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

WHERE GENETEC GETS HEAVY

Enterprise economics, applied below enterprise.

Buy once, then keep buying

"Perpetual licence" is one line on the first invoice. The maintenance agreement behind it runs every year for as long as the system does, and the certified Windows hardware under it gets replaced every three to five years. Add those up over a decade at a mid-market site and the recurring share dwarfs the purchase. All of it goes to Genetec rather than to the installer who supports the customer.

Three cloud doors, and partners still pick between them

Stratocast has been the cloud answer since 2013 and never took hold. Security Center SaaS arrived in 2024 as the serious attempt and gained plain-English AI search in September 2025. Cloud Link bridges an on-prem system into it. That is three entry points to one roadmap, and an integrator quoting a five-year plan has to guess which one Genetec will still be investing in.

Number-plate recognition is a second purchase

AutoVu is Genetec's plate-recognition line and it comes with its own budget, its own certification and its own project. A customer who assumed plate reading was part of the video platform finds out at quote stage. TetherX reads plates from cameras that support it over ONVIF (the open camera standard), on the same dashboard and the same subscription.

AT A GLANCE

Genetec and TetherX, question by question

The 6 questions an integrator asks on a site walk, answered for both platforms.

Question Genetec TetherX
What you do with the recorders already on site Security Center becomes the recorder, on certified Windows server hardware sized per camera count and refreshed every 3-5 years. Cloud Link bridges an on-prem system up to Security Center SaaS. 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.
What your operators see on one timeline Video (Omnicast), access control (Synergis), number-plate recognition (AutoVu), communications (Sipelia) and event management (Mission Control) in one unified product. AutoVu is a separate product line with its own budget and certification. Video, access control, intruder and automation. One operator, one timeline, one dashboard across all four.
Where the AI runs Plain-English AI search arrived in Security Center SaaS in September 2025. Analytics beyond the base platform are separately licensed modules. 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.
Who you buy it from Genetec-certified partners only. A new integrator faces a slow certification ramp before quoting a project. Your installer, always. TetherX sells through the channel only and does not quote end customers direct, so the integrator keeps the account.
What you actually pay for Perpetual per-camera licence, plus a mandatory Software Maintenance Agreement at roughly 18-25% of the licence every year, plus the certified Windows hardware underneath. An annual subscription by channel count, from £100/site/year. Not per operator seat, not per analytic, and no concurrent-user cap.
What you keep if you stop paying The perpetual licence keeps running, but stopping the Software Maintenance Agreement stops security patches and version upgrades, so the install ages out rather than switching off. The TetherBox keeps a local interface for live view and recent footage with no Internet and no subscription, so the site is never dark.

Genetec column built from: Genetec on LinkedIn, Genetec Security Center SaaS.

GENETEC vs TETHERX

Enterprise certified vs channel ready.

Both unified platforms across cameras, access and ALPR. The honest read on where each one wins and where each one costs you something.

Genetec

Strengths

Enterprise gold standard - airports, transit and critical-infrastructure deployments at the scale Genetec was built for

Unified Security Center stack - video, access control, ALPR (AutoVu) and analytics in one mature product

Privacy-by-design heritage and strong federal / SLED footprint in North America

Trade-offs

Per-camera perpetual licence + mandatory Software Maintenance Agreement (around 18-25% of licence per year) and certified Windows server hardware refresh every 3-5 years

Genetec-certified partner gating - new installers face a slow ramp before they can quote a project

TetherX

Strengths

Annual platform subscription - no perpetual licences, no Software Maintenance Agreement renewals

No certification gating - approved installers ramp in days, not months

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

Trade-offs

You are a federal or critical-infrastructure buyer with your own security team, and you want Genetec's track record and the unified Security Center stack. Genetec is the more established enterprise pick.

WHICH ONE FITS

Pick the one your site points at

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

Choose Genetec if

  • You are securing an airport, a transit network or critical infrastructure, at the scale Genetec was built for
  • The customer has a dedicated in-house security team and certified integrators already on contract
  • Number-plate recognition is central to the job and AutoVu is already the standard on the estate
  • A federal or SLED procurement spec names Genetec, or names a track record only Genetec has

Choose TetherX if

  • The job is SMB or mid-market, where the per-camera licence plus maintenance agreement plus Windows server stack costs more than the site is worth
  • You want to quote next week rather than after a certification programme
  • The customer wants an annual subscription with upgrades included, instead of a perpetual licence with a maintenance agreement behind it
  • Cameras, alarms and doors need one dashboard without a server room and a hardware refresh cycle
FAQ

Questions before you switch from Genetec

Genetec is the Canadian unified-security incumbent and the enterprise gold standard at airports, transit and critical-infrastructure scale. It leads Western cloud VMS market share at roughly 27.94% (6sense) and posted net +9 in IPVM 2025 integrator adoption - the most resourced Western VMS still gaining share.

For SMB and mid-market the economics rarely work: per-camera licences plus mandatory Software Maintenance Agreement (SMA) renewals, certification gating that slows new integrator partners, and on-prem Security Center on certified Windows hardware.

Stratocast (the legacy hosted cloud product, launched 2013) under-performed for over a decade. Security Center SaaS (launched 2024, with plain-English search powered by AI added Sep 2025) is Genetec's serious cloud re-attempt - jury still out on uptake, and certification gating still applies. TetherX delivers the cloud-native, installer-friendly path Stratocast aimed for but never quite landed.

Security Center is per-camera perpetual licensing plus mandatory SMA renewal, on customer-supplied or Genetec-certified Windows server hardware (or a Streamvault turnkey appliance). Stratocast is the legacy cloud subscription (historically around $5 per camera per month list price). Security Center SaaS (2024) is the current cloud entry point, tier-based per device via Genetec's published SaaS pricing.

TetherX is an annual platform subscription priced by channel count (from £100/site/year) through your channel partner, with cloud recording and AI search as optional per-camera services. No SMA, no certified hardware requirement, no perpetual licence anchor.

For enterprise critical-infrastructure scale (airports, transit, ports, federal sites), Genetec is purpose-built and remains the best choice. For the standard SMB and mid-market integrator stack - ARC platforms (Immix, Sentinel, CONXTD, MASterMind, Bold Patriot Manitou, Stages, CHeKT and others), intruder alarms (Texecom, Hikvision AX Pro), access control - TetherX covers the field with simpler integrator onboarding.

Genetec partners must be Genetec-trained and certified to sell Security Center and AutoVu. Slow ramp for new integrator partners. TetherX has no certification gate - approved partners onboard in days, not months, and get a trial TetherBox + demo platform on day one.

Yes. We recommend up to 1,000 cameras per timeline for optimal event searching; deployments above this federate multiple timelines under one organisation, so a single customer can run many thousands of cameras across hundreds of sites without losing search performance.

For airport, transit and federal critical-infrastructure tenders Genetec remains the better fit - the Federation Server architecture and Mission Control workflows are purpose-built for that scale. For everything below, the SMA + certified-Windows + certified-channel economics no longer justify themselves.

Yes. 30 days through an integrator partner, TetherBox included, full platform access. Extensions on request.
COMPANY HISTORY

Genetec: 28 years independent, three cloud product lines

Genetec was founded in Montreal in 1997 and remains privately held and Canadian-owned. No PE event, no take-private and no parent-company churn - a notable contrast against Bosch (Triton PE 2025), Verkada (IPO track), LenelS2 (Honeywell carve-out), Avigilon (Motorola Solutions) and Milestone (Canon). Founder Pierre Racz is still CEO. Holds approximately 27.94% cloud-VMS market share per the IPVM 2025 surveys.

The product portfolio runs three cloud lines plus the on-prem flagship: Security Center (on-prem, the airport / transit enterprise gold standard), Security Center SaaS (launched 2024, with September 2025 natural-language AI search added), and Stratocast (the legacy multi-tenant SMB cloud). Unified-security platform spans Omnicast video, Synergis access, AutoVu LPR (number-plate recognition), Sipelia communications and Mission Control event management.

Sold through certification-gated partners only. Per-camera licence + mandatory annual Software Maintenance Agreement (15-22% / year typical) is the commercial model. IPVM's 2025 integrator-adoption survey scored Genetec at +9, the most resourced Western incumbent still gaining channel adoption. 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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