Blog · 2 Oct 2026 · 8 min read
Smarsh competitors, Global Relay pricing and Global Relay vs Smarsh on what you really sign
§ Live · Compliance scan
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Broker-dealer, US · what a scan returns
- § 01 Supervisory system and WSPs
- § 02 Annual CEO certification
- § 03 Outside activities, Rule 3290 Changed
- § 04 Daily reserve computation
The short answer: the Smarsh competitors a US broker-dealer, RIA or fund manager actually shortlists are Global Relay, Theta Lake and, for Microsoft 365 E5 shops, Microsoft Purview, with Proofpoint and Mimecast in the mix when archiving is bought with email security. On recorded contracts Global Relay's median is $6,793 a year against $22,759 for Smarsh. The bigger differences are in the contract: Global Relay renews for two years at a time, Smarsh for one, and both make it expensive to shrink.
Every figure below comes from a vendor's own marketplace listing, its published contract terms, or contracts reported by buyers on Vendr, read on 2 October 2026. Where a vendor publishes nothing, the table says so instead of guessing. If you have not priced Smarsh itself yet, start with Smarsh pricing, which breaks its bill down SKU by SKU.
Smarsh competitors compared on price
| Vendor | Public price evidence | Metered on |
|---|---|---|
| Smarsh | AWS Marketplace: Cloud Capture $25,000 annual minimum platform fee. Vendr median $22,759, range $3,288 to $131,276 | Platform fee plus per user, per year, per content type |
| Global Relay | Vendr median $6,793, range $975 to $7,800. No marketplace listing | Per account (each mailbox, phone number or profile) |
| Theta Lake | AWS Marketplace: SMB Platform up to 999 users $15,000 a year, Enterprise Platform $50,000 | Platform fee plus per user, per year content SKU |
| Proofpoint | Vendr company-wide median $73,303 (range $9,511 to $197,830), mostly email security deals | Per user, by module |
| Mimecast | Vendr company-wide median $30,242 (range $6,301 to $139,730), mostly email security deals | Per user, by bundle |
| Microsoft Purview | Communication Compliance comes with Microsoft 365 E5 level licensing | Per Microsoft 365 user |
| Pagefreezer, Jatheon, LeapXpert | No list price found | Quoted |
Two cautions. The Proofpoint and Mimecast medians cover the whole company, so they are dominated by email security purchases and say little about an archive-only deal. And the Global Relay range tops out at $7,800, which tells you the recorded deals are small firms, not that a 400-person broker-dealer pays that.
Global Relay pricing and what an account means
Global Relay prints no price list, so the useful public document is its definitions page. It bills per account, and defines an account as "each unique messaging or data account (automated or otherwise), including but not limited to mailbox, shared mailbox, resource mailbox, social media profile or company page, mobile device phone number, messaging screen name". It adds that for billing purposes an account "may be referred to as user, with the same meaning."
Read that against your own footprint before you compare quotes. A registered rep with a mailbox, a firm mobile number and a LinkedIn profile is three accounts. The shared compliance@ inbox is one more, and so is the conference room calendar if it is a resource mailbox. Firms that count heads and get quoted on accounts are the ones surprised at the first true-up.
The master terms add three things worth knowing:
- A floor that only rises. Your minimum billable commitment is the account number in the order form or the average over the last 12 months, whichever is higher. A year with extra headcount raises the floor for later years.
- Retroactive true-ups. If actual use exceeds what you subscribed to, Global Relay can charge from the start of the excess, not from the day it notices.
- Price movement. Fees can rise each year by the CPI-U percentage, and prices can also change at renewal on written notice.
Global Relay vs Smarsh on contract terms
Price gets the attention, but the renewal clauses decide what a switch costs three years from now. Both vendors publish their terms. Here they are side by side.
| Term | Global Relay (master terms of service) | Smarsh (services agreement v10/25) |
|---|---|---|
| Auto-renewal | Two-year periods | 12-month periods |
| Your notice window | At least 90 and no more than 120 days before expiry | 60 days before the term ends, after Smarsh's renewal notice at least 90 days out |
| Price increase at renewal | Annual CPI-U increase, plus repricing on notice | Uplift of up to 10% of recurring fees, separate from discount expiry and scope changes |
| Minimum commitment | Higher of order form accounts or trailing 12-month average | Order form fees; Smarsh can raise the minimum to your final-year usage, and reducing it lets Smarsh reprice and drop volume discounts |
| Billing | Quarterly billing cycle by default; 1.5% a month late | Net 30 from invoice; 1.5% a month late |
| Your data after you leave | Elect in writing to export (for a fee), keep a static archive, or delete; Global Relay may delete after 120 days of no action | Access ends at termination and data is deleted as soon as practicable unless agreed otherwise; export is paid professional services; transition help must be requested before termination |
The last row is the one that matters if you are leaving Smarsh. The obligation to keep broker-dealer communications under SEC Rule 17a-4 runs for years, and adviser records under Rule 204-2 for five. If the old archive is deleted at termination, the records you still owe a regulator go with it. Request transition assistance in writing before you send the non-renewal notice, get the export SOW priced, and line up where the historical data will live.
Both notice windows are also easy to miss. Global Relay's opens 120 days out and closes 90 days out, so a reminder set for "three months before renewal" lands inside the last few days of a 30-day window. If your firm already runs contract management software that tracks renewal notice windows, load these two agreements into it the day you sign.
Which Smarsh alternative fits which firm
A small RIA on email and a few phones. Global Relay's recorded deals sit in exactly this range. Count accounts honestly before you sign, and check the two-year renewal against your own plans.
A broker-dealer or fund manager with video, voice and chat. Theta Lake was built around Zoom, Teams and Webex capture, and its list price is public, which makes it the easiest quote to sanity-check. The SMB platform covers up to 999 users at $15,000 a year before content fees.
A firm already on Microsoft 365 E5. Price Purview first. You may already own the supervision layer for Microsoft channels and only need a specialist for Bloomberg, WhatsApp or carrier text.
A large firm with many channels and an enterprise conduct program. This is where Smarsh and Proofpoint compete hardest, and where the minimum-commitment clauses above carry the most money.
Where an archive sits in the rest of a firm's stack, next to employee compliance and rule tracking, is laid out for FINRA members on broker dealer compliance software and for private fund advisers on hedge fund compliance software.
How to negotiate a Global Relay or Smarsh quote
- Ask for the quote in accounts and content types, line by line, and reconcile it to your own count before comparing totals.
- Cap the renewal increase in the order form. Smarsh's standard uplift ceiling is 10% and Global Relay ties increases to CPI-U; both can be negotiated down before you sign, rarely after.
- Ask for the minimum commitment to be fixed for the term, not reset to peak usage.
- Put data return in the order form: format, price per GB or flat fee, and how long the archive stays readable after termination.
- For Smarsh, check whether a 30-user deal was priced on the enterprise platform with its $25,000 minimum.
What no archive vendor does for you
An archive proves what was said. It does not tell you that FINRA approved Rule 3290 on September 15, 2026, that the Form PF amendments moved to July 1, 2027, or that the adviser AML rule is now due January 1, 2028. Somebody still has to read those releases, decide what they mean for the procedures manual, and keep a record that they did.
That is the part ComplianceOfficer does. It watches SEC, FINRA, CFTC and FinCEN releases at the source, keeps a register of the rules that apply to your firm, flags the procedure a change touches, and logs every review for the annual report. It costs $149 a month for the firm, sits next to whichever archive you choose, and the scan at the top of this page shows what your register would hold. Advisers can see the full picture on RIA compliance software, and if COMPLY is on your shortlist too, RIA in a Box cost covers how it bills.
General regulatory information, not legal advice. Written by the team at ComplianceOfficer building ComplianceOfficer; verify anything consequential with qualified counsel.