Number of Seats/Users: Double-Take offers discounts based on the number of users or seats. A higher volume typically leads to a better discount structure, especially for enterprise-level usage.

Commitment to a Long-Term Contract: Discounts are often provided to companies that commit to using the service for a longer period (e.g., 1-year or 3-year contracts). A longer commitment shows Double-Take that the company is serious and willing to invest in the platform long-term.

No Active Discounts: Companies that are not already receiving other active discounts may have a better chance of qualifying for additional discounts from Double-Take. Double-Take reserves discounts for new customers or those not currently under promotional pricing.

Volume or Usage Commitment: Double-Take offers discounts if you agree to a minimum amount of usage or transaction volume. This could be based on data storage, transactions, or other metrics tied to how much you will use the platform.

Enterprise-Level Negotiation: Companies that qualify as “enterprise” due to their size or complexity (e.g., having large teams, multiple departments, or geographical presence) may be eligible for additional discounts from Double-Take. Such companies are often in a position to negotiate for better pricing.

Early Renewal or Prepayment: Double-Take often offers discounts if you renew early or prepay for the entire contract period. This is a common approach to securing a lower price.

Here at Spendbase our internal data shows that Double-Take (now Carbonite Availability) is seen as a strong, but very specialized, tool by our clients.

Overall sentiment
– Most Spendbase clients are positive about reliability and feature depth.
– Satisfaction rises significantly when it’s used only for the handful of truly critical systems, not for the entire estate.

Key strengths our clients highlight
– Very strong for mission‑critical workloads that need:
– Near‑zero RPO and RTO
– Continuous replication
– Fast failover
– Flexible deployment options:
– Physical → physical
– Physical/virtual → cloud
– Any mix of on‑prem, VMware, Hyper‑V, or public cloud
– Licensing model is appreciated:
– License per source server only
– No extra license needed for targets, which makes expansion easier

Typical challenges and risks
Our internal data shows recurring friction in these areas:
– Setup and environment requirements:
– Works best when the secondary server has a clean OS
– OS version and build need to match very closely
– Non‑standard images or heavily customized builds cause delays and extra work
– Infrastructure expectations:
– Destination servers usually need to stay online
– Offline targets are smoother only when using Hyper‑V or VMware replicas
– Cost-effectiveness:
– Using Double‑Take for an entire infrastructure DR strategy is often overkill
– For workloads that don’t need near‑zero RPO/RTO, clients feel cheaper, simpler options are better

Where Double‑Take fits best
Spendbase clients get the most value when they:
– Limit it to:
– Core databases
– Revenue‑critical apps
– Systems with strict SLAs or regulatory uptime needs
– Use other, less expensive tools for:
– Non‑critical servers
– Test/dev environments
– Workloads with relaxed RPO/RTO

Discount and optimization insights from Spendbase
– Right‑sizing: we often cut costs by reducing licensed sources to only the top 5–15% of critical servers.
– Environment alignment: planning clean, standardized OS images at the DR site lowers hidden implementation costs.
– Platform choices: where possible, targeting VMware/Hyper‑V to enable offline replicas both reduces infra spend and makes operations smoother.

In short, our internal data shows that Double‑Take is excellent for “crown jewel” systems, but Spendbase clients save the most when they avoid deploying it everywhere and negotiate licenses precisely around those high‑value workloads.