Keepit vs AvePoint Cloud Backup for Australian Organisations (2026)

Most of the comparisons on this page are lopsided on workload count. This one is closer. AvePoint covers 6 SaaS applications, including the same Microsoft ecosystem workloads (Entra ID, Dynamics 365, Power Platform) that most Veeam products miss. Both cover Google Workspace. Both cover Salesforce.

The real differentiators are not the backup features themselves but the things around them: AvePoint's IRAP certification and governance tooling versus Keepit's workload breadth, pricing transparency, and infrastructure independence. Your buying decision likely comes down to which of those factors matters most to your organisation.

AvePoint holds IRAP (Information Security Registered Assessors Program) certification. Keepit does not. For Australian Government contracts, this is a hard barrier. If you are selling to federal agencies, state government departments, or any organisation that mandates IRAP-assessed products, AvePoint wins this comparison before the feature table matters.

We are direct about this because there is no workaround. Keepit's Australian data centre, ISO 27001 certification, and SOC 2 Type II compliance meet the requirements for most private sector organisations. But they do not substitute for IRAP in a procurement process that specifically requires it.

For state and local government, healthcare, and financial services organisations where IRAP is recommended but not mandated, the picture is different. Both products satisfy the data sovereignty and compliance posture that auditors typically look for. In those cases, the comparison shifts back to features, pricing, and architecture.

This is where we have the strongest opinion. AvePoint's pricing is opaque. Multiple G2 reviewers and customer case studies report difficulty getting clear pricing before a sales engagement, surprise API costs after signup, and storage overage charges that were not obvious at contract signing. The starting price of ~USD 2/user/month is real, but it is the starting price. Storage, API usage, and overages are separate and vary by configuration.

Keepit's Australian list price for Business Essentials ranges from AUD $2.63 to $4.47/user/month depending on seat count and contract term. Unlimited retention, unlimited storage, no egress fees, and free offboarding if you leave. The total cost is the quoted cost. No surprises at renewal.

AvePoint also requires annual or multi-year contracts with no month-to-month option. Keepit offers monthly billing for partners who need flexibility.

For MSPs building a resale practice, pricing predictability directly affects margin confidence. If you cannot reliably predict your cost base, you either over-provision (eating margin) or under-quote (eating the overage). Keepit's model eliminates that uncertainty.

AvePoint is the better choice in several specific scenarios:

• Australian Government contracts requiring IRAP-assessed products. Non-negotiable.
• Microsoft-only governance environments where you want backup, data classification, sensitivity labelling, DLP, and tenant migration from one vendor. AvePoint's governance tooling is mature and genuinely useful for large M365 compliance programmes.
• Planner and Project Online backup, which AvePoint covers and Keepit does not.
• Mid-merger organisations that need tenant-to-tenant M365 migration alongside backup. AvePoint sells migration tools from the same vendor.
• BYOC flexibility for organisations that want to control their storage infrastructure. AvePoint supports Azure, AWS, and GCP as storage targets. Keepit requires use of its own cloud (no bring-your-own-storage option).

AvePoint's Elements Portal for multi-tenant MSP management is also well regarded, though Keepit's Partner Management Console covers similar ground.

Keepit is the stronger choice when:

• You protect more than Microsoft and Salesforce. Keepit's 16+ workloads (as of May 2026) cover GitHub, Jira, Confluence, Azure DevOps, Zendesk, Okta, DocuSign, BambooHR, and Miro. AvePoint covers none of these.
• Infrastructure independence matters. Keepit's backup has no relationship with Azure, AWS, or GCP. AvePoint deployments, in practice, usually land on Azure.
• Immutability must be structural. Keepit's Merkle tree architecture is immutable by design. AvePoint's immutability depends on how the underlying BYOC storage is configured.
• Pricing predictability matters. Keepit's all-inclusive per-user price eliminates storage overages, API surprises, and overage charges. AvePoint customers have been burned by these.
• You need contract flexibility. Month-to-month billing versus annual-minimum lock-in.
• You are an MSP building a growing SaaS backup offering. Every new Keepit connector is a new billable service with zero deployment overhead.

Keepit also ships new connectors faster than AvePoint, with a target of 100+ workloads by 2028. That pace of expansion matters for MSPs who want a product that grows their addressable market over time.

See also: Keepit vs Datto | Keepit vs Acronis