Acronis vs Okta

Acronis is a Swiss-headquartered cyber protection company founded in 2003, known for its True Image disk imaging software and, today, mainly for a multitenant platform that managed service providers use to back up, secure and manage their clients' systems. EQT agreed in 2024 to take a majority stake, and Acronis says more than 20,000 service providers and 750,000 businesses use its platform.

The business offering, marketed as the Acronis Cyber Platform and sold to service providers as Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud, combines backup of servers, PCs, VMs and Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace with disaster recovery, EDR and MDR, email security, data loss prevention, patching, RMM and PSA-style billing and service desk tools. MSPs pay per workload for actual usage; IT departments buy one to three year terms. The consumer line, Acronis True Image, is sold per year: Essentials for local backup and cloning, Advanced with cloud storage and anti-malware, and Premium with 1 TB or more of cloud storage.

Acronis fits MSPs that want one console for backup, security and RMM, and home or small-office users who need full-disk images and cloning. Backblaze is simpler and cheaper for plain cloud backup, Afi.ai focuses on SaaS backup for Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, and Veeam is the usual choice for large virtualized data centers.

Buying tip: True Image prices rise with each extra computer and terabyte, so a 3 or 5 computer pack is better value for households. MSPs should check which security modules they already license elsewhere.

Okta is an identity and access management company founded in 2009 in San Francisco by Todd McKinnon and Frederic Kerrest. It went public in 2017 and bought Auth0 in 2021 for about $6.5 billion. Its core job on the workforce side is to give every employee one secure login to all their apps, enforce multi-factor authentication, and create or remove accounts automatically as people join, move or leave.

Workforce Identity is sold per user per month, billed annually, with a $1,500 annual minimum. Starter ($6) covers SSO, MFA and Universal Directory; Essentials ($17) adds Adaptive MFA, lifecycle management, access governance and privileged access, with Core Essentials ($14) in between; Professional and Enterprise add Device Access, Identity Threat Protection, Identity Security Posture Management and API Access Management. Customer Identity starts at $3,000 a month, and a free Integrator plan allows 10 users in a non-production org.

Okta fits companies running dozens of SaaS apps that need central access control, audits and fast offboarding. It falls short for very small teams because of the contract minimum, and add-ons push real costs above list prices. Microsoft Entra ID is the natural rival for Microsoft-heavy shops, Keycloak is a free self-hosted option, and 1Password covers password sharing rather than full IAM.

Recent development: Okta for AI Agents reached general availability on April 30, 2026, registering AI agents as non-human identities with managed tokens and kill switches. Okta also pushes the Cross App Access (XAA) protocol through the IETF.