Do You Need a Compliance Platform? Vanta, Drata, and the Honest Answer

Only if your controls already exist. The platform automates evidence collection continuously, but it does not implement the controls. If SSO, enforced MFA, account separation, and change management are already real, it buys back the 50 to 100 hours of manual evidence collection per cycle; if they aren't, fix the gaps first.

It runs read-only connectors into your IdP, cloud accounts, MDM, and repo host to pull evidence automatically and continuously, which kills the screenshot ritual. It also provides policy templates, task tracking, an auditor-facing dashboard, and multi-framework control mapping, so one piece of evidence can satisfy SOC 2, HIPAA, and ISO 27001 at once.

It observes gaps; it does not close them. It can flag that MFA isn't enforced, that prod and dev share an AWS account, or that a change-management policy isn't followed, but enforcing MFA, separating accounts, and building a review culture are engineering projects the platform cannot do for you.

After, if the backlog is long. Buying first means paying $10,000 to $25,000 a year to watch the dashboard stay red while the same engineers who would clear the backlog context-switch into audit prep. Controls first makes the trial a confirmation scan, lets you pick an auditor with evidence already flowing, and opens the observation window clean.

Yes. Connect the trial read-only, let it scan everything, and export the red list before it expires; that list is a legitimate readiness assessment, the kind consultancies charge five figures for. Sign only once the list is mostly green, or once there is a funded plan to make it green.

Year-one pricing is a land grab; year two is the business model. The step-ups are employee tiers and framework count: crossing 50 or 100 employees mid-contract or adding a second framework at list price can turn a $12,000 first year into a $30,000 second. Negotiate the HIPAA or ISO add-on and the tier boundaries in the order form before signing.