Try to find a published price for disaster recovery as a service and you will mostly find lead-capture forms. The numbers exist — they are just buried in procurement files. Reference-checked ranges put DRaaS at roughly $50–$200 per protected VM per month with replicated storage billed on top. A typical 30-VM managed environment at a provider like Expedient runs $8,000–$30,000 per month depending on recovery tier and immutability options, and full engagements land between $250,000 and $3 million in total contract value over three to five years.
This brief decodes where that money goes, which contract terms actually move the number, and how four structurally different vendors — Expedient, Zerto, 11:11 Systems, and Cohesity — shape what you pay. All ranges are as of mid-2026; list pricing varies by region, deal size, and how hard you negotiate the test schedule.
The benchmark numbers
| Typical range (as of mid-2026) | Billing basis | |
|---|---|---|
| Per-VM subscription | $50–$200 per VM/month | Per protected workload |
| Replicated storage | Billed on top, tiered by performance and immutability | Per GB/month |
| Recovery compute | Heavily discounted until you declare | Reserved or burst, per vCPU/GB |
| Replication bandwidth | Often bundled; metered at hyperscaler targets | Per Mbps or egress GB |
| 30-VM managed environment | $8,000–$30,000/month | Blended monthly bill |
| Full engagement | $250K–$3M total contract value | 3–5 year term |
Treat these as the shape of the market, not a rate card. The spread inside each range is not noise — it is the recovery SLA. A four-hour contractual RTO with annual testing sits at the bottom of the band; a 15-minute RTO with quarterly witnessed tests and immutable replica storage sits at the top. The number itself is less useful than knowing which lever put you where you are.
The anatomy of a DRaaS bill
Every DRaaS quote, whatever the logo, decomposes into a base subscription per protected workload plus three consumption components. The subscription covers replication software, orchestration, and the provider’s support obligation. Consumption covers recovery compute (cheap while idle, full price the moment you declare), replicated storage, and replication bandwidth.
Storage is the line that grows while nobody is watching. Journals, retained snapshots, and immutability copies compound the same way backup storage does — our cost-per-TB benchmark applies almost unchanged here, and the same $/TB discipline should be in your DRaaS renewal file. The takeaway for the meeting: the per-VM rate is the headline, but storage growth is what your year-three bill will actually be about.
The three questions that move the price
Declared vs. contractual recovery SLAs
Many quotes quietly price a declared objective — a target the provider aims for — rather than a contractual SLA with remedies. The gap between the two is often 30–50% of the bill. Decide which workloads genuinely need a contractual 15-minute RTO and which can live with a four-hour target; our RTO/RPO benchmarks give defensible tiers. Paying SLA money for target language is the most common DRaaS procurement mistake I see.
Failover testing frequency
Testing is where DRaaS quotes hide margin in both directions. One included annual test is the default; each additional witnessed test typically bills as a professional-services day plus recovery compute. Quarterly testing can add 10–20% to the annual bill — and it is usually worth it, because an untested runbook is a fiction. Regulated shops should reconcile the test schedule against the cadence argued in our DR testing and DORA brief before signing, not after the first audit finding.
Does failover require IP and DNS changes?
This is the sleeper question. If recovered workloads come up on new addresses, every failover — including tests — drags in DNS cutover, firewall rework, and application re-pointing. That shows up as longer real RTOs and larger services bills. Expedient’s SDN-based approach is the notable counterexample: its push-button failover preserves network identity, so workloads recover without IP or DNS changes. Other providers solve it with stretched networking or scripted re-IP, with varying elegance. Ask the question in every evaluation; the answer predicts your true test cost better than the per-VM rate does.
How four vendors structure the bill
Expedient
Expedient is a full-stack operator: it runs the target cloud, the network, and the service desk, with DRaaS offerings for both VMware and Nutanix estates. Pricing is a managed monthly bill — the $8K–$30K figure for a 30-VM environment is the working planning range, with recovery tier and immutable storage driving the spread. Strengths: the push-button, no-re-IP failover noted above, and witnessed testing handled by the provider rather than your staff. Where it fits less well: shops committed to recovering into their own hyperscaler tenancy, or teams that want software they operate themselves. You are buying an outcome, and the premium over raw software reflects that.
Zerto (HPE)
Zerto is the replication engine, not the service. Its continuous data protection and journal-based recovery deliver the lowest RPOs in this group — seconds, not minutes — and it is licensed per protected VM, run by your team or consumed through an MSP. HPE has owned Zerto since 2021 and, as of late 2025, also distributes it through Commvault, so expect the same engine to appear on several quotes under different letterheads. Strength: best-in-class RPO and hypervisor-level flexibility. The honest downside: buying Zerto directly means you own orchestration, the DR target’s infrastructure bill, and the testing calendar. The software line is only part of your real DRaaS cost.
11:11 Systems
11:11 Systems is the consolidation play — the rollup of iland, Green Cloud, and Sungard AS recovery assets — and it sells managed DRaaS on more than one replication engine, with Zerto- and Veeam-based offerings targeting its own cloud or Azure. That breadth is the strength: one provider can quote continuous replication for tier-0 and cheaper snapshot-based DR for everything else. It is also the caveat: two 11:11 quotes are not automatically comparable, so make the account team state which engine, which target, and which SLA class each line item carries. Fits buyers who want managed service economics with engine choice.
Cohesity
Cohesity — the largest independent data-protection vendor since the Veritas merger closed — comes at DR from the backup side. Recovery is orchestrated from snapshots on its platform, with FortKnox providing an isolated cyber vault, and pricing follows its data-protection licensing plus cloud consumption rather than a per-VM DRaaS subscription. Realistic RPOs are minutes to hours, not seconds. That makes Cohesity the wrong answer for sub-minute tier-0 replication and a genuinely strong answer for the consolidation question: if backup, ransomware recovery, and DR for the long tail of workloads can share one platform, the blended cost often undercuts running a separate DRaaS contract for everything.
Reading your own quote
- Blended cost above ~$250/VM/month: you are paying tier-0 rates across the estate. Re-tier — most environments need contractual aggressive SLAs on fewer than 20% of workloads.
- Blended cost below ~$40/VM/month: check what you actually bought. That price usually means replicated backups with no recovery compute reserved and no orchestrated failover — backup with extra steps, not DR.
- One test per year in the contract: your real RTO is unknown. Budget the extra 10–20% for quarterly tests on tier-0 or accept that the SLA is decorative.
- Storage line growing faster than VM count: journal retention and immutability copies are compounding. Renegotiate retention tiers before renewal, not at it.
What to do about it
Run every DRaaS evaluation against the same four asks. First, contractual SLAs with remedies on tier-0, declared targets everywhere else — and price both tiers separately. Second, the testing schedule in the contract, with per-test pricing fixed for the term. Third, a written answer on failover network identity: no IP or DNS changes, or the exact mechanism and its cost. Fourth, storage growth assumptions in the order form, so year-three pricing is a formula rather than a surprise. Providers that answer all four crisply are the ones worth shortlisting; the ranges in this brief tell you whether their number is honest.
Frequently asked questions
How much does DRaaS cost per VM?
Published and reference-checked ranges run roughly $50–$200 per protected VM per month as of mid-2026, with replicated storage billed on top. Aggressive contractual RTO/RPO, quarterly testing, and immutable replica storage push toward the top of the band.
Why don’t DRaaS providers publish pricing?
Because the bill is mostly configuration: SLA class, storage volume, test frequency, and network design change the number by multiples. Publishing a rate card would anchor every deal at the bottom of the range, so providers price through discovery instead.
Is DRaaS cheaper than running a second data center?
Almost always, below a few hundred workloads. A warm second site carries facilities, hardware refresh, and staffing whether or not you ever fail over; DRaaS converts that to a monthly fee with recovery compute discounted until declaration. At very large scale, or with strict data-sovereignty constraints, owned capacity can win again.
What should a DRaaS contract include for testing?
At minimum: one included full failover test per year, fixed per-test pricing for additional tests, and non-disruptive test capability so exercises do not touch production. Regulated firms should align frequency with their resilience obligations — quarterly on tier-0 is the defensible norm.
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