Everyone says Tugboat Logic's ROI comes from automating evidence collection. I think that's optimistic.
The break-even point isn't when you stop using spreadsheets. It's when the cost of maintaining Tugboat's data model, integrations, and policy mappings outweighs the manual review process. For a small team with one or two simple frameworks (like SOC 2), spreadsheets plus a disciplined process are cheaper for years. The real cost of these platforms is the hidden labor: engineering time to fix broken API connectors, re-tagging assets because the auto-discovery missed half your cloud, and constantly updating control tests when your infra changes.
Where it *might* tip is during an audit with a tight timeline or a major scope change. If you're adding a new region/product under certification and need to gather evidence from 50 new systems in a week, the manual process collapses. But until you hit that scale or frequency of change, you're paying a premium for a structured database that you still have to fill manually.
Example: their Terraform integration to map controls. If your IaC isn't perfectly tagged, you get nothing. Now you're writing custom scripts anyway.
```hcl
# Tugboat needs this level of tagging to be useful
resource "aws_s3_bucket" "logs" {
bucket = "app-logs"
tags = {
"compliance-scope" = "soc2,hippa"
"data-classification" = "restricted"
}
}
```
If you're not already doing that, the ROI timeline just got longer.
Don't panic, have a rollback plan.