A Secureframe alternative for founders with no security hire

Picture a common setup. Twelve people. A customer wants a SOC 2 report before its contract renews, and the CTO owns the project because nobody else on the team knows the production systems well enough to answer the auditor’s questions. This page is for that CTO, and for whoever signs off on the spend next to them.

What the public sources say

Secureframe prints a starting price for its entry plan and quotes the other two. So the figures below come from its own pricing page and from a marketplace that reports what buyers paid. Each has the date we last read it.

• Secureframe lists its Fundamentals plan as starting at $7,500 a year and shows no dollar figure for its other two plans, Complete and Defense. Every plan links to a quote request. Source, checked 2026-09-28.
• Vendr reports a median annual contract value of $20,000 for Secureframe, based on purchases completed through its marketplace. Source, checked 2026-07-30.

That median is the platform alone. The CPA firm bills separately. For a company with a dozen staff, the platform can end up as the largest single line in the SOC 2 spend.

The step you should not pay for

Before any audit, you need to know where you stand. The industry calls this a readiness assessment. Secureframe has written about what it costs when a professional does it.

• Secureframe states that a professional SOC 2 readiness assessment typically costs between $10-17,000, and that cost depends on the size of your organization and the scope of your audit. Source, checked 2026-10-02.

Ours is free. It takes about 15 minutes, and at the end you have a score and a gap list. You can read more on the readiness assessment page, or simply take it now.

Doing it yourself, honestly

Self-serve costs less because you supply the labor. That is the whole trade, and it is worth being clear about before you pick a side. A vendor that runs the project for you has to pay the people who do it, and that cost lands in your quote whether or not you needed the help. A self-serve product removes those people from the price and hands their work to you, with software doing the parts that can be automated. Here is how the work splits.

What you do

You answer questions about your company. You approve policies and adjust them where they do not match reality. You connect your cloud and code accounts, upload what cannot be pulled automatically, and fix the gaps. None of it needs a security degree. It needs a few focused hours a week.

What the software does

It maps your controls to the Trust Services Criteria,² drafts the policies, tracks evidence and flags what is still missing. It keeps the package in the shape an auditor expects. With a focused team that means audit-ready starting at about a week.

What neither of us does

Sign the report. A licensed CPA firm examines your controls and issues the opinion.¹ cybersoftware is not a CPA firm. SOC 2 examinations are performed by independent licensed U.S. CPA firms. You can check any firm’s license with the state board.³

Where Secureframe earns its price

We would rather you buy the right tool than ours, because a customer who outgrows us in three months is a poor outcome for both sides. Secureframe is the better choice in these situations, and there is no shame in any of them.

You want experts in the loop

If you would rather have specialists guide the project than work through a gap list yourself, ask Secureframe what its plans include. A self-serve tool is the wrong shape for that.

Your scope is wide

Many frameworks, many teams, many systems. A bigger platform handles that sprawl better than a lean one.

Your buyer runs a formal procurement

Some enterprise deals need a negotiated master agreement and an account manager. Self checkout is not built for that.

You need proof others bought it

We publish no customer counts, case studies or logos. If your board wants that evidence before you sign, compare the customer pages on your shortlist and weigh the gap.

Price and fit, compared

The table keeps to facts that either company has published on its own site or that a public source reports. Where Secureframe has published nothing, we say so instead of estimating a number on its behalf.

The scope is SOC 2, Security only.² The Type 1 price buys the readiness questionnaire, the gap list your answers produce, policies written against your own stack, and the evidence package the examination runs on. An independent partner auditor reviews that package and issues the report. We never sign it.

Secureframe’s floor against our first year

Compare like with like. Our first year comes to $9,200 on the onboarding entry, or $11,200 with the Type 1 examination. Both figures carry the first Type 2 audit. The Secureframe starting price in the table is lower than either. It is also a different purchase: software on the entry plan, before any CPA firm is engaged. Their page does not say an examination is inside it, so the auditor fee is a second line you still need quoted. Add that line to their floor, then compare the total with our first year, not with our entry.

The first SOC 2 Type 2 audit is carried by the term. It starts once the 3-month observation window completes, with nothing to buy at that point. To pay the term up front instead, the first twelve months go on one invoice: $6,600 for the year, pay for eleven months, get twelve. After that, billing continues at $600 per month.

A later audit is arranged on request rather than priced on a page: our team negotiates with independent audit firms on your behalf, and the engagement is quoted before it begins. It is the one line here with no published number. The SOC 2 cost page breaks the whole cost into lines.

Where to go from here

Take the free assessment first. It costs you a quarter of an hour and tells you whether a self-serve route is realistic for your team, given the people and the hours you actually have this quarter. If it is, the prices are on our pricing page. If you are still weighing other vendors, see how we compare with Vanta and Drata.

Secureframe prints a starting figure for its entry plan, which puts it in SOC 2 software that publishes its pricing with the others that print one. The best SOC 2 software for startups compares nine platforms side by side, and how to leave a compliance platform cleanly covers what to take with you if you switch. SOC 2 without a compliance platform covers the route with none.