Cohiva Quorum compared with Convene
Convene, made by Azeus, is a well-known board portal used by large organisations around the world, including banks, listed companies, and government bodies. Cohiva Quorum is a board-governance product built for Australian boards, with a statutory entity register and group-of-companies oversight included alongside the board portal. Both help boards run meetings and handle papers, but they aim at different buyers. This page sets out the genuine differences so you can pick the right fit.
The two products overlap on the core idea of a secure place to prepare, run, and record board meetings. The difference is where each one puts its emphasis. Convene has grown up serving large enterprises across many countries, so its strengths sit in breadth, security, and scale. Quorum has grown up serving Australian boards, so its strengths sit in statutory framing under local law and in managing several related entities at once. Neither approach is better in the abstract. The question is which one matches how your organisation is governed and what your board has to account for.
At a glance
| Area | Convene | Cohiva Quorum | | --- | --- | --- | | Primary market | Global enterprises, banks, government | Australian boards and groups of companies | | Board meeting management | Mature, broad feature set | Yes, focused on the meeting and resolution lifecycle | | Statutory entity register | Not the core focus | Built in, a core part of the product | | Multi-entity group oversight | Available for larger deployments | Built in, central to the design | | Australian statute framing | General governance | Corporations Act 2001 and ACNC framing, with citations on resolutions | | Conflicted-voting rules | Manual process | s194 and s195 applied from the entity type | | Minute book | Meeting records | s251A immutable minute book |
Where Convene is strong
Convene has a long track record and a large global customer base, which counts for a lot when a board is choosing a portal it will rely on for years. Its security posture and certifications are a frequent reason regulated enterprises and financial institutions select it, and a board that has to satisfy a strict information-security review will find Convene well prepared for that conversation. The meeting experience is mature, with a deep set of features for building and distributing board packs, annotating documents, and running the meeting itself across devices. Directors who travel or sit on several boards tend to value a portal that behaves consistently on a phone, a tablet, and a laptop, and Convene has invested in that experience over a long period.
It supports many languages and is used widely outside Australia, so a multinational group with boards in several countries will find it a natural fit. Azeus also brings the resources and support structure of an established vendor, which matters to large procurement teams that need contracts, security questionnaires, and ongoing support handled at scale. For an organisation whose governance technology has to be uniform across many jurisdictions, that consistency is itself a feature. If your board sits inside a global enterprise or a regulated financial institution and you want a proven, security-led portal with broad meeting features, Convene is a strong and sensible choice.
Where Cohiva Quorum is strong
Quorum is built for the Australian context. Rather than treating the board portal and the statutory register as separate tools, it brings them together. The entity register sits in the same product as the meetings, so officer and member details, the things you need to keep current, live next to the decisions the board makes. That closeness reduces the gap between what the board decided and what the register says, because the two are not kept in different systems that someone has to reconcile after the fact.
Resolutions carry citations to the relevant section of the Corporations Act 2001 or ACNC guidance, so the basis for a decision is recorded with the decision. Conflicted-voting handling follows the entity type: the difference between s194 and s195 is applied for you rather than left to a manual judgement at the table, which removes a common source of error when a director has a material personal interest. The minute book is designed around s251A and is immutable once recorded, so the record of what was resolved is fixed and cannot be quietly edited later. For a group of companies, Quorum gives oversight across multiple entities in one place, which suits Australian organisations that run several related boards or subsidiaries and want to see the group rather than log into each board separately. Quorum helps you comply and is designed to meet Australian governance obligations, while the entity and its officers remain responsible for compliance.
Choose Quorum if / Choose Convene if
Choose Cohiva Quorum if you are an Australian board or a group of Australian companies and you want the board portal, the statutory entity register, and group oversight in one product, with decisions framed around the Corporations Act 2001 and the ACNC. It fits boards that want their governance record and their meeting workflow to live together, and it fits groups that are tired of managing several entities in parallel.
Choose Convene if you are a large global enterprise, a bank, or a government body that wants a proven, security-led board portal with a broad meeting feature set and multilingual reach across countries. If your priority is an established international portal and statutory entity registers are handled elsewhere, Convene is likely the better match for you. Being honest about that is part of the point of this page: the right tool depends on the shape of your organisation, and for a global regulated enterprise that shape often points to Convene.
Part of the Cohiva platform
Cohiva Quorum is part of the Cohiva platform. You can learn more at [www.cohiva.com](https://www.cohiva.com). When a board resolution or circular resolution needs signing, Quorum works with [Cohiva Sign](https://www.cohiva.com), so the signed document flows back into the minute book.