WHERE ALTA FALLS SHORT

Open in name, Avigilon-favoured in practice.

Camera support skews to Avigilon

Firmware updates, analytics and features work best on Avigilon-branded cameras. If you run a mixed-brand fleet, you'll feel the difference compared to a brand-neutral platform.

Real cost, not the headline $179/yr

The licence is around $179 per camera per year, but the Cloud Connector A1100 (24TB on-site appliance) is around $14,400, plus roughly 20 hours of installer time. A real 73-camera quote landed at around $315 per camera in equipment before any licences.

Per-lens licensing on multi-sensor cameras

A 4-head Pelco Saris or Avigilon multi-sensor uses 4 Alta licences (one per lens) and 4 Cloud Connector slots, not 1 per camera body. If your design uses multi-sensor cameras, the bill climbs fast compared to the older Unity product. The Ava-heritage Quad cameras are licensed per lens too.

Portfolio-wide 5 May 2026 price increase

Motorola Solutions ran a portfolio-wide MSI list-price increase on 5 May 2026 - Alta, Unity and Pelco all repriced upwards in the same window. Installers on r/AvigilonAlta cite it as the reason to compare on-prem versus cloud costs again. Combine with the per-lens regression on multi-sensor cameras and the same site recosts at materially more.

Pelco VideoXpert EoL - cloud line dead

Pelco VX (the cloud line that came with the Pelco acquisition) is being wound down with a migration path to Unity or Alta. Customers on VX are facing a forced platform change, not a renewal.

Envysion is the QSR/retail sibling, not Alta

For QSR and multi-site retail, MSI sells Envysion (Motorola acquired June 2019) - same MSI Video portfolio, different SKU, vertical-specialist sales motion. A "Motorola cloud video" pitch may actually mean Envysion under the hood, not Alta.

Built on the Openpath access platform

Mercury controller support is a useful migration add-on, but the underlying access platform is the Openpath product Motorola bought - which is proprietary at the core.

Mobile-first access focus

Alta's marketing leads with 94% mobile-first access adoption. The video half of the platform doesn't stand out as much as the access half.

Hosted on Microsoft Azure only

Alta runs on Microsoft Azure and uses whatever regions Azure offers. TetherX runs in regional data centres in the UK, US, Canada, India and Australia for in-country data residency.

AVIGILON ALTA vs TETHERX

Non-proprietary or genuinely brand-agnostic?

Both unify cameras with access. The honest read on where each one wins and where each one costs you something.

Avigilon Alta

Strengths

Motorola Solutions unified-command ecosystem - CommandCentral CAD/records, Pelco, Ava cloud and WatchGuard body cams all integrated

Strong on-camera AI heritage from the original Avigilon stack

Microsoft Azure-hosted with broad regional footprint

Trade-offs

Per-lens licensing on multi-sensor cameras - a 4-head dome bills as 4 licences, not 1

Repeating Motorola Solutions price increases (most recent 5 May 2026) and ~$315/camera real install cost on top of the $14k+ Cloud Connector

TetherX

Strengths

Open to 1,000+ integrations, no native-brand pull - cameras already on site stay

Per-camera billing regardless of head count - a 4-head multi-sensor is 1 licence

Cloud recording optional per camera - local-only, cloud-only or both, all in one platform

Trade-offs

If a US public-safety or large-enterprise buyer wants the Motorola Solutions unified-command stack (CommandCentral, Pelco, body cams, dispatch) integrated end-to-end, Avigilon Alta is the more natural fit

FAQ

Questions before you switch from Avigilon Alta

Avigilon is a Canadian camera and VMS (Video Management Software - the platform that runs your CCTV) maker founded in Vancouver in 2004, bought by Motorola Solutions in 2018. Avigilon Alta Video came from Motorola's 2022 acquisition of Ava Security (a Norwegian start-up), rebranded "Alta Video" in March 2023. Alta Access came from buying Openpath in 2021. The old on-prem product, Avigilon Unity (formerly ACC), is still around, and the Pelco VideoXpert range they inherited is being wound down with a migration path to Unity or Alta.

Per-lens licensing: on Alta, a multi-sensor camera uses one licence per lens, not per camera body. A 4-head Pelco Saris uses 4 licences and 4 Cloud Connector channel slots - on the older Unity, the same camera body needs one licence.

Recurring price increases: on the r/AvigilonAlta forum, installers point at the May 2026 Motorola Solutions price increase as a reason to revisit on-prem versus cloud costs. TetherX bills per camera regardless of how many lenses it has, and is genuinely brand-agnostic, with a 30-day free trial through a channel partner.

Both work with non-Avigilon cameras over ONVIF (the camera interoperability standard that lets cameras from different brands work with the same software). The difference shows up in practice: firmware updates, analytics and feature support work best on Avigilon-branded cameras. TetherX treats every brand the same - Hanwha, Axis, Bosch, Pelco, Hikvision, Dahua, Uniview, Mobotix and i-PRO all behave equally well. If you have a mixed-brand fleet, you'll feel the difference.

Alta Access is Openpath-derived; Mercury controller support is a genuine open-standard hook - if you leave Avigilon later, the Mercury controllers can be re-flashed to another platform. That is the real differentiator vs Verkada-style lock-in. TetherX integrates with channel access-control platforms directly - different design philosophy, both valid. The right answer depends on the integrator's existing access stack.

Headline Alta pricing is around $179/year per camera licence on Microsoft Azure - but that is only the licence. Cloud Connector A1100 (24TB) is around $14,400 MSRP plus roughly 20 hours integrator programming time.

Real-deal example: a 73-camera quote disclosed on r/Avigilon (May 2026) landed at roughly $315/camera capex before licences. Multi-sensor cameras compound the bill - a 4-head camera consumes 4 Alta licences and 4 Cloud Connector channel slots.

TetherX model: TetherX is an annual platform subscription priced by channel count (from £80/site/year), quoted through your channel partner. Per-camera regardless of head count, with cloud recording, AI search and ARC integration as optional per-camera services - monthly billing or prepay 1-3 year terms.

Yes. TetherX is cloud-native, but every site runs a TetherBox gateway - TetherBox software on an existing server or PC at the site, or a dedicated unit from the range (compact in-vehicle / lamp-post models through to rackmount, see the range). The cameras stay on the site network behind it with no direct Internet access, and the TetherBox is the only thing that talks to the cloud.

Hosting: Alta is built on Microsoft Azure and inherits Azure's regions. TetherX hosts in regional data centres in UK, US, Canada, India and Australia, and can spin up new local clouds on demand where a customer needs data residency in a region we do not yet host in - including dedicated private clouds.

Both are real cloud platforms with different hosting strategies - Alta inherits Azure's footprint, TetherX is closer to the data with regional sovereignty.

Yes. A 30-day free trial through an integrator partner, TetherBox included, full platform access. Extensions on request if you are mid-evaluation.
COMPANY HISTORY

Avigilon, Motorola Solutions and the Alta rebrand

Avigilon was founded in Vancouver, Canada in 2004. Motorola Solutions acquired Avigilon in 2018 for approximately CA$1.2B and the platform now sits inside the Motorola unified-command ecosystem alongside CommandCentral (CAD / records), Pelco (which Motorola acquired in 2020), Ava Security (acquired 2022, the cloud VMS that became Alta) and WatchGuard body-worn video.

The cloud-first "Avigilon Alta" line is the rebrand of Ava Security post-2022 acquisition. The on-prem Avigilon Control Center (ACC) Unity line continues alongside it. 5 May 2026: Motorola announced an MSI-portfolio-wide price increase that compounds against Alta's per-lens treatment on multi-sensor cameras - a 4-head camera bills as 4 licences not 1.

The TetherX-relevant constraint is the Motorola native-brand pull: the integrator is encouraged to lead with Motorola cameras + Alta cloud + CommandCentral as one unified-command pitch, with third-party cameras supported but de-emphasised. The manufacturer's site is the authoritative source for current product status.

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Across the partner network

TetherX partners hold the accreditations security-procurement buyers and insurers filter on. Coverage varies by partner.

NSI 9 ISO 9001 7 SSAIB 5 SafeContractor 5 BAFE 4 CHAS 4 ConstructionLine 4 Cyber Essentials 3 NICEIC 2 ISO 14001 2 ISO 27001 1

Counts reflect partners currently in the TetherX directory holding each accreditation.

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[1] About this comparison. Information about other vendors is drawn from their public product pages, datasheets, integrator forums (Reddit, vendor user groups), public CVE databases (NVD, CISA), publicly-listed LinkedIn company pages (headcount, headquarters, founding year, leadership transitions and corporate ownership signals) and customer conversations - accurate to the best of our knowledge as of Q2 2026. Pricing, features, security posture and policies change. A vendor may have shipped a fix, dropped a price, added a region or changed an architecture since this page was last reviewed.

If you believe anything here is inaccurate or out of date, please contact us and we will review and correct it. Trademarks and product names belong to their respective owners and are referenced here for identification only.

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