Quorum vs. PolicyNote: A Comprehensive Platform Comparison

If you’re evaluating PolicyNote or navigating the FiscalNote ecosystem, this breakdown isn’t about ticking off features — it’s about understanding how these platforms shape your daily work. Policy risks don’t wait. Neither should your tools.

This guide cuts through surface-level comparisons to show how each platform handles the realities of public affairs: identifying threats early, mobilizing advocates quickly, and coordinating complex influence strategies across teams.

Quick Decision Guide

What You’re Actually Choosing Between

At a glance, PolicyNote aims to unify tools acquired over years — CQ, VoterVoice, Fireside — into a single experience. Quorum took a different path: it built an integrated system from the ground up. That decision shows up every day in how work gets done.

Where Quorum delivers one connected system, PolicyNote is still assembling the pieces.

Quorum was architected to move with you:

You can open a bill and see its policy risks, the staffers you’ve met with, the lawmakers who matter most, and even launch a campaign with the same login. AI helps you prioritize what to act on and draft stakeholder messaging — all within one platform. Nothing is siloed. Everything is linked.

As the Sierra Club put it after a surprise vote:

“Had we not had Quorum, we wouldn’t have known that bill had passed… and wouldn’t have been able to put together a broader strategy.”

With PolicyNote, users act as the integration layer themselves. Legislative content is there — but advocacy execution still happens in VoterVoice. Stakeholder data may live elsewhere. Reporting spans multiple tools. Instead of a flow, you get fragments.

Platform Structure: Unified vs. Migrating

Policy work is dynamic. Hearings shift, votes move without warning, amendments appear overnight. In those moments, a fragmented system slows you down.

Quorum was built to handle the full lifecycle of influence: bill tracking, stakeholder strategy, grassroots mobilization, and reporting — all within one data model. Everything syncs instantly.

PolicyNote, by contrast, is still absorbing legacy systems. Users often describe missing features, inconsistent support, and confusion about what’s migrating and when. One user shared:

“The product needs to better integrate with its multiple components.”

For public affairs teams that rely on speed and precision, a platform mid-transition introduces too much friction.

AI That Drives Strategy, Not Just Answers

Both platforms feature AI. But they serve fundamentally different roles.

PolicyNote’s AI offers document summarization, hearing transcripts, and conversational search — helpful for research, but not strategy.

Quorum’s AI goes further. It homes in on what’s most important, automatically providing personalized bill summaries based on your unique issue areas, risks, and opportunities. It writes customized advocacy messages tuned to your campaign goals and even connects dots between past actions, stakeholders, and upcoming votes.

As Texas REALTORS® put it:

“[Quourm AI] is huge, monumental change… a paradigm shift.”

In Quorum, AI is part of the workflow — not a side tool you toggle to when you have a question. That’s the difference between a digital assistant and a true force multiplier.

Advocacy Integration: Connected or Actually Unified?

The impact of grassroots campaigns often comes down to timing. That’s where a unified platform matters most.

In Quorum, advocacy is native. You identify a threat, segment your audience using verified legislator and staff data, and launch a campaign — all within minutes, all in one place. Every action loops back into the same system, so you can see what’s working across campaigns, bills, and stakeholders.

PolicyNote displays some campaign metrics, but the core creation and segmentation experience remains in VoterVoice. That means switching tools, re-entering data, and losing valuable context right when urgency peaks.

Support, Data, and Trust

Quorum maintains its own in-house data teams that update legislative information and human-verified policymaker contacts across federal, state, local, and EU institutions. When a staffer moves committees or when a legislator’s district office changes personnel, those updates flow instantly through the platform. Teams don’t have to second-guess whether they’re looking at accurate information.

Policynote’s data, on the other hand, is sourced from multiple acquired systems, each with its own structure, history, and maintenance processes. Customers often feel the result of this fragmentation. One user reported “lag time between legislative events and reporting,” while others point to inconsistencies or gaps across components. When data systems weren’t built together, keeping them aligned becomes an ongoing challenge.

The difference extends beyond data to support. Customers consistently rate Quorum’s support higher than FiscalNote’s. With dedicated onboarding, tailored training, and responsive customer success teams, Quorum’s 8.5/10 support rating reflects a culture of partnership. FiscalNote’s 6.7/10 support rating and user reports of delayed help and added fees tell a different story.

Decision Framework

Choose Quorum If…

You want a platform that is a force multiplier that consistently delivers better policy outcomes, not just faster tasks.

• You need one unified workflow where legislative tracking, stakeholder management, and advocacy live together — giving you orchestrated influence motions, not fragmented tasks.
• You want AI that drives strategy, not just answers questions — identifying priority bills, providing personalized summaries, and drafting tailored content at scale.
• You value platform stability and want to avoid forced migrations, missing features, and shifting product strategies.
• You rely on high-quality support, dedicated CSM partnership, and rapid response during critical policy moments.
• You need leadership-ready reporting that shows how policy changes, advocacy actions, and stakeholder engagement connect to real-world outcomes.
• You want a platform proven to shape results — from early-warning insights to successful veto campaigns.

Consider PolicyNote If…

You’re comfortable with a platform that is still consolidating and evolving.

• You’re a current FiscalNote customer with favorable pricing and are willing to stay through the PolicyNote transition.
• You’re okay with more manual work or siloed workflows.
• You can tolerate short-term friction and uncertain timelines in hopes of long-term feature parity as PolicyNote matures.

You’re not choosing between “good” and “bad” software—you’re choosing between two entirely different philosophies of how public affairs work should happen. Quorum represents a unified, orchestrated, outcomes-driven approach designed to help teams actually win their policy fights. PolicyNote, by contrast, relies on stitched-together tools that provide information but leave the heavy lifting—and the coordination—up to you.

See Quorum in Action

Join 1,800+ organizations — including more than half of the Fortune 100 — that trust Quorum to power their government affairs work.

• Request a personalized demo
• Get a free PolicyNote-to-Quorum migration assessment
• Ask us to walk through your exact workflows live

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