Guardian Due Diligence vs Rapid Diligence
Which searcher-focused QoE shop gets your deal?
Guardian Due Diligence
A quality-of-earnings boutique focused specifically on searcher-sized deals (typically under $5M enterprise value), offering QoE, QoE Lite, proof-of-cash, and deal advisory, founded in 2017 by Elliott Holland, now a 17-person team with $600M+ in transactions reviewed.
Custom pricing · Pricing not published; quotes come via a scheduling call. Third-party reviews report roughly $20–40k engagements; we could not verify those figures against a primary source, so treat them as directional only.
- Specialization is the pitch: QoE for searcher-sized, often SBA-financed deals is the entire practice
- Scale and track record: 17-person team, $600M+ in transactions since 2017
- Claims to surface most deal-breaking issues within about a week, materially faster than typical CPA-firm timelines
- No published pricing, and third-party figures ($20–40k) are significant against a sub-$2M purchase
- Marketing-forward brand (the founder styles himself 'King of QoE'); calibrate marketing claims against references
- Testimonial-heavy public reputation; ask for recent client references on deals your size
Verified Jul 10, 2026 · Full review →
Rapid Diligence
A tech-enabled quality-of-earnings firm built for SMB buyers, with published pricing: full QoE from $16.5k, a lighter QoE from $11.2k, a $750 pre-LOI vetting report, a $1,097-per-month search advisory tier, and post-close bookkeeping and fractional-CFO services; the firm cites 250-plus deals reviewed across five years.
One-time · Published pricing (rapiddiligence.com, July 2026): QoE from $16.5k; QoE Lite from $11.2k; preliminary vetting report $750; search advisory $1,097 per month; bookkeeping from $549 per month; fractional CFO from $1,840 per month. Standard QoE turnaround 3 to 4 weeks with paid expediting.
- Genuinely published pricing across the whole service ladder, rare in QoE
- The $750 pre-LOI vetting report is a useful screening product most firms do not offer
- SMB-native: the firm reports a majority of its deals involve SBA 7(a) financing
- Volume claims and deal statistics are the firm's own
- A lighter, tech-enabled process is a fit question for messy books that need forensic depth
- Post-close services create an incentive to stay in the relationship; evaluate each service on its own
Verified Jul 12, 2026 · Full review →
Our take
Choose Guardian for pattern depth in searcher-sized deals and hands-on guidance through the whole diligence arc, quoted per deal.
Choose Rapid Diligence when published pricing matters: a $16.5k full QoE, an $11.2k lite tier, and a $750 pre-LOI screen you can buy before committing to anything. Collect both quotes either way.