Yes. Vanta and Drata both work for an MSP that needs its own SOC 2, and Vanta runs a partner program with a console for managing several clients. Both were designed around software companies, though, so you'll translate some questions into MSP terms yourself. Neither subscription includes the CPA firm's audit fee.
A client asked for your SOC 2 report. It's been on the roadmap for a year or two, and now it's attached to a renewal, so it just moved to the top of the list.
This is for the MSP owner who has to go find out what that involves. It's especially for anyone who already bought Vanta or Drata, opened the questionnaire, and quietly stopped. You'll learn what the work takes and how to scope it to the criteria you need. You'll also see where Vanta and Drata fit an MSP, what the audit costs on top, and whether to do Type 1 or Type 2 first.
Can an MSP use Vanta or Drata?
Yes. Both are good tools for the buyer they were designed around: a compliance specialist inside a software company. That person recognizes every question on the form, because the form describes the business they work in.
An MSP owner doesn't always recognize the questions, so a lot of requirements take longer, because you're translating them before you can answer.
Three things get harder. The questions ask about software you don't build. The CPA firm that performs the examination is a separate bill, so the price you see isn't the price you pay. Both vendors point you to partner audit firms for that (Vanta, Drata). And when a question doesn't describe your business, the help content is written for software teams, so the MSP answer is often yours to work out.
When are Vanta or Drata the better pick?
Vanta and Drata are very good at what they were built for. They connect to the tools a software company already runs and collect evidence automatically (Vanta, Drata). If you run a software company, we'd happily point you to either one.
Three MSP situations point the same way.
You sell your own software product. Maybe part of your business is a SaaS app, and a client wants SOC 2 on it. The questions will make sense, because they describe what you ship.
Your clients already use Vanta. Vanta has run a Service Partner Program since 2022, with a partner console for managing client accounts and registering deals. If your clients are SaaS companies on Vanta, that program keeps you inside the tool they already know.
You want a large auditor marketplace inside the tool. Vanta lists 100+ partner audit firms, and Drata's Alliance Program has 1,300+ partners, including the audit firm A-LIGN. If you'd like to shop a long list of CPA firms from one place, both make that easy.
Drata also has Workspaces, which split one account by product or business unit. We couldn't find a documented console for managing separate MSP clients, so ask Drata directly if that's what you need.
Cyber Verify does a different job. Your MSP gets certified first, and every question is written in MSP terms. You pay a fixed fee for the platform and our team, with no billable hours.
The questionnaires assume you ship code
A SOC 2 platform built for software companies asks about your software development lifecycle, your release process, and the cloud product you own. You don't have any of those, so you have to decide for yourself whether patch management counts as change management, and whether client onboarding counts as provisioning.
If an answer is off, you'll usually learn it from the auditor, months after you wrote it.
That guessing is where SOC 2 projects stall, usually in one of two ways.
An owner buys the platform and hands it to a staff member. That person often can't answer the questions either, so the login sits unused until someone checks.
Or the owner does it personally, hits a question that doesn't describe the business, and goes looking for help. The help they find is written for software teams, so it's hard to know whether an MSP answer is good enough, and the work slows down.
What an MSP-specific approach looks like
The fix is to ask SOC 2's questions in MSP terms.
Cyber Verify presents a requirement in language that describes your business. Something like: do you have a customer onboarding policy? Alongside it comes the reason the question is being asked, what the best practice is, and sample answers from other MSPs.
You answer as an MSP, and the platform maps your answer to the SOC 2 trust services criteria on the back end. The translation stops being your job.
MSPAlliance has certified MSPs against UCS since 2004, so the questions come from two decades of watching how managed services businesses run.
UCS, the Unified Certification Standard, is the standard: 72 requirements written for MSPs, free to read at mspalliance.com/ucs. Cyber Verify is the certification you earn against it, and the platform where you do the work, for your own MSP first and then for your clients. An independent audit firm, pre-approved by MSPAlliance, performs the certification audit. Once you're certified, SOC 2 runs on the same platform, and a CPA firm performs the examination.
Mike Deskin, President of Dresner Group, describes the result this way: "Cyber Verify separated us from the pack. We've won millions of dollars in contracts because of it."
Cyber Verify, Vanta and Drata side by side
Here's how the three compare on the things an MSP asks about first. Vanta and Drata don't publish prices, so we've used buyer data from Vendr for price.
Built for
- Cyber Verify: MSPs certifying their own practice, then serving clients
- Vanta: Companies certifying themselves
- Drata: Companies certifying themselves
Where you start
- Cyber Verify: Cyber Verify certification of your MSP against UCS, then SOC 2 and other frameworks
- Vanta: The framework you pick
- Drata: The framework you pick
Frameworks
- Cyber Verify: UCS, plus SOC 2, ISO 27001, ISO 20000, ISO 9001 and CMMC Level 1 and 2. We track 12 more, including NIST CSF 2.0, HIPAA and PCI DSS 4.0.
- Vanta: SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA, HITRUST and more, plus custom frameworks (Vanta)
- Drata: 30+ pre-built frameworks, plus custom frameworks (Drata)
Audit
- Cyber Verify: An independent audit firm, pre-approved by MSPAlliance, audits your certification. A CPA firm examines SOC 2 under its own engagement with you, and you can bring your own.
- Vanta: Not included in the subscription (Vanta). 100+ partner audit firms (Vanta)
- Drata: Not included in the subscription (Drata). A-LIGN is an audit partner (Drata)
Serving clients
- Cyber Verify: A tenant per client and white-label reports. Once you're certified, Cyber Verify bills you per client tenant, and you set the price and invoice your clients.
- Vanta: Service Partner Program since 2022, with a partner console for managing client accounts and registering deals (Vanta)
- Drata: Alliance Program with 1,300+ partners (Drata). Workspaces split an account by product or business unit (Drata). We couldn't find a documented console for separate MSP clients.
Hands-on help
- Cyber Verify: A compliance sherpa: audit-school training, unlimited messaging, and evidence checked before you submit it. One-hour response target, weekdays 9 to 5 Eastern.
- Vanta: Product support, plus the partner and auditor network
- Drata: Product support, plus the partner and auditor network
Price
- Cyber Verify: Not published. Talk to us for a quote. A fixed fee for the platform and our team, with no billable hours, split into 12 monthly payments by default.
- Vanta: Not published. Median $20K a year, range $7.5K to $57K (Vendr)
- Drata: Not published. Median $25K a year, range $9.5K to $68K (Vendr)
The audit line is the one to read twice. With Vanta or Drata, the CPA firm is a second bill, so ask any vendor, us included, whether the audit fee is in the quote. Drata's own cost guide puts the audit for a smaller company at $7.5K to $15K for a Type 1. A Type 2 runs $12K to $20K (Drata).
Scope it before you price it
The expensive mistake here is overscoping, and it's easy to make, because scope is what drives the bill.
SOC 2 has five Trust Services Criteria: Security, Availability, Confidentiality, Processing Integrity, and Privacy. Only Security is required. The other four are optional, and each one belongs in scope only when you've made a specific commitment to a client.
Availability belongs in scope if your agreements promise uptime, and Confidentiality if you hold your clients' confidential data. Processing Integrity is aimed at organizations that process transactions on a client's behalf, so add it only if you sell that kind of service. We'll help you decide scope during the assessment.
Services work the same way. Scope covers your managed services line and the commitments in your agreements, so a low voltage division or a hardware resale practice doesn't automatically come along.
Ask any provider to quote Security-only first, then price each additional criterion separately. If they can't break it out that way, ask why, since each extra criterion adds work and cost.
Do Type 1 first
Type 1 reports on whether your controls are designed correctly at a point in time. Type 2 reports on whether they operated correctly over a period.
Start with Type 1 unless a client demand forces your hand. It gets your policies written, your evidence organized, and your team used to the process while the stakes are lower.
Type 2 as a first move is possible, and sometimes a customer requires it. It's harder to schedule, because Type 2 covers an observation window, usually 3 to 12 months (Vanta), and the report comes after it closes. That adds at least a quarter to the timeline, however fast you work.
A letter of intent showing you've started will sometimes satisfy a customer's auditor while the work is under way.
What the work actually takes
Drata's cost guide puts a Type 1 at one to three months (Drata). Most MSPs on Cyber Verify have a Type 1 report four to six months after they start. That clock includes readiness work, such as writing any policies you don't have yet.
The loop is simple. You submit a requirement. The team reviews it and either approves it or sends it back with a note on what to fix. If you can handle the correction yourself, you do. If not, you ask a person.
Once you're most of the way through readiness, a CPA firm comes into the same platform and performs the examination remotely. By then most of your work is done, and your remaining role is reviewing the reports the team drafts. Reports are typically issued about four weeks later.
The first year takes the most of your own time, because you're writing policies that don't exist yet. If yours are already written and followed, it goes faster. Year two is lighter, since you're updating documents rather than creating them.
Don't chase a perfect report
There's no such thing as a perfect SOC 2 report, and a couple of exceptions isn't a bad outcome.
Some MSPs have asked to have an exception found, because their clients were suspicious of results that came back spotless. A report with nothing in it suggests the examiner didn't look hard.
If you've ever walked a client through their own compliance work, you've already made this argument to them. Every organization has deficiencies. The question an auditor is really asking is whether you know about yours, wrote them down, and understand why they're there.
An audit that surfaces two honest exceptions tells a better story than one claiming none.
What to ask before you buy any platform
Whoever you choose, get answers to these first:
- Are the questions written for MSPs, or translated from a software company template?
- Who performs the actual examination, and is that firm's fee included in the price?
- Is this a fixed fee, or are there billable hours on top?
- What's the support response time, and does a person answer?
- Can the scope be limited to my managed services line?
- What happens in year two, and how far does the time commitment drop?
The second and third questions are where platform pricing and total cost separate. A subscription that covers the software may still leave you to find and pay a CPA firm. Ask every vendor, us included, how the audit fee is billed.
Cyber Verify charges a fixed fee for the platform and our team, with no billable hours, split into 12 monthly payments by default. Support runs on a one-hour response target, Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 Eastern, with chat in the portal.
Cyber Verify works with a pool of CPA firms and introduces one based on availability when your readiness is nearly complete. You can also bring your own. Either way, the CPA firm works under its own engagement with you.
What are the best alternatives to Vanta and Drata for MSPs?
Here are the main compliance platforms MSPs compare with Vanta and Drata, with a source linked for every claim about another product. We make Cyber Verify, so it's listed first.
- Cyber Verify — an MSP-native platform that certifies your own MSP against UCS, with an independent audit, then runs compliance for your clients on the same platform.
- ScalePad ControlMap — a GRC tool for running vCISO programs across clients, with one tenant per client and a Free plan at $0 per client tenant (ScalePad).
- Compliance Scorecard — a governance platform MSPs use to run policies, risk registers and compliance programs for clients (Compliance Scorecard), with 30+ frameworks plus build-your-own (Compliance Scorecard).
- Secureframe — compliance automation for SOC 2, ISO 27001 and more, with reseller, service provider and referral tracks and a multi-tenant portal for MSPs (Secureframe).
- Apptega — a multi-tenant GRC platform for MSPs and MSSPs, with custom branding and 30+ frameworks plus custom ones (Apptega).
- Kaseya Compliance Manager GRC — a GRC tool that collects data from client networks, cloud and endpoints and scores each control (Kaseya), then builds audit-ready reports, with connections to VSA, Datto RMM, IT Glue and Autotask (Kaseya).
- Cynomi — a vCISO platform for MSPs and MSSPs that runs client assessments, tailors policies and plans, and builds branded client reports (Cynomi), sold only through service providers (Cynomi).
FAQ
Can an MSP use Vanta or Drata for SOC 2?
Yes, for the MSP's own SOC 2. Expect to translate some software-company questions into MSP terms, and to hire the CPA firm separately.
What are the best Vanta alternatives for MSPs?
For most MSPs, Cyber Verify is the strongest alternative to Vanta: it certifies your own MSP against UCS with an independent audit, then runs compliance for your clients on the same platform, with expert help from the Compliance Response Center included in every plan. Other options fit narrower situations: ScalePad ControlMap if you want a free tier to test demand (ScalePad), Compliance Scorecard for a policy-led governance service (Compliance Scorecard), Secureframe if your clients are software companies chasing SOC 2 or ISO 27001 (Secureframe), Apptega for clients spread across many of its 30+ frameworks, under your brand (Apptega), Kaseya Compliance Manager GRC if you already run VSA, Datto RMM, IT Glue or Autotask (Kaseya) and Cynomi for vCISO programs across many SMB clients (Cynomi).
Does Vanta have a program for MSPs?
Yes. Vanta's Service Partner Program started in 2022 (Vanta). Partners get a console for managing client accounts and registering deals (Vanta).
Is the SOC 2 audit included in Vanta or Drata pricing?
No. The audit is a separate bill from a CPA firm. Drata's guide puts it at $7.5K to $15K for a Type 1 and $12K to $20K for a Type 2 at smaller companies (Drata). With Cyber Verify, you pay a fixed fee for the platform and our team, with no billable hours. The CPA firm works under its own engagement with you.
How long does SOC 2 take for an MSP?
Drata puts a Type 1 at one to three months (Drata). Most MSPs on Cyber Verify have a Type 1 report four to six months after they start, including readiness work. A Type 2 then needs an observation window of 3 to 12 months, and reports typically arrive about four weeks after the audit.
What is UCS, and do I need it for SOC 2?
UCS is the Unified Certification Standard, MSPAlliance's standard for MSPs. It has 72 requirements across five domains, and the full text is free at mspalliance.com/ucs. SOC 2 itself doesn't require it. On Cyber Verify, though, you earn Cyber Verify certification against UCS first, and SOC 2 and other frameworks build on it.
Getting started
Scope the services you want covered. Decide whether a client deadline forces Type 2 or whether you can start with Type 1. Then get a quote for the platform and our team, and ask us how the CPA firm is billed. That way you can compare the full first-year cost across vendors.
Book a 30-minute demo with a compliance specialist to see the platform and get a scoped quote for your services.