Vanta / Drata
$10,000–$18,000/yr
Excellent platforms once you have a security team to drive them. Their integrations and pricing assume you're at 50+ people, not closing your first enterprise deal at 12.
01Audit-ready SaaS
SOC 2 without the
five-figure platform tax.
Audit-ready in weeks. Scoped controls, an evidence vault, policy templates, and a live readiness dashboard. For a fraction of what enterprise platforms cost.
No credit card · Type 1 ready in a day · Cancel anytime
certn.app / dashboard
Audit readiness
74%
Almost there
By category
View all →- Security23/2592%
- Availability7/978%
- Confidentiality5/864%
- Privacy3/741%
Next up
3 left- CC6.7Restrict to authorized users
- A1.2Backup recovery testing
- PI3.1Input validation
Audit package
Cover sheet · controls index · 10 policies · evidence by control
Built around the AICPA Trust Services Criteria
SecurityAvailabilityConfidentialityProcessing IntegrityPrivacy
02What founders are choosing now
Three options. None built for you.
Each of these works for the company it was built for. The problem is the gap between them, where most early-stage SaaS teams find themselves on day one of a SOC 2 conversation.
Compliance consultant
$10,000–$30,000
A real human who walks you through every step. The right call if you have the budget. Hard to justify pre-Series A when runway is measured in months.
Google Sheets
Free, until something falls through
What most small teams reach for first. The risk lives in what you don't know to track. Miss one quarterly access review and the 12-month observation window resets.
03Why we built it this way
One job. Done well.
SOC 2 platforms got expensive because they kept adding things: infrastructure monitors, employee training, vendor risk modules, AI policy generators. Each new layer brings another price tier, plus another integration that takes weeks to wire up.
Certn does the opposite. Four jobs, focused: scope your controls, hold your evidence, generate your policies, surface your readiness. No infrastructure access. No implementation engineer. No 90-day rollout.
The benefit isn’t only the price. It’s that you can sign up at 9am and have a real picture of your audit readiness by lunch.
Where focus shows up
Fast, self-serve setup
No infrastructure access required. You sign up, scope your audit, and start uploading evidence the same day.
Clean evidence over automation
Auditors review the same artifacts whether they're collected by hand or by integration. Certn keeps them organized and current.
Predictable policy language
Ten templates with sensible defaults, in language auditors expect. No generative copy to verify line by line.
Boundaries that respect yours
Employee training and vendor management stay wherever they already live. Certn captures the records an audit asks for, and stops there.
04 · Product
Everything to pass.
Nothing extra.
Scoping
A 6-question intake that does the hard part for you.
SOC 2 isn't a single checklist. It's five Trust Services Criteria, and most companies only need one or two. The intake asks six plain-English questions about how you store, process, and serve customer data, then trims the universe of about 100 controls down to the 25 to 40 that actually apply to you.
- Plain-English questions, no security jargon
- Re-scope anytime as your business evolves
- Justification trail for every control we exclude
Question 4 of 667%
Does your service compute outputs that customers act on?
Applies whenever customers depend on the accuracy of your system’s calculations or processed data.
Yes
No
+ Adds 5 Processing Integrity controls covering input validation and output accuracy.
Your answers save automatically · Use ← → to navigate
Evidence
A vault for screenshots, exports, and PDFs.
Every control has its own page with examples of what auditors expect to see. Drag in a screenshot of your access review, a CSV of terminated employees, or a PDF of your pen test results. Each file is tagged to its control and timestamped, with freshness reflected in your dashboard as you upload.
- Drag-and-drop file uploads
- Per-control evidence organized by category
- One-click export of the full evidence package
Security · CC
Common Criteria
- CC6.1Logical access provisioning3 files
- CC6.2Removing access on termination2 files
- CC6.7Restrict to authorized usersAdd →
- CC7.1Vulnerability scanning1 file
- CC7.2Monitoring & alertingAdd →
Policies
Ten fill-in-the-blank policies with sensible defaults.
Acceptable Use, Incident Response, Access Control, Data Retention, Password, Vendor Management, Business Continuity, Vulnerability Management, Change Management, and Risk Assessment. Each one is a guided form. Fill in the blanks, preview the finished doc, and download as PDF.
- Live preview as you type
- Per-policy or collated PDF export
- Reviewed against AICPA Trust Services Criteria
Policies
3of10 finalized
- Acceptable Use Policy
- Access Control Policy
- Data Retention Policy5/8 filled
- Incident Response Plan~25 min
- Password Policy
- Vendor Management Policy~20 min
05How it works
From signup to audit, in four steps.
01
Sign up & scope
Create an account and answer six questions. Takes about three minutes.
02
Upload evidence
Drop screenshots, configs, or PDFs into each control. We tell you exactly what auditors look for.
03
Generate policies
Fill in the blanks, preview the finished policy, and export the full package as PDF.
04
Hand off to your auditor
Download a single audit package with controls, evidence, and policies, formatted the way auditors expect.
06Pricing
Honest, founder-friendly pricing.
Type 1
$49one-time
Audit-ready zip: cover sheet, controls and evidence index, ten policies as individual PDFs, and your evidence files organized into per-control folders. The structure auditors expect.
Coming soon
Type 2
$99/ month
Continuous compliance monitoring across the full 12-month observation window. Quarterly evidence reviews, deadline reminders, and freshness alerts. In active development — join the waitlist for early access.
07 · About Certn
Built for the gap between
Vanta and a spreadsheet.
Compliance tooling grew up around the largest customers. The 200-person companies with dedicated security teams and budget for a $15,000-per-year platform. Certn is for everyone else.
Certn was built after talking to founders going through their first SOC 2 audit at small companies. The pattern was consistent: a 12-person SaaS gets asked for SOC 2 by an enterprise customer, looks at Vanta, looks at the price, and looks at the integration requirements. They walk away and try to do it in spreadsheets. Six months later, evidence is scattered across three Notion pages and four Google Drives.
Certn fills that gap with one focused product. No infrastructure monitor, no training system, no vendor risk tracker. Four things that actually get a small team through an audit: scope, evidence, policies, readiness.
01
Compliance should be a tool, not a tax.
The big platforms charge more than most early-stage companies pay their first engineer because they're trying to be infrastructure monitor, training system, and vendor risk tracker all at once. We deliberately build only the four parts a small team actually needs.
02
Auditors want clarity, not cleverness.
Every feature is judged on one question: does it make the auditor's job easier? If yes, it earns a spot in the product. If not, it doesn't.
03
Founders should never read a 200-page framework doc.
You shouldn't need to learn the AICPA Trust Services Criteria to pass a SOC 2. Certn translates the framework into questions a non-security person can answer in an afternoon.
08FAQ
Common questions.
Do I actually need SOC 2?+
If enterprise customers are starting to ask for it, or if you're losing deals over a security questionnaire, then yes. SOC 2 is the de-facto trust signal for B2B SaaS in North America.
Will this actually pass an audit?+
Our controls and policies follow the AICPA Trust Services Criteria. You still hire a CPA firm for the audit itself. Certn gets you 90% of the way there so the audit is short and inexpensive.
Is the audit itself included?+
No. The actual SOC 2 audit is performed by a CPA firm. Certn gets you 90% of the way there so the audit is short, smooth, and inexpensive. Most customers spend $7,000 to $20,000 with their auditor depending on whether they pursue Type 1 or Type 2.
How is this different from Vanta or Drata?+
Vanta and Drata are full compliance platforms: infrastructure monitors, training systems, vendor risk modules, the works. That's why they cost $10,000+ a year and need an implementation engineer to deploy. Certn is deliberately smaller. Scope, evidence, policies, readiness. The four pieces a small team needs to walk into an audit ready, with nothing extra to set up or pay for.
How can you do SOC 2 without integrations?+
Most SOC 2 controls aren't automated anyway. They're access reviews, incident postmortems, vendor lists, and training records, all handled by hand regardless of the tool you use. The pieces an integration could automate, like an access list snapshot, you upload as a CSV or screenshot. That trades a few minutes a quarter for skipping the platform fee, the IAM grants, and the implementation rollout.
When does Type 2 launch?+
Type 2 (the continuous-compliance subscription for the 12-month observation window) is in active development. Join the waitlist and we'll email you the moment it's live, with an early-access discount for waitlist members.
Can I switch between plans?+
Once Type 2 launches, you'll be able to upgrade from Type 1 anytime and we'll credit what you already paid. For now, Type 1 is the only paid plan available.
Can I cancel anytime?+
Type 1 is a one-time purchase, so there's nothing to cancel. When Type 2 launches, it'll be month-to-month with no contracts — cancel anytime. Either way, you can export everything you've uploaded whenever you want.
09 · Talk to us
Let’s talk.
Curious whether Certn fits your team? Want a demo? Partnership or press question? A real human reads every message.
Prefer email over the form? Reach us directly. Real person, usually same-day.
hello@certn.app
Stop losing deals over
security questionnaires.
Sign up free, complete the 6-question scope, and see your full readiness picture in under five minutes.