ETQ Reliance (Octave Reliance) review

About the price: No price published by Octave or on review and listing sites (Sep 2026). Priced by concurrent users, application sets and sites; implementation and validation consulting are separate services. The contract allows fees to rise up to 7% a year at renewal.

What is ETQ Reliance?

ETQ Reliance is an enterprise quality management system that is now sold as Octave Reliance. ETQ was founded in 1992 and became part of Octave, a listed spin-off of Hexagon’s software businesses, in May 2026 (see “Company and ownership” below).¹²

Since then, etq.com redirects to Octave, and the product pages say “Formerly ETQ Reliance.”³ Octave calls it a rebrand of the same product.³ It says the new names don’t change functionality, contracts or entitlements.⁴

Reliance is built around more than 40 configurable applications.³ The core covers document control, training, audits, CAPA, change management, risk, suppliers and analytics. Buyers add application sets on top: nonconformance handling, supply chain, new product introduction, life sciences compliance and others.⁵ Workflows and forms are changed with visual tools, or with a scripting language for advanced logic.⁶⁷ It serves many industries, including automotive, aerospace, pharma and medical devices.⁶ Medical devices are one market among many.

Who ETQ Reliance is for

It fits larger device manufacturers that want one configurable system across sites. Trane runs it for more than 9,000 users across 52 sites.⁵ Device customers include Avanos (since 2012), Owen Mumford and Symmetry Surgical, a 250-person company that used the apps largely out of the box.⁸⁹¹⁰ Its GxP apps, such as deviations and OOS lab investigations, suit companies that make devices and drugs.⁵

For smaller teams, ETQ launched Reliance Go in December 2025: a self-service package with 13 applications, setup guides and 24/7 support.¹¹¹² Go covers the core and nonconformance apps only, so the life sciences set (complaints with eMDR, the Part 11 app) isn’t in it.¹³

Look elsewhere if you:

• Build software as a medical device. We found no IEC 62304 features or Jira and Git integrations.¹⁴⁵
• Need design controls and a risk file out of the box. There is no design-controls app. Avanos built its own design history file app on the platform.⁸
• Are a small team seeking your first ISO 13485 certificate. We found no SOP templates, and paid setup help is sold separately.¹³

ETQ Reliance pricing

Octave doesn’t publish prices. Its FAQ says pricing is “subscription-based (by users, modules or sites)”.³ ETQ’s old pricing pages (2020 to 2025) never showed a figure. They priced by concurrent users, application sets and implementation type.¹⁵ Price aggregators and review sites also list it as quote-only.¹⁶¹⁷ We found no dated price paid by a buyer, so we can’t give an estimate.

Reliance Go is advertised with “licensing-only pricing”, but no amount.¹³ Setup help for Go (Service Care 360: up to 20 hours of setup help, a planning workshop and deployment check-ins) is an optional add-on. So are single sign-on setup, document migration and Microsoft 365 or Google Docs collaboration.¹³ Enterprise buyers can choose a self-service path or paid implementations of increasing depth.¹⁸ Validation consulting is also offered as a service.¹⁹

The current subscription agreement (June 2026) is non-cancellable and auto-renews for the same term. It lets fees rise by up to 7% a year, or by a different amount if Octave quotes new pricing at least 30 days before renewal.²⁰ Capterra reviewers call it expensive.²¹ Ask for a renewal cap in writing.

Features

Octave’s product manuals and customer community aren’t public, so we checked features against product pages, vendor documents, case studies and user reviews.³

Document control and training

Documents go through configurable phases: draft, document control review, review, final approval, awaiting release and approved.²² Documents can be co-edited in Google Docs.²² Controlled documents can be linked to training, with automatic notices and completion tracking.²² Capterra users describe document change control and automatic training reminders. One notes that change requests need documents downloaded and re-uploaded.²¹

Design controls and risk

This is the weak area for device makers. The new product introduction set contains APQP project control, product specifications with bills of materials, FMEA, HACCP and calibration.²³ The FMEA app ranks failures by RPN and includes a hazard analysis for end-user safety.²³ We found no design-input-to-verification traceability, no ISO 14971 risk management file and no design history file export. The “release management” app manages releases of your own Reliance configuration, not device software.¹⁴

CAPA, complaints and quality events

CAPA, nonconformance reporting, customer feedback, returns and a general quality-events app are standard building blocks. An event can be tracked or investigated without opening a CAPA.⁵²⁴ The life sciences set adds complaint handling with an electronic form for FDA medical device reports. Octave says it integrates with an electronic submission gateway to file eMDRs.¹⁹ We found no EU vigilance, EUDAMED, UDI or post-market surveillance features. Symmetry Surgical reports that the complaint app saves more than 40 engineering hours a month.¹⁰

Suppliers and production

The supply chain set covers supplier rating, receiving inspection, PPAP and supplier corrective actions.⁵ Suppliers can log in as external users.²⁵ Illumina’s suppliers submit change notifications and respond to audits and SCARs directly.²⁶

What users say

• G2: 4.3/5 from 627 reviews, with 7.9/10 for ease of use and 7.7/10 for quality of support (checked in a browser, 30 Sep 2026).²⁷
• Capterra: 4.5/5 from 57 reviews, with 4.2 for ease of use and 4.3 for customer service.²¹

In a sample of 70 G2 reviews read in October 2026, every one is labelled by G2 as invited by the vendor or by G2 and incentivized, and half arrived in three short windows.²⁷ Because invited and burst reviews tend to skew positive, our usability, support and sentiment scores are capped at 8 rather than taken at face value.

Recurring themes on Capterra:²¹

• Configurable. Many reviewers praise how far workflows can be adapted, and LNS Research names configurability as a strength.²⁸
• Split on usability. Several reviewers, including two at medical device companies, call it easy to use and navigate. Others report that new users find it unintuitive or daunting. Two medical device reviewers found it dated or slower after an upgrade.
• Expensive. Several reviewers mention high licence and implementation costs.

We couldn’t read Reddit, and we found no recent first-hand forum discussions of ETQ.

Security, hosting and validation

Octave says Reliance runs on AWS with encryption, SSO and LDAP, and that it complies with ISO 27001.³ The archived certificate for the ETQ platform expired on 14 May 2026, and we found no renewal, so our score gives no credit for it.²⁹ Octave’s cloud security policy offers customers a SOC 2 Type 2 report and ISO 27001 certificates on request, “if available for the applicable Software Product”.³⁰ It doesn’t say whether a SOC 2 report covers Reliance.

No hosting region is published. The subscription agreement names only an optional US GovCloud region.³¹ Octave’s June 2026 cloud policies, which cover Reliance, say the data centres are run by Microsoft and Amazon but name no regions.³²³⁰ A public EU data processing addendum for Octave Reliance (June 2026) includes standard contractual clauses, and a subprocessor list is also public, both still on ETQ web addresses.³³³⁴ The addendum lets Octave process data wherever it or its subcontractors have facilities and names no hosting region.³³ EU buyers should ask where their data will live.

For validation, Octave offers a Reliance Validation Execution Package for self-validation, or paid validation consulting.¹⁹ In 2020 ETQ said the package came with the life sciences solution, with test documentation for each release.¹ The Part 11 and Annex 11 app binds an authenticated signature to each step and keeps an audit trail.¹⁹

Buying and contract terms

• Trial: no free trial.³⁵ Octave has a four-minute recorded demo video, and live demos go through sales.³⁶¹³
• Contract: the term is set in the order form; the agreement auto-renews and can’t be cancelled for convenience.²⁰
• Price increases: see pricing above; there’s no public price list to track changes against. Two reviewers (both early 2023) report licence prices rising over the years and once-included tasks, such as cloning environments, becoming paid services.²¹³⁷
• Leaving: you can ask for your data in an industry-standard format at no charge within 30 days of the contract ending.²⁰ Standard offboarding is included in the subscription. Octave exports the full database where the product supports it, plus data in an industry-standard format, and gives you 30 days to download it before deleting it.³⁸ Keeping the environment longer is a paid option.³⁸ The REST API maps data to CSV, XML or JSON, but its documentation isn’t public.²⁵
• Go-live: Octave says “a few weeks for a basic system to a few months for multi-site rollouts”.³
• If Octave is sold or fails: the agreement has no escrow clause and no data-return promise tied to insolvency, end of service or a change of owner. The general return-on-termination clause above is what applies.²⁰ The data processing addendum only promises to tell you if personal data is caught up in insolvency proceedings.³³

Company and ownership

• Founded: 1992, as EtQ.¹ ETQ, LLC is registered in Delaware (file no. 6497946).³⁹
• Ownership changes: growth-equity firm TCV bought EtQ in August 2017, its first outside investment.⁴⁰ Hexagon AB bought ETQ for $1.2 billion, completing on 1 April 2022; Hexagon expected about $75 million in ETQ revenue that year.⁴¹ On 22 May 2026 Hexagon spun off Octave, including ETQ, by distributing Octave shares to its own shareholders.⁴²
• Today: Octave Intelligence plc, an Irish public company (organisation no. 607457) with its registered office in Dublin and US offices in Madison, Alabama.⁴³ It is listed in New York (OCTV) and Stockholm and files reports with the SEC.²⁴⁴ Melker Schörling AB is named as a significant shareholder.⁴²
• Filed figures (all Octave products): second-quarter 2026 revenue of $398 million and a net loss of $1.97 billion, mainly from $2.1 billion of non-cash impairments. Annual recurring revenue was $1.14 billion. Total equity was $5.08 billion on 30 June 2026.⁴⁵⁴⁶

Verdict

Octave Reliance suits multi-site device and combination-product manufacturers that want one configurable system for documents, CAPA, complaints with eMDR, suppliers and audits. It is weak on design controls, risk files and software development. With no published prices, contract terms or hosting regions, small and software-focused teams should look elsewhere.

Visit the ETQ Reliance (Octave Reliance) website (made by Octave Intelligence plc (formerly ETQ))