Written and fact-checked by Roman Gaufman, Founder & CEO, TetherX

WHERE ALTA FALLS SHORT

Open in name, Avigilon-favoured in practice.

Non-proprietary on the datasheet, native-brand in the field

A third-party camera connects. It is the follow-on that diverges: firmware updates land first for Avigilon models, analytics are tuned against Avigilon sensors, and new features reach the native fleet a release or two ahead. Alta also leads with access rather than video, and the marketing puts 94% mobile-first adoption at the front. The half of the platform an integrator is buying here is the half that gets second billing.

Pelco VideoXpert customers are migrating, not renewing

The cloud line Motorola inherited with Pelco is being wound down, and the path out of it leads to Unity or Alta. Anyone who bought VideoXpert on a ten-year view is now doing a platform change they did not schedule, and paying for it.

Two Motorola cloud video products, one pitch

For quick-service restaurants and multi-site retail, Motorola sells Envysion, acquired in June 2019 and run by its own vertical sales team. It sits in the same MSI Video portfolio as Alta with a different SKU and a different roadmap, so an integrator hearing "Motorola cloud video" should establish which of the two is actually on the quote before designing around it.

AT A GLANCE

Avigilon Alta and TetherX, question by question

The 7 questions an integrator asks on a site walk, answered for both platforms.

Question Avigilon Alta TetherX
What you do with the recorders already on site Replaced by the Cloud Connector appliance - the A1100 with 24TB on site runs around $14,400 before licences, plus roughly 20 hours of installer time. They stay. The TetherBox sits alongside the existing NVRs, DVRs and panels and pulls from them. It runs as software on a server the site already owns, so nobody rips out working kit to start.
Which devices you can connect Third-party cameras connect, but firmware updates, analytics and features work best on Avigilon-branded hardware. A mixed-brand fleet feels the difference. 1,000+ integrations across 17,000+ device models, plus any ONVIF camera with full features - not a bridged, feature-reduced tier.
What your operators see on one timeline Video and access control together, on the Openpath access platform Motorola acquired. Mercury controller support helps a migration, but the core is proprietary. Video, access control, intruder and automation. One operator, one timeline, one dashboard across all four.
Where the AI runs Strong on-camera AI heritage from the original Avigilon stack, at its best on Avigilon cameras. At the edge on the TetherBox: person, vehicle and animal detection plus 63-class audio analytics, searchable across multi-site footage in seconds. The platform keeps evolving with additional analytics through the year.
What you actually pay for Around $179 per camera per year, on top of the Cloud Connector appliance. A real 73-camera quote landed at around $315 per camera in equipment before any licence. Motorola ran a portfolio-wide list-price increase on 5 May 2026. An annual subscription by channel count, from £100/site/year. Not per operator seat, not per analytic, and no concurrent-user cap.
Where your recordings are stored Microsoft Azure only, in whatever regions Azure offers. On the TetherBox at site by default. Cloud recording is optional per camera, into a UK, EU, US, Canadian, Indian or Australian region the customer picks.
What you keep if you stop paying Cloud access stops, and the Cloud Connector is an Alta appliance with no role outside the platform. The TetherBox keeps a local interface for live view and recent footage with no Internet and no subscription, so the site is never dark.

Avigilon Alta column built from: Avigilon Alta (Motorola Solutions), Avigilon on LinkedIn.

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

Repeating Motorola Solutions price increases (most recent 5 May 2026) and around $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

No resolution cap on 4K or multi-sensor cameras

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

Trade-offs

You are a public-safety or large-enterprise buyer already running the Motorola stack: CommandCentral, Pelco, body cams and dispatch. Avigilon Alta fits that estate better than we do.

WHICH ONE FITS

Pick the one your site points at

Find the column that describes the job in front of you.

Choose Avigilon Alta if

  • A US public-safety or large-enterprise buyer wants the Motorola unified-command stack - CommandCentral, Pelco, body cams and dispatch - joined up end to end
  • The camera fleet is already Avigilon, so the native-brand pull costs you nothing
  • Mobile-first access control is the headline requirement and video is the secondary system
  • Microsoft Azure regions satisfy the data-residency requirement

Choose TetherX if

  • The camera fleet is mixed-brand and you want every camera to get the same features, not just the native ones
  • A $14k on-site appliance per site does not fit the project - TetherBox runs as software on hardware the customer already has
  • The buyer needs in-country data residency in the UK, EU, Canada, India or Australia rather than whatever Azure offers
  • Intruder alarms and a control-room workflow are part of the job, not an afterthought
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.

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 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 Paxton Net2 directly, including Net2Cloud - different design philosophy, both valid. The right answer depends on the integrator's existing access stack.

The table above carries both sides of the Alta figure. Worth adding is where the $315 per camera in that r/Avigilon quote came from. The appliance is a fixed cost the site pays whether it runs 10 cameras or 70, so a small site carries the same $14,400 across far fewer channels. Sizing a multi-site rollout, that arithmetic decides which sites are viable at all.

TetherX is quoted by your channel partner as an annual subscription on channel count, monthly or prepaid over one to three years, with cloud recording, AI search and ARC integration added per camera where a site needs them. A fisheye counts as one channel however many views you dewarp from it, and there is no resolution cap, so a 4K or multi-sensor camera does not cost more to record than a 2MP one.

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 the UK, EU, US, Canada, India and Australia. Where a customer needs residency in a region we do not yet host in, we spin up a new local cloud on demand, 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. The platform now sits inside the Motorola unified-command ecosystem alongside CommandCentral, Pelco (acquired 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 across Alta, Unity and Pelco in the same window.

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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