XcellLicensing|Druva Licensing Guide

01The short version#

Druva sells backup and recovery as a service. Druva runs the software and the storage, so you don't buy a backup server, disks or tape. You pay in one of two ways. SaaS apps and laptops are licensed per user. Servers, VMs, databases and cloud workloads are licensed per TB of backup data stored each month, measured after deduplication and compression. Each workload family comes in up to three editions: Business, Enterprise and Elite.

02Platform and product names in 2026#

Druva has renamed its platform more than once, and its help pages still use older product names. Quotes, consoles and articles may therefore use different labels for the same thing. The table maps them.

swipe table →

03The three licence units#

Every Druva licence is measured in one of three units. Pick the right unit for each workload first. Editions and prices only make sense after that.

swipe table →

04Workloads and how each is counted#

Druva's Plans & Pricing pages list eleven workload families, each priced separately unless you buy a bundle. This table shows the unit, the editions on offer and what XcellHost charges where we have a listed price.

swipe table →

* XcellHost prices from our Druva page, monthly billing, indicative, excluding 18% GST. † Druva licenses endpoints per user, but our Druva page prices them per device. See conflicts. ‡ Our page says per TB of protected (front-end) data; Druva's unit is TB stored after deduplication.

05Editions per workload: Business, Enterprise, Elite#

Druva's public price list shows three editions for data centre and public cloud workloads, and two (Enterprise and Elite) for SaaS apps and endpoints. Some single workloads, such as Dynamics 365, Power BI and identity, come in Enterprise only. Features marked "add-on" are optional security capabilities billed on top.

Data centre (servers, VMs, NAS, databases)

swipe table →

Public cloud (AWS, Azure)

The same three editions. Enterprise and Elite add storage tiering, multi-region, cross-region and cross-cloud backup, automated cloud DR for AWS and the Dru AI Copilot. Self-service rollback is an add-on in Enterprise and included in Elite. Druva also lists zero egress and unlimited restores for data centre and public cloud.

Microsoft 365, Google Workspace and endpoints

swipe table →

Druva marks optional security capabilities with "$". Its pages show which edition each "$" belongs to in a layout that is hard to read row by row, so treat the "Add-on / varies" cells as confirm with XcellHost.

Salesforce

Enterprise and Elite. Multi-region storage, long-term retention beyond one year, data anonymisation, high-frequency backup and GDPR support are Elite-only. Sandbox seeding and Data Archiver are optional in both.

06SaaS Universal License and the Essentials Pack#

Besides licensing each workload on its own, Druva offers two bundles. One is a single per-user licence for all SaaS apps. The other is a package for smaller organisations.

07Per-user rules: who uses a licence#

Druva's documentation is specific about when a per-user licence is used. These rules decide how many licences you need, so they are worth reading before you order.

swipe table →

In Druva's partner console, preserved users are provisioned on top of the active count at 10% of active users, and a "High Storage Tier" of 300 GB per user is available on Enterprise and Elite (not Salesforce or Dynamics 365).

08Credits and TB-months#

For servers, VMs, databases and cloud workloads on a direct contract, Druva sells credits. One credit is 1 TB of deduplicated, compressed backup data stored in Druva's cloud for one month. A server with 10 TB of data that produces 8 TB of backup data uses 8 credits a month.

• Daily burn: credits used per day = deduplicated TB stored × 12 ÷ 365. 1 TB stored for a day uses about 0.033 credits. The balance updates daily at 12:15 AM UTC.
• One shared pool: all credits go into one pool. They are not assigned to individual servers.
• Term: typically 12 or 24 months, set in the contract. Example: 10 TB for 12 months ≈ 120 credits; 50 TB for 24 months ≈ 1,200 credits.
• 80/20 rule: use at least 80% of purchased credits during the term. Up to 20% of unused credits can roll over at renewal, subject to your contract. Anything above 20% expires.
• Overage: alerts at 70%, 80%, 90% and 100%. At 110% of available credits, backups are suspended until you buy a top-up or renew. Restores stay available under your retention policy.
• Expiry: at term end, backups are suspended whatever the balance. Unused evaluation credits do not carry over to a commercial account.

09Retention, long-term retention and the archive tier#

How long you keep backups changes the bill on TB-based workloads, because every retained version is stored data. Druva offers two cheaper tiers for older data, with rules about when it can be deleted.

swipe table →

Druva's worked example of the early-deletion fee: deleting 14 TB after 7 months in the cold tier costs 0.35 × 5 × 14 = 24.5 credits. Once LTR is turned on for a partner-provisioned customer, it can only be turned off by Druva Support.

For SaaS workloads the published limits are fewer. Dynamics 365 retention can be extended up to 1 year. Salesforce retention beyond one year is Elite-only. Active Directory lists "unlimited retention", and Entra ID data is kept "as long as needed".

10Cyber resilience add-ons#

Druva's price lists name three optional security capabilities that sit on top of an edition: Security Posture & Observability (Core Security), Accelerated Ransomware Recovery (Advanced Security) and Threat Insights (Premium Security). Druva's help centre groups the features like this.

swipe table →

Druva's help centre says Posture & Observability is enabled by default for eligible products in its partner console. Druva says MDDR makes "no promises with regard to response times". Prices for the three security packages are not published: price on quote.

11The Data Resiliency Guarantee#

Since August 2022 Druva has offered qualifying customers up to US$10 million of coverage across five risk types: cyber, human, application, operational and environmental. It comes with service levels, not insurance.

12Storage regions, India residency and compliance#

Druva stores backups in public cloud regions you choose when you set up. For Indian buyers, the question is whether the region you need is offered for your workload and edition.

swipe table →

DPDP, CERT-In and RBI: what licensing changes

No backup licence makes you compliant on its own. But the edition and add-ons you choose decide which controls you can actually use. Here is how common Indian requirements map to Druva licensing.

swipe table →

13Trials, terms and billing#

Druva publishes very few commercial terms. This is what its own documents say, and what to ask for in writing.

swipe table →

14Buying through an MSP such as XcellHost#

Managed service providers run Druva for many customers from Druva's Managed Services Center. The licence still comes from Druva, but who provisions it and who bills you changes.

swipe table →

XcellHost presents itself as a Druva partner in India*. Our Druva page invites resellers and MSPs to sell Druva with our onboarding, billing and support. The exact programme tier and whether a given order is MSC-provisioned, Druva-provisioned or reseller-led is confirm with XcellHost.

* Partner status as stated on XcellHost pages; to be confirmed by XcellHost.

15How XcellHost bills Druva in rupees#

These prices are copied exactly from the estimator on our Druva Resilience Cloud page. They are indicative, exclude 18% GST and are confirmed on your quotation.

swipe table →

Yearly prices are our page's formula (monthly × 0.9, rounded) shown per month; the yearly bill is 12 × that figure. A separate XcellHost product, Entra ID Backup, is ₹125 per user a month. It is not the Druva identity line.

16Worked examples#

Three common Indian set-ups, priced with the XcellHost rates above. They are illustrative, monthly unless stated, and exclude anything on quote.

17Migration, true-ups and renewals#

Most buyers come to Druva from an on-premises backup server, a Microsoft 365 backup tool or nothing at all. The licensing questions are the same each time: what to count, when the count is checked, and what happens when you grow.

18Mistakes to avoid#

1. Counting laptops instead of people. Druva endpoint licences are per user. Check which unit your quote uses.
2. Comparing "per TB" prices that measure different TBs. Front-end TB, stored TB and a provider's billing TB are not the same.
3. Buying Enterprise for SaaS when legal needs legal hold. Legal hold, federated search and defensible deletion are Elite on M365, Google and endpoints.
4. Expecting DRaaS on Business or Enterprise. It is Elite, or a per-VM add-on on Enterprise.
5. Letting credits expire unused. Below 80% use, you lose everything above the 20% rollover.
6. Ignoring the 110% stop. A data surge (an untruncated SQL log, a CBT reset) can burn credits fast and halt backups.
7. Deleting LTR data early. The early-deletion fee applies in the first 12 months in the cold tier.
8. Assuming Hyderabad. AWS Mumbai and Azure Central India are listed; Hyderabad is not.
9. Expecting the US$10M guarantee through an MSP. MSP customers are not eligible.
10. Paying twice for MDDR. Druva includes it; ask what an extra MDDR line adds.

19Buyer checklist#

Tool 4. Tick the items as you go. Your ticks are saved in this browser only. Download the list as a CSV or print it to PDF.

20Glossary#

Accelerated Ransomware Recovery (ARR)

Druva's Advanced Security package: Quarantine Bay, Restore Scan, Curated Snapshots, Threat Hunting and the IOC library.

Active licence

A per-user licence in use because a user's first backup started or first device was activated.

Archive tier

Direct-to-cold storage for data centre data, up to 50% cheaper. Not on Azure storage.

Credit

1 TB of deduplicated, compressed backup data stored for one month (a TB-month).

Credit term

The contract period for using credits, typically 12 or 24 months.

Curated Snapshot

One clean recovery point assembled from a date range and antivirus results.

Data Lock

Stops retention changes and snapshot deletion. Enterprise and Elite; AWS workloads.

Data Resiliency Guarantee

Druva's programme of up to US$10M coverage with SLAs, for qualifying direct and reseller customers.

DRaaS

Disaster recovery as a service for VMs. Included in Elite; a per-VM add-on on Enterprise.

DruAI

Druva's AI layer and agents, listed in every edition.

Early-deletion fee

0.35 × (12 − months in cold tier) × TB deleted, charged in credits for LTR data deleted within a year.

Essentials Pack

Druva's bundle for organisations with fewer than 250 people.

inSync

Druva's product name for SaaS apps and endpoints, still used in its help centre.

LTR (long-term retention)

A cold tier on Amazon Glacier Deep Archive, up to 20% cheaper. Enterprise and Elite.

MDDR

Managed Data Detection and Response: Druva's 24×7 monitoring of backup threat indicators, built into the subscription.

MSC

Managed Services Center, Druva's multi-tenant console for MSPs.

Phoenix

Druva's product name for enterprise (data centre and cloud) workloads in its help centre.

Posture & Observability

Druva's Core Security package: anomalies, rollback actions, access events, Security Center, SIEM.

Preserved user

A user an admin marks as preserved; uses a preserve licence only if backed up.

Resilience Cloud

The current name of Druva's SaaS platform.

Rollback Actions

Restores deleted backups from a secure cache for up to 7 days.

SaaS Universal License

One per-user licence covering Druva's SaaS and identity workloads, with pooled storage.

TB-month after deduplication

Druva's unit for data centre and public cloud workloads: backup data stored, not source size.

TurboTier

Local backup and instant VM recovery. Enterprise and Elite.

No terms match.