The True Cost of Compliance: DIY vs Consultant vs Platform (2026)

The compliance cost problem

Every growing company hits the same inflection point: a customer, investor, or regulation requires you to demonstrate compliance with a recognized framework — ISO 27001, SOC 2, GDPR, or something similar. The question immediately becomes: how do we do this, and what will it cost?

The answer depends on which approach you take. The market presents three broad options: do it yourself with spreadsheets and documents, hire a consultant to guide or lead the process, or use a compliance platform that provides structure, automation, and tooling.

Each approach has its place. The mistake most companies make is choosing based on sticker price alone, without accounting for the hidden costs of staff time, rework, and delayed certification. This guide provides a realistic comparison across all three approaches, with actual cost ranges, timelines, and the tradeoffs you need to understand before committing.

Approach 1: DIY with spreadsheets

What this looks like

You assign someone internally — often a head of engineering, a security-minded developer, or an operations lead — to manage compliance. They read the standard, create spreadsheets to track controls, draft policies in Google Docs or Confluence, and collect evidence manually. Everything lives in shared drives, spreadsheet tabs, and document folders.

Cost breakdown

Item	Cost	Notes
Certification audit (ISO 27001)	8,000 - 20,000 EUR	Still required regardless of approach
SOC 2 audit (Type II)	15,000 - 40,000 EUR	Auditor fees vary by scope
Internal staff time (project lead)	30,000 - 60,000 EUR	400-800 hours over 6-18 months, valued at opportunity cost
Internal staff time (contributors)	10,000 - 25,000 EUR	Engineering, HR, legal, and other teams
Security tools (if not already in place)	3,000 - 15,000 EUR	Vulnerability scanning, logging, MFA, etc.
Total estimated cost	66,000 - 160,000 EUR	Heavily weighted toward staff time

Timeline

Typical DIY timelines range from 6 to 18 months for initial certification. The wide range reflects the reality that this work competes with product development, customer support, and other priorities. Without a dedicated compliance function, the project often stalls when the internal champion gets pulled into other work.

Pros

• Lowest direct spend. No consultant fees, no platform subscription. The only hard costs are the audit itself and any security tooling you need to purchase.
• Deep internal knowledge. The person running the project develops a thorough understanding of your systems, risks, and controls.
• Full control. You decide the pace, the priorities, and the approach without external dependencies.

Cons

• Massive time investment. The internal staff time is the hidden cost that makes DIY far more expensive than it appears. A senior engineer spending 500 hours on compliance is 500 hours not spent on the product.
• Steep learning curve. Unless you’ve done this before, you’ll spend significant time figuring out what the standard actually requires, what evidence auditors expect, and how to structure your documentation. The standard is written for auditors, not practitioners.
• Spreadsheet chaos. Tracking dozens of controls, evidence items, risk assessments, and action items across spreadsheets becomes unmanageable. Version control breaks down. Evidence becomes scattered. Reporting to leadership is manual and painful.
• Higher risk of audit findings. Without experienced guidance, teams commonly misinterpret requirements, miss key controls, or produce insufficient evidence. Audit findings mean additional costs for remediation and re-assessment.
• Sustainability problems. A spreadsheet-based system requires constant manual maintenance. When the person who built it leaves, institutional knowledge walks out the door.

Best for

Very early-stage companies (under 15 employees) with an experienced security or compliance person on staff, limited budget, and no urgent deadline.

Approach 2: Hiring a consultant

What this looks like

You engage a consulting firm or independent consultant specializing in information security and compliance. They conduct a gap analysis, define a project plan, draft policies and procedures, guide control implementation, and prepare you for the certification audit. Depending on the engagement, they may do most of the work or serve in an advisory capacity while your team executes.

Cost breakdown

Item	Cost	Notes
Certification audit (ISO 27001)	8,000 - 20,000 EUR	Same as DIY
SOC 2 audit (Type II)	15,000 - 40,000 EUR	Same as DIY
Consultant fees	15,000 - 60,000 EUR	Varies by engagement scope and firm
Internal staff time (reduced)	15,000 - 35,000 EUR	Less than DIY because consultant carries much of the workload
Security tools	3,000 - 15,000 EUR	Same as DIY
Total estimated cost	56,000 - 170,000 EUR	Consultant fee offset by reduced internal time

Timeline

Consultant-led projects typically complete in 3 to 9 months for initial certification. The accelerated timeline comes from the consultant’s experience — they know exactly what’s required, what evidence auditors want, and how to structure documentation efficiently.

Pros

• Expert guidance. A good consultant has done this dozens of times. They know the shortcuts, the common pitfalls, and what auditors actually care about. This dramatically reduces wasted effort.
• Faster timeline. Experience translates directly to speed. Consultants can often cut 3 to 6 months off the timeline compared to DIY.
• Higher first-pass success rate. Companies working with experienced consultants are significantly more likely to achieve certification without major findings on their first audit.
• Reduced internal burden. The consultant handles the bulk of documentation, gap analysis, and audit preparation. Your team provides input and implements controls, but the project management load is shared.

Cons

• Expensive. Consultant fees add 15,000 to 60,000 euros to the project cost. For a high-touch engagement with a Big 4 advisory firm, costs can exceed 100,000 euros.
• Quality varies enormously. The compliance consulting market ranges from former Big 4 partners who genuinely know their material to individuals who recycled the same generic template pack across every client. Bad consultants deliver cookie-cutter policies that don’t reflect your actual operations, leaving you with documentation that looks compliant but breaks down under audit scrutiny.
• Knowledge doesn’t stay in-house. When the consultant’s engagement ends, the expertise they brought leaves with them. If your team didn’t deeply engage in the process, you’ll struggle to maintain the ISMS independently.
• Potential misalignment. A consultant optimizes for passing the audit. Your organization needs controls that actually work in practice. These goals sometimes diverge, resulting in policies that are technically compliant but nobody follows.
• Ongoing dependency. Many consulting relationships create a recurring dependency — you need the consultant again for surveillance audits, risk assessment updates, and policy reviews. This ongoing cost is often not budgeted upfront.

Best for

Companies without in-house security or compliance expertise, those with a firm deadline (customer requirement, funding round), and organizations where the certification is strategically important enough to justify the premium.

Approach 3: Using a compliance platform

What this looks like

You subscribe to a compliance management platform that provides a structured workflow for achieving and maintaining certification. These platforms typically include pre-built control frameworks, evidence collection (often automated through integrations with cloud providers and SaaS tools), risk assessment tools, policy templates, and audit-ready reports.

The market has expanded significantly since 2022, with platforms ranging from full-service enterprise tools to lightweight, affordable options.

Cost breakdown

Item	Cost	Notes
Certification audit (ISO 27001)	8,000 - 20,000 EUR	Same as other approaches
SOC 2 audit (Type II)	15,000 - 40,000 EUR	Same; some platforms have auditor partnerships
Platform subscription	0 - 50,000 EUR/year	Enormous range; see breakdown below
Internal staff time (reduced)	15,000 - 35,000 EUR	Structure and guidance reduce learning curve
Security tools	0 - 10,000 EUR	Some overlap with platform features
Total estimated cost	38,000 - 155,000 EUR	Depends heavily on platform choice

Platform pricing landscape

The compliance platform market has a wide pricing spectrum:

Tier	Examples	Annual cost	What you get
Premium enterprise	Vanta, Drata	20,000 - 50,000+ EUR/year	Deep automation, cloud integrations, continuous monitoring, auditor marketplace
Mid-market	Sprinto, Secureframe, Scrut	10,000 - 25,000 EUR/year	Good automation, integrations, workflow management
Affordable / emerging	Various newer entrants	3,000 - 10,000 EUR/year	Structured workflows, templates, basic integrations
Free / freemium	AuditFront (free tier)	0 - 3,000 EUR/year	Structured templates, self-assessment, gap analysis

The premium platforms (Vanta, Drata, and similar) charge 20,000 to 50,000+ euros per year. For a well-funded Series B startup, that cost is reasonable relative to the time savings from automated evidence collection. For a bootstrapped 20-person company, it’s a difficult pill to swallow — especially as an ongoing annual commitment.

Timeline

Platform-assisted projects typically complete in 3 to 12 months, depending on the platform’s automation depth and the company’s starting maturity. Platforms with deep cloud integrations can significantly accelerate evidence collection, but the core work of risk assessment, policy development, and control implementation still requires human judgment and effort.

Pros

• Structure from day one. Platforms provide a clear path through the framework — what’s required, what evidence is needed, and what’s done vs. outstanding. This eliminates the “where do I start?” problem that plagues DIY approaches.
• Automation. Premium platforms automatically pull evidence from AWS, Azure, GCP, GitHub, Okta, and dozens of other tools. This eliminates hours of manual screenshot collection and keeps evidence current.
• Continuous compliance. Unlike a one-time consultant engagement or a static spreadsheet, platforms maintain a living view of your compliance status. Drift is detected automatically rather than discovered during the next audit.
• Scalable. Once set up, maintaining compliance for surveillance audits and adding new frameworks is significantly less effort than starting from scratch each time.
• Knowledge stays in-house. The platform captures institutional knowledge about controls, evidence, and decisions. When team members change, context is preserved.

Cons

• Ongoing subscription cost. Unlike a one-time consultant fee, platform costs recur annually. Over a three-year certification cycle, a premium platform costs 60,000 to 150,000 euros in subscription fees alone.
• Automation is not a substitute for understanding. Platforms can collect evidence and track controls, but they cannot assess whether your risk treatment is appropriate, whether your policies are meaningful, or whether your controls actually work. You still need someone who understands information security.
• Vendor lock-in. Migrating away from a compliance platform is painful. Your evidence, risk assessments, and control mappings are stored in the vendor’s system. If pricing increases significantly (which has happened with several platforms), switching costs are high.
• Feature overlap with existing tools. If you already have a GRC tool, a ticketing system, and a document management platform, a compliance platform may duplicate functionality.
• Premium pricing for essential features. Some platforms gate critical features (custom frameworks, additional integrations, advanced reporting) behind higher-tier pricing. The entry price often doesn’t include everything you’ll need.

Best for

Companies that want structured compliance management without full consultant dependency, organizations managing multiple frameworks simultaneously, and teams that value the ongoing monitoring and audit readiness that platforms provide.

Head-to-head comparison

Factor	DIY	Consultant	Platform
Direct cost (Year 1)	10,000 - 35,000 EUR	26,000 - 95,000 EUR	0 - 50,000 EUR
Internal time cost	40,000 - 85,000 EUR	15,000 - 35,000 EUR	15,000 - 35,000 EUR
Total Year 1 cost	50,000 - 120,000 EUR	41,000 - 130,000 EUR	15,000 - 85,000 EUR
Timeline to certification	6-18 months	3-9 months	3-12 months
Audit pass rate (first attempt)	Moderate	High	Moderate-High
Ongoing annual cost	Staff time only	Staff time + retainer	Subscription + staff time
Knowledge retention	High (if person stays)	Low	Medium-High
Scalability to new frameworks	Low	Medium	High

Note: “Direct cost” excludes audit fees, which are roughly the same regardless of approach. Internal time costs are estimated at 60-80 EUR/hour opportunity cost.

When each approach makes sense

Choose DIY when:

• You have a qualified security or compliance professional on staff
• Your budget is extremely constrained and time is flexible
• You have a small scope (under 30 employees, single product)
• You want maximum control over the process
• You’re pursuing a single framework and don’t anticipate managing multiple certifications

Choose a consultant when:

• You have no in-house compliance expertise
• You have a hard deadline (customer requirement, funding milestone)
• The certification is strategically critical (enterprise deal, M&A preparation)
• You can afford the premium and want the highest first-attempt success rate
• You have complex scope (multiple locations, regulated industry, complex infrastructure)

Choose a platform when:

• You want structured guidance without full consultant cost
• You plan to manage compliance ongoing, not as a one-time project
• You need to support multiple frameworks (ISO 27001 + SOC 2 + GDPR)
• You value continuous monitoring over point-in-time assessments
• You have a team that can drive the process with guidance but not hand-holding

The hybrid approach

Many companies achieve the best results by combining approaches. Common patterns include:

• Platform + targeted consultant support: Use a platform for structure and day-to-day management, bring in a consultant for the risk assessment and audit preparation
• DIY start + platform for scale: Begin with spreadsheets to understand the framework, then migrate to a platform when the scope grows
• Consultant for first certification + platform for ongoing: Let a consultant get you through the initial audit, then use a platform to maintain compliance through surveillance cycles

Why AuditFront is different

Most compliance platforms position themselves at the premium end of the market — 20,000+ euros per year — because their business model is built on well-funded startups preparing for enterprise sales. That leaves a gap for the vast majority of companies: those that need structure and guidance but cannot justify five-figure annual platform fees.

AuditFront bridges this gap. Our self-assessment templates provide the structured framework that makes DIY actually feasible — covering ISO 27001, SOC 2, GDPR, NIS2, and tech due diligence with practical, actionable guidance for every control.

You get:

• Structured assessments that map to every requirement in the framework, with clear guidance on what each control means in practice
• Gap analysis that shows exactly where you stand and what needs work
• Progress tracking across teams and frameworks, without spreadsheet chaos
• Board-ready reports that communicate compliance status to leadership and stakeholders
• Free entry point — start with a free assessment and upgrade only when you need additional capabilities

The philosophy is simple: compliance should be accessible to every company, not just those with six-figure budgets. Whether you’re a 10-person startup preparing for your first customer security questionnaire or a 200-person company managing multiple certifications, you should have access to structured, practical compliance tools.

Making the decision

The right compliance approach depends on your specific circumstances — team expertise, budget, timeline, and strategic importance. Here’s a quick decision framework:

1. What’s your budget? If you have less than 30,000 euros in direct budget (excluding audit fees), you’re looking at DIY or a free/affordable platform. If you have 50,000+ euros, all options are on the table.

2. What’s your timeline? If you need certification in under 6 months, a consultant or a well-structured platform is the safest path. DIY rarely meets tight deadlines.

3. Do you have in-house expertise? If someone on your team has compliance experience, a platform provides structure without redundant advisory. If not, consultant support for at least the initial certification is worth serious consideration.

4. How many frameworks? If you’re managing ISO 27001, SOC 2, and GDPR simultaneously, a platform that handles cross-framework mapping saves enormous duplication of effort.

5. Is this a one-time project or ongoing? If you view compliance as a continuous function (as it should be), invest in tools that support ongoing management. If you’re optimizing for a single certification event, a consultant may deliver the fastest ROI.

Get started

Whatever approach you choose, the worst decision is no decision. Every month of delay is a month of customer deals stalled by security questionnaires, a month of risk exposure, and a month closer to a deadline that isn’t moving.

AuditFront gives you a free starting point. Run a self-assessment against any major framework, see where you stand, and make an informed decision about what comes next — whether that’s continuing with AuditFront, bringing in a consultant, or investing in a premium platform.

Start your free compliance assessment and take the first step today.