Let’s say a compliance platform costs $12,000 a year. Does that sound like a high price?
It’s all about what you’re replacing.
Automating the collection of evidence in a complicated technology environment can eliminate hundreds of hours of tedious work, it could be an investment worth it. If a startup with seven employees could manually gather the same evidence in the space of a few hours every month, the amount will be different.
That’s a useful way to approach the search for a Vanta alternative. Start with asking which platform has the greatest features. Determine how much time and effort these features can save your business.
Automation is an economic break-even Point
It’s not inherently either good or bad. The value of compliance automation changes as the company grows. Imagine a tech company which is expanding, multiple cloud environments, many applications and frequent changes in access. The manual process of collecting evidence can be a major operational burden. Integrations that can automatically monitor systems and gather evidence could be able to justify the cost.
Imagine a startup with 10 employees preparing for their first SOC 2. The system may be small, and evidence collection might be manageable with significant automation.
This is a crucial distinction when evaluating Vanta’s pricing. A well-designed platform may offer significant capabilities, however those capabilities are only beneficial in the event that an organization really requires the capabilities.
Compare Architecture and not just Brands
Vanta vs Drata is a debate that can easily become a feature-by feature exercise. It is crucial to examine the features, services as well as the quotes and contracts of each platform. Both are well-established compliance platforms that concentrate on integrations and automation.
You’ll need to make a decision on something else first. Do you have a company that is interested in an integration-driven platform for compliance? Certain companies require continuous monitoring and automated collection of evidence. Some businesses prefer to supply their own evidence, especially when workload is modest.
Vanta Competitors Don’t All Follow the Same Model
Many Vanta competitors are also in a similar category that is focused on automation. On the market, there are platforms with a simpler design that focus more on the organization of systems rather as opposed to connectivity.
CertAssist is part of the latter group. It was developed by compliance consultants and internal auditors, CertAssist organizes framework controls within a single workspace. It provides editable policy and evidence guidelines, and allows auditors to examine evidence submitted with access to only read-only.
It is not able to connect to operational systems or create infrastructure agents. Customers upload their own documents.
Factor System Access Into the Decision
Removing integrations has an obvious disadvantage: someone must collect evidence by hand.
The application for compliance doesn’t need integration or integration and may be used without any ongoing connections to the operational environment.
The architectures are not universally superior. The key question is what option is most appropriate for your business.
CertAssist is targeted at companies of five to 200 employees and provides pricing information rather than having to have a sales conversation. The starting price is $225 monthly, which is a significant reduction from the standard cost of $375 per month.
Let Complexity Have Its Proper Place
What a start-up with 10 employees needs today may not be the same when you have 100 or even 500 employees.
A simple platform could make sense, while compliance is easy. As the number of employees, systems, frameworks, and evidence requirements multiply, the economics can eventually favor greater automation. It’s a more efficient way to purchase compliance technology and let complexity take its place.
Affording fifty integrations because they look impressive in a table of comparisons is not worth it. You should pay for them only when the cost to do the job they replace manually is higher.