When the Incumbent Won't Unbundle, Someone Else Will

A platform that grew more expensive as the company grew, and still wouldn't sell you just the part you needed.

The compliance team had outgrown its incumbent platform in two directions at once. Rigid permissions, weak segregation of duties, limited custom fields, and no way to handle client-specific framework variants across multiple environments made the product increasingly unworkable at scale. At the same time, headcount-based pricing was compounding the cost as the firm expanded from roughly 250 to 500-plus staff, with per-workspace custom frameworks adding tens of thousands in fees that clients would not reimburse.

When the team decided to build GRC tooling internally and buy only a trust center, the incumbent had no answer: it could not sell its trust center as a standalone product. Renewing meant accepting the same cost curve and the same constraints. Not renewing meant risking a public trust center blackout during active audits.

Before selecting Drata, the team evaluated every available path:

• Renew the incumbent platform and absorb the rising cost
• Buy a full GRC and trust center bundle from a new vendor
• Build GRC tooling internally on an existing project management platform
• Adopt a managed service partner's proprietary compliance control framework
• Evaluate a third-party AI-assisted compliance tool demoed through the partner
• Find a trust center that could be purchased on its own, without a GRC platform attached

Selected over Vanta, Drata won because it could sell the trust center on its own and prove it in two weeks.

1. 1

   Standalone packaging was the deciding factor: Vanta's retention pricing was aggressive, but it could not unbundle its trust center. Drata could. That single commercial difference made every other comparison secondary.

2. 2

   The proof of concept retired the risk: the team had a hard go/no-go deadline in mid-to-late October. A two-week, criteria-driven POC on an Advanced instance confirmed every functional requirement and gave the team the evidence they needed to issue a non-renewal notice to the incumbent with confidence.

3. 3

   Framework-based pricing fit the buyer's model: the incumbent's headcount-based pricing had become a structural problem as the firm scaled. Drata's pricing model removed that escalation dynamic entirely.

4. 4

   Procurement was fast and low-friction: routing through a channel partner on a cloud marketplace compressed the paper process to days, which mattered when the window between POC completion and contract expiry was measured in weeks.

Drata's Trust Center was the only option that could be purchased as a standalone product, which made it the only viable path once the team committed to building GRC internally. A two-week proof of concept on an Advanced instance tested every functional requirement the team had documented: Entra ID SSO, custom branding, role-based access controls, permission profiles, auto-expiring restricted documents, clickwrap NDA, Teams integration, and AI-assisted trust center generation with bulk document import. Every requirement was confirmed.

The commercial structure removed the remaining friction. A 12-month term kept the team's options open, a deferred start date eliminated overlap with the outgoing platform, and procurement through an existing cloud marketplace partner meant the paper process closed in days. The team did not have to choose between meeting a hard deadline and getting the product right. They did both.

Before Drata, the team was locked into a platform that priced against their growth and would not sell them only what they needed. After, the trust center is live on a validated configuration, the headcount-driven cost curve is gone, and the team holds a flexible term that keeps future options open.

The firm replaced its incumbent trust center before the contract renewal deadline, with no gap in coverage during active audits. The trust center handling roughly 1,500 interactions a year passed a criteria-driven proof of concept and went live on a configuration the team had validated themselves.

Moving to framework-based pricing eliminated the headcount-driven cost escalation that had made the incumbent increasingly difficult to justify as the firm grew. The team now holds a 12-month term that preserves flexibility, with clear expansion paths available if the internal GRC build stalls or integration requirements deepen.