Comparison guide

AccessPoint vs. FOI Assist

FOI Assist is a focused Ontario tool built and run by a lawyer who has managed an FOI program himself, with a free knowledge base and seminar series behind it. AccessPoint runs the same work inside the Microsoft 365 your team already uses, with flat published pricing. Which one fits depends on the size and shape of your program — and both are Canadian answers we respect.

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The short answer

FOI Assist is a well-regarded, lightweight SaaS for Ontario FIPPA/MFIPPA institutions — deadline tracking, guided workflows, compliant letters, online intake, and a one-click IPC annual statistical report — hosted on Amazon Web Services in Canada and built by Justin Petrillo, an Ontario lawyer who ran the Toronto 2015 Games' FOI program. For a small office that mainly needs the paperwork layer handled, it's an honest, affordable answer, and the lawyer-practitioner behind it, with his free knowledge base and seminars, is a real part of the value. AccessPoint plays a different game: it runs inside your own Microsoft 365, collecting records from SharePoint and Outlook, redacting in the browser, and reporting from the same case data, with flat pricing published on the site — and privacy assessments, breach response, and complaints on the same platform when you need them.

What is FOI Assist?

FOI Assist was created by Justin Petrillo, an Ontario lawyer with more than fifteen years' experience and a former software developer (NVIDIA and Microsoft are on his résumé) who ran the freedom-of-information program for the Toronto 2015 Pan Am / Parapan Am Games as its legal counsel, and later served as senior counsel at Canada Life. Released commercially in February 2021 by FOI Assist Corporation of London, Ontario, it's a browser-based subscription tool, hosted on Amazon Web Services in Canada, aimed squarely at Ontario institutions governed by FIPPA and MFIPPA — municipalities, police services, universities, colleges, school boards, hospitals, health units, and conservation authorities.

The product's promise is in its tagline, "Make Freedom of Information Easy", and it keeps to the administrative spine of Ontario FOI work: tracking statutory deadlines and clock status, guiding each request through a compliant workflow, generating decision letters, fee estimates, and affected-person notices, accepting requests online, and automating the annual statistical report submitted to the IPC. Around the software, Petrillo maintains a genuinely useful free knowledge base, a free seminar series (including sessions on Ontario's new FOI rules), printable process flowcharts and reference cards, and a PIA Exchange where institutions share real privacy impact assessments with one another. Many Ontario coordinators rely on those resources whether or not they buy the software — credit where due.

Having a lawyer who has run an FOI program behind the product is unusual in this category. If part of what you're buying is judgment — someone who can explain why a rule works the way it does and has stood in a coordinator's shoes — that is a point in FOI Assist's favour, and it's worth asking Petrillo directly how far that support extends beyond the software and the free resources.

The comparison isn't about quality — it's about where the work happens and how you buy. FOI Assist handles the paperwork layer of Ontario FOI in its own Canadian-hosted service. AccessPoint runs inside the Microsoft 365 tenant your institution already secures — records collection from SharePoint and Outlook, redaction with exemption tagging, and IPC reporting from the same case data — with flat pricing published on the site, and PIAs, breach response, and complaints on the same platform when you need them.

The decision comes down to three questions.

  1. Where should the work happen, and what should it feel like? FOI Assist A separate lightweight service on AWS in Canada that handles the paperwork layer; records collection and redaction stay outside it. AccessPoint Integrated inside the Microsoft 365 your team already works in — requests, records, redaction, and reporting in SharePoint, Outlook, and Teams, in your own tenant.
  2. Do you want software and advisory from the same vendor? FOI Assist Software from a lawyer who has run an FOI program, with a free knowledge base and seminar series; ask how far advisory support extends beyond that. AccessPoint A low-cost, flat-priced platform, with separate services from the privacy firm or counsel of your choice, and Realizer's onboarding and migration services.
  3. How do you want to buy? FOI Assist An annual subscription, by quote. AccessPoint A flat annual price based on your organization's size, published on the site before you ever talk to us.

FOI Assist and AccessPoint, side by side

FOI Assist AccessPoint
Where your data lives FOI Assist's cloud on Amazon Web Services in Canada — Canadian data residency Your own Microsoft 365 and Azure tenant
Microsoft 365 integration Standalone tool — records collection and redaction handled outside it Native to Microsoft 365 — records pulled straight from SharePoint, OneDrive, Outlook, and Teams, and the work happens in the tools your team already uses
Pricing Annual subscription, quoted Flat annual by organization size, published on the site, no per-user fees
Public intake Online request intake Email-based intake only today (New-from-email); no public portal yet
Statutory reporting Automates the annual statistical report submitted to the IPC Generates the IPC report from jurisdiction-pack templates, plus Report Studio dashboards
Legislative alignment Built by a lawyer who has run an Ontario FOI program; workflows track FIPPA/MFIPPA closely Jurisdiction packs built from public information about each Act — a starting point your own legal counsel validates
Practitioner guidance Free knowledge base, seminar series, flowcharts, reference cards, and a PIA Exchange, from a lawyer who has run an FOI program Product docs, practitioner guides, and free tools on this site; onboarding and migration services; your own counsel or advisors run the program
Redaction Handled outside the tool Browser-native studio with statutory exemption tagging, fall-backs, and AI-proposed redactions
Video & audio redaction No video or audio redaction described in its published documentation Native: box, blur, pixelate, mute, bleep, and voice distortion on body-worn, CCTV, 911 audio, and Teams recordings, with the exemption on every span, in-tenant face detection and tracking, transcript-anchored proposals, and a burned release with a hash manifest and a time-based redaction log — no per-seat add-on
Jurisdiction coverage Ontario (FIPPA/MFIPPA) 136 jurisdiction packs — Ontario included, plus federal ATIP, other provinces, US, EU, UK
Best-fit office size Small offices and solo coordinators Small teams through multi-department programs — flat pricing, no per-user fees
Scope Deadlines, guided workflows, compliant letters, online intake, and IPC statistics for Ontario FOI Access requests, plus PIAs, breach response, complaints, and a privacy risk register on the same platform when you need them

Competitor capabilities vary by product edition and configuration; this table reflects each product's public positioning as of 2026-09-10.

Where FOI Assist fits

A fair comparison cuts both ways — FOI Assist is a reasonable choice when:

  • You're a small Ontario institution — perhaps a solo coordinator — whose pain is deadlines, letters, and the IPC annual statistics, and records volumes are low enough to handle outside the tool.
  • Budget is the binding constraint and a lightweight subscription covers your genuine needs.
  • You value having a lawyer-practitioner behind the tool — someone who has run an FOI program and writes the guidance many Ontario coordinators already read.
  • You value the practitioner-built Ontario specificity — the workflows track FIPPA/MFIPPA closely, and the free knowledge base alone is worth knowing about.

Where AccessPoint differs as a FOI Assist alternative

Inside the Microsoft 365 you already use Requests, records, redaction, and reporting run in SharePoint, Teams, and Outlook, governed by your existing security stack — no separate tool to log into, and nothing hosted by the software vendor.
The records work, not just the paperwork Collection tasks to custodians, dedupe and relevance review, full-text search with OCR, and a browser-native redaction studio — the document-heavy middle of FOI work that letter-and-deadline tools leave to you.
Flat pricing, published on the site Flat annual pricing by organization size, billed through the Microsoft marketplace, no per-user fees — you can price it before you call us, and a 30-day trial runs in your own tenant with nothing to unwind.
Reporting and privacy work that grow with you IPC reporting from jurisdiction-pack templates plus Report Studio dashboards and My Day live tiles — and Bill 194 PIAs (provincial since July 2025, municipal from January 2027), breach response, and complaints on the same platform when you're ready for them.

Migrating from FOI Assist to AccessPoint

Outgrowing a lightweight tool is a good problem. AccessPoint imports your history without an ETL project — and without losing the years of tracking discipline you've built.

  1. Export your request history to Excel from your current tool.
  2. Download AccessPoint's import template from Settings → Data import & export — it carries your tenant's own type codes, and your existing file numbers persist as legacy references.
  3. Upload and validate: a per-row created / skipped / errors report runs before anything imports, with safe re-runs on corrected files.
  4. Stage any historical documents in the migration-staging container in your own Azure storage, with optional hash verification.
  5. Import in the background — records arrive historical, with no notifications, no recomputed deadlines, and Imported audit provenance.

Your historical IPC reporting stays reproducible: imported requests carry their original dates, so register reports over past periods reflect the history you actually had.

Plan your migration →  ·  Data Import & Export guide  ·  Migration & onboarding services

Questions people ask about FOI Assist and AccessPoint

How is AccessPoint different from FOI Assist?
FOI Assist focuses on the administrative layer of Ontario FOI — deadlines, guided workflows, compliant letters, online intake, and the IPC annual statistical report — in a lightweight subscription hosted in Canada. AccessPoint runs inside your own Microsoft 365: records are collected from SharePoint and Outlook, redacted in the browser with exemption tagging, and reported from the same case data, with flat pricing published on the site and no per-user fees. Small Ontario offices legitimately choose FOI Assist; offices where document volume, privacy obligations, or multi-statute scope have become the job tend to need a platform.

Is FOI Assist only for Ontario?
Yes — it's built specifically for Ontario institutions under FIPPA and MFIPPA, which is part of its appeal for that market. AccessPoint ships an Ontario jurisdiction pack with the same statutory specificity (deadlines, exemptions, fee rules, IPC reporting), plus 135 other packs covering federal ATIP, the other provinces, US FOIA and state laws, EU GDPR, and UK FOI — relevant if you're a shared service, a multi-jurisdiction organization, or simply want room to grow.

Where is FOI Assist's data hosted?
In Canada. FOI Assist's privacy policy says the platform is hosted on Amazon Web Services infrastructure in Canada, including the Canada (Central) region, with client data intended to remain in Canadian AWS data centres. So residency isn't the dividing line here. The difference is whose environment it is: FOI Assist's cloud, or your own Microsoft 365 and Azure tenant, where AccessPoint runs under your existing identity and security controls and alongside the records themselves.

FOI Assist is built by a lawyer. Does that matter?
It's a genuine strength. Justin Petrillo has practised law for more than fifteen years, ran the Toronto 2015 Games' FOI program, and publishes a free knowledge base and seminar series that many Ontario coordinators rely on. If part of what you want from a vendor is that kind of practitioner judgment, ask him how far it extends beyond the software. AccessPoint is built by a software company: our jurisdiction packs are built from public information about each Act and are a starting point we expect your own legal counsel to validate, our guides document the reasoning, and we work alongside whichever counsel or consultants you already trust rather than replacing them.

We mainly struggle with deadlines and letters. Isn't a lighter tool enough?
It might be — an honest vendor says so. If your volumes are low and records review is manageable by hand, a deadline-and-letters tool solves your actual problem. The threshold to watch: when document collection, redaction, Bill 194 PIAs, or breach response start consuming your week, those are platform problems, and solving them piecemeal (a redaction tool here, a spreadsheet risk register there) costs more than one system that runs it all.

Does AccessPoint produce the IPC annual statistical report like FOI Assist does?
Yes. FOI Assist automates the annual statistical report submitted to the IPC from the file data already in the system; AccessPoint generates the same report from the Ontario jurisdiction pack's templates, using the case data you process day to day, alongside operational dashboards and Report Studio for everything the statute doesn't ask but your leadership does.

Can we start with FOI Assist and move to AccessPoint later?
Yes, and the path is clean: export your request history to Excel, map it into AccessPoint's tenant-generated import template, validate per row before anything imports, and keep your original file numbers as legacy references. Imported records arrive historical with full audit provenance. Portability works in both directions — AccessPoint's one-click export means you're never locked in here either.

Competitor information on this page is drawn from public sources — vendor websites, government reports, and press coverage — and was last reviewed in 2026-09-10. Products evolve, and a comparison is never the whole story: capabilities vary by edition and configuration. Spot something out of date? Tell us and we'll correct it.

When the Records Work Needs a Platform Too

Try AccessPoint free for 30 days in your own Microsoft 365 tenant — the Ontario pack configures FIPPA/MFIPPA out of the box.

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