Milestone XProtect alternative
Same cameras. Same network. A bill that stops growing every time you add a lens.
Ividiyo is a self-hosted VMS for ONVIF and RTSP cameras, running on Ubuntu rather than Windows Server, administered in a browser rather than a desktop client, with AI detection and plate recognition in the base price.
XProtect is a capable platform and most people who leave it are not leaving because it stopped working. They leave because of how it is counted. Milestone's own documentation is clear on the model: you need one device licence per hardware device with a camera that you want to add to the system, a few models need more than one, and video push from a phone needs a licence for each phone. The licence count therefore tracks the camera count exactly, for the life of the system.
On top of that sits Care Plus, the maintenance subscription that carries patches and feature updates. On XProtect Corporate it is not optional in the first year — resellers list it as mandatory across the whole installation, both the base licence and the device licences, for the first year after purchase.
Then there is the platform itself. Milestone's guidance for IT teams expects Windows Server for the management server, with the Management Client and Smart Client needing Windows 10 or later and the .NET Framework, and a dedicated graphics card recommended for the viewing client. Those are Windows licences, workstation specifications and a desktop rollout, all before a single camera is recorded.
Structural differences only — the things that do not change between quotes. The Milestone column describes the platform's documented requirements and licensing model.
| Milestone XProtect | Ividiyo | |
|---|---|---|
| Licence counting | One device licence per camera, plus a base licence. A few device models consume more than one. Mobile video push needs a licence per phone or tablet. | No per-camera licence at any tier. Professional is priced per site by camera band, Enterprise per recording server with unlimited cameras. |
| Server operating system | Windows Server for the management server, per Milestone's own IT guidance. Windows licences are a separate cost from the VMS. | Ubuntu 24.04 LTS on x86, or Raspberry Pi OS 64-bit on a Pi 4 or 5. No operating system licence to buy. |
| Operator client | Smart Client installed on each workstation — Windows 10 or later, .NET Framework, dedicated graphics card recommended. A web client is available alongside it. | A browser. Live view, playback, search and administration are all the same web interface, with no install on the operator's machine and no client version to keep matched to the server. Native iOS and Android apps are included on every tier. |
| Video analytics | Supplied by third-party analytics partners and priced separately, typically per channel, on top of the device licences. | Object detection, licence plate recognition, appearance search, heatmaps, video synopsis, anonymisation and face recognition are all included in Professional and Enterprise. One mid-range NVIDIA GPU handles 150+ cameras. |
| Maintenance | Care Plus, bought per licence, and mandatory across a whole Corporate installation in its first year. | Annual licences include updates and business-hours support with nothing else to buy. On a perpetual licence, Ividiyo Care is optional and keeps updates and support running. |
| Where footage lives | On your own servers — XProtect is self-hosted too, which is one of the things that makes it a fair comparison. | On your own servers: local SSDs with optional NAS pools behind them. Nothing is uploaded to a cloud, and remote viewing is end-to-end encrypted. |
| Free tier | XProtect Essential+ is free for a limited camera count on a single site. | Free for up to 10 cameras with live view, recording, playback and clip export. No licence key, no expiry, no card. |
Milestone's licensing and platform requirements above are drawn from Milestone's own published documentation and from authorised reseller listings, current at October 2026. Licensing terms change and differ by product edition and region — confirm the detail with Milestone or your partner before making a decision on either product.
The pricing page carries a worked comparison at 300 cameras with AI detection and plate recognition: around R560,000 for a traditional VMS once camera licences, the base licence, an analytics plug-in and an LPR plug-in are added up, against R119,800 a year for Ividiyo Enterprise across two recording servers with every module included. Competitor figures there are converted from published USD list prices before tax, while the Ividiyo figure includes VAT, so the real gap is wider than the headline.
That arithmetic matters less than its shape. In a per-device model every camera you add is a licence you buy and then keep paying maintenance on. In a per-site or per-server model, adding twenty cameras to an existing band costs nothing. Sites that grow are where the difference compounds.
This is the size where the two pricing models stop resembling each other. A per-device licence is counted per lens, so the bill follows the camera count wherever it goes. Ividiyo Enterprise is counted per recording server with unlimited cameras on each, so the bill follows the rack.
That 2,500-camera figure assumes AI detection on every single camera, at the 150-cameras-per-GPU density we run in production — it is the most expensive shape this can take, because the GPU is what sets the server count. Most estates of this size run detection on the cameras that need it rather than all of them, which means fewer servers for the same camera count. No Milestone figure is quoted here on purpose: a deal of this size is discounted off list, so extrapolating their published rate would produce a number that is both wrong and unfair. The comparison worth making is on your own quote, and it is one subtraction — see below.
Because we will not guess at a 2,500-device quote, here is the arithmetic from the other direction. Our cluster costs R958,400 a year. For a per-device licence to match it, the all-in cost per camera per year — the licence amortised over the life of the system, plus the maintenance percentage on top — would have to come in under R383.
That is the whole comparison, and it is one you can run yourself without trusting anything on this page. Take the per-device rate on your quote, add the annual maintenance, divide by the years you expect the system to run, and see which side of R383 it lands on.
The second question is the one that bites later. Ask what the next two hundred cameras cost. Under per-device licensing that is two hundred more licences and maintenance on them for as long as the system exists. On a cluster with headroom, it is nothing at all — and when the headroom runs out, it is one more recording server at a price that is published.
On an ONVIF site the work is measured in hours, not weekends.
Ividiyo goes on a separate Ubuntu machine — or the same hardware, if you are re-purposing it later. Nothing touches the running XProtect system, so there is no window where the site is uncovered.
ONVIF discovery finds what is on the network and pulls stream URLs, resolutions and capabilities. Cameras stay configured exactly as they are; a second VMS subscribing to a second stream is normal for an IP camera.
Record on both for a week and compare on your own footage. When you are satisfied, leave the old recorder read-only until its retention expires and let it age out, rather than migrating historical video out of a proprietary format.
No, and the distinction matters. Ividiyo is commercial software that you self-host: it runs entirely on hardware you own, with your footage on your disks and nothing uploaded to a cloud. That is what people usually mean when they search for an open source VMS, but it is not the same thing — our source code is not published. The Free tier is free of charge for up to 10 cameras.
Yes, if they speak ONVIF or RTSP, which covers virtually every IP camera of the last decade — Hikvision, Dahua, Uniview, Axis, Bosch, Hanwha, Avigilon, UniFi Protect and hundreds more. There is no device licence and no approved-hardware list, so nothing on the wall has to be replaced.
It stays there. Recorded video in any VMS's proprietary format is not practically portable between systems, so the normal approach is to keep the old recorder running read-only until its retention period expires, then decommission it. Clips you need to keep beyond that are exported as files before it goes.
No. It is built for Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, with an ARM build for Raspberry Pi OS 64-bit. For most sites that removes a cost rather than adding a constraint, since the Windows Server licences a Milestone deployment needs are not part of the VMS quote.
No. Live view, playback, forensic search, alarms and administration are a web interface, so adding an operator is creating a login rather than rolling out a desktop client. There is no per-seat licence and no client build to keep version-matched to the server. Native iOS and Android apps are included on every tier as an extra way in.
The Free tier runs up to 10 cameras with live view, recording, playback and clip export — no licence key, no time limit, no card. Point it at the cameras you already own and see what it does before anything changes.
Need something to send on? Download the product brochure (PDF) — it carries this comparison and the pricing.