Responsive vs Steerlab (2026): pricing, features and verdict

Short answer: Pick Responsive if you are buying a response operation: intake, assignment, review, and submission, unlimited response projects on every edition, a platform fee that starts at $10,000 on the Emerging edition, and a choice of AWS regions across six geographies. Pick Steerlab if you are buying a drafting pass and a cleaner library: sourced answers, a confidence score, a Go/No-Go agent, European hosting, and a first RFP or questionnaire with no credit card. Responsive was RFPIO. It has the longer customer list and the larger review sample. Steerlab is the younger Paris company whose pricing page returns a 404, so the paid plan is quoted after a demo. Do not compare $10,000 to a Steerlab price. There isn’t one on the site.

Responsive was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in Beaverton, USA. The profile still carries the former name, RFPIO, because buyers search for both. Named customers include Microsoft, SAP, Accenture, LinkedIn, Zoom, and Vodafone. The best-for line is enterprise teams with complex approval chains and heavy integration requirements. The workload named on the profile is RFPs, RFIs, DDQs, and security questionnaires under one content backbone. A profile FAQ also uses Responsive’s phrase Strategic Response Management for that combined scope, and it includes RFQs in Responsive’s own framing. This page reports that phrase as Responsive’s, because quote-driven RFQ work is part of how Responsive describes itself.

Steerlab was founded in 2023 in Paris. On 4 September 2024, Tech.eu reported a EUR 1.7 million pre-seed, about $1.9 million, led by Dreamcraft Ventures, with Heartfelt_, Lumiere AI Ventures, Station F, and more than 20 angel investors. Customers named on the site in this record: Playable, beqom, Staffbase, Gladia, and Mantra. The product is for B2B software presales and security teams. It is not, on the product pages this guide recorded, a full intake-to-signature suite.

Steerlab publishes a page aimed at teams leaving Responsive. Use it as the vendor’s account of migration, then check both records below. A page written by one of the two vendors is a source for what that vendor claims. It does not replace the other vendor’s pricing page, DPA, or review record.

Key takeaways

• Scope: Responsive’s strength is wide workflow coverage, from intake to submission, plus a single content backbone and named enterprise customers. Steerlab’s strength is sourced drafting, a library that claims to dedupe and flag stale answers, a Go/No-Go agent, and a no-card first document.
• The fee you can cite: Emerging starts from $10,000 as a platform fee. That is not the whole bill. User licenses sit on top, and CRM, API, MCP connectors, and premium onboarding are listed as paid add-ons. The standard term is 12 months. There is no free trial.
• The fee you cannot cite: https://www.steerlab.ai/pricing returns a 404. Paid plans are quoted after a demo.
• Residency: Responsive publishes six AWS election choices, including the US and the EU. Steerlab publishes Europe, with Ireland in the terms.
• Certificates: both talk about SOC 2. Responsive names SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001:2022. Steerlab names five Trust Services Criteria and does not say Type I or Type II. ISO 27001 is unlisted for Steerlab.
• Reviews: Responsive’s July 2026 counts are 1,308 on G2, 56 on Gartner, and 190 on Capterra. Steerlab’s October 2026 count is 1 on Capterra.

An operation, or a drafting desk

Responsive’s summary is a dedicated response-management platform with a wide intake-to-submission workflow. Key features: one content library across RFPs, RFIs, and questionnaires; an intake-to-submission workflow engine; AI answers pulled from your library; unlimited response projects on every edition; deep integrations and an open API. Strengths recorded on the profile add named enterprise customers and the single backbone. If your Monday is a queue of requests, assignments, and approvals, that is the job Responsive wrote down.

The maturity of deadline and team management is a real Responsive strength. Complex approval chains are the best-for line on the profile. An administrator who can run editions, licenses, and add-ons is part of the cost, and also part of why a large sales and proposal team can put every region on one contract. Reporting that reaches a leadership review, and a workflow that does not stop at the draft, are why buyers with a proposal department stay. Steerlab does not have to match that scope to be worth a trial. It has to be honest that it is not that scope.

Steerlab’s key features are AI drafts with linked source documents and a confidence score, an auto-managed library that deduplicates and flags outdated answers, a Go/No-Go agent with win probability and competitor bias detection, ingest of Excel, Word, PDF, and narrative proposals, answers in Slack and Microsoft Teams, a Chrome extension for web portals, and project tracking with assignments, comments, and roles such as Contributor and Proposal Manager. That is a collaboration product. It is not an intake-to-e-signature platform in the record this guide holds. Teams that need the wider machine should not force Steerlab to pretend. Teams whose actual pain is the draft and the rotten library should not buy Responsive’s machine and then staff it halfway.

What happens to a Responsive library

This is the paragraph Steerlab wants you to read, so it should be precise.

Steerlab’s FAQ in this guide says the Responsive comparison page describes a structured migration of your Q&A library and documents, which Steerlab then cleans and deduplicates. You can skip the import and connect drives and CRM directly. The library behavior Steerlab claims after that import: classify content, remove duplicates and conflicts, flag outdated responses, learn from each submission. If you are leaving Responsive because the library became a second job, that claim is the reason to use the free document on a messy export, not on a tidy sample. If the flags miss the duplicates your content owner can see in five minutes, the migration story failed its only test.

Responsive’s answer to the same pain is the library you already run: one backbone, AI answers pulled from it, unlimited projects so volume is not the meter. The content owner is a feature of that design. Updates, tags, and review are how the backbone stays true. Steerlab is arguing you should need less of that person. Responsive is arguing that person, given a wide workflow, is how enterprise teams ship. Both arguments are coherent. They describe different headcount plans. Write down whether the librarian role exists before you pick the software that assumes the answer.

Draft quality, in the reviewers’ words and in the product’s

Responsive’s facts file records two Capterra patterns, checked October 2026. Reviewers report extra hours of formatting cleanup when exporting projects back to the original file or template, in reviews dated February 2025 and April 2026. Reviewers also report auto-suggested answers that do not match the question asked, and AI drafts that always need review, in reviews dated November 2024 to April 2026. Those are the reviewers’ reports, linked below. They are not a rewrite of Responsive’s product by this page. They are why you bring your own workbook to the proof of concept. Responsive offers that proof of concept only “for qualifying situations,” which is the pricing-page phrase in the facts file. If you cannot qualify, you are evaluating from demos and from these reviews.

Steerlab’s parallel test is the unknown question and the source link. The security-teams page says unknowns are flagged. Each answer is supposed to carry source documents and a confidence score. The features page says the product auto-generates 80% or more of a document in minutes. That 80% is Steerlab’s sentence, stored in the facts file without a published denominator. It is quoted so you are not surprised when the homepage says it, and it is not treated as a benchmark against Responsive. Count the answers you would ship, the answers you would edit, and the answers you would refuse.

A May 2026 Capterra review of Steerlab, the only one in this record, asked for more ready-to-use templates for banking and fintech security questionnaires and said some RFPs still need setup work. If that is your industry, the free document should be one of those questionnaires.

The $10,000 floor and the missing Steerlab number

	Responsive	Steerlab
Published starting price	Emerging edition from $10,000, as a platform fee	None. Pricing URL returns a 404
What else is on the bill	User licenses, plus add-ons. Growth and Enterprise are quoted	Paid plans quoted after a demo. Meter not published
Projects	Unlimited response projects on every edition	Not stated
Term	12-month minimum as standard	Not stated on a public card
Try before pay	No free trial. Proof of concept for qualifying situations	First RFP or questionnaire, no credit card
Add-ons named	CRM and API integrations, MCP server and connectors, premium onboarding	Not published as a menu

$10,000 is the Emerging platform fee. Licenses and add-ons sit on top of it, so the invoice can land higher than that floor. A team that needs CRM sync, an API, or MCP connectors should read those as add-ons before it compares “starting at” with a competitor that has not started. Standard support details and edition gates beyond that floor live on Responsive’s pricing page. Confirm the edition that includes the region and the connectors you circled.

Steerlab’s commercial strength is the opposite shape. You can see a draft of your file before you know the price. You cannot put a renewal in the budget until the demo produces a quote. Ask whether the quote is per seat, per project, or per workspace, and ask what the first document’s workspace becomes if you wait. The 404 is not a temporary impression. The facts file records it as of October 2026, with medium confidence on the “no public list” reading, and high confidence that the free trial covers the first document without a credit card. Repeat the 404 in your notes so nobody on the buying team later remembers a price that was never on the page.

Security, subprocessors, and chat

Responsive’s DPA, as of August 2026, supports ISO 27001:2022 and SOC 2 Type II. Hosting is a customer-elected AWS region in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Singapore, or the European Union. The subprocessor list is unusually specific, which is a strength your security reviewer will notice:

• Amazon Web Services: primary cloud hosting and in-app translation.
• Microsoft Azure: cloud hosting, translation, and other AI services. Listed location is the United States, even when the AWS tenancy is in the EU.
• Google Cloud: cloud hosting and translation assistance. Listed location is the United States.
• OpenAI: generative writing assistance using GPT. Listed location is the United States.
• MongoDB: database for select service data.
• ProWritingAid: spell and grammar assistance inside edit windows. Answer text in the editor can leave the core host.
• DeepL: translation assistance. Listed location is the United States.
• RFPIO India Private Limited: customer support related to the services. Support processing is listed in India.

Those cautions are copied from the profile because they change the residency story. Electing EU for the AWS tenancy does not, on this list, pull every subprocessor into the EU. Ask which of those paths can be disabled.

Steerlab’s packet is shorter. SOC 2, five criteria, type not stated. ISO 27001 unlisted. AWS in Europe, terms say Ireland. No full subprocessor list, so the equivalent of Responsive’s OpenAI line is a question you have to ask. Slack and Microsoft Teams are both on the integrations page. Responsive’s Teams presence is the Responsive Bot, with a Microsoft 365 app certification page cited as of August 2026, and Slack is on the profile. Chat is not the differentiator. The subprocessor table is.

French law and Paris-seated arbitration govern Steerlab’s terms. Responsive’s contracting pattern in this record is the annual subscription and the DPA, not a forum clause this guide has extracted. Send both papers to counsel. Do not assume the DPA you used for RFPIO is the paper Steerlab will sign.

Integrations, and the migration path

Responsive’s profile names Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Seismic, and SharePoint, and the strengths line points at a deep catalog plus an open API. The pricing facts say CRM and API integrations, and MCP connectors, are add-ons. A deep catalog you pay to turn on is still a deep catalog. It is not included because the logo is on a grid. Confirm the line item.

Steerlab’s 17 named connectors: Google Drive, SharePoint, OneDrive, Dropbox, Box, Slack, Microsoft Teams, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Salesforce, Chrome, Confluence, Notion, Okta, Google SSO, Auth0, Microsoft Entra ID. Dynamics 365 and Entra ID are the names a Microsoft-standardized EU team will look for. Seismic is the name a Responsive shop often already pays for, and it is on Responsive’s list, not on Steerlab’s 17.

Shared: Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack, Teams, SharePoint. The migration question is less “who has more logos” and more “will the library export survive, and which connector becomes an add-on on day one.” Run the export. Price the connector. Then decide.

Known issues and limitations

Responsive

• Layered price and a 12-month term: platform fee from $10,000 on Emerging, user licenses, and add-ons, per the pricing page. CRM, API, MCP connectors, and premium onboarding are among the add-ons (checked October 2026). No free trial. A proof of concept is “for qualifying situations.”
• Export cleanup, dated reviews: Capterra reviewers report extra hours of formatting cleanup when exporting back to the original file or template, reviews dated February 2025 and April 2026.
• Suggestions that miss the question: the same Capterra set, reviews dated November 2024 to April 2026, reports auto-suggested answers that do not match the question and AI drafts that always need review.
• Residency is not one switch: EU AWS hosting still sits beside United States listings for Azure, Google Cloud, OpenAI, and DeepL on the subprocessor list, and support processing is listed in India.

Steerlab

• No price list: steerlab.ai/pricing returns a 404. Paid plans are quoted after a demo (checked October 2026). The first RFP or questionnaire needs no credit card.
• Europe only, as written: security and terms. Ireland is the hosting sentence in the terms. No US, UK, Canada, Australia, or Singapore option is published.
• SOC 2 type unstated, subprocessors incomplete, ISO 27001 unlisted.
• One review: Capterra, May 2026, asked for banking and fintech security-questionnaire templates and said some RFPs still need setup.
• Forum: French law, arbitration seated in Paris. DDQs are not a named product workflow in the record.

Choose Responsive when

• Intake, assignment, review, and submission need to live in one system, with unlimited response projects.
• You can administer editions, licenses, and add-ons, and a 12-month term is acceptable.
• Finance wants a published floor, $10,000 for the Emerging platform fee, before the license conversation starts.
• Buyers or regulators ask for a choice among US, Canada, UK, Australia, Singapore, and EU hosting, and you will read the subprocessor list for the paths that stay in the United States.
• You want SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001:2022 named as such, on the DPA.
• Seismic, a deep integration catalog, or an open API is already part of how the proposal team works, and you will price the add-on.
• The review corpus (1,308 G2 reviews as of July 2026) is something your committee expects to see, including the Capterra notes on export formatting.

Choose Steerlab when

• The Responsive library is the complaint, and you want to see a cleaned import on one real export before you believe the comparison page.
• A Go/No-Go agent would change which opportunities become projects.
• You want Slack and Teams answers, a Chrome extension for portals, and Dynamics 365 or Entra ID on the connector list.
• European hosting by default is the requirement, and a six-region menu is not.
• You want the first step to be a document. The no-card first RFP is that start. The quote still has to arrive before you renew anything.
• Your volume is B2B RFPs and security questionnaires. A full RFQ and intake operation is a different buy.
• You will hold the signature until the SOC 2 type, the model providers, and the price meter are in writing.

Verdict

Responsive is the heavyweight response platform in this pair, and that word is doing descriptive work: intake through submission, a $10,000 platform floor, six AWS regions, Type II and ISO 27001:2022, and a review sample in the thousands. The add-ons, the 12-month term, the qualifying-only proof of concept, and the Capterra notes on export formatting and mismatched suggestions are part of the same record. A team with an administrator and a proposal operation is who the editions are for.

Steerlab is the smaller, sharper bet: try a document, keep data in Europe, let the library flag its own duplicates, and decide the bid with a Go/No-Go agent before you staff the project. The missing price, the unstated SOC 2 type, the single public review, and the narrower workflow are part of that bet too.

Leave Responsive if the library and the operating weight are the problem, and only after the free Steerlab document survives your export. Stay on Responsive if the workflow, the regions, and the certificate names are the problem you actually have. In both cases, the next artifact is a written quote next to a file you already answered last quarter.

Read the full Responsive review or Steerlab review, or browse all RFP & DDQ software.

Sources checked

• Responsive pricing page (checked October 2026)
• Responsive data processing addendum (checked August 2026)
• Responsive subprocessor list (checked August 2026)
• Responsive reviews on G2 (checked July 2026)
• Responsive reviews on Gartner (checked July 2026)
• Responsive reviews on Capterra (checked October 2026)
• Microsoft Teams certification for Responsive Bot (checked August 2026)
• Steerlab homepage (checked October 2026)
• Steerlab pricing URL (checked October 2026)
• Steerlab free start (checked October 2026)
• Steerlab about page (checked October 2026)
• Steerlab security page (checked October 2026)
• Steerlab terms and conditions (checked October 2026)
• Steerlab integrations page (checked October 2026)
• Steerlab features page (checked October 2026)
• Steerlab page on Responsive (checked October 2026)
• Tech.eu on Steerlab's pre-seed round (checked October 2026)
• Steerlab on Capterra (checked October 2026)