the private equity firm Hg since 2024. Diligent One Platform is the name HighBond took on 31 January 2024, the platform Diligent Corporation acquired when it bought Galvanize, the company ACL Services became, in April 2021. The two renames happened two years apart, not together; what they share is that both are recent enough that the old names, AuditBoard and HighBond, still dominate search demand.
Which is cheaper, Optro or Diligent One?
Neither publishes a price, so the honest answer is that the public evidence points to Diligent One being cheaper on average, but the evidence is weak. Vendr’s data puts Optro’s median contract at $45,947 a year against $26,250 for Diligent, but Diligent’s figure comes mostly from board-portal deals, not audit contracts, so it likely understates what an audit-specific quote would actually cost. Get both vendors to quote the same modules and user counts before assuming either number applies to you.
Which has better analytics, ACL or Optro’s built-in tools?
Diligent One’s ACL Analytics, on the market long before Diligent owned it, still runs on its own scripting language, ACLScript, with an added Python command, more than 100 connectors claimed and a dedicated Robots automation layer; Optro Analytics is a no-code tool with no scripting option, and limited analytics is G2 reviewers’ most common complaint about Optro. A team that wants reproducible, scripted, full-population testing should expect to add a dedicated analytics tool to Optro sooner than to Diligent One.
Which is better for SOX?
Optro, by a clear margin at the program level. Its Controls Management product is the direct descendant of SOXHUB, the SOX-only tool AuditBoard sold from 2014 to 2017, with certification workflows, external auditor access and deficiency aggregation built for a public company’s ICFR program. Diligent One’s Internal Control workflow tests controls competently on a COSO 2013 template but is rated Adequate rather than Strong on this site’s scorecard for exactly that program-level gap; a SOX-heavy company should default to Optro or Workiva.
Can we run Optro and Diligent One’s analytics together?
There is no reason you cannot, and some functions do exactly that: buy Optro, or another audit platform, for workflow, workpapers and issue tracking, and license ACL Analytics or ACL AI Studio separately for the testing that platform’s own analytics cannot do. Diligent’s documentation does not state whether ACL Analytics can be licensed as a standalone product outside a Diligent One Platform subscription, so ask the vendor directly rather than assuming either way.
Which one is the safer long-term bet?
Both carry ownership risk of a different kind. Optro has been owned by Hg since 2024, with a new CEO in 2025 and two recent acquisitions, which is typical of a private-equity growth story; Diligent’s owners, Insight Partners, Clearlake and Blackstone, have been exploring a sale since November 2024 with no completed transaction as of this comparison, and Diligent is mid-way through retiring several major components, including the HighBond domain, the Reports app and the AX server, that customers built on. Ask each vendor about change-of-control and data-export clauses regardless of which one you pick; the site’s due diligence guide has the questions.
internalauditguide.com has no commercial relationship with Optro, Diligent One Platform or any other vendor named on this page. We take no vendor money, run no affiliate links and accept no sponsored placements, and no vendor saw this page before publication. Product and company names are the trademarks of their owners. Corrections: desk@internalauditguide.com.
Sources and verification
- PR Newswire, “Meet Optro: AuditBoard unveils new identity” (9 March 2026) — the rebrand date, the Fortune 500 and analyst claims (accessed 26 September 2026).
- Hg, “AuditBoard agrees to be acquired by Hg” (23 May 2024) — the deal value and the ownership change (accessed 26 September 2026).
- Optro, AI and LLM information page — the module list, Accelerate, Midship and MCP server dates, and the AI data-use and trust statements (accessed 26 September 2026).
- Vendr, AuditBoard marketplace page — Optro’s median, range, purchase count and escalator notes, updated February 2026 (accessed 26 September 2026).
- West Virginia Department of Transportation, AuditBoard bid response, CRFQ 0803 DOT2400000036 (November 2023) — the five-year total and the per-user pricing (accessed 26 September 2026).
- Gartner Peer Insights, Audit Management Solutions market — the 4.5-from-890 and 4.1-from-148 ratings and the market’s review distribution (accessed 26 September 2026).
- G2, “Diligent One Platform vs Optro” comparison page — the category-by-category ratings for both products (accessed 27 September 2026).
- Diligent help center, Analytics 19.0 release notes — the 4 December 2025 release, connectors and the encryption and domain changes (accessed 26 September 2026).
- Diligent help center, End of support announcements — the AX, Direct Link, Reports app and highbond.com retirement dates (accessed 26 September 2026).
- Diligent help center, ACL AI Studio release notes — the 25 September 2025 general availability date, agentic mode and the Claude 4.6 model (accessed 26 September 2026).
- Diligent newsroom, “Diligent Debuts AuditAI at IIA GAM 2026” — the 10 March 2026 launch, named capabilities and the time-savings claim (accessed 26 September 2026).
- Diligent, Trust and Compliance page — certifications, hosting regions, encryption, the 30-day extraction window and the AI data-use statement (accessed 26 September 2026).
- Reuters via U.S. News (14 November 2024) — the near-$7 billion sale exploration and the 2016 and 2020 ownership dates (accessed 26 September 2026).
- Vendr, Diligent marketplace page — Diligent’s median, range and the board-portal caveat, updated February 2026 (accessed 26 September 2026).
- Wolters Kluwer, summary of Gartner’s Market Guide for Audit Management Software (13 April 2026) — the report’s date, author and agent-washing warning (accessed 26 September 2026).
Related guides
- Internal audit software: the independent buyer’s guide — every review, comparison and buying guide in one place.
- How we review audit software — the evidence levels, the scorecard and the fit-by-situation method.
- The audit software shortlist finder — eight questions, a shortlist with the reasons from each review.
- The requirements matrix — 156 weighted requirements and vendor scoring in a free Excel workbook.
- Optro (formerly AuditBoard) review — the full review: modules, AI, pricing and user themes.
- Diligent One Platform review — the full review: HighBond’s history, ACL, Robots and the 2026 AI agents.
- Optro vs TeamMate — AuditBoard’s successor against the audit classic.
- Optro vs Workiva — which platform fits when SOX and reporting both matter.
- TeamMate vs Diligent One — two audit veterans, two different bets.
- Optro vs Archer — audit-first SaaS against the enterprise GRC platform.
- Optro vs ServiceNow IRM — when the platform you already own is enough.
- LogicGate vs Optro — no-code flexibility against an audit-native suite.
- Optro (AuditBoard) alternatives — 10 options by team size and budget.
- Optro vs Vanta — why you may be comparing two different categories.
- Internal audit software vs compliance automation — Optro and TeamMate against Vanta and Drata.
- GRC suite vs standalone audit management software — how to make that call in 2026.
- Internal audit software pricing — real numbers for every vendor in this guide.
- Types of internal audit software — audit management, GRC, SOX, compliance and analytics, sorted.
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