What document DRM actually costs
Most document DRM vendors do not publish a price. You fill in a form, take a call, and find out the number several days later. That makes it hard to know whether protecting a few hundred documents is a $500 decision or a $9,000 one before you have spent a week on it.
Below is every published figure we could find, quoted from each vendor's own pricing page, together with a plain explanation of the three pricing models in this market. Where a vendor does not publish a price, this page says so rather than guessing. We include our own pricing on the same terms.
Published document DRM pricing
| Platform | Published entry price | What the price tracks | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|
| MyPass DRM | Free to 100 active documents, then $39/month ($299/year) | Monthly active documents | Watermarking, expiry, device limits and access records on every tier, including the free one |
| DRM-X 5.0 | $100/month ($1,000/year) Basic, to $600/month Enterprise | Licence quota, user cap, storage and bandwidth | Additional licences $0.10–$0.45 each; bandwidth over plan $0.04/GB |
| Digify | $140/month Pro (1 user), $350/month Team, $1,500/month Business | Seats, data rooms and guest counts | Dynamic watermarking and DRM start at the $350/month Team tier |
| HelpRange | $174 per user, per month | Seats | Unlimited documents and views |
| Vitrium | From $5,000/year (Pro); VitriumOne from $9,000/year | Annual contract scoped by users and storage | Video and audio protection are a paid add-on; Enterprise is quoted |
| Locklizard | No published price — contact sales to place an order | Publisher licence, quoted per configuration | Secure viewers are free of charge |
Read from each vendor's own pricing page on 3 September 2026. Figures are the lowest published tier and exclude implementation, add-ons and tax. Vendors change prices; confirm before you budget.
Three pricing models, and which one suits you
The number matters less than the unit attached to it. Nearly every vendor picks one of three, and the right one depends on the shape of your programme rather than its size.
Per seat
You pay for the people who publish and administer content. Digify and HelpRange work this way. It suits a small team publishing to a large audience, because the cost stays flat however much you protect. It works against you when several departments each need one occasional publisher — four light users on a per-seat plan can cost more than a whole platform.
Per active document
You pay for the documents actually being opened in a billing period. This is our model. It suits bursty volume — an exam window, a standards release, a course intake — and organizations with many publishers but a moderate document count. It works against you if you hold a very large permanent library that is all in active use at once; at that point a flat annual contract is usually cheaper, and we will say so.
Annual contract
A negotiated yearly figure scoped to users, storage and integrations. Vitrium and Locklizard work this way. It suits buyers who need SSO, deep platform integration, on-premise deployment or a procurement process that expects a contract anyway. It works against you if you want to start this week — expect a sales cycle, and expect a published starting figure to be a floor rather than a price.
What moves the price after the first quote
- Watermarking can be a tier gate. On Digify, dynamic watermarking and DRM start at the $350/month Team plan; the $140 Pro plan does not include them. If watermarking is the reason you are buying DRM, price the tier that has it.
- Video and audio are usually extra. Vitrium lists them as a paid add-on to both Pro and VitriumOne. If half your training library is video, price that early.
- SSO and integrations sit above the entry tier almost everywhere, ours included — SSO is an Enterprise consultation here, not a Pro feature.
- Usage overage has its own unit. DRM-X charges $0.10–$0.45 per additional licence and $0.04 per GB over plan. Usage-based pricing is only cheap while you understand the meter.
Working out your own number
Before you talk to anyone, write down four figures. They are the only inputs any of these vendors will price against.
- Documents genuinely opened in a typical month — not how many exist. Most libraries have a long tail nobody touches.
- People who need to publish or set policy — usually far fewer than teams assume.
- Recipients, and whether they are staff, members, or paying customers.
- Whether you need video, offline access, SSO or an API. Each one moves you a tier.
A certification body protecting 300 study guides for one exam window, published by two staff, is a very different quote from a publisher with 8,000 permanently active reports. The first is a few hundred dollars a year on usage-based pricing. The second is an annual contract, and probably not with us.
Where MyPass DRM fits
We are the lowest published entry point in the table, and pricing tracks monthly active documents rather than seats, so an organization with many publishers is not penalised for headcount. Watermarking, expiry, device limits and access records are on every tier including the free one. See our full pricing.
Where we are honest about fit: if you need an installed viewer enforcing policy with no network connection, an on-premise deployment inside your own data centre, or a negotiated enterprise contract with security-review documentation as standard, one of the annual-contract platforms above will serve you better. And no platform on this page — ours included — stops someone photographing a screen. What recipient watermarking changes is that the photograph carries the name of the person it was issued to.
A note on fairness: prices change and tiers get renamed. Every figure here was read from the vendor's own page on 3 September 2026 and is dated for that reason. We do not publish feature-by-feature grids, because they go stale faster than anyone maintains them — confirm current capabilities with each vendor and in a live evaluation on your own documents.
Common questions
Published prices range from free to about $600 per month. As of 3 September 2026 the lowest published paid tier is MyPass DRM at $39 per month for up to 500 monthly active documents. DRM-X starts at $100 per month, Digify at $140 per month for a single user, and HelpRange at $174 per user per month. Vitrium starts at $5,000 per year, and Locklizard publishes no price at all.
Because they price per deployment. Enterprise DRM contracts are usually scoped to user counts, storage, integrations and hosting model, so the vendor prefers to quote after a discovery call. That is reasonable for complex deployments, but it makes a quick comparison impossible and adds days to an evaluation.
MyPass DRM has a free tier covering up to 100 monthly active documents, with no card required, and it includes recipient watermarking, expiry, device limits and access records. Several vendors offer a free trial rather than a free tier. Free PDF password tools are not DRM: a password controls who opens the first copy, not what happens to it afterwards.
A document that was actually opened by at least one recipient during the billing month. Files sitting in a library that nobody opened do not count. It means a large archive with seasonal usage costs far less than a per-seat or per-file model would charge for the same library.
Not on its own. Price in this market tracks deployment complexity — on-premise hosting, custom integration, installed viewers, procurement support — more closely than it tracks the strength of the access controls. Compare the specific controls you need: recipient watermarking, time-based access, device authorization, revocation and access records. Then compare the tiers that actually include them.