Kaseya really screwed me, I must have a way out.

[computertechguy]

I agreed to 100+ licenses of RMM and have about 8 Servers on Datto, so its about $1,600 a month. My largest client who has about 100 licenes' says they want to go direct (I was sure Kaseya wouldn't sell direct but I was wrong). So, Kaseya sold my client 100 licenses, and migrated the backups (2 Servers) over to them. Kaseya will not, at least at the Rep level let me out of my contract (or at least reduce my qty of licenses that the customer took).

I thought this would have been a no brainer, they aren't loosing revenue its just coming from another direction.

Has anyone been in this situation and have they ever had any satisfaction?

 

[timeshifter]

Wow, that sucks!

https://www.reddit.com/r/msp/comments/1am3m8n/does_kaseya_sell_directly_to_nonmsp_small

 

[HCHTech]

I would be having a lawyer look at that contract. Not hopeful, but you never know.

 

[Sky-Knight]

I cannot state loud enough how much of a bad idea it is to ever do business with Kaseya.

And no, they won't let you out of your contract, even if your contract is up. The orgs I know that work with them and don't have vast quantities of cash stolen from them, all use privacy card or something similar to pay them.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

We've been hustling fast to move our backup services away from Datto. Signed up with Axcient to take over the backups of servers (Alto, Siris), as well as workstations...as well as 365 and Google tenants.

Had been with Datto since their first year out. Became early stars of their reseller program, even had some of the early big wigs stop by our office to meet us. We're down to about 1x dozen Alto 'n Siris devices now....way way way down from where we were. When K-Mart...err....Kaseya...bought up Datto....we saw that writing on the wall and made plans to find a different product. Axcient is a similar product to Dattos Alto 'n Siris. Originally went under the name "Replibit". Local out of Colorado. ConnectWise owns them...but Axcient is sort of remaining their own island....and we're "month to month" with them. No "1 year terms". Negotiated a good price too!

Quick story, last week I onboarded a new client we snagged from a competitor. They were on Datto Alto for their on prem server. It was old...very old. 1x week before the day we did the "onboarding" with the competitor....K-Mart had turned on auto renew on the Alto and it was auto committed to a 1 year contract.
UGH!

Another quick story...we had a few weeks in a row of many "meetings" with various services we work with. We had a few with Axcient for onboarding...and one day we had another meeting that I jumped into. Saw a different person in the Teams meeting I had not seen before....thought to myself "Oh, cute new girl they got"...(I had assumed it was yet another meeting with Axcient). So she asks how things are going, and I jump right into "Oh good....I'm pulling as many backups as possible away from K-Mart and moving them onto your services...."
.....she gives me a weird look....and then I'm wondering what's up...I ask "So where are you located?"...she answers "the main Norwalk office". I suddenly realize..she's not an Axcient person, but Datto(Kaseya)...as the main Datto HQ (I've been to it many times)...is in Norwalk CT.

 

[computertechguy]

We've been hustling fast to move our backup services away from Datto. Signed up with Axcient to take over the backups of servers (Alto, Siris), as well as workstations...as well as 365 and Google tenants.

Had been with Datto since their first year out. Became early stars of their reseller program, even had some of the early big wigs stop by our office to meet us. We're down to about 1x dozen Alto 'n Siris devices now....way way way down from where we were. When K-Mart...err....Kaseya...bought up Datto....we saw that writing on the wall and made plans to find a different product. Axcient is a similar product to Dattos Alto 'n Siris. Originally went under the name "Replibit". Local out of Colorado. ConnectWise owns them...but Axcient is sort of remaining their own island....and we're "month to month" with them. No "1 year terms". Negotiated a good price too!

Quick story, last week I onboarded a new client we snagged from a competitor. They were on Datto Alto for their on prem server. It was old...very old. 1x week before the day we did the "onboarding" with the competitor....K-Mart had turned on auto renew on the Alto and it was auto committed to a 1 year contract.
UGH!

Another quick story...we had a few weeks in a row of many "meetings" with various services we work with. We had a few with Axcient for onboarding...and one day we had another meeting that I jumped into. Saw a different person in the Teams meeting I had not seen before....thought to myself "Oh, cute new girl they got"...(I had assumed it was yet another meeting with Axcient). So she asks how things are going, and I jump right into "Oh good....I'm pulling as many backups as possible away from K-Mart and moving them onto your services...."
.....she gives me a weird look....and then I'm wondering what's up...I ask "So where are you located?"...she answers "the main Norwalk office". I suddenly realize..she's not an Axcient person, but Datto(Kaseya)...as the main Datto HQ (I've been to it many times)...is in Norwalk CT.

Yes, I like axcient BUT they can't do a failover.. When the server goes down we spin a VM in the cloud and point the Siris to the vm, clients continue to work as usual. That is the best part of Datto.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Yes, I like axcient BUT they can't do a failover.. When the server goes down we spin a VM in the cloud and point the Siris to the vm, clients continue to work as usual. That is the best part of Datto.

Not sure what you mean by that. If the server goes down, the point of the Siris is...you're able to spin it up right there on the Siris device. That is why the Siris is more $ than the Alto....it's basically a little hypervisor. Where the Alto cannot virtualize, only store locally. You wouldn't "point the siris to the VM in the cloud". You can...spin up a server virtually in the Datto data center and..tunnel it to the clients LAN through the Alto.

Dattos Alto...can hold local backups. It can also VPN tunnel to a Datto data center...so you can spin up a server in Dattos cloud...tunnel that through the VPN to make it avail to the clients LAN. We've done that many times. Axcient also does this...you just have to create the VPN to the Axcient "virtual office" spun up for you in the cloud..where as....the Datto Alto was able to do this automatically for you. But honestly...takes just a couple of minutes to whip up the VPN tunnel. Axcient can 99% replicate the fuctionality of what a Datto Alto can do.

Dattos Siris....in additional to storing local backups, it can "virtualize" them locally on the appliance. We've done this many...many times with quite a few clients. Axcient also does this. Axcient can 100% replicate the functionality of what a Datto Siris can do.

Axcient does daily screen shots of the latest backups bootup test...screen verification, just like Datto does.

We've really lost nothing in moving from Krapseya...to Axcient.
We build our own little equivalents of Alto...and Siris. You can purchase from Axcient but...nice building your own and making more. You can even re-skin Datto devices (my office..I have one of the middle year blue Alto units...that I reskinned with Axcient...backing up my workstation here at the office.

 

[computertechguy]

Not sure what you mean by that. If the server goes down, the point of the Siris is...you're able to spin it up right there on the Siris device. That is why the Siris is more $ than the Alto....it's basically a little hypervisor. Where the Alto cannot virtualize, only store locally. You wouldn't "point the siris to the VM in the cloud". You can...spin up a server virtually in the Datto data center and..tunnel it to the clients LAN through the Alto.

Dattos Alto...can hold local backups. It can also VPN tunnel to a Datto data center...so you can spin up a server in Dattos cloud...tunnel that through the VPN to make it avail to the clients LAN. We've done that many times. Axcient also does this...you just have to create the VPN to the Axcient "virtual office" spun up for you in the cloud..where as....the Datto Alto was able to do this automatically for you. But honestly...takes just a couple of minutes to whip up the VPN tunnel. Axcient can 99% replicate the fuctionality of what a Datto Alto can do.

Dattos Siris....in additional to storing local backups, it can "virtualize" them locally on the appliance. We've done this many...many times with quite a few clients. Axcient also does this. Axcient can 100% replicate the functionality of what a Datto Siris can do.

Axcient does daily screen shots of the latest backups bootup test...screen verification, just like Datto does.

We've really lost nothing in moving from Krapseya...to Axcient.
We build our own little equivalents of Alto...and Siris. You can purchase from Axcient but...nice building your own and making more. You can even re-skin Datto devices (my office..I have one of the middle year blue Alto units...that I reskinned with Axcient...backing up my workstation here at the office.

Ok, I just had a sesion with an engineer at Axicient and he says they can't do this but maybe he meant without an appliance.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Ok, I just had a sesion with an engineer at Axicient and he says they can't do this but maybe he meant without an appliance.

Axcient "can" run without an appliance. But it also supports a local "vault". That "vault"..can be a basic one....like a Datto Alto. Or...a device with more horsepower....so that you can "virtualize" like a Datto Siris. They also sell appliances directly. Or...you can build your own. You install a special Axcient OS on them (it's much like a Datto OS on Also or Siris). Backups up the local servers locally, and sends data offsite to Axcients cloud. And you can access them/manage them through your Axcient portal just like looking at the list of your Datto devices in your Datto portal.

We use an MSI Cubi N for the "alto" clones...and SuperMicro or MSIs from MITXPC...for the "Siris" clones (like a larger box/toaster NAS size). Can outfit those with CPUs from Celery, i3, i5, i7, i9....and up to 32 gigs of RAM, nVME for local OS drive, and 4x bays for 2.5 or 3.5" drives for RAID for the stow-age.

I haven't had to configure a larger 4U rack mount for some of our larger clients that have Datto Siris 6 or 8TB big units that back up a dozen or so servers....those will be spec'd built this fall when their contract with K-Mart is up.

 

[John Kennedy]

There are other options out there for this type of backup. Barracuda does it for sure. I'm not a huge fan of Axcient, especially after they changed how much data could be backed up in the cloud without overages.

I bet you could create something somewhat custom with an Acronis or MS360 system. You'd have to provide your own local hardware to replace the Siris, but it'd certainly be possible. Build your own NAS and put Proxmox on it, then have a VM on Proxmox handle the local backups and be able to turn them on.