Most compliance platforms are SaaS-only: convenient, but your security evidence lives in someone else's cloud. Self-hosting flips that. Here's the honest trade-off, and how to decide.
Two models, one goal
Both approaches automate the same thing — continuous evidence, policies, and auditor-ready reports. The difference is where your data lives and who operates the platform.
| SaaS-only | Self-hosted | |
|---|---|---|
| Where evidence lives | Vendor's cloud | Your infrastructure |
| Data residency | Vendor default (often US) | Your choice of region |
| Who runs it | The vendor | You (or a managed instance) |
| Lock-in | Often per-seat | You own the deployment |
| Setup effort | Lowest | You provide infrastructure |
Where SaaS wins
SaaS is the fastest to start — nothing to deploy, the vendor handles uptime and updates. For a small team with no strict data-residency requirement, that convenience is real.
Where self-hosting wins
- Regulated & sovereign teams. Healthcare (PHI), EU (GDPR/NIS2/DORA), govtech and defense often can't put evidence in a third-party US cloud. Self-hosting keeps it in-boundary.
- Data residency you control. You decide exactly which region holds your data.
- No vendor lock-in. You own the deployment and your data; leaving isn't a hostage negotiation.
- Fewer subprocessors. When you host it, most deployments have no third-party data processor at all.
You don't have to pick a sideThe best answer is often a hybrid: self-host for maximum control, or choose a sovereign-managed option where the platform is run for you but still single-tenant, in your region, with residency you control. That's the convenience of SaaS without giving up your boundary.
How to decide
- Strict residency / regulated data → self-hosted (or sovereign-managed).
- Small team, no residency constraint, want zero ops → managed.
- Want to avoid per-seat lock-in and keep evidence in-boundary → either self-hosted or sovereign-managed.
General guidance to help you compare deployment models. Your specific regulatory obligations should be confirmed with your compliance and legal teams.