OneTrust Alternative for Third Party Due Diligence

OneTrust earns its place in many compliance stacks. On its website and product materials, OneTrust positions itself as a broad platform spanning privacy, security, and GRC use cases, with configurable workflows, assessments, and reporting across risk domains. For organizations running multiple governance programs under one roof, that breadth can be a real advantage: shared objects, centralized reporting, and a single place to manage different assessment types.

Teams searching “OneTrust alternative” are rarely saying OneTrust is “bad.” They’re usually reacting to friction in the third-party due diligence layer: the amount of configuration required to get a clean intake-to-approval flow, the operational burden of administering questionnaires at scale, or the desire for stronger “security proof” signals without building everything from scratch. In our experience, the breaking point often comes during high-volume vendor onboarding or when procurement, security, and compliance need a simpler shared process.

Below are credible alternatives for third party due diligence tooling, including where each fits, what it does well, what will frustrate you, and how to think about migration.

What OneTrust does well for third-party due diligence

Based on OneTrust’s own product positioning, teams typically choose OneTrust because it can:

• Support broad governance programs beyond third party risk, including privacy and GRC-adjacent workflows ¹.
• Offer configurable assessments and workflows, which matters if you need to model complex approval paths across Security, Legal, Privacy, and the business.
• Centralize risk data and reporting across different risk types, which helps in board reporting and audit readiness.

If your program is already standardized on OneTrust for privacy or GRC, keeping third party due diligence in the same ecosystem can reduce fragmentation.

Where OneTrust can fall short specifically for TPDD workflows

Common gaps we see in practice (and why teams look elsewhere):

1. Operational overhead for “everyday” TPDD: Highly configurable platforms can require significant admin time to keep intake forms, questionnaires, and workflows clean as the business changes.
2. Speed-to-value challenges: If your goal is to stand up a practical third party onboarding pipeline quickly, broad platforms can feel like a long implementation.
3. Security evidence expectations: Many TPDD programs increasingly want more than self-attestation. If your stakeholders expect faster paths to evidence (SOC 2 handling, security posture signals, structured remediation), you may want a tool that is more directly tuned to security due diligence execution.
4. User experience for non-compliance stakeholders: Procurement and business owners often want a short, guided intake and clear status. Complex GRC-like experiences can slow submissions and increase follow-ups.

None of these are unique to OneTrust; they’re common tradeoffs for broad platforms.

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Alternatives to OneTrust for Third Party Due Diligence (alphabetical)

AuditBoard

What it is ²: AuditBoard is a platform focused on audit, risk, and compliance workflows, including risk management capabilities that many teams extend into third-party risk processes.

Why teams pick it over OneTrust: AuditBoard tends to appeal to organizations that want strong alignment between internal audit, enterprise risk, and compliance workflows. If your TPDD program is tightly tied to audit testing and issue management, a platform built with audit teams in mind can reduce duplicative work.

Pros:

• Good fit if internal audit is a primary stakeholder and you want shared testing/controls concepts across programs.
• Can support structured workflows and reporting across risk and compliance functions ³.

Cons:

• If you want a purpose-built “vendor security review line,” you may still need to design a lot of the TPDD experience yourself.
• Non-audit users (procurement, business owners) may need more enablement to use it smoothly.

Daydream

What it is (Daydream): Daydream is focused on third-party due diligence execution: turning messy intake, evidence collection, and reviewer decisioning into a fast, auditable workflow.

Why OneTrust switchers consider it: Teams coming from OneTrust often tell us the pain isn’t “missing features,” it’s too many surfaces to maintain for routine vendor onboarding. Daydream’s approach is to narrow scope to what makes TPDD move: a clean intake, structured follow-ups, and reviewer-ready summaries that reduce back-and-forth. If OneTrust felt like you were administering a platform more than running a program, Daydream is designed to reduce that admin load while still producing an audit trail you can defend.

Pros:

• Designed around the day-to-day TPDD queue: intake → request evidence → review → decision → track follow-ups.
• Helps standardize how reviewers document rationale, so approvals don’t live in Slack threads and email.

Cons (real limitations):

• Narrower scope than full GRC/privacy suites like OneTrust; if you need privacy program management and third-party risk in one system, Daydream may not replace that footprint.
• Newer entrant with a smaller ecosystem than established platforms; some enterprise integration expectations may require more coordination or be unavailable out of the box.

ProcessUnity

What it is ⁴: ProcessUnity offers third-party risk management and related operational risk workflows, with tools geared toward onboarding, assessments, and risk lifecycle management.

Why teams pick it over OneTrust: If your primary need is a dedicated TPRM system rather than a broad privacy/GRC suite, ProcessUnity can be a more direct fit. Many programs value having third-party specific workflows and artifacts as first-class concepts.

Pros:

• Purpose-built for third-party risk programs, which can reduce the “build it yourself” feeling.
• Structured lifecycle management for third parties: onboarding, periodic reviews, and tracking.

Cons:

• You may still need to invest in configuration and taxonomy cleanup to get consistent outputs.
• If your organization wants one platform for privacy + GRC + TPRM, you’ll likely run multiple tools or accept integration work.

SecurityScorecard

What it is ⁵: SecurityScorecard provides security ratings and external signal monitoring for third parties, commonly used for continuous monitoring and risk discovery.

Why teams pick it over OneTrust: OneTrust can run assessments and workflows, but if your stakeholders are pushing for continuous monitoring signals to complement questionnaires, SecurityScorecard is often evaluated as an add-on or partial alternative.

Pros:

• Useful for ongoing visibility into third-party security posture signals without waiting for annual reassessments.
• Can help triage which third parties deserve deeper review based on external indicators ⁶.

Cons:

• Ratings don’t replace due diligence artifacts like SOC 2 reports, DPAs, or documented control narratives.
• Without a workflow system, you may still need another tool (or process) to manage intake, approvals, and evidence requests.

Whistic

What it is ⁷: Whistic focuses on vendor security reviews through security profiles, questionnaires, and sharing standardized security information between buyers and sellers.

Why teams pick it over OneTrust: If your bottleneck is the security questionnaire loop, Whistic can streamline the exchange and reuse of security responses, especially for SaaS-heavy ecosystems where vendors already maintain profiles.

Pros:

• Can reduce repetitive questionnaire work through reusable security profiles and structured Q&A ³.
• Helpful for scaling reviews with fewer analyst hours spent on basic follow-up.

Cons:

• If your TPDD program includes broader domains (financial viability, ESG, sanctions screening, subcontractor mapping), you may need supporting tools or processes.
• Some organizations still want deeper workflow governance (routing, approvals, exceptions) than a profile-centric approach provides.

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Feature comparison table (TPDD lens)

Dimension	AuditBoard	Daydream	ProcessUnity	SecurityScorecard	Whistic
Primary strength	Audit/risk/compliance workflow alignment	Fast TPDD execution workflow and reviewer decisioning	Dedicated TPRM lifecycle management	External security posture signals and monitoring	Streamlined security questionnaires and reusable profiles
Best for	Orgs where Internal Audit drives risk tooling choices	Teams leaving OneTrust due to admin overhead and wanting simpler onboarding	Mature TPRM programs that want a purpose-built system	Programs adding continuous monitoring to assessments	SaaS-heavy buyer programs trying to reduce questionnaire churn
Workflow depth (intake → approval)	Configurable, often designed by admins	Purpose-built TPDD flow with emphasis on speed and audit trail	Purpose-built TPRM workflows across lifecycle	Limited; typically complements a workflow tool	Partial; strong for security exchange, less for enterprise routing
Evidence handling	Supports attaching and tracking artifacts in workflows	Centered on collecting, organizing, and reviewing vendor-provided evidence	Supports assessment artifacts and documentation	Focuses on externally observable signals vs. vendor-provided evidence	Focuses on structured questionnaire responses and shared profiles
Continuous monitoring	Depends on configuration and integrations	Program-dependent; not positioned as a ratings network	Program-dependent; may integrate with monitoring sources	Core capability	Not primarily a ratings/monitoring product
Fit if you need privacy + TPRM in one platform	Possible, depending on modules and design	Typically not; narrower than suites	Usually separate from privacy program tooling	No	No
Implementation lift	Moderate to high if you’re designing workflows broadly	Lower if you want a focused TPDD process	Moderate; purpose-built but still needs program design	Lower for monitoring deployment; still need process integration	Lower for questionnaire streamlining; still need governance processes

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Decision criteria: when to choose each (team size, maturity, regulatory context)

Use this as a practical selector:

• Choose AuditBoard if internal audit and controls testing are central to your risk operating model, and you want TPDD to align with audit methodologies and reporting.
• Choose Daydream if you’re leaving OneTrust because third-party onboarding feels overbuilt. Daydream fits teams that want a crisp intake-to-decision pipeline, consistent reviewer rationale, and less platform administration.
• Choose ProcessUnity if you want a tool that is explicitly designed for third-party risk lifecycle management and you’re prepared to invest in standardizing inherent risk tiers, assessment packs, and review cadence.
• Choose SecurityScorecard if your gaps are around continuous monitoring signals, third-party discovery, and ongoing posture visibility. Many teams pair it with a workflow system rather than replacing one.
• Choose Whistic if security questionnaires are the pain point and you want vendors to reuse structured responses rather than starting from scratch for each customer request.

Regulatory alignment: If you operate in heavily examined environments, map your process to guidance like OCC 2013-29 (Third-Party Relationships: Risk Management Guidance) and EBA Guidelines on outsourcing arrangements (EBA/GL/2019/02). Tools won’t “make you compliant,” but your workflow should clearly show planning, due diligence, contracting controls, ongoing monitoring, and exit.

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Migration considerations and switching costs (what actually takes time)

1. Inventory and tiering cleanup: Before migrating, reconcile your third party list, ownership, inherent risk tiers, and review frequencies. Most programs discover duplicates and inconsistent tiers.
2. Questionnaire rationalization: Export current questionnaires and cut questions that nobody uses in decisions. One common mistake is migrating every legacy question “just in case.”
3. Evidence library and retention: Decide what to migrate vs. archive. Auditors usually care about decisions and supporting evidence for in-scope periods, not every historical attachment.
4. Workflow mapping: Document current routing rules (Security, Privacy, Legal, Finance) and exception handling. Build the “happy path” first, then add edge cases.
5. Parallel run: For 30–60 days, run new intakes in the new system while closing old cases in OneTrust. This reduces disruption and forces process clarity.

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Practitioner-focused TPDD checklist (works regardless of tool)

• Define inherent risk inputs (data sensitivity, access type, criticality, concentration risk).
• Require minimum evidence by tier (e.g., SOC 2 Type II, pen test summary, ISO certificate, BCP/DR artifacts) based on your policy.
• Standardize review outcomes: approve, approve with conditions, reject, exception. Track conditions with owners and due dates.
• Keep an audit-ready rationale: who approved, why, and what compensating controls were accepted.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is OneTrust a bad choice for third-party due diligence?

No. OneTrust is respected for broad governance and configurable assessments. Teams usually look for alternatives because they want a simpler TPDD operating workflow or faster time-to-value, not because OneTrust lacks credibility.

Can security ratings tools replace vendor questionnaires?

Usually no. Ratings can add continuous signals, but most programs still need vendor-provided artifacts and contractual assurances. Many teams use ratings to prioritize which third parties need deeper review.

What’s the biggest hidden cost in switching from OneTrust?

Questionnaire and workflow rework. Exporting data is typically possible, but getting to a clean, right-sized intake and assessment set takes stakeholder time.

Should we buy a TPRM tool or stay inside an all-in-one GRC suite?

If you run multiple governance programs (privacy, internal controls, enterprise risk) in one place, a suite can reduce tool sprawl. If TPDD throughput and analyst efficiency are the priority, a purpose-built TPRM/TPDD tool is often easier to operate.

How do we evaluate tools without running a 6-month RFP?

Pick 2–3 real third parties (one low-risk SaaS, one high-risk processor, one critical provider) and run them through each tool’s workflow. Time the steps: intake completion, evidence requests, reviewer decisioning, and reporting output.

Footnotes

1. OneTrust product pages

2. AuditBoard’s website

3. product materials

4. ProcessUnity’s website

5. SecurityScorecard’s website

6. product positioning

7. Whistic’s website