Entrica vs Sine

Sine was built in Adelaide and is now part of Honeywell’s Security and Access Solutions business, sold as “Sine by Honeywell”. It is an established product with a broad feature set, so it is a natural name on an Australian shortlist, and worth setting beside Entrica plainly.

We should be straight about what this page is. It is our page, on our site, and it leads with the things we do well: specifically, how each product behaves on the morning the alarm goes off. We have bound ourselves to a strict rule. Every factual statement about Sine below is taken from something Sine publishes about itself, it is linked, and it is dated. Where we could not find something documented, the answer says Not publishedrather than a guess dressed up as a finding. Comparative claims about a named competitor sit under the Australian Consumer Law’s ban on misleading or deceptive conduct, and an inaccurate one is our problem, not theirs.

Entrica is a visitor management system for organisations in New Zealand and Australia. People sign in by scanning a QR code or tapping an NFC tag with their own phone, or through a tablet kiosk at the door; the host is told their visitor has arrived, and the arrival stays on a live on-site list until they sign out. The difference is in how the emergency side behaves once you need it.

One roll, shared by every warden. The evacuation list opens in a browser on any phone or laptop signed in to Entrica. The warden at the assembly point, the person still at the gate and whoever is on the phone to emergency services are all working the same list, and someone ticked off on one screen shows as ticked off on every other screen within seconds. There is no reconciling of separate roll calls afterwards.

People can account for themselves. The emergency alert goes out by text and email, and carries a link for people on the roll call to mark themselves safe without logging in. A contractor who left by the back gate can confirm they are clear from wherever they ended up.

The door closes behind you. While an emergency event is open, the emergency sign-in block refuses new sign-ins at the QR code and the kiosk alike, so nobody adds themselves to the list you are trying to clear.

All of that is in the Core plan. The full split by plan is on our features page.

The table is short because we only kept rows we can state accurately and where the difference matters in an emergency. Sine publishes plenty that the table does not cover. Its emergency messaging and roll call are, in its words, “Included as standard on all Sine Core plans”; it can print or email the list of who is checked in; it offers web check-in that needs no app; and its range goes well beyond visitor sign-in, into areas like contractor compliance, ID checks and access control. If those matter more to you than how the roll call behaves, weigh them accordingly.

Whichever system you choose, the duty stays with you. Under the model WHS laws (and Victoria’s OHS Act 2004), you must make sure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that your work does not put visitors and contractors at risk, and the WHS Regulations require an emergency plan that covers evacuation, communication with everyone at the workplace, and testing. In practice that testing comes down to someone at the assembly point working out whether everyone who came in has come back out, which is why this comparison is weighted towards emergency behaviour rather than badge design.

Visitor records are also personal information under the Privacy Act 1988 for organisations it covers. We have written both halves up properly, without the sales pitch, in our guide to visitor management systems in Australia.

Entrica does not publish figures yet, and we are not going to put an invented number beside someone else’s real one. What we can tell you is what each plan contains, which is the part that decides whether a quote is good value. That is on features and pricing. Ask us for a number and you will get one for your actual situation (how many locations, how many devices, whether you need policies signed at the door).