The cost problem facing Belgian SMEs
If you are running a small or medium-sized business in Belgium and you have looked into GDPR compliance, you have probably experienced sticker shock. Privacy consultants and law firms routinely quote between 2,000 and 5,000 EUR for a basic GDPR dossier. For businesses with more complex processing activities, quotes of 10,000 EUR or more are not unusual.
These fees make sense from the consultant’s perspective. Building a proper GDPR dossier requires mapping your processing activities, assessing legal bases, drafting a privacy policy, and creating documentation for the supervisory authority. That takes time, and consultant time is expensive.
But for a Belgian SME with five or fifteen employees, spending thousands on compliance is simply not realistic. The result? Many small businesses do nothing at all, hoping they fly under the radar of the GBA (Gegevensbeschermingsautoriteit, also known as APD in French).
That is a risky strategy. The GBA has been increasingly active in enforcing GDPR compliance, and fines for small businesses, while smaller than those for multinationals, can still be significant.
Why traditional consulting is expensive
To understand where the cost comes from, consider what a consultant actually does:
- Intake meeting - they learn about your business, your processes, and your IT systems
- Data mapping - they identify all processing activities involving personal data
- Legal analysis - they determine the legal basis, retention periods, and risk level for each activity
- Document drafting - they write your processing register, privacy policy, and cookie policy
- Review cycle - you review drafts, provide feedback, they revise
Each of these steps involves billable hours. A typical small business engagement runs 15 to 25 hours, at rates of 100 to 200 EUR per hour. The math is straightforward, and the total is steep.
How GDPRWise eliminates most of that cost
GDPRWise replaces the most time-consuming steps with technology:
The intake and data mapping are handled by the AI-powered website scan. Within two minutes, the scanner analyses your website and detects cookies, trackers, forms, and third-party scripts. It also identifies your sector, which determines which processing activities are most likely relevant.
The legal analysis is built into the sector dossiers. GDPRWise maintains pre-built dossier foundations for dozens of industries. Each sector dossier includes the common processing activities, legal bases, retention periods, and security measures for that industry. When the scan detects your sector, this foundation is loaded automatically.
The document drafting is fully automated. Your processing register, privacy policy, cookie report, and action list are generated based on your scan results and your answers to a set of targeted questions.
The review cycle is replaced by confidence labels. Every item in your dossier is marked as “Detected” (verified by the scan, high confidence) or “Needs review” (the platform needs your confirmation). You only spend time on items that actually require your input.
The result is a complete GDPR dossier that would have cost thousands with a consultant, delivered in hours instead of weeks.
Two options that fit your budget
GDPRWise offers two options for Belgian SMEs:
Free Scan
The Free Scan gives you a complete GDPR dossier at no cost. You get:
- Full AI-powered website scan
- Sector-specific dossier foundation
- Guided refinement questions
- Processing register, privacy policy, cookie report, and action list
- Employee privacy policy
- Export to PDF and Excel
No account or credit card needed. This is ideal if you want to get compliant and manage updates yourself. You own your dossier, and you can update it manually whenever your situation changes.
Peace of Mind - subscription
The Peace of Mind plan (EUR 29/month, yearly billing) adds continuous monitoring on top of everything in the Free Scan:
- Periodic website rescans
- Automatic comparison with your existing dossier
- Notifications when changes are detected (new cookies, new scripts, removed forms)
- Regulatory update alerts when Belgian or EU rules change
- Priority support
This is ideal if you want compliance to run on autopilot. The platform watches your website and alerts you when something needs attention, so you never fall behind.
Built for the Belgian market
GDPRWise is not a generic international tool that happens to be available in Belgium. The platform was built with the Belgian market in mind:
Multilingual support: Belgium has three official language communities. GDPRWise supports Dutch, French, German, and English. You can generate your privacy policy in Dutch for Flemish customers and in French for Walloon customers, all from the same dossier.
Belgian regulatory context: The sector dossiers account for Belgian-specific requirements and practices. Social secretariats, the structure of employee data processing in Belgium, and the role of the GBA are all reflected in the platform.
Local pricing: The pricing is designed for Belgian SMEs, not for American enterprises. You pay a fair price that reflects the size and complexity of a small business, not a multinational.
What Belgian businesses are actually paying for
When you break it down, the value proposition is clear:
| What you get | With a consultant | With GDPRWise |
|---|---|---|
| Processing register | Included (15-25 hours) | Included (auto-generated) |
| Privacy policy | Included | Included |
| Cookie report | Often extra | Included |
| Employee privacy policy | Often extra or not offered | Included |
| Action list | Sometimes included | Included |
| Ongoing monitoring | Separate retainer | Peace of Mind plan |
| Typical cost | 2,000 - 5,000 EUR | Fraction of that |
| Delivery time | 3-6 weeks | Same day |
The GDPRWise dossier meets the same GDPR requirements as one built by a consultant. The documentation format is the same. The processing register follows the same structure. The privacy policy covers the same mandatory elements.
The difference is in how it is produced: technology instead of billable hours.
Not a replacement for complex legal advice
To be clear, GDPRWise does not replace a lawyer for complex legal questions. If you are dealing with large-scale processing of sensitive data, international data transfers to high-risk countries, or a data breach with potential liability, you need legal counsel.
But for the vast majority of Belgian SMEs, a bakery, a physiotherapy practice, a small IT consultancy, a web shop, the GDPR requirements are well-defined and predictable. These are exactly the businesses GDPRWise is built for.
The cost of doing nothing
Some Belgian business owners still believe that the GBA only targets large companies. That is no longer true. The Belgian authority has issued fines to small businesses, and the trend across the EU is towards broader enforcement.
Beyond fines, there is reputational risk. Customers increasingly ask about privacy. Business partners include GDPR compliance clauses in contracts. Public tenders require evidence of compliance.
A complete GDPR dossier is becoming a basic business requirement, like having proper insurance or filing your taxes. The question is not whether you need one, but how you get one without breaking the bank.
Belgian SMEs use GDPRWise to get a full GDPR dossier in hours, not weeks. AI scanning, sector dossiers, and multilingual support included.