Helios vs Datto RMM: the contract is the product
Datto RMM is reported at around $2.99 per endpoint a month, usually on multi-year, auto-renewing terms with a committed minimum, while Helios publishes a monthly price with no contract. For most small MSPs that paperwork, not the feature list, is the deciding difference: a client lost mid-term still leaves its committed endpoints on a Datto bill.
Written with respect. We ran an MSP on several of the products we compare, we rate them, and without them Helios would not exist. These pages are here because buyers deserve the numbers, not because we want a fight.
The short answer
- Datto RMM is commonly reported from around $2.99 per endpoint per month, with minimum commitments and multi-year auto-renewing terms (verified July 2026).
- Losing a client mid-term still leaves the committed endpoints on your bill; Helios is flat per MSP so the bill does not move.
- Datto's patch policies are the part reviewers cite most; its remote access reliability is its most-reviewed complaint.
- Helios tracks warranty, end-of-life and out-of-support operating systems, and forecasts replacement spend.
- Helios: published flat pricing per MSP (£99 / £199 / £399 by fleet size) plus a £4/device Launch tier for 5 to 25 devices. Monthly, cancel any time.
- Helios is monthly with no commitments; that is the structural difference to weigh first.
Every step above is the platform as it runs today; the same fix is on the Tickets page of the live demo.
What Datto RMM does well
Datto RMM runs some of the largest MSP fleets in the world. Its patch policies are the part reviewers cite most, the platform holds up at scale, and the wider Kaseya catalogue means BCDR, documentation and security products under one vendor if single-vendor consolidation appeals to you.
What to look at closely before you buy
- The contract. Kaseya standardised on multi-year agreements with auto-renewal windows that are easy to miss, and 2026 brought committed-minimum billing: you pay for the endpoint count you committed to even if you lose a client (last verified July 2026). Read every renewal clause twice and diarise the notice dates.
- Remote access reliability. It is the single most mentioned complaint in Datto RMM's public reviews. Test it hard during any trial, it is the feature your technicians touch most.
- Per-endpoint maths. Reported from around $2.99 per endpoint per month with minimums; a few hundred endpoints lands in the same range as flat-priced alternatives without the lock-in.
How Helios is different
Helios is monthly, flat per MSP, and you can cancel from the billing page without a phone call. Losing a client never means paying for their endpoints anyway. And rather than a recommendations layer, Helio actually works your queue: investigating alerts on the machine, fixing what it can under approval guardrails you set per client, and answering inbound tickets.
| Helios | Datto RMM | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Flat per MSP: £99, £199 or £399/month by device count (50 / 250 / unlimited), plus a £4/device Launch tier (5 to 25 devices) to start small. Every feature on every plan, monthly billing, cancel any time. | From ~$2.99/endpoint/month reported, minimum commitments, multi-year terms with auto-renewal (verified July 2026) |
| Contract | Monthly, cancel any time, self-serve | Multi-year, auto-renew, committed minimums |
| Remote access | Built in (browser-based, no second vendor) | Included; reliability is its most-reviewed complaint |
| AI | Investigations, auto-healing, AI service desk | Kaseya Cooper: insights and recommendations |
| Losing a client | Bill unchanged (flat per MSP) | Committed endpoints still billed |
| Patching | Windows, macOS, Linux and third-party (winget); per-client and per-group windows | Windows and third-party; policy-driven |
| Asset lifecycle | Warranty and end-of-life tracking, out-of-support OS flags, replacement forecasting | Asset data in RMM; lifecycle tooling varies by module |
Where Datto RMM is the better pick
If you are consolidating a large estate onto the Kaseya stack, negotiating hard on a multi-year rate, and have the scale to absorb the commitments, that is Datto RMM's case. If the last three years taught you to value the ability to leave, price that in.
The parts that rarely make a feature grid
Comparisons and price lists tend to stop at monitoring, patching and tickets. Helios has kept shipping, every feature lands on every plan, and this is the part that usually gets left out:
- Cyber Essentials readiness, with the fixes. Every Windows machine is checked each day against the Cyber Essentials technical controls (v3.3, April 2026), 13 checks a machine. Nine of them have a fix in Helios: one press for the firewall, incoming connections, the Guest account, auto-run, lockout, overdue updates and Microsoft Defender, and a yes first before it disables unused accounts or turns off automatic sign-in. Each client gets a readiness report under your name. It is a readiness check: only a Certification Body awards the certificate. How it works
- Client billing that closes the loop. Recurring contracts (flat, per-device or per-seat), an included-hours retainer that nets against logged time, and the finished invoice pushed into Xero or QuickBooks or exported as CSV.
- The kit that will never take an agent. Nominate a machine already running the agent as a site relay and act on the switches, firewalls, NAS boxes and printers around it over SSH. A target only appears if that relay is what discovered it, every command waits for a human, and the password is fetched at the moment it runs and written to the audit trail.
- Network discovery that names things. Agents map each client's network and identify what they find by vendor and type, so new hardware on a client site is flagged the day it appears.
- Replacement dates without a spreadsheet. Machines report their own age from the BIOS date, so Helios can tell you what is due for replacement against a service-life policy you set, per client.
- Reporting built for the review, not the dashboard. A custom report builder, SLA reporting, Microsoft 365 licence-cost reporting, and a day-one baseline per client that stores the numbers, so a quarterly review can prove what actually moved.
- Quotes the client accepts from the portal. Price a piece of work, send it, and the client accepts or declines it signed in to the portal or from the link in the email. Monthly lines go straight onto their contract, one-off lines onto that month's invoice, and every decision is on the record.
- Approvals on your phone. Helios installs as an app from the browser and pushes a fix waiting for approval, a critical alert or an escalation to your phone, each opening the page it is about. Every kind can be switched off per person.
- Everything is addressable. A published REST API, a credential vault with an audit trail, custom fields on clients and devices, and standing rules that limit what Helio may do on its own: block an action or require a human to approve it, scoped to one client, a device group, a device type or a single machine, and to a class of action or one named fix.
What the add-ons cost
Datto RMM · how the bill is built
From ~$2.99/endpoint/month reported, minimum commitments, multi-year terms with auto-renewal (verified July 2026)
Every line on the Helios list is on every plan, and the seat count never changes the price. Whatever Datto RMM quotes you, add up the add-ons and the seats before you compare the two headline numbers.
Common questions
Is Helios a good alternative to Datto RMM?
If the contract terms are what is bothering you, yes. Datto RMM has been in the market since 2011. Helios is monthly with no minimum term, publishes its prices, and includes a service desk rather than expecting you to buy Autotask alongside it.
How does Helios pricing compare to Datto RMM?
Datto RMM is reported from around $2.99 per endpoint per month with minimums, quoted rather than published, and usually on a multi year term. Helios is £4 a device on the Launch tier up to 25 devices, then £99, £199 or £399 a month by device band, published, monthly, cancel any time.
Is Helios tied to a multi-year contract?
No. Billing is monthly and you can cancel any time. The 14 day trial takes no card to start. Long auto renewing terms are the most complained about thing in this market and we are not repeating them.
What does Datto RMM actually cost?
Short answer: it depends on your endpoint count and your term, and the headline rate is rarely the number on the invoice. The full breakdown lives on its own page rather than here, with the published rates, the buyer-reported quotes, the add-ons and the contract terms each labelled and dated: see Datto RMM pricing.
Is there a free alternative to Datto RMM?
Yes, and free rather than a trial. Action1 is free for the first 200 endpoints with no feature limits, Level is free for the first 10 endpoints, ManageEngine Endpoint Central is free for up to 25 endpoints, and NetLock RMM is a free Community Edition for up to 25 endpoints (checked September 2026). Helios is not one of them: there is a 14 day trial that takes no card to start, then a 4 pound per device Launch tier from 5 to 25 devices. If a zero bill is the requirement, one of those is your answer and we would rather tell you than waste your trial.
Is there an open source alternative to Datto RMM?
Tactical RMM is the only open source project built for the MSP job specifically: monitoring, alerting, scripting and patching, with remote access from an embedded MeshCentral. MeshCentral on its own is Apache 2.0 and widely used, but it is remote access only, with no monitoring, patching or scripting. NetLock RMM is open core under AGPL with a free tier to 25 endpoints. The honest caveat is that RMM means four things running together and almost nothing in open source does all four, so price in the hosting, the upgrades and the hours. Helios is not open source.
What is the best Datto RMM alternative for a small MSP?
It depends which axis is hurting. If it is the bill growing with every endpoint, look at flat or per technician pricing. If it is the service desk living in a second product, look at something that has one built in. If it is the contract, check the term and the notice period before the feature list, because that is the part you cannot undo. Helios was built for one to ten technician teams that want the whole job in one bill, which is a fit for some of those and not all of them.
Sources
Competitor prices and terms were checked against these pages in July 2026. If something has changed since, tell us and we will correct it.
Why MSPs choose Helios
One platform that does the work, at a price that stays put
Helio fixes, not just flags
When an alert fires, Helio, the AI technician built into Helios, investigates it, writes the fix and runs it once you approve. It keeps what works, so the next one is quicker.
Everything in one product
RMM, a service desk with SLAs, patching including third-party apps, remote access, Microsoft 365 and Defender checks, backup monitoring, a client portal and billing into Xero or QuickBooks.
Priced by fleet, not by people
£4 a device on Launch up to 25 devices, from £20 a month, then £99, £199 or £399 a month by fleet size, with any number of technicians and every feature on every plan.
A price that stays put
Your price is locked for as long as you stay subscribed, and that is written into our terms. Monthly billing, cancel any time.
Bring your clients across
Import your clients and machines from another RMM's CSV export, then roll the Helios agent out at your own pace, with a count of how many have arrived.
14 days free, no card to start
The full platform from the first minute, on your own machines. No sales call. Remote control asks for one card check, and nothing is charged.
See it on your own fleet
Helios is the AI-native platform for MSPs: monitoring, patching, security, Microsoft 365, backup monitoring, remote access, client billing and an AI service desk in one product, at one flat price per MSP. Contracts and logged time become invoices in Xero or QuickBooks without leaving the platform. Every feature is on every plan. 14-day free trial, card-free, set up in minutes, cancel any time.
Start freeCompetitor details on this page were last verified in July 2026 from public pricing pages, announcements and review sites, and may have changed since. They are provided in good faith for comparison; always confirm current pricing and features with the vendor. All trademarks belong to their respective owners. Spotted something out of date? Email hello@heliosmsp.io and we will fix it.