Understanding the pricing model

Datto SaaS Protection offers a number of subscription options that provide billing flexibility. The pricing model varies by subscription type. This article describes the Datto SaaS Protection pricing model for each subscription type:

NOTE  Effective December 2025, Datto SaaS Protection transitioned to a Committed Minimum Quantity (CMQ) and variable consumption policy for standalone and legacy SaaS Protection subscriptions. This policy has replaced the previous high-watermark pricing approach. (Refer to Committed Minimum Quantity (CMQ) billing FAQs.) This change does NOT apply to Kaseya 365 User subscriptions.

To check your subscription type:

  1. Log in to Datto SaaS Protection as an administrator. (Refer to Logging in for the first time for details.)

  2. The Partner Portal Home page displays. Click Manage under Datto SaaS Protection.

  3. You are logged in to SaaS Protection and the SaaS Protection Status page displays.

  4. Do either of the following to open the License Information pane from the SaaS Protection Status page:

  • On the Kaseya 365 Licenses or SaaS Protection Licenses chart at the top of the page, click .

OR

  • In the main table below the charts, click to the right of Add Organization and select View License Information.

  1. The License Information pane displays license information by subscription type: Kaseya 365 for Kaseya 365 User subscriptions, SaaS Protection for standalone SaaS Protection subscriptions, and Legacy License Usage Summary for Legacy SaaS Protection subscriptions. Depending on which subscriptions you are using, you will see one, two, or all three subscription types on your License Information pane. Examples of each type are shown here:

The following topics describe how SaaS Protection storage and license consumption work with your Kaseya 365 User subscription:

See these topics to learn how storage consumption is calculated and how overages are handled for Datto SaaS Protection:

Backup storage consumption is determined by this simple calculation:

Total stored size divided by total number of purchased licenses, where:

  • 1 TB = 1024 GB
  • total stored size is how much storage is consumed by your data on the Datto SaaS Protection side, after compression and deduplication
  • total number of purchased licenses includes all pooled SaaS Protection licenses across all of your Microsoft 365 tenants

Example:

A customer is currently storing 10 TB of combined data in SaaS Protection for all of their Microsoft 365 tenants and:

  • the total number of purchased licenses is 200
  • the total stored size is 10 TB * 1024 = 10,240 GB
  • the storage used per license is 10,240 GB / 200 licenses = 51.2 GB / license

If this per-license usage is larger than the fair use limit in the Datto SaaS Protection terms of use policy, then the customer may incur the overage terms described in that policy.

For details about SaaS Protection terms of use, see How can I view my SaaS Backup terms of use policy?

Datto SaaS Protection has fair use limits that define how much storage you can consume before reaching an overage threshold and describe the overage policy that may be applied upon exceeding this threshold.

For Datto SaaS Protection, fair use limits are described in the product's terms of use. To view these terms:

  1. Go to the Kaseya Master Agreement, scroll down to section 1.a.i and click the Datto SaaS Protection and SaaS Defense product link.

  2. In the Datto SaaS Protection terms of use, view the fair use limits for Storage Entitlement For SaaS Protection.

If you're using too much storage, you can do any of the following to decrease your per-license storage usage:

Your Kaseya 365 User subscription includes one of these SaaS Backup modules: Datto SaaS Protection or Spanning Backup. This section describes license consumption and pricing for your SaaS Protection module.

Commitment means the minimum length of time you agree to pay for the Kaseya 365 User subscription that provides the SaaS Protection service to your clients.

Your Kaseya 365 User subscription's commitment terms apply to all organizations being protected by SaaS Protection. Your subscription is set up for auto-renewal, meaning that all billable licenses will be automatically renewed for another term. The renewal term matches that of the original commitment (e.g., one year).

When you add an organization to an existing Kaseya 365 User subscription, referred to as adding the organization to the same pool, the terms apply to all organizations within that subscription. For example, in a subscription with a one-year commitment, the subscription's end date is the same for all licenses regardless of when the organization's licenses were added to the subscription.

EXAMPLE  
MSP A's subscription has a one-year commitment that began in March. By the end of March, MSP A has added three organizations to the subscription.
Throughout the rest of the calendar year (April — February), MSP A continues to add organizations to this same subscription.
At the end of February, the subscription and the licenses for all of its organizations are automatically renewed for another one-year commitment.

Retention refers to the length of time the client's backed-up data is stored in the Kaseya cloud before it is removed. SaaS Protection provides Infinite cloud retention (ICR), where backup snapshots are retained in the Kaseya cloud for the retention period you select and:

  • up to three daily backups are taken of each end user's service data and retained for 30 days.
  • one of the daily backups is retained for 90 days.
  • after 90 days, one weekly backup is retained for 90 days, then retained on a rolling basis for up to one year.
  • after one year, one monthly backup is retained for one year, after which each is stored for the selected retention period.

The following daily, weekly, and monthly backups are retained:

  • Daily backup: the last backup of the day is retained.
  • Weekly backup: the last backup on Sunday is retained.
  • Monthly backup: the last backup on the last Sunday of the month is retained.

Paused or archived users

If a user's seat status is Paused or Archived, backups are retained as described above during the retention period. Post retention period, the last backup snapshot is retained as long as the user remains licensed with a Paused or Archived seat.

SaaS Protection bills for user seats that are considered protected seats. A user's seat is a protected seat if it is in one of the following statuses:

  • Active or Standard: The seat exists in the organization and is actively backed up.
  • Paused or Inactive: The seat exists in the organization; backups were enabled but are currently paused.
  • Archived: The seat no longer exists in the organization, but backups are still accessible.

NOTE  Archived seats do not impact your subscription's committed license amount. Archived seats are in a separate pool and are billed separately, at list price or the price agreed upon at the time of initial sale. Active and Paused seats will increase the subscription's committed license amount if there is an overage.

For your Kaseya 365 User subscription, usage equals the number of protected seats in Active, Standard, Paused, or Inactive status. Usage is measured near the end of each month when a snapshot is taken of the number of protected seats per pool. Licenses are billed based on usage. Your monthly subscription charge includes your billable usage and the subscription options selected.

Archived seats are billed separately.

Non-billable seat

A seat status of Unprotected means the seat exists in the organization but backups are not enabled. An unprotected seat is not a billable seat and therefore, a license fee is not charged for the seat.

Each SharePoint site and each Team requires a seat but the seat is not billable. Each licensed user has access to their company's SharePoint sites and Teams. Backups of SharePoint sites and Teams are complimentary (but these backups are included in your subscription's backup storage consumption calculation).

The following graphic illustrates the SaaS Protection seat types. A dollar sign indicates a seat for which a monthly license fee is charged. An M365 shared mailbox is charged a monthly license fee only if it has a license in your M365 environment.

Your subscription's committed amount is determined by the number of standard user licenses. Archived licenses are not included in the committed amount. Your subscription's committed amount may increase as the number of protected users (users protected with a standard license) increases.

The total number of protected users you have at the end of each month is your "usage" for the month. This is the number on which your subscription charge for the following month is based and is known as the committed amount.

You can add and remove organizations anytime during the commitment term. At the end of any month, if the number of protected users is greater than the committed amount, the committed amount increases to and remains at that greater amount, referred to as the high-water mark.

NOTE  If your committed amount increases due to an overage in users protected by SaaS Protection, Kaseya 365 User licenses are automatically purchased to satisfy the new committed amount. Each Kaseya 365 User license includes a new seat for SaaS Protection and a new seat for each of the other modules in your subscription.

You are responsible for paying the committed amount, regardless of whether you’re using all of the committed amount. However, you can redeploy unused licenses to new organizations that you add during the commitment term.

EXAMPLE  
MSP B currently has a one-year commitment with three organizations. The subscription has 72 protected end users.
In May, MSP B adds 7 organizations that includes 180 protected end users to the same subscription. At the end of May, the committed amount is recalculated to 252 (180 + 72).
In June, two of the organization accounts in this subscription are canceled. The accounts include 40 protected seats, therefore, lowering the total number of protected seats in the subscription to 212 (252 - 40). However, the committed amount remains at 252, the high-water mark and MSP B is still charged for 252 licenses each month. MSP B now has 40 unused licenses it can redeploy within its commitment term.

An archived license enables you to stop running backups for a user but retain their existing backups according to your subscription's retention policy.

If additional archived licenses are needed, you must purchase them separately. Unlike standard user licenses, the archived licenses you purchase do not change the number of Kaseya 365 User licenses in your subscription.

Depending on the options selected when purchasing Kaseya 365 User, your subscription either:

  • had no existing archived licenses at time of purchase. To archive a seat, simply apply an archived license. Any archived licenses are billed separately, month-to-month, at list price or the price agreed upon at the time of initial sale.
  • had a committed number of archived licenses at time of purchase and:
    • you are responsible for paying the committed amount, regardless of whether you’re using all of the committed amount. However, you can redeploy unused licenses to new organizations that you add during the commitment term.
    • to archive a seat, simply apply an archived license. For any archived license overage, those licenses are billed separately, month-to-month, at list price or the price agreed upon at the time of initial sale.

EXAMPLE  
MSP B's subscription has an archived license commitment of 50 licenses.
In November, all 50 licenses are in use.
In December, MSP B applies archived licenses to another 6 users.
At the end of December, MSP B is billed for 56 licenses.
In January, MSP B removes archived licenses from 16 users, decreasing their usage to 40 licenses.
At the end of January, MSP B is billed for 50 licenses (their subscription's committed amount for archived licenses).

Kaseya will only charge a license fee for a shared mailbox if it has a license in your M365 environment as this is considered a user seat type. (Note that even though a license fee is not charged, shared mailbox backups are included in your subscription's backup storage consumption calculation.)

A shared mailbox has a license in the M365 environment because of one of the following reasons:

  • The shared mailbox has over 50 GB of storage, at which point Microsoft requires a license.
  • A Microsoft user account converts to a shared mailbox and the Microsoft license was not removed from the account.

An M365 user that is converted to a shared mailbox and has their Microsoft license removed will be recognized as having a shared mailbox. Previous backups are maintained and are still subject to retention.

With online archives (also known as in-place archives), Exchange users can enable an additional archive mailbox for their primary mailbox where they can store messages. They can then easily move or copy messages between their primary and archive mailboxes. SaaS Protection can be configured to include these online archives in backups of an organization's Exchange service (see Protecting Exchange online archives.)

Because online archives are included in a user's Exchange backups, no additional user license is required to backup online archives. However, enabling this feature impacts current storage usage as new folders (archive mailboxes) are added to the organization's Exchange backups.

For Datto SaaS Protection, fair use limits are described in the product's terms of use. To view these terms:

  1. Go to the Kaseya Master Agreement, scroll down to section 1.a.i and click the Datto SaaS Protection and SaaS Defense product link.

  2. In the Datto SaaS Protection terms of use, view the fair use limits for Storage Entitlement For SaaS Protection.

The following topics describe how SaaS Protection storage and license consumption work with your standalone SaaS Protection subscription:

See these topics to learn how storage consumption is calculated and how overages are handled for Datto SaaS Protection:

Backup storage consumption is determined by this simple calculation:

Total stored size divided by total number of purchased licenses, where:

  • 1 TB = 1024 GB
  • total stored size is how much storage is consumed by your data on the Datto SaaS Protection side, after compression and deduplication
  • total number of purchased licenses includes all pooled SaaS Protection licenses across all of your Microsoft 365 tenants

Example:

A customer is currently storing 10 TB of combined data in SaaS Protection for all of their Microsoft 365 tenants and:

  • the total number of purchased licenses is 200
  • the total stored size is 10 TB * 1024 = 10,240 GB
  • the storage used per license is 10,240 GB / 200 licenses = 51.2 GB / license

If this per-license usage is larger than the fair use limit in the Datto SaaS Protection terms of use policy, then the customer may incur the overage terms described in that policy.

For details about SaaS Protection terms of use, see How can I view my SaaS Backup terms of use policy?

Datto SaaS Protection has fair use limits that define how much storage you can consume before reaching an overage threshold and describe the overage policy that may be applied upon exceeding this threshold.

For Datto SaaS Protection, fair use limits are described in the product's terms of use. To view these terms:

  1. Go to the Kaseya Master Agreement, scroll down to section 1.a.i and click the Datto SaaS Protection and SaaS Defense product link.

  2. In the Datto SaaS Protection terms of use, view the fair use limits for Storage Entitlement For SaaS Protection.

If you're using too much storage, you can do any of the following to decrease your per-license storage usage:

This section describes license consumption and pricing for your SaaS Protection subscription.

Commitment means the minimum length of time you agree to pay for the SaaS Protection subscription that provides the SaaS Protection service to your clients.

Your subscription's commitment terms apply to all organizations being protected by SaaS Protection. Your subscription is set up for auto-renewal, meaning that all billable licenses will be automatically renewed for another term. The renewal term matches that of the original commitment (e.g., one year).

When you add an organization to an existing subscription, referred to as adding the organization to the same pool, the terms apply to all organizations within that subscription. For example, in a subscription with a one-year commitment, the subscription's end date is the same for all licenses regardless of when the organization's licenses were added to the subscription.

EXAMPLE  
MSP A's subscription has a one-year commitment that began in March. By the end of March, MSP A has added three organizations to the subscription.
Throughout the rest of the calendar year (April — February), MSP A continues to add organizations to this same subscription.
At the end of February, the subscription and the licenses for all of its organizations are automatically renewed for another one-year commitment.

Retention refers to the length of time the client's backed-up data is stored in the Kaseya cloud before it is removed. SaaS Protection provides Infinite cloud retention (ICR), where backup snapshots are retained in the Kaseya cloud for the retention period you select and:

  • up to three daily backups are taken of each end user's service data and retained for 30 days.
  • one of the daily backups is retained for 90 days.
  • after 90 days, one weekly backup is retained for 90 days, then retained on a rolling basis for up to one year.
  • after one year, one monthly backup is retained for one year, after which each is stored for the selected retention period.

The following daily, weekly, and monthly backups are retained:

  • Daily backup: the last backup of the day is retained.
  • Weekly backup: the last backup on Sunday is retained.
  • Monthly backup: the last backup on the last Sunday of the month is retained.

Paused or archived users

If a user's seat status is Paused or Archived, backups are retained as described above during the retention period. Post retention period, the last backup snapshot is retained as long as the user remains licensed with a Paused or Archived seat.

SaaS Protection pricing for standard user licenses adheres to a Committed Minimum Quantity and variable consumption policy.

Monthly billing is based on the Committed Minimum Quantity of licenses for your subscription or your actual calculated license usage for the month (whichever is higher).

NOTE  Effective December 2025, this Committed Minimum Quantity and variable consumption policy replaced Kaseya's previous high-watermark pricing approach. (Refer to Committed Minimum Quantity (CMQ) billing FAQs.)

Committed Minimum Quantity (CMQ) of licenses

The CMQ of licenses is the minimum number of standard user licenses your subscription is billed for. This minimum quantity was either:

  • defined when the subscription was purchased

OR

  • for older subscriptions that were transitioned from the legacy high-watermark pricing policy, this value was set to what the subscription's CMQ value was in November, 2025.

Calculated license usage for your standard user license pool

The total number of protected users you have at the end of each month is your "usage" for the month. The calculated license usage for your standard user license pool includes seats in the following statuses:

  • Active or Standard: The seat exists in the organization and is actively backed up.
  • Paused or Inactive: The seat exists in the organization; backups were enabled but are currently paused.

IMPORTANT  Archived seats are not included in your standard user license pool and do NOT impact your subscription's CMQ of licenses count. Archived seats are in a separate pool and are billed separately, at list price or the price agreed upon at the time of initial sale.

Your monthly license usage is calculated using the standard user license count on the last day of the previous month. The monthly license usage of your standard user license pool is then compared to your CMQ of licenses and you are billed for whichever is higher. (See the example billing scenarios provided below.)

You are responsible for paying the CMQ of licenses each month, regardless of whether you’re using all of the committed amount. However, you can redeploy unused licenses to new organizations that you add during the commitment term.

EXAMPLE  If you have a CMQ of 200 licenses, and are utilizing 205 licenses on November 30, then your bill would be for 205 licenses, invoiced on December 1, 2025.

EXAMPLE   If you have a CMQ of 200 licenses, and are only using 195 of them on December 31, 2025, you will be billed for your CMQ of 200 licenses on January 1, 2026.

NOTE  The only way to reduce your variable monthly license usage is to decrease the number of users in Active, Standard, Paused, or Inactive status (e.g., decrease the number of seats protected by your standard user license pool). To change a user's seat status, see Changing seat status.

SaaS Protection bills for user seats that are considered protected seats. A user's seat is a protected seat if it is in one of the following statuses:

  • Active or Standard: The seat exists in the organization and is actively backed up.
  • Paused or Inactive: The seat exists in the organization; backups were enabled but are currently paused.
  • Archived: The seat no longer exists in the organization, but backups are still accessible.

For your SaaS Protection subscription, usage is calculated on the last day of each month when a snapshot is taken of the number of protected seats per pool (e.g., protected seats in your standard user license pool and protected seats in your archived user license pool). You are billed based on this usage. Your monthly subscription charges include your billable seats in each pool and any additional subscription options selected.

Non-billable seat

A seat status of Unprotected means the seat exists in the organization but backups are not enabled. An unprotected seat is not a billable seat and therefore, a license fee is not charged for the seat.

Each SharePoint site and each Team requires a seat but the seat is not billable. Each licensed user has access to their company's SharePoint sites and Teams. Backups of SharePoint sites and Teams are complimentary (but these backups are included in your subscription's backup storage consumption calculation).

The following graphic illustrates the SaaS Protection seat types. A dollar sign indicates a seat for which a monthly license fee is charged. An M365 shared mailbox is charged a monthly license fee only if it has a license in your M365 environment.

An archived license enables you to stop running backups for a user but retain their existing backups according to your subscription's retention policy.

If additional archived licenses are needed, you must purchase them separately. Archived licenses are in a separate license pool and do not impact your subscription's CMQ of licenses count.

Depending on the options selected when purchasing SaaS Protection, your subscription either:

  • had no existing archived licenses at time of purchase. To archive a seat, simply apply an archived license. Any archived licenses are billed separately, month-to-month, at list price or the price agreed upon at the time of initial sale.
  • had a committed number of archived licenses at time of purchase and:
    • you are responsible for paying the committed amount, regardless of whether you’re using all of the committed amount. However, you can redeploy unused licenses to new organizations that you add during the commitment term.
    • to archive a seat, simply apply an archived license. For any archived license overage, those licenses are billed separately, month-to-month, at list price or the price agreed upon at the time of initial sale.

EXAMPLE  
MSP B's subscription has an archived license commitment of 50 licenses.
In November, all 50 licenses are in use.
In December, MSP B applies archived licenses to another 6 users.
At the end of December, MSP B is billed for 56 licenses.
In January, MSP B removes archived licenses from 16 users, decreasing their usage to 40 licenses.
At the end of January, MSP B is billed for 50 licenses (their subscription's committed amount for archived licenses).

Kaseya will only charge a license fee for a shared mailbox if it has a license in your M365 environment as this is considered a user seat type. (Note that even though a license fee is not charged, shared mailbox backups are included in your subscription's backup storage consumption calculation.)

A shared mailbox has a license in the M365 environment because of one of the following reasons:

  • The shared mailbox has over 50 GB of storage, at which point Microsoft requires a license.
  • A Microsoft user account converts to a shared mailbox and the Microsoft license was not removed from the account.

An M365 user that is converted to a shared mailbox and has their Microsoft license removed will be recognized as having a shared mailbox. Previous backups are maintained and are still subject to retention.

With online archives (also known as in-place archives), Exchange users can enable an additional archive mailbox for their primary mailbox where they can store messages. They can then easily move or copy messages between their primary and archive mailboxes. SaaS Protection can be configured to include these online archives in backups of an organization's Exchange service (see Protecting Exchange online archives.)

Because online archives are included in a user's Exchange backups, no additional user license is required to backup online archives. However, enabling this feature impacts current storage usage as new folders (archive mailboxes) are added to the organization's Exchange backups.

For Datto SaaS Protection, fair use limits are described in the product's terms of use. To view these terms:

  1. Go to the Kaseya Master Agreement, scroll down to section 1.a.i and click the Datto SaaS Protection and SaaS Defense product link.

  2. In the Datto SaaS Protection terms of use, view the fair use limits for Storage Entitlement For SaaS Protection.

The following topics describe how license consumption and pricing work for legacy SaaS Protection subscriptions.

Commitment means the minimum length of time you agree to pay for the SaaS Protection service on behalf of your clients. The options are:

  • Three-year: A three-year commitment is for 36 consecutive months, or three calendar years. At the end of the commitment term you can switch to a one-year commitment, cancel the agreement, or do nothing and the three-year commitment automatically renews as a new three-year commitment.
  • One-year: A one-year commitment is for 12 consecutive months, or one calendar year. At the end of the commitment term you can cancel the agreement, or do nothing, and the one-year commitment will automatically renew with a new one-year commitment.
  • Month-to-month: With the month-to-month option, you have the flexibility to add or remove licenses on demand, and the next monthly billing cycle will reflect those changes.

You will be billed for the SaaS Protection service at the beginning of the month, for that month. Towards the end of each month, we take a billable usage snapshot that determines what your bill will be for the following month.

IMPORTANT  The month-to-month option is not available for MSPs that became a partner on or after January 22, 2023.

Retention refers to the length of time the client's backed-up data is stored in the Kaseya cloud before it is removed. The retention types are:

  • Time-based retention (TBR): Backup snapshots are retained in the Kaseya cloud for the retention period you select with a maximum of one year. 
    • Up to three daily backups are taken of each end user's service data and retained for 30 days.
    • The last snapshot of the day is retained for 90 days.
    • After 90 days, one weekly backup is retained for 90 days, then retained on a rolling basis for up to one year.
  • Infinite cloud retention (ICR): Backup snapshots are retained in the Kaseya cloud for the retention period you select. The ICR retention type retains data until the subscription is canceled.
    • Up to three daily backups are taken of each end user's service data and retained for 30 days.
    • The last snapshot of the day is retained for 90 days.
    • After 90 days, one weekly backup is retained for 90 days, then retained on a rolling basis for up to one year.
    • After one year, one monthly backup is retained for one year, after which each is stored for the selected retention period.

The following daily, weekly, and monthly backups are retained:

  • Daily backup: the last backup of the day is retained.
  • Weekly backup: the last backup on Sunday is retained.
  • Monthly backup: the last backup on the last Sunday of the month is retained.

Paused or archived users

If a user's seat status is Paused or Archived, backups are retained as described above during the retention period. Post retention period, the last backup snapshot is retained as long as the user remains licensed with a Paused or Archived seat.

Your SaaS Protection subscription consists of the commitment and retention type options you select.

  • One-year commitment — infinite cloud retention
  • One-year commitment — time-based retention
  • Three-year commitment — infinite cloud retention
  • Three-year commitment — time-based retention
  • Month-to-month commitment — infinite cloud retention
  • Month-to-month commitment — time-based retention

IMPORTANT  The month-to-month option is not available for MSPs that became a partner on or after January 22, 2023.

You can have multiple subscriptions based on your organizations' needs. When you add an organization to an existing subscription, referred to as adding the organization to the same pool, the terms apply to all organizations within the same subscription. For example, in a subscription with a one-year commitment, the subscription's end date is the same for all organization licenses billed regardless of when the organization licenses were added to the subscription.

EXAMPLE  
MSP A currently has a one-year commitment — infinite cloud retention subscription that began in March. By the end of March, MSP A has added three organizations to the subscription.
Throughout the rest of the calendar year (April — February), MSP A continues to add organizations to the same one-year commitment — infinite cloud retention subscription.
At the end of February, the commitment terms are automatically renewed (unless another option is implemented) and apply to all the organization licenses included in the subscription.
MSP A also has a month-to-month commitment — time-based retention subscription that includes 12 organizations and a month-to-month commitment — infinite cloud retention subscription that includes 15 organizations. Both month-to-month commitment subscriptions automatically renew at the end of each month (unless another option is implemented).

NOTE  While in a current subscription, you can change an organization from a month-to-month commitment to a one-year or three-year commitment. However, you cannot change an organization from a one-year or three-year commitment to a month-to-month commitment. The retention type can be changed anytime during a current subscription, regardless of the commitment type. See the article Changing subscription terms.

SaaS Protection bills for user seats that are considered protected seats. When a user's seat status is one of the following statuses, it is a protected seat:

  • Active: The seat exists in the organization and is actively backed up.
  • Paused: The seat exists in the organization; backups were enabled but are currently paused.
  • Archived: The seat no longer exists in the organization, but backups are still accessible.

Usage equals the number of protected seats. Usage is measured near the end of each month when a snapshot is taken of the number of protected seats per pool. Licenses are billed based on usage. Your monthly subscription charge includes your billable usage and the subscription options selected.

Non-billable seat

A seat status of Unprotected means the seat exists in the organization but backups are not enabled. An unprotected seat is not a billable seat and therefore, a license fee is not charged for the seat.

Each SharePoint site and each Team requires a seat but the seat is not billable. Each licensed user has access to their company's SharePoint sites and Teams. Backups of SharePoint sites and Teams are complimentary (but these backups are included in your subscription's backup storage consumption calculation).

The following graphic illustrates the SaaS Protection seat types. A dollar sign indicates a seat for which a monthly license fee is charged. An M365 shared mailbox is charged a monthly license fee only if it has a license in your M365 environment.


Pricing tiers

The number of licenses for which you are charged determines the cost per-license for each pricing tier. The cost per-license decreases at each tier as the number of licenses increases.

Tiers:

  • 1-99 seats
  • 100-499 seats
  • 500+ seats

A one-year or three-year TBR and ICR subscription includes requirements that do not apply to a month-to-month subscription. Pricing for these subscriptions adheres to a Committed Minimum Quantity and variable consumption policy.

Monthly billing is based on the Committed Minimum Quantity of licenses for your subscription or your actual calculated license usage for the month (whichever is higher).

NOTE  Effective December 2025, this Committed Minimum Quantity and variable consumption policy replaced Kaseya's previous high-watermark pricing approach. (Refer to Committed Minimum Quantity (CMQ) billing FAQs.)

Committed Minimum Quantity (CMQ) of licenses

The CMQ of licenses is the minimum number of user licenses your subscription is billed for. This minimum quantity was either:

  • defined when the subscription was purchased

OR

  • for older subscriptions that were transitioned from the legacy high-watermark pricing policy, this value was set to what the subscription's CMQ value was in November, 2025.

Calculated license usage

The total number of protected users you have at the end of each month is your "usage" for the month. Your calculated license usage includes seats in the following statuses:

  • Active: The seat exists in the organization and is actively backed up.
  • Paused: The seat exists in the organization; backups were enabled but are currently paused.
  • Archived: The seat no longer exists in the organization, but backups are still accessible.

Your monthly license usage is calculated using the protected user license count two days before the end of the previous month (e.g., November 28 for the December 1 invoice). This monthly license usage is then compared to your CMQ of licenses and you are billed for whichever is higher. (See the example billing scenarios provided below.)

You are responsible for paying the CMQ of licenses each month, regardless of whether you’re using all of the committed amount. However, you can redeploy unused licenses to new organizations that you add during the commitment term.

EXAMPLE  If you have a CMQ of 200 licenses, and are utilizing 205 licenses on November 28, then your bill would be for 205 licenses, invoiced on December 1, 2025.

EXAMPLE   If you have a CMQ of 200 licenses, and are only using 195 of them on December 29, 2025, you will be billed for your CMQ of 200 licenses on January 1, 2026.

NOTE  The only way to reduce your variable monthly license usage is to decrease the number of protected users in the subscription's license pool. To change a user's seat status, see Changing seat status.

Kaseya will only charge a license fee for a shared mailbox if it has a license in your M365 environment as this is considered a user seat type. (Note that even though a license fee is not charged, shared mailbox backups are included in your subscription's backup storage consumption calculation.)

A shared mailbox has a license in the M365 environment because of one of the following reasons:

  • The shared mailbox has over 50 GB of storage, at which point Microsoft requires a license.
  • A Microsoft user account converts to a shared mailbox and the Microsoft license was not removed from the account.

An M365 user that is converted to a shared mailbox and has their Microsoft license removed will be recognized as having a shared mailbox. Previous backups are maintained and are still subject to retention.

With online archives (also known as in-place archives), Exchange users can enable an additional archive mailbox for their primary mailbox where they can store messages. They can then easily move or copy messages between their primary and archive mailboxes. SaaS Protection can be configured to include these online archives in backups of an organization's Exchange service (see Protecting Exchange online archives.)

Because online archives are included in a user's Exchange backups, no additional user license is required to backup online archives. However, enabling this feature impacts current storage usage as new folders (archive mailboxes) are added to the organization's Exchange backups.