If you're looking for a MasterControl alternative, you might be looking to cut costs due to uncertain market conditions, or you might be part of a growing quality team that is looking for a more affordable solution that fits the size of your team.
MasterControl is one of the most recognized names in quality management software. It's built for large, highly regulated organizations with extensive infrastructure and dedicated IT support. For small to midsized teams, however, MasterControl’s cost, complexity, and long rollout timelines might not be the best fit.
In this guide, we’ll walk through three alternative paths that quality leaders are using to build compliant, scalable systems:
- DIY management using a low-cost tool stack
- Point solutions for document control, CAPA, training, audits, etc.
- Unified compliance platform built for smaller teams
We’ll break down when each approach makes sense (and when it doesn’t), so you can confidently choose the right QMS solution for where your team is today and where you're headed in the future.
Why MasterControl Isn't Always The Best Fit For Smaller Teams
MasterControl was built to serve global manufacturers and enterprise giants in highly regulated industries: companies with centralized quality departments, dedicated system administrators, and months (or years) to spend on implementation and configuration.
It's depth and legacy position make it a great choice for very large organizations looking to digitize their quality systems.
But not every company in need of a QMS is an enterprise behemoth with enterprise pockets. Companies today are more likely to operate with smaller, decentralized teams, agile product cycles, and a leaner approach to quality. The needs have shifted from building highly customized, heavy systems to finding right-sized platforms that are intuitive, scalable, and fast to deploy.
Additionally, modern software platforms now offer capabilities that used to require custom development:
- audit trails
- version control
- e-signatures
- cloud-native storage
- advanced workflow automation
Lengthy custom builds for deployment are no longer the norm for modern software rollouts.
Most importantly, the people using QMS platforms today are different. They’re often quality professionals who also support regulatory or product development roles. They don’t have time to learn complex systems or chase document versions across disconnected tools.
MasterControl was built for enterprise organizations, not for small and midsized teams trying to scale quickly without sacrificing compliance.
If that sounds like your situation, this guide is for you. We'll cover three affordable Mastercontrol alternatives that will allow you to manage quality at different stages of growth.
Option #1: The Low-Cost DIY Stack For Quality Teams
For many growing companies, the first attempt at a quality management system (QMS) isn’t a formal platform at all. It's a patchwork of familiar tools: shared drives, spreadsheets, and digital signatures.
For a while, that works just fine. The typical DIY QMS stack includes SharePoint, Box, or Google Drive for storing SOPs and quality records, paired with DocuSign or Adobe Sign for approvals. Training records might live in Excel. CAPAs, if you’re tracking them at all, may be handled in Word docs or simple forms. If you're aiming for 21 CFR Part 11 or ISO 13485 compliance, you might also layer in validation tools or plugins.
This setup is quick, flexible, and inexpensive: perfect for getting the job done in the earliest phases of your quality journey.
Benefits of DIY Quality Management
This approach comes with some key benefits:
- Low upfront cost: You're using tools already in your tech stack rather than needing to budget for new software.
- Team familiarity: There’s no steep learning curve. Everyone knows how to upload files, leave comments, and route documents via email.
- Customizable (sort of): You can create folders, templates, and workflows that suit your needs in the short term.
If your team is small, your document volume is low, and formal audits are still a ways off, this approach can offer just enough structure to stay organized.
Downsides of DIY Quality Management
DIY quality management can work well at first, but it's very unlikely to keep up with your needs long term. As soon as your organization begins to grow, take on regulated work, or prepare for inspections, the weaknesses will begin to surface.
- Not truly compliant: SharePoint + e-signatures does not equal a compliant QMS. You’ll need to manually build validated systems, robust audit trails, and secure access controls.
- Poor version control: When six versions of the same SOP are floating across folders and inboxes, it’s easy to publish the wrong one or submit the wrong file during an audit.
- Lack of workflow automation: Approvals, training assignments, change controls, and other actions have to be pushed forward manually.
- Audit prep becomes a fire drill: Without a centralized system, proving who did what, when, and why often requires pulling together information from five different places.
The big, central issue here is that doing all of these things manually is possible when you have a small team, increasingly painful as you scale, and ultimately impossible at the size most teams aspire to reach.
When To Go DIY (And When Not To)
The DIY approach can be a smart starting point when:
- You're still early-stage and have only a few SOPs to manage
- Your team is under 10 people and quality is one of many hats someone wears
- You’re looking for a short-term solution to get organized before a real QMS investment
Once your team starts managing multiple processes, interacting with external auditors, or bringing new products to market, this stack can start to feel like a duct tape solution that keeps falling apart. The more you grow, the more time and money you’ll eventually spend retrofitting a system that was never built for long-term use.
If you’re already seeing signs of friction — like version confusion, delayed approvals, or missed training assignments — it may be time to consider a more purpose-built QMS solution.
Option #2: Point Solutions For Each Quality Need
Once companies outgrow spreadsheets and shared drives, the next logical step is often to assemble a stack of specialized QMS tools that each focus on a specific area of quality.
You might use Qualio for document control and SOP management, Trainual or WorkRamp for training tracking, ZenQMS for CAPA workflows, and a tool like Greenlight Guru or AuditBoard for managing audits and supplier oversight. Some teams also manage complaints or deviations in separate ticketing systems like Jira or Zendesk.
This point solution approach offers more structure, automation, and compliance support than a purely DIY setup and lets teams tackle quality problems one piece at a time without having to commit to implementing a big, complex, expensive enterprise QMS.
Benefits of Point Solutions
This approach brings some notable benefits for quality teams with well-defined needs:
- Purpose-built functionality: Tools like ZenQMS, Qualio, or Greenlight Guru offer deep support for specific areas of quality like training workflows, CAPA resolution, or SOP version control. They offer fast, effective solutions for specific needs.
- Lower upfront investment: You can pick and pay for only what you need. Many tools offer pricing tiers, allowing smaller teams to get started without committing to a massive contract or complex, customized rollout.
- Modular flexibility: You’re not locked into a single system or vendor. If one tool isn’t working, you can swap it out without rebuilding your entire QMS.
This approach can work effectively for teams with clear ownership over each quality function, well-defined internal processes, and the capacity to manage coordination between disconnected systems.
Downsides of Point Solutions
While point solutions are usually a step up from DIY builds, they come with their own downsides.
- Fragmented workflows: Each tool operates in its own silo. That means documents, approvals, and audit trails often live in separate places, and just like with DIY, stitching them together for inspections or investigations becomes a manual process.
- Duplicate data and disconnected teams: One SOP might be uploaded to your doc control system, while training records for that SOP live elsewhere. That disconnection increases the risk of version errors and compliance gaps.
- Integration challenges: While many tools claim to offer integrations, most require custom setup, middleware, or manual intervention to truly work together. That means more overhead and less agility as your needs evolve.
For the life sciences teams we support here to Kivo, fragmented systems can be especially risky when preparing for FDA, EMA, or ISO inspections. If your CAPAs, SOPs, and training records don’t live in the same ecosystem, it can be difficult to demonstrate compliance in a clear, audit-ready way.
Many teams in this space start with point solutions but eventually outgrow them due to validation requirements and traceability expectations.
When To Use Point Solutions (And When Not To)
The point solution approach can be a good fit when your team has specific, well-defined quality challenges to solve and you’re looking for a quick fix that won’t disrupt your current workflows.
It’s particularly useful when your quality team has the bandwidth and expertise to manage multiple systems and keep them aligned manually.
This setup becomes less effective when you need to connect processes across departments, such as linking SOP changes to training records or tying CAPAs to audit outcomes. It also starts to break down when you’re preparing for external audits or regulatory inspections and need end-to-end traceability.
For fast-growing teams, there’s a real risk of outgrowing this stack within a year or two, which can lead to more rework and operational complexity over time.
If you're already struggling with version control, duplicated documents, or disconnected systems, it may be time to consider a more unified approach. The ideal solution should be easier to implement than a traditional enterprise platform while still being built to scale with your business.
Option #3: Unified Quality & Compliance Platform For Smaller Teams
For teams looking to simplify operations, eliminate silos, and avoid cobbling together disconnected tools, a unified platform built for small to midsize organizations will likely offer the strongest long-term fit.
Instead of using one system for documents, another for CAPA, a third for training, and hoping they all work together, unified platforms are designed to manage these workflows under one roof. That means documents, approvals, training records, and audits all live in the same environment, with shared visibility and real-time traceability.
The key is finding a platform designed for your industry. For example, Kivo was purpose-built for the life sciences sector, where compliance isn’t limited to Quality alone but spans Regulatory and Clinical as well. To support that, our system combines QMS, RIM, and TMF into one fully-integrated environment.
While your immediate goal might be to improve your QMS, it’s worth thinking ahead. The right platform will give you a singular foundation for managing quality documentation AND the upstream and downstream processes that depend on it.
Benefits of a Unified Platform
The biggest benefit of unified compliance platform is that it brings everything together:
- One place for all quality activity: Draft SOPs, route for approval, track training, manage CAPAs, and prep for audits, all from the same platform.
- End-to-end traceability: Link every change to its impact across departments. When regulators ask for a training record tied to a revised SOP, you’ll have the full story in one system.
- Faster deployment: Platforms like Kivo can be deployed in weeks, not months, and are intuitive enough to require little to no training.
- Lower total cost of ownership: By replacing four or five disconnected tools with one right-sized platform, teams reduce both license fees and administrative overhead.
- Built to scale: By combining everything your team needs in one integrated platform, you can avoid the vast majority of technical debt that comes when teams attempt to scale using disparate systems.
When it comes to long-term costs, compliance, and operations, a scalable unified system is nearly always going to come out ahead.
Downsides of a Unified Platform
While we built Kivo to be the best choice for small to midsized life sciences teams, there are still downsides to a unified platform within our industry, just as there will be in every industry.
- Less customization than enterprise systems: Unified platforms are often built to be easy to use "out of the box", which means they may not offer the deep configurability or endless workflow options that large enterprise platforms provide.
- Not the best fit for very niche use cases: If you need advanced features like detailed supplier scorecarding, multi-site manufacturing deviation handling, or hyper-specific eCTD publishing workflows, a unified system may not go as deep as the best point tool.
- Slightly overkill for early stage companies: Part of having a system designed to scale on the backend of growth is that it might be overkill on the frontend of your team's journey, which can be a problem when budgets are especially tight.
In other words, if your team is big, hyper niche, or brand new, a unified system may not be the ideal fit for you.
When to Choose A Unified Platform
A unified platform is often the right move when:
- Your team is juggling multiple audits, filings, or product lines
- You’re spending more time managing systems than improving processes
- You’re scaling headcount or launching into new regions and want consistency
- You’re tired of version mismatches, disconnected teams, and costly workarounds
If you’re working with a small but growing quality team that needs to move fast without compromising compliance, a unified platform designed for non-enterprise teams can offer a better features fit that will grow with you, while being significantly more affordable than a legacy solution like MasterControl at every stage of growth.
See Kivo In Action
If your team is growing and you're starting to feel the friction of disconnected systems, long implementation timelines, or workflows that just weren’t built for smaller quality teams, Kivo might be the right next step.
Kivo was designed to help small and midsized life sciences companies manage quality more effectively, with tools that streamline document control, simplify training and CAPA workflows, and keep cross-functional teams aligned throughout the product lifecycle. Whether you're preparing for your first audit or scaling your QMS across multiple sites, Kivo makes it easy to stay organized, compliant, and inspection-ready.
We’d love to show you how it works. Click below to request a demo and see Kivo in action.
