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Government · head to head

Polco vs Qualys VMDR

Polco logo

Polco

Government

Civic Engagement and Polling Platform

From
$300/month
Free plan
No
Full reviewWebsite
Qualys VMDR logo

Qualys VMDR

Cybersecurity

Cloud-delivered vulnerability management licensed per asset, using scanner appliances and a lightweight agent.

From
$3/month
Free plan
No
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: Polco interface has a formal, academic tone compared to modern civic engagement platforms; Qualys VMDR licensing is per asset and each capability is its own subscription, so patch management, endpoint detection, web application scanning, container security and policy compliance are separate line items, and the platform demonstrated in a proof of concept is rarely the platform in the quote.
  • They diverge on capability: Polco covers Scientific Surveys, Qualys VMDR covers Cloud Agent.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 30 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Polco and Qualys VMDR actually diverge.

Attributes where Polco and Qualys VMDR differ
AttributePolcoQualys VMDR
Starting price$300/month$3/month
PlatformsWeb, Ios, AndroidWeb, Cloud, Api
CategoryGovernmentCybersecurity
Founded20151999

Identical on both: pricing model (subscription), free tier (No), user rating (Not yet rated).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Polco

  • Scientific Surveys
  • Live Polling
  • Community Benchmarking
  • Priority-Based Budgeting
  • Demographic Analysis
  • NRC Surveys
  • ArcGIS
  • Social Media

Only in Qualys VMDR

  • Cloud Agent
  • Scanner appliances
  • Authenticated scanning
  • TruRisk scoring
  • Asset inventory
  • Patch Management
  • Cloud connectors
  • Container sensor

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Polco

  • Citizen Servicesnot Qualys VMDR
  • Records Managementnot Qualys VMDR
  • Public Safetynot Qualys VMDR
  • Civic Engagementnot Qualys VMDR

Qualys VMDR

  • A hybrid workforce where scheduled network scans miss most laptops and continuous agent-based assessment is the only way to get real coveragenot Polco
  • PCI DSS external scanning where an approved scanning vendor report is a contractual requirementnot Polco
  • An estate spanning datacentre, multiple public clouds and endpoints that needs one vulnerability view rather than three toolsnot Polco
  • Organisations replacing a manual patch-verification process with agent-reported evidence that a fix actually landednot Polco

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Polco

  • Interface has a formal, academic tone compared to modern civic engagement platforms
  • Emphasizes surveys and benchmarking over open discussion forums and idea boards
  • Pricing is custom quote-based without transparent pricing on the website

Qualys VMDR

  • Licensing is per asset and each capability is its own subscription, so patch management, endpoint detection, web application scanning, container security and policy compliance are separate line items, and the platform demonstrated in a proof of concept is rarely the platform in the quote.
  • Ephemeral cloud instances consume asset entitlement until they age out of inventory, so an autoscaling group that creates and destroys hosts hourly can burn licence capacity on machines that existed for minutes, and controlling that means tuning purge policies rather than tuning the cloud.
  • Authenticated scanning produces materially better results than unauthenticated, but it requires storing and rotating privileged credentials for every target platform, which is a security project in its own right, and teams that skip it receive reports full of unconfirmed potential findings that nobody trusts.
  • The console is a set of modules with separate interfaces, search syntaxes and report engines, so an analyst moving between vulnerability management, policy compliance and web application scanning learns each one, and cross-module reporting usually ends in a spreadsheet or a script against the API.
  • The tool surfaces findings far faster than any organisation can remediate them, and it does not solve the ownership problem: without an agreed prioritisation policy and a named owner in IT operations, a first scan producing tens of thousands of findings becomes a dashboard that everyone learns to ignore.

Pricing, plan by plan

Polco

$300/month
  • Community Engagement$300/month
    • Community Surveys
    • Live Polling
    • Benchmarking

Qualys VMDR

$3/month
  • VMDR$3/month
    • Per asset
    • Vulnerability scanning
    • Detection
  • VMDR+$5/month
    • All VMDR features
    • Advanced analytics
    • Cloud integration
  • VMDR Complete$7/month
    • All VMDR+ features
    • Threat intel
    • Response automation

Which should you pick?

Choose Polco if

  • You need scientific surveys.
  • You work on Web, Ios, Android.
  • You also want live polling.
Polco review

Choose Qualys VMDR if

  • You need cloud agent.
  • You work on Web, Cloud, Api.
  • You also want scanner appliances.
Qualys VMDR review

Questions people ask

Is Polco or Qualys VMDR better?
Neither clearly leads. Polco starts at $300/month and Qualys VMDR at $3/month, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Polco or Qualys VMDR?
Polco starts at $300/month and Qualys VMDR at $3/month.
Does Polco or Qualys VMDR run on more platforms?
Polco runs on Web, Ios, Android. Qualys VMDR runs on Web, Cloud, Api.
What is Polco best used for?
Polco is most often used for citizen services, records management, public safety, civic engagement. Of those, citizen services and records management are not what Qualys VMDR is typically brought in for.
What can Polco do that Qualys VMDR cannot?
Polco covers Scientific Surveys, Live Polling, Community Benchmarking, Priority-Based Budgeting. Qualys VMDR covers Cloud Agent, Scanner appliances, Authenticated scanning, TruRisk scoring.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Polco: How does Polco ensure survey data quality?

Polco uses scientific survey methodology through the National Research Center, with pre-tested survey questions and verification that participants live in the surveyed area to eliminate outside interference and bad-faith responses.

Source
Qualys VMDR: Agent or scanner: which do I need?

Usually both. The agent covers endpoints and servers you control and gives continuous data; scanners cover devices you cannot install an agent on, such as network gear, printers and appliances, and provide the external perimeter view.

Polco: What's the difference between Polco and open discussion platforms?

Polco emphasizes scientific surveys and benchmarking over open forums or suggestion boards, prioritizing rigorous data collection for policy decisions over broad community brainstorming.

Source
Qualys VMDR: Does it patch as well as detect?

Yes, through the Patch Management module, which is a separate subscription using the same agent. Core VMDR detects and prioritises but does not deploy fixes.

Qualys VMDR: How are assets counted for licensing?

By the number of assets in inventory, which includes cloud instances and containers depending on the modules in use. Short-lived cloud assets count until they are purged, so purge settings directly affect what you consume.

Qualys VMDR: Can I keep the data in a specific region?

Yes. Qualys operates several regional platform instances and you choose which one your subscription lives on. Moving between them later is not trivial, so decide before onboarding.

Qualys VMDR: Does it scan web applications?

Web Application Scanning is a separate module licensed per application, not part of core VMDR, and it is a dynamic scanner with the usual limits around authenticated flows in single-page applications.

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