Let’s say a compliance platform costs $12,000 per year. Does that sound expensive?

What it replaces will determine the final answer.

If $12,000 can be used to cut down on hundreds of hours in the repetitive gathering of evidence across an extremely complex technology environment this could be money that is well-invested. If a small business of seven people could gather the same data manually, in a couple of hours every month, the cost appears to be quite different.

It’s a smart way to approach the search for the best Vanta alternative. Identifying the platform with the best features is not the first step. Find out what features bring your company savings in time and money.

The Break-Even point for automation

Automating compliance isn’t inherently good or bad. Scale affects its value. Imagine a technology company that is growing that has hundreds of employees numerous cloud environments, a variety of applications, and regular access modifications. Gathering evidence manually could be a significant operational burden. Integrations that automatically monitor systems and gather evidence can easily justify their cost.

Imagine a startup with 10 employees working on their first SOC 2. It might have a small infrastructure, and collection of evidence could be handled without a lot of automation.

Vanta pricing is based on this difference. The capabilities of a high-end platform are amazing, however they only provide financial value for organizations that require them.

Compare Architecture and not just Brands

Searching for Vanta Vs. Drata can quickly become a feature-by-feature exercise. Both are established software for compliance that is built around automation and integrations. Hence, the comparison of their frameworks supported including integrations, service agreements, and individual quotes can be useful for organizations searching for that method.

There’s another decision to make first. Do you require a software that can be integrated into your compliance system? Certain businesses want continuous monitoring and automated collection of evidence. Other businesses would prefer to supply evidence on their own, particularly when the workload is low.

Vanta Competitors Don’t All Use the Same Model

Many well-known Vanta competitors compete within a similar automation-focused category. On the market, there are also platforms with a simpler design that focus more on the organization of systems rather as opposed to connectivity.

CertAssist fits into this category. It was developed by compliance consultants and internal auditors, CertAssist organizes framework controls in a single workstation, allows for the editing of policies and evidence guidance, and lets auditors review submitted evidence via access to only read-only.

It does not, in fact, connect to operational systems or create infrastructure agents. Customers upload their own evidence.

Consideration should be given to the access to the system.

Removal of integrations comes with an obvious disadvantage: somebody must gather evidence manually.

This means that there is no need to integrate and the implementation of compliance does not require an integration with the operating environment.

Both architectures are equally good. It is important to ask which tradeoffs make sense for your business.

CertAssist is targeted at groups that comprise between five and 200 persons. The company publishes its prices rather than needing an initial sales call to determine the beginning price. The starting price is $225 monthly, which is comparable to the usual price of $375 a month.

Let Complexity Earn Its Place

The requirements for a start-up that a 10 person company has today may not be the same for 100 or even 500 employees.

Although compliance is easy, a lightweight platform may make sense. When systems, employees frameworks, and evidence requirements grow, the economics will ultimately favor more automation. It is better to let the complex technology of compliance earn its rightful place.

Don’t buy fifty different integrations just because they appear impressive on the comparison chart. You should pay for them only if you realize that the cost of the work manually is greater.