An enterprise aerospace technology firm was approaching renewal with its incumbent compliance platform and facing a straightforward mandate from leadership: reduce cost without breaking the compliance program. With SOC 2 and ISO 27001 both in scope and a renewal clock running, the team needed a replacement that could match what they already had, migrate cleanly, and land at a materially lower price point. That combination, not a search for something better, drove the switch.
[ The Problem ]
The incumbent worked. The price didn't.
The compliance program was functional, but the economics had stopped making sense. The team was spending roughly twice what the scope of their actual needs justified, and as headcount declined, a user-based pricing model made the gap worse over time.
Leadership had a clear cost-reduction mandate, and renewing at the same rate was no longer a neutral option. The question was whether switching platforms would introduce more risk than it saved in spend. Any replacement had to cover SOC 2 and ISO 27001 from day one, support existing integrations, and offer a credible migration path, or the savings would not be worth the disruption.
[ What they needed ]
Before committing to a switch, the team needed to confirm a replacement could:
- Cover SOC 2 and ISO 27001 from day one without a gap in compliance posture
- Integrate with Google Workspace, AWS, GCP, Jira, GitHub, GitLab, and endpoint tooling
- Export policies, evidence, risks, and vendor data from the incumbent and import cleanly
- Support access reviews and vendor risk management without requiring a full re-implementation
- Deliver a pricing model that reflected actual headcount, not legacy user assumptions
- Clear legal review including EU data processing terms and controller versus processor language
- Close before the incumbent renewal deadline to avoid paying for another year
[ Why Drata won ]
Selected over Vanta, Drata won by making the switch feel economically compelling and operationally safe at the same time.
Commercial model fit the buyer's actual situation: Vanta's user-based pricing had become inefficient as headcount declined. Drata's framework-based packaging gave the team a structure that matched what they were actually using, making the savings argument concrete rather than speculative.
Migration credibility removed the switching risk: the ability to export policies, evidence, risks, and vendor data from Vanta and import directly into Drata meant the team was not choosing between saving money and protecting their compliance program. That combination closed the evaluation.
Day-one framework coverage was non-negotiable and confirmed early: SOC 2 and ISO 27001 both needed to be live from the start. Drata confirmed that scope in the first evaluation call, which allowed the conversation to move quickly to commercial terms rather than lingering on fit questions.
Trust Center included, not added: the incumbent required a separate answer to security questionnaire volume. Drata's included Trust Center functionality strengthened the overall value case without adding line items to the proposal.
[ How Drata solved it ]
Drata GRC provided immediate framework coverage for both SOC 2 and ISO 27001, removing the biggest functional risk in the evaluation. The team confirmed that controls, policy workflows, evidence capture, and audit workflows mapped closely enough to what they already knew that the learning curve would not slow the program down.
Drata's migration support addressed the switching risk directly. Policies, evidence, risks, and vendor risk data could be exported from the incumbent and imported into Drata, giving the team a structured path rather than a rebuild from scratch. That migration credibility was more decisive than any individual feature comparison.
Trust Center functionality, included in the platform, gave the team a stronger answer to inbound security questionnaires than they had before, reducing manual response work without requiring a separate tool or additional spend. TPRM covered vendor risk management needs within the same platform, and AIQA extended the automation story across the compliance workflow. Taken together, the platform delivered the parity the team required at a price point that made the switch economically rational.
[ Before and after Drata ]
Before Drata, the team was locked into a pricing model that charged for users they no longer had, with a renewal approaching that would have extended that inefficiency for another year.
After the switch, the compliance program runs on a cost structure that reflects actual scope, SOC 2 and ISO 27001 coverage remained uninterrupted through the transition, and the team avoided renewing at a spend level that leadership had already flagged as unsustainable.
[ Business outcome ]
The team closed the switch before the incumbent renewal deadline, avoiding another year of above-market spend. The move from a user-based pricing model to framework-based packaging directly addressed the inefficiency that had made the incumbent feel overpriced as headcount declined.
SOC 2 and ISO 27001 coverage remained intact through the transition, and the migration path kept the compliance program operational without a rebuild. The cost reduction was concrete and immediate, not contingent on future usage or expansion. The deal also positioned the team to add PCI coverage and expand vendor management capabilities within the same platform as needs grow, without returning to the incumbent.