Product information
Can you find identifiers, variants, materials and manufacturer details without hunting through emails and old files?
Buyer guide
How to choose a Digital Product Passport solution
Choose the simplest setup that will still hold together when products, suppliers and published information start to change.
You may not need specialist software on day one. A spreadsheet can be perfectly sensible for a handful of products. The point is to notice when the manual setup is starting to cost more time than it saves.
Before you compare tools
Work out what you actually need to keep under control.
A DPP is not just the page a customer sees. The harder part is usually the information behind it: where facts came from, who can update them and what was published before.
Supporting documents
Can you show which specification, declaration or certificate backs a fact without making private documents public?
Publishing & updates
Can you update a Passport without changing the QR destination, and can you still see the version customers saw before?
People & systems
Will one person manage it, or does information need to come from suppliers, Shopify, an API or other internal systems?
Four common approaches
There is no single right answer.
The right choice depends on how many products you have, how often the information changes and how important it is to keep a clear record of what changed.
Spreadsheet + manual QR
When it can work well
A good starting point for a very small catalogue, especially when one person manages it and the information rarely changes.
What to check
Watch how many copies of the same fact you create. Public pages, source documents and old versions can become difficult to keep in step.
Generic QR or profile tool
When it can work well
Useful when the main job is to put a simple public product page behind a QR code.
What to check
Check whether it can keep private source material, structured product data and published history separate from the public page.
Specialist DPP software
When it can work well
Useful when product records, supporting documents, checks and publishing need to live in one workflow.
What to check
Check how the provider handles changing regulation, data export, older published versions and pricing as your catalogue grows.
Enterprise product or supply-chain platform
When it can work well
Makes sense when you have large catalogues, several internal systems, complex supplier networks or a formal implementation team.
What to check
Check the implementation effort as carefully as the feature list. More capability is not automatically better if the day-to-day workflow becomes harder.
When manual starts to hurt
A spreadsheet is not the problem. Losing track of it is.
Plenty of businesses should start in a spreadsheet. The warning signs are practical, not technical: the same information appears in several places, updates take too long, or nobody is quite sure which source is current.
- ✓The same product fact is copied into several files or public pages.
- ✓You cannot quickly tell which supplier document supports a value.
- ✓A product change means manually updating several places.
- ✓You cannot reconstruct what a customer saw six months ago.
- ✓Variants or separate product parts are making the spreadsheet fragile.
- ✓More than one person is maintaining the catalogue and ownership is unclear.
Questions for any vendor
Ask them to show you, not just say yes.
Feature lists can make every platform sound the same. A short walkthrough of the real workflow usually tells you much more.
Show me what stays private and what becomes public.
Show me an old published version after the product has changed.
Show me what happens to the QR link when I publish an update.
Show me how missing information is handled. Does the tool leave a gap, flag it or encourage a guess?
Show me how a supporting document is linked to the fact it supports.
Show me how I can export my product data if I need to move it elsewhere.
Explain what makes the price go up: products, users, languages, scans, integrations or something else.
Tell me what happens to an existing published Passport if I stop paying for the service.
Where Madeivo fits
Madeivo is for the gap between spreadsheets and an enterprise rollout.
It is designed for small and growing product businesses that need a repeatable DPP workflow without turning DPP preparation into a large systems project.
Probably a good fit if
- ✓Your product information and supporting documents are spread across different places.
- ✓You want a clear way to see gaps before you publish.
- ✓You need private supporting files, preview, a stable Passport link and published version history.
- ✓You want to start with one product and build from there rather than run a large implementation project.
Probably not the right fit if
- You only need a single static landing page behind a QR code.
- You are looking for a full ERP or PLM replacement, or a large supplier-network platform.
- You need legal certification or consultancy rather than software to organise and publish product information.
This guide is about choosing software. It does not decide which legal requirements apply to a particular product or business.
Not sure which level of tooling you need?
Start with the free readiness check. It shows how organised your product information is, and you do not need to give us an email address to see the result.