Arctera inherited a loyal customer base when it took over Veritas’s Enterprise Vault and EV Cloud business. Many of those customers have archived with the same product for over a decade. Lately, more of them are asking us the same question: is there a better option before we sign again?
This article covers what Arctera customers tell us is driving that question, how Jatheon compares feature by feature, and what switching actually involves.
Why Arctera Customers Are Looking for an Alternative
In recent conversations with financial firms, public agencies and the MSPs who support them, the same complaints came up again and again.
Here are the top 6 reasons why customers are looking for an Arctera alternative:
Three-year deals, take it or leave it
Customers describe renewal offers that only come as three-year agreements, with deadlines as short as the end of the business day and no willingness to negotiate. One MSP told us Arctera is “forcing clients to purchase their bundled products at extortionate prices.”
Price increases of 30% or more
Those multi-year renewals often arrive at 30% or more above the current price. Customers report no matching improvement in the product or in support.
Export fees that make leaving expensive
Arctera quotes roughly $10,000 to $20,000 per terabyte to export an archive. For many organizations that adds up to 1–1.5x their annual contract, paid just to get their own data back. Arctera’s published terms also list per-GB import and export fees and a pooled storage allowance of 15 GB per user.
Slow exports
Even customers willing to pay hit Arctera’s export limits. A standard Enterprise Vault export can run at around 1% of the archive per day, so 30 TB takes three months or more.
Support that has not kept pace
IT teams tell us their engineers would switch tomorrow if the decision were theirs. Poor responsiveness on support tickets seems to be a recurring issue.
Keyword noise in compliance reviews
Compliance teams running keyword surveillance describe the same daily grind: the word “confidential” in every email disclaimer, newsletters matching risk terms, and reviewers clearing false positives by hand.
Mobile capture through partners
Arctera captures WhatsApp, iMessage and other mobile messaging through third-party partners. That means a separate vendor, a separate onboarding and a separate support path for the channels regulators now scrutinize most.
Why Teams Choose Jatheon as an Arctera Alternative
| Jatheon | Arctera | |
| Pricing model | Per user per year; ediscovery and compliance features included | Not published; quote required |
| Contract terms | 1, 3 or 5 years, your choice | Customers report pressure toward 3-year terms |
| Renewal pricing | Predictable and negotiated openly, no surprise increases | Customers report increases of 30% or more |
| Inactive mailboxes | Free; only active users are billed | Not published |
| Storage | 100 GB per user included (fair use) | 15 GB per user, pooled; per-GB fees above that |
| Export and exit fees | None; 90 days to take your data, standard cloud transfer costs only | Around $10,000 to $20,000 per TB to export |
| Mobile messaging | Native capture of iMessage, WhatsApp, SMS and RCS on iOS and Android, BYOD or corporate | Through third-party partners |
| Other sources | Email, Microsoft Teams, iMessage, WhatsApp, OneDrive, SharePoint, Slack, Zoom, social media, websites and 25+ other sources in one archive | 130+ content sources, mobile via partners |
| Search | One search across every source | Search within ediscovery module |
| Redaction and export | Built in, including attachments; PDF, PST, EML, CSV and XLSX exports based on channel | Customers report redacting in separate tools after export |
| AI | AI-assisted search and records-request handling, transcription, translation, OCR, risk scoring, sentiment analysis, classification | InsightAI summaries, translation |
| Training and support | Unlimited role-based training, in-house engineer 24/7 support included | Customers report slow support |
| Migration from Arctera | Native, on-prem Enterprise Vault and Arctera cloud | N/A |
| Deployment | Cloud, on-premises, virtual | Cloud, on-premises or hybrid |
| Release schedule | One release every month | The Arctera Unified Platform ships quarterly updates. |
Arctera details from customer conversations and Arctera’s public documentation, as of November 2026.
This doesn’t mean Arctera is not a capable platform. They get points for the breadth of connectors (Arctera lists more than 130 content sources), which is useful for firms with niche trading and voice systems. The company has a long track record too. Enterprise Vault has been archiving email for over two decades, and many IT teams know it well.
If you need a dedicated surveillance suite for a large trading floor and price is secondary, Arctera may still fit. If you want complete, searchable archiving across email, collaboration and mobile at a predictable price, Jatheon is the more direct choice.
Switching from Arctera to Jatheon
The biggest reason customers stay with their current vendor is fear and hassle that comes with migration. Jatheon takes that off the table.
- Technical review: One hour to confirm sources, volumes and the best route. You get a fixed quote, migration included.
- Live archiving from day one: New email, collaboration and mobile messages flow into Jatheon immediately. There is no gap in coverage.
- Historical migration: On-prem Enterprise Vault is migrated without paying Arctera’s export fees. Arctera cloud archives are migrated by Jatheon end to end, and never hit Arctera’s export limits.
- Reconciliation: You get proof that every archive arrived, and a list of any item that needs attention.
- Switch off Arctera on your schedule, not on Arctera’s renewal date.
