Vanta, Drata, Secureframe, and Strike Graph are excellent platforms — for funded SaaS startups with technical teams. If you run a restaurant, retail group, or hospitality business, they were never built for you. PCINexus was.
Vanta is a well-built product. Drata has excellent automation. Secureframe has a clean workflow. But every one of them was designed for cloud-native software companies with GitHub repositories, AWS infrastructure, and a DevOps team. Their integrations, their onboarding, their pricing — all of it assumes a technical team and a venture-funded budget. If you're a multi-location restaurant group, a regional retailer, or a small hospitality operator, you are not their target customer. Their own pricing pages make that clear. PCINexus was built specifically for the businesses they left behind.
Every platform optimizes for a specific customer. When the customer isn't you, the tool fights you at every turn.
Excellent for SOC 2 and ISO 27001 automation for software companies. PCI DSS support exists but is secondary to their core use case. Integrations are GitHub, AWS, GCP, Okta, and Jira — the standard cloud-native stack.
Developer-first platform with daily automated tests built into CI/CD pipelines. Audit Hub brings auditors into the platform. Designed for companies that ship software and need continuous compliance evidence from their code deployments.
Pre-configured workflows and process libraries for companies scaling their compliance program. Strong SOC 2, ISO, and HIPAA support. PCI DSS available but the platform is optimized for companies with dedicated security staff.
Automatically maps evidence across SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and PCI DSS simultaneously. Best for software companies that need to satisfy multiple compliance frameworks from a single evidence set.
Highly customizable workflows for teams that want to tailor every aspect of their compliance program. Strong fit for engineering-led organizations that want control over how compliance integrates with their sprint cycles.
The only compliance platform designed from the ground up for multi-location physical merchants — restaurants, retailers, hospitality groups, and service businesses. No cloud infrastructure assumed. No DevOps team required. Integrates with the security tools your business actually uses, including free and open-source tools first. Full SAQ workflow, year-round compliance calendar, AI evidence review, findings tracker, and Active Directory sync — all in one platform, at a price designed for real business margins.
Starter plan · 6-month compliance cycle · No technical team required · Free setup period — pay only when you go live.
Start Free Setup → ✦ Live DemoAn honest comparison across the criteria that matter most for a physical merchant compliance program.
| Criteria | PCI Nexus | Vanta | Drata | Secureframe | Strike Graph |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Built for physical merchants | ✓ Yes | ✗ No | ✗ No | ✗ No | ✗ No |
| SAQ Wizard (under 2 min) | ✓ Yes | Partial | Partial | Partial | ✓ Yes |
| Multi-location physical management | ✓ Yes | ✗ No | ✗ No | ✗ No | ✗ No |
| Year-round compliance calendar | ✓ Yes | Basic | Basic | Basic | Basic |
| AI evidence review (per upload) | ✓ Yes | AI agent (vendor reviews) | ✗ No | ✗ No | ✗ No |
| PCI DSS AI chat assistant | ✓ Yes — 24/7 | ✗ No | ✗ No | ✗ No | ✗ No |
| Free / open-source tool integrations | ✓ Yes — first priority | ✗ No | ✗ No | ✗ No | ✗ No |
| Active Directory / on-prem sync | ✓ Yes | Okta / cloud IdP only | Okta / cloud IdP only | Cloud IdP only | Limited |
| Findings & remediation tracker | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Annual cycle management | ✓ Yes — full archive | Partial | Partial | Partial | Partial |
| Requires DevOps / cloud infrastructure | ✓ Not required | Cloud-native assumed | Required | Cloud-native assumed | Mostly |
| Starting price per month | $125 / mo | $499+ / mo | $499+ / mo | $499+ / mo | Contact Sales |
| Free setup / no card to start | ✓ Yes | Trial only | Trial only | Trial only | ✗ No |
Pricing and feature availability based on publicly available information as of 2026. All trademarks are property of their respective owners.
Before choosing any compliance platform, the right questions to ask aren't about features — they're about fit.
Most of the major platforms integrate with cloud infrastructure — AWS, GCP, Azure, GitHub, Okta. If your security stack is Microsoft Defender, an on-premises firewall, Active Directory, and maybe a free vulnerability scanner, most platforms will give you partial coverage at best.
PCINexus integrates with the tools physical businesses actually run — including free and open-source tools first.
Drata and Sprinto are built for engineering teams. The onboarding assumes you have a DevOps engineer who can configure integrations, set up API tokens, and review automated test results.
PCINexus was built for an operations manager or business owner — someone who understands their business environment but doesn't have a CS degree. Every workflow is designed with that user in mind.
Compliance is annual. Your evidence from last year is the baseline your auditor will compare against this year. Most platforms treat each compliance cycle as a fresh start.
PCINexus preserves every prior compliance cycle as a full read-only archive — accessible forever, comparable year over year. Your compliance history is an asset. We treat it like one.
A $499/month compliance platform costs $5,988 per year before any add-ons, professional services, or additional seat fees. For a VC-funded startup treating compliance as a sales requirement, that's a line item. For an independent restaurant group or regional retailer, that's a real budget decision.
PCINexus Starter is $125/month — $750 for a full six-month compliance cycle. That's the price we set deliberately, because it's the price that makes sense for the businesses we were built to serve.
See the full platform running live — a real multi-location compliance workflow, no login required.