We make Drive Guard for Admins. Every price here was read from the vendor's public page on 9 September 2026; where a vendor publishes no price, we say so.
Two tools, one word in common
Search for "Google Drive sharing audit" and both Patronum and Drive Guard for Admins turn up. They overlap on one job – finding what is shared where across the domain – and on almost nothing else. Patronum is a Workspace management suite in which Drive is one module. Drive Guard for Admins is the Drive audit and nothing beyond it.
That makes this an easy comparison to get right, as long as you start from the job on your desk rather than the feature lists.
What Patronum is
Read from patronum.io/pricing and patronum.io/pricing-for-business on 9 September 2026.
The base Patronum plan is $8 per user per year and includes onboarding and offboarding, email signature management, Google Drive management, contact sharing and an organisation chart. Patronum+ is $16 per user per year and adds automated file-sharing governance, end-user file compliance, automated file expiry and customisable file governance policies.
There is an Education and Non-profit price of $2 per user per year. A Backup add-on is $3 per user per month. The trial is 30 days with all features.
The Drive side, then, is in two layers: the base plan manages Drive, and the Plus plan automates governance – policies that act on sharing, expire files and put compliance prompts in front of end users.
Choose Patronum if…
- You want signatures, contacts and org charts handled in the same tool as Drive. If your ticket queue is half "update my signature" and half "who can see this folder", one suite that does both is worth paying for.
- You want offboarding workflows. Patronum includes automated onboarding and offboarding in the base plan. Drive Guard for Admins does not do lifecycle work; our offboarding checklist is a manual process.
- You want automation rather than a report. Patronum+ is built to apply governance policies and expire files without an admin working through a list. We report; you act.
- You are a non-profit. Patronum's $2 tier covers non-profits as well as education. Our free offer is for education institutes only – a non-profit pays our standard price.
- You want a 30-day trial. Ours is 7 days.
If the Drive question is one item on a longer list of admin chores, Patronum is the better fit and there is no need to read further.
What Drive Guard for Admins is
Drive Guard for Admins is a Google Workspace Marketplace add-on, installed once by a Workspace admin and deployed to everyone. No user installs anything.
It scans every user's My Drive and every Shared Drive in the organisation and shows public links, external shares and legacy access on one dashboard, with exports. You choose which users it is deployed to and manage the org-wide settings.
It does not manage users, signatures or contacts, and it does not run policies. Today it reports and the admin fixes; revoking public links and external access from inside the tool is coming soon. You decide when to look, and the quarterly audit checklist is the cadence we suggest.
The price is US$4.80 per user per year – launch pricing against a US$8.80 list price. Organisations with more than 100 users get a discount. Education institutes get it free – write to support@8apps.co. The 7-day trial needs a credit card and unlocks everything except downloading the raw data, so the dashboard you evaluate is the real one, on your real domain.
Side by side
| Patronum | Drive Guard for Admins | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Workspace management suite – users, signatures, contacts, offboarding, Drive | Drive sharing audit add-on |
| Scope | All of the above; Patronum+ adds automated file governance, compliance prompts, file expiry | Drive only – public links, external shares, legacy access |
| Org-wide? | Yes – per-user licence across the domain | Yes – one admin install, every My Drive and Shared Drive |
| Reports vs fixes | Manages and automates; Plus tier applies policies | Reports today; in-tool remediation coming soon |
| Price | $8/user/yr; Patronum+ $16/user/yr; education and non-profit $2/user/yr (read 9 September 2026) | US$4.80/user/yr launch price; discount over 100 users; free for education (read 9 September 2026) |
| Trial | 30 days | 7 days, card required, everything unlocked except raw-data download |
| Who it fits | Admins who want one suite for daily Workspace administration | Admins who need the Drive exposure question answered |
Choose Drive Guard for Admins if…
- The job is the Drive sharing audit and only that – someone asked what is public, what is shared outside the domain and what old access is still open, and you need a dashboard and an export you can hand over.
- You are paying for one job. On a 50-user domain that is 50 × $4.80 = $240 a year, against $400 for Patronum or $800 for Patronum+.
- You run a school, college or university. Free, on request, rather than $2 per user. The school-domain audit guide covers what that audit looks like on an Education domain.
- You prefer a report you act on to a policy engine you configure. Some admins want automation; others want to see the list and decide file by file. If you are the second kind, the simpler tool is the right one.
- You want the 7-day trial to show you the real dashboard against your own domain before you commit.
What both sit on top of
Neither tool replaces Google's own controls. External sharing is set under Apps → Google Workspace → Drive and Docs → Sharing settings, per organisational unit if you need it. The Admin console lists every shared drive and can filter for ones with no managers. Drive log events show visibility changes for the last six months – activity history, not a current permissions map. The flagship guide, how to audit Google Drive access across the organisation, does all of that natively first, and only then reaches for a tool.
Both products start at the point where the native tools stop on a Business edition: there is no domain-wide "show me everything that is public" view without the file exposure report or Drive inventory export, and those are Enterprise and Education Standard/Plus features. Patronum gets you past that point as part of a suite. Drive Guard for Admins gets you past it on its own.
Sources
- Patronum Pricing – Business $8/user/yr; Education & Non-profit $2/user/yr; 30-day free trial; Backup add-on $3/user/month; base features (signatures, Drive management, contact sharing, org chart).
- Patronum Pricing for Business – Patronum $8/user/yr, Patronum+ $16/user/yr; base plan includes onboarding & offboarding; Plus adds automated file sharing governance, end-user file compliance, automated file expiry, customisable file governance policies.
- Manage external sharing for your organization – Admin console path for sharing settings; per-OU configuration.
- Manage shared drives as an admin – filter for drives with no managers.
- Data retention and lag times – Drive log events retained 6 months.
- File exposure report – edition list (not Business editions).
- Export your organization's Drive inventory – edition list (not Business editions).
- PRODUCT.md / BRAND-FACTS.md (Sanchit, 2026-09-01) – all Drive Guard for Admins claims and price.