Pricing
subscription
Best For
MSPs providing managed BDR services who need reliable instant recovery for small business clients
Rating
8.8/10
Last Updated
Mar 2026
TL;DR
Datto is the MSP industry's favorite BDR vendor. The SIRIS and ALTO appliances combine local backup with cloud replication, and the instant virtualization feature genuinely saves businesses during outages. Kaseya's acquisition raised some concerns, but the product quality hasn't dropped. Expensive compared to DIY alternatives, but MSPs pay for the reliability and the support.
What is Datto?
The BDR Platform That MSPs Actually Trust
Datto built its business on a simple promise: when disaster strikes, your clients' businesses keep running. The company was acquired by Kaseya in 2022 for $6.2 billion, which caused some hand-wringing in the MSP community. Two years later, the product remains strong. Over 17,000 MSPs worldwide use Datto to protect their clients' data.
The hardware-software combination is what makes Datto work. SIRIS appliances sit at the client site and take image-based backups every few minutes. Those backups replicate to Datto's cloud automatically. When a server fails, the MSP can instantly virtualize the backup—either on the local appliance or in the Datto cloud. The client's server is back online in minutes, running from backup while the primary hardware gets replaced.
Inverse Chain Technology
Datto's backup approach is clever. Instead of maintaining a full backup plus incrementals that you need to merge, Datto always maintains the most recent backup as a complete image. Older restore points are stored as reverse deltas. This means the latest recovery point is always the fastest to restore—no chain assembly required. It also means corrupted incrementals don't break your entire backup chain.
The Cloud Is Your Safety Net
Every backup replicates to Datto's own cloud infrastructure. If the local appliance dies (fire, theft, hardware failure), you spin up the cloud instance. It's not just storage—Datto's cloud can actually run your VMs. The screenshot verification feature automatically boots each backup as a VM, takes a screenshot, and confirms the OS loaded correctly. You get daily proof that your backups are recoverable.
Kaseya Ownership and Pricing Concerns
The Kaseya acquisition made some MSPs nervous. Kaseya has a reputation for aggressive sales tactics and price increases after acquiring companies. So far, Datto has maintained its independent product roadmap and pricing hasn't spiked. But the long-term trajectory is uncertain. Pricing is also higher than assembling your own BDR stack with Veeam and commodity hardware—SIRIS appliances start around $2,500 with monthly cloud fees of $100-300 per device.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Instant virtualization on local appliance or Datto cloud gets servers back online in minutes, not hours
- Inverse Chain Technology keeps the latest backup as a complete image—fastest possible restore of the most recent state
- Screenshot verification automatically proves every backup is bootable with daily OS-level confirmation
- Purpose-built for the MSP channel with multi-tenant management, automated billing, and partner support
- Cloud replication to Datto-owned infrastructure provides a true offsite safety net without third-party dependencies
Cons
- Hardware appliance costs ($2,500+) plus monthly cloud fees make it significantly more expensive than software-only solutions
- Kaseya ownership creates long-term pricing uncertainty—MSPs worry about future price increases after the acquisition
- Vendor lock-in is real: proprietary appliances and cloud infrastructure make migration to alternatives painful
- Not designed for direct enterprise use—the entire model assumes an MSP intermediary managing the deployment
- Cloud virtualization bandwidth depends on client internet speed, which can limit RTO for large environments
Datto Pricing
ALTO (Small Business)
- Image-based backup
- Cloud replication
- Instant local virtualization
- Screenshot verification
- Up to 5 agents
SIRIS (Mid-Market)
- Everything in ALTO
- Higher storage capacity
- Instant cloud virtualization
- Ransomware detection
- Up to 20 agents
SIRIS Enterprise
- Everything in SIRIS
- Unlimited agents
- Enterprise cloud storage
- Priority support
- Custom retention policies
Pricing last verified: March 25, 2026
Who is Datto Best For?
- MSPs providing managed BDR services who need reliable instant recovery for small business clients
- Small businesses with 1-20 servers that want appliance-based backup with zero-touch cloud replication
- IT providers requiring daily automated proof that client backups are bootable and recoverable
- Organizations in regulated industries needing documented backup verification for compliance audits
Technical Details
The Bottom Line
Datto scores 8.8/10. It stands out for instant virtualization on local appliance or datto cloud gets servers back online in minutes, not hours. Best suited for msps providing managed bdr services who need reliable instant recovery for small business clients. Keep in mind that hardware appliance costs ($2,500+) plus monthly cloud fees make it significantly more expensive than software-only solutions.
Frequently Asked Questions
Based on editorial analysis