CathexisVision alternative
Both South African. Both run on Ubuntu. The differences are narrower than usual — and worth being precise about.
Cathexis has been building VMS software in Durban since before most of this industry existed. This page is not an argument that they are bad at it. It is an honest account of where Valdexia is different, including the places where it is not.
Most of the arguments on our other comparison pages are irrelevant to this one. Against Milestone we talk about Windows Server; CathexisVision ships Ubuntu 20.04 and 24.04 server packages alongside its Windows build, so that is a draw. Against overseas vendors we talk about rand pricing and local support; Cathexis is a Durban company with a South African support team and thirty years of local installations behind it, so that is a draw too, and arguably better than a draw in their favour.
What is left is a smaller set of real differences: how simple the licence is to count, whether the analytics are a package feature or a per-camera line, whether there is a desktop client at all, and what the operating system underneath costs.
This page is for people choosing between the two, and it sticks to what can be checked against each vendor's own published material.
Only what can be verified from each vendor's own published material. Cathexis does not publish prices or a text licensing model, so neither is characterised here.
| CathexisVision | Valdexia | |
|---|---|---|
| Server operating system | Windows Server 2016 or later, or Ubuntu — 20.04 and 24.04 server packages are published for the current release. A genuine strength, and the same answer we give. | Ubuntu 24.04 LTS on x86, from a mini PC up to a server rack. No Windows build and no operating system licence to buy. |
| Operator client | A Windows client, with CATHEXISCarbon as the current generation — a Windows desktop installer, and CATHEXISCarbon Web, which runs in a browser with nothing to install. | A browser, and only a browser. There is no desktop client to install, version-match or license per seat, because everything an operator does is the same web interface. iOS and Android apps are included on every tier. |
| Quoting | Prices are not published. Packages and the feature matrix are set out on the licensing page, and the figures come from Cathexis or an accredited partner. | Also quoted rather than published — but the structure is one base licence per system plus one rate per channel, with no per-server licence, so the figure follows the camera count. In rand, VAT inclusive. |
| What a package includes | Features are set out per package, and the licensing page's own legend distinguishes an included feature from one where a licence is required, so some capability sits beside the package price rather than inside it. | Object detection and tracking, motion, heatmaps, colour extraction, tripwire and loitering rules, the alarm manager, maps and role-based access are in the channel licence on every camera. Plate recognition, face recognition and forensic review are per camera on top — for the cameras that need them, not the whole site. |
| Smallest deployment | An enterprise and commercial product, sold through accredited integrators. | Also commercial, from sixteen channels up — a mini PC in a comms cupboard runs a branch, and the same build runs a multi-server estate. A 7-day demo licence for 10 cameras comes first either way. |
| Scale | Around thirty years and a very large installed base across Africa and the Middle East, with an extensive published list of tested camera and third-party integrations behind it. | Built and priced for estates in the thousands: unlimited cameras per recording server, multi-server recording under one management interface, federated multi-site and automatic server failover. 500+ cameras on a single site, 10,000+ supported, and a worked cost example at 2,500 published on the Milestone comparison. |
CathexisVision details above are taken from Cathexis's own published download listings, documentation and licensing page as at October 2026. Their licensing page presents its package matrix as an image rather than text, so this table deliberately makes no claim about how their licences are counted — ask Cathexis or an accredited partner, and ask us the same question.
The clearest way to compare two products whose prices are presented differently is for one side to put its numbers down and invite the other to do the same. Ours are below, in full, for an estate of 2,500 cameras.
That 2,500-camera figure assumes AI detection on every single camera, at the 150-cameras-per-GPU density we run in production — it is the most expensive shape this can take, because the GPU is what sets the server count. Most estates of this size run detection on the cameras that need it rather than all of them, which means fewer servers for the same camera count. There is no CathexisVision column here for the same reason there is none in the table above: their package matrix is published as an image and their prices are not published at all, so anything we printed would be invented. Ask them for the equivalent figure and set it beside this one.
Neither of us publishes a rate card, so the useful comparison is not two numbers off two web pages — it is the same two questions put to both vendors, and the structure each answer reveals.
What does an estate of 2,500 cameras cost, all in, with analytics on the cameras that need them? All in means the licence, the maintenance percentage multiplied by the years you will run it, the analytics that sit beside the package rather than inside it, and the operating system licences underneath. And what do the next two hundred cameras cost after that? Ours is two hundred channels at the same rate as the first sixteen, with no per-server licence however many recorders it takes and no Windows licence underneath any of them.
We are not claiming theirs is worse. We are claiming ours is knowable in advance, which at this size is worth something on its own.
Stripped of everything the two products have in common.
Our full price list is on the website in rand including VAT, so you can size a budget before you speak to anybody and check our arithmetic against a competing quote. That is a deliberate choice, not an oversight — most of this industry quotes privately, and it makes comparison shopping slow.
Object detection and tracking is in the channel licence on every camera, not added to it — so there is no decision about which cameras deserve AI. You need a GPU to run it at scale. Plate recognition, face recognition and forensic review are licensed per camera, which is what makes them a fraction of what the enterprise platforms charge for the same thing.
One base licence per system and a channel per camera, at the same channel rate at sixteen cameras or two and a half thousand, with no per-server licence and no package matrix to read a legend against. The quote follows the camera count, so an integrator can derive it before asking us.
Yes. It is built in Johannesburg by AD Infratech (Pty) Ltd and supported from here, with all prices published in rand including VAT. So the usual local-versus-imported argument does not apply between us and Cathexis — you are choosing between two South African products, which is a better position for a buyer than most markets offer.
It does. Cathexis publishes Ubuntu 20.04 and 24.04 server packages alongside a Windows Server build, so Linux is not a point of difference between us. Where we differ is the operator side: their client generation, CATHEXISCarbon, ships as a Windows desktop application with CATHEXISCarbon Web as the browser option, whereas we have no desktop client at all.
We will not characterise theirs, because Cathexis does not publish the model in a form we can quote — their licensing page carries the package matrix as an image, and its legend shows that some features are included in a package while others require a licence. Ask them directly. Ours we will set out plainly, though the rate itself is quoted rather than published: one base licence per system plus one perpetual channel per camera, at the same channel rate on both tiers, with no recording server needing a licence of its own and AI object detection in it and the specialist analytics licensed per camera on top.
Yes, if they speak ONVIF or RTSP, which covers virtually every IP camera of the last decade. The cameras, cabling, switches and storage all stay. Recorded video already written in CathexisVision's format stays in that system, so the usual approach is to keep the old recorder read-only until its retention expires.
You should not take it on faith. Everything on this page about CathexisVision comes from Cathexis's own published downloads, documentation and licensing page, and is worded so you can go and check it. Where we could not verify something — how their licences are counted — we have said so rather than guessed. Ask them the questions this page raises, and ask us the same ones.
A demo licence runs the whole product for 7 days on up to 10 cameras, with nothing switched off and no card. Point it at the cameras you already own and see what it does before anything changes — and if a week or ten cameras is not enough to prove it, say so and we will issue a licence that fits the evaluation.